Teaching Philosophy

Introductory courses in political philosophy would benefit from the incorporation of material on the Iroquois Great Law of Peace, including the story of the foundation of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Classroom study of this tradition will serve several purposes: introducing a valuable account of political phenomena such as negotiation, consensus, veto, and rational communication; contributing to the diversity of syllabi; tracing the influence of Iroquois law on Western political institutions; and comparing the Haudenosaunee story to early modern social contract theory, especially Hobbes’s Leviathan. This paper draws connections to relevant topics in a standard, historically-oriented course and suggests learning resources and objectives.

This article shows how the mind-body problem can be taught effectively via an experiential learning activity involving a couple of classroom props: a brick and a jar of ground coffee. By experiencing the physical properties of the brick (shape, weight, length, width) and contrasting them with the olfactory experience of coffee (seemingly dimensionless, weightless, etc.), students are introduced in a vivid way to the well-known difficulty of explaining the mental in physical terms. A brief overview of experiential learning theory and its connection to philosophy is also provided.

In her book Specifications Grading, Linda B. Nilson advocates for a grading regimen she claims will save faculty time, increase student motivation, and improve the quality and rigor of student work. If she is right, there is a strong case for many faculty to adopt some version of the system she recommends. In this paper, we argue that she is mostly right and recommend that faculty move away from traditional grading. We begin by rehearsing the central features of specifications grading and providing two examples of how to implement it in philosophy classes. In light of the examples, we argue that specifications grading fulfills two of Nilson’s central desiderata (increasing rigor and motivating students) but not the third (saving faculty time). Since specifications grading generates two benefits that when combined increase student learning, without adding or increasing burdens, we conclude that student learning increases when courses are revised to include aspects of specifications grading.

This paper offers a contrast between “content-first” course design, and “skills-first” course design. The traditional lecture format is a paradigmatic example of the former, by the later I mean courses that emphasize the sustained practice of skills integral to the discipline. Two arguments are offered for adopting, other things being equal, the skills-first design. One is the “content-plus” argument that the skills-first course design does a better job of promoting content acquisition than a content-first class. The second argument, the “skills-plus” argument, claims that a skills-first course design has the added value of better promoting philosophical skills as compared with a content-first course.