Teaching Philosophy

There is evidence that problem-based learning (PBL) is an effective approach to teach team and problem-solving skills, but also to acquire content knowledge. However, there is hardly any literature about using PBL in philosophy classes. One problem is that PBL is resource intensive because a facilitator is needed for each group of students to support learning efforts and monitor group dynamics. In order to establish more PBL classes, the question is whether PBL can be provided without the need for facilitators. We present a combination of five strategies—among them the collaborative argument visualization software AGORA-net—to replace facilitators. Additionally, we present evidence that these strategies are sufficient to provide a PBL experience that achieves intended learning goals in an ethics class and is satisfying for students without facilitators.

Psychologist Richard Nisbett argues that fundamental aspects of critical thinking and logic are culturally conditioned. Nisbett’s claims, if correct, have substantial implications for the teaching of logic and critical thinking. In this paper I examine Nisbett’s arguments and conclude that he overstates the degree to which his empirical work justifies his theories about cultural difference. I will argue that we have good reason to be cautious about revising our pedagogy on the basis of assumptions about cultural difference, and that Nisbett’s work does not provide convincing enough evidence to justify setting that caution aside.

Philosophy of religion is a popular area of study with a lot of underexplored potential. For many students, as well as members of the public, it is the area of philosophy that deals most explicitly with the “big questions” that engage them directly. But a preoccupation with overly technical argumentation and decontextualized examples of religious beliefs can be off-putting. In this article, I discuss broader and narrower visions of philosophy of religion, outlining what needs to be included in any introductory course while also exploring ways of diversifying the syllabus and deepening approaches to existing topics for more advanced-level students. Without overlooking the risks of spreading the content too thinly, I highlight how increased interdisciplinarity and greater cross-cultural awareness can enliven the subject.

In a much-discussed article on fair grading, Daryl Close said that impartial and consistent grading of students forbids practices like grading on a curve and dropping the lowest grade. I show—negatively—that impartiality and consistency don’t forbid these practices. I also show—positively—that some other conditions on fair and reasonable grading do rule out grading on a curve and dropping the lowest grade.

This essay examines why some introductory ethics students are averse to any sort of moral requirement (i.e., moral obligation). It provides a series of descriptions and techniques to help teachers recognize, diagnose, and engage such students. After discussing the nature of student aversions to moral obligations, I discuss three causes and several ways to engage each: 1) Student Relativism; 2) student fears and misunderstandings of obligations; and 3) the phenomenon of what I call fetishized liberty, which leads to the “liberty paradox”—where students actively fight for liberties, yet actively give up or fail to use the ones they currently have.

This article explores the value of teaching Environmental Ethics as an introductory-level general education course for non-majors. It focuses on how philosophy can help students discern multiple voices within discourses, texts and thinking, and by doing so disrupt several untenable mental paradigms that new and underprepared students often bring with them to college: fixed and dualistic notions of truth, relativistic conceptions of difference, and decontextualized approaches to issues and ideas. This article also presents examples of class activities that are designed to foster multivocal thinking and that are also manageable for faculty with high teaching loads.

In this review, the relative strengths and weaknesses of four recent logic books are presented. This review is organized thematically, where each text is examined under the following metrics: aesthetic qualities, organization, accessibility, problems and exercises, student resources, instructor resources, and price. Instead of examining each textbook one at a time, a comparison by category showcases each book’s prominent features and themes within that category. Attention is also given in this review to the needs of logic students at the junior college level, whose diverse backgrounds increasingly factor into textbook decisions. Selecting a logic textbook can seem especially daunting given the abundance of choices on the market. Instructors are increasingly forced to select a textbook with numerous, and even competing, considerations in mind. This review intends to make the often difficult process of selecting between new textbooks on the market a little bit easier.