AAPT Members

In his second video on happiness (linked below), Alain de Boton consults an advertising agency to produce ads reminding us of Epicurus’ central insight that happiness is not found in material wealth, but in friends and family. He briefly claims that the reason for this (at least, on his reading of the tradition) is that advertisers associate their products with those things we do value.  read more »

[Post by Phil Jenkins]

Unlike brain surgery, the practice of philosophy shouldn’t be limited to professionals. That’s why I run a Socrates Café at the Scranton, PA public library. We are having our fourth monthly meeting tonight. We had 4 people attend the first month, 10 the second, and 21 last time. Because of the publicity created by the above linked article, the library is now thinking about expanding to two meetings per month, and maybe doing a third for 8-10 year olds.  read more »

Alain de Botton produced a 6-part series on Philosophy called ‘A Guide to Happiness’: Socrates on Self-Confidence, Epicurus on Happiness, Seneca on Anger, Montaigne on Self-Esteem, Schopenhauer on Love and Nietzche on Hardship. I haven’t watched them yet, so I have no commentary to make - but they are still worth looking at. Here’s the first:

Post by Gualtiero Piccinini

In one of my current classes, 4 out of 13 students are regularly missing classes and skipping many of the assignments and some of the quizzes.  At this rate, they are falling behind and will have a hard time passing the class.  I hope it’s still early enough for them to catch up, but I wonder if there is anything I can do besides warning them.  I have mentioned to them that it’s important to come to class and do the assignments, and I even emailed them to ask whether they would come to class, turn in their work, etc.  But my efforts don’t seem to make a difference.  Any thoughts on how to get students like this to engage with the class?

Con Houlihan, a columnist for the Irish Independent, has an op-ed arguing for increased emphasis on philosophy in education, because journalists and - worse yet - ordinary people are not questioning our leaders. Specifically Bush. But he does call out journalists in Ireland who were complicit with (or silent about) the Provisional IRA. He’s probably right about the phenomenon, and hey, who am I to argue against more philosophy in schools?

Many journalists of this generation have not distinguished themselves

I created these as part of the Inquiry project a few years ago. They’ve been updated and modified a couple of times since then. I use Peter Wason’s four-card task to introduce students to the concept of ‘form’ in basic propositional logic. I begin by presenting this problem with the claim that the law states:  read more »

A student of mine lent me Plato and a Platypus walk into a bar a few weeks ago. Forbes has reviewed (kindly) the sequel: Aristotle and an Aardvark Go to Washington: Understanding Political Doublespeak Through Philosophy and Jokes. As I frequently use political ads as demonstration ‘arguments’ in my CT class, usually to illustrate Aristotle’s rhetoric, I am quite anxious to get my hands on a copy.  read more »

There is an interesting article in Drury University’s student paper about approaches to teaching abortion. When I taught contemporary issues in ethics, I did. But I hated it. I sincerely hope that Dr. Teresa Hornsby, who is mentioned herein, will develop some useful techniques.
Learning to teach abortion
Grant to help study abortion discussions in classrooms

A few years ago, all my illustrations of complex philosophic concepts came from the Simpsons or bad sci-fi. Now, I find myself bringing things like the following to class:

(From Tiggers Don't Climb Trees Dutton Children's books).

Brilliant though it is, I feel I may be betraying something about my status as a 'daddy' when I use these. Oh well...

The Columbus Dispatch has an article about Ohio’s program allowing highschool students to take courses at the college level - and it focuses on a student taking Phil 101, ethics and the like! I started this way (seriously, I too was reading the Republic behind my Physics book). Someone should warn him.
High School Option: At least a few savor early taste of college

I won’t be able to make it to Seoul for the world congress, but it is a fascinating structure for a conference.

Below is an article I found promoting it in the ‘Korean Times’. Of particular interest is this idea of showcasing the developing ‘Korean philosophy’. I am reminded in many ways of the old controversy on whether or not there is an ‘African Philosophy’ (one answer is ‘yes, but it is primarily people concerned with whether or not there is an African philosophy’). At the very least, it could be used as a launching point for the issue of nationalphilosophy or ethnophilosophy.

Anyway, here’s the link:
Korean Philosophy to Get Global Spotlight

Every year, Merriam-Webster publishes their list of the 10 top words of the year. I usually take the opportunity to reinforce that old language-as-social endeavor point. This year’s entries are:

1. w00t (interjection): expressing joy (it could be after a triumph, or for no reason at all); similar in use to the word “yay”
2. facebook
3. conundrum
4. quixotic
5. blamestorm
6. sardoodledom
7. apathetic
8. Pecksniffian
9. hypocrite
10. charlatan

While I’ve always loved ‘quixotic’, my personal favorite this year has to be ’sardoodledom’. I will make a concerted effort to use it in class in the next week. I am teaching PhilArt at the moment, so opportunities abound!

The last few years have witnessed the great ‘truthiness’ in 2006 and somewhat more mundane ‘integrity’ in 2005. See Merriam-Webster.com for more.  read more »

Post by Gualtiero Piccinini

Eduzendium is an initiative of Citizendium, a newish wiki encyclopedia that aims to improve on Wikipedia by enlisting the work of experts in the field.  Eduzendium is an initiative whereby teachers and their students are enlisted to help create the encyclopedia.  I am not sure that it would work well for most philosophy classes, especially in light of the existence of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.  But I’d be interested in comments and suggestions.  It sounds like it would be fun to try, given the right class and students.

Below is a description of the initiative by Larry Sanger, editor-in-chief of Citizendium.  read more »

At the beginning of every semester, I sit down and digitize all the great ‘character’ appeal commercials I’ve collected over the past semester. The spring ritual is particularly good, as the Superbowl usually fuels such collections. This superbowl, however, was pretty much crap. With one notable exception:

(here as a youtube video until I get mine copy digitized]
Coke has been doing these ‘world peace through softdrink selection’ ads for years. May I humble present:  read more »

I came across this article while doing research on the frequency of standard ’scientific’ words in the NY Times science section. Andy Clark famously recounts a number of similar experiments in his Natural Born Cyborgs, and I’ve used them to great affect in my Minds and Machines class. It would be impossible to replicate this for students (I expect), but it might be worth discussing:
Scientists Induce Out-of-Body Sensation

[Post by Phil Jenkins]

One of the biggest challenges in teaching philosophy to beginning students is demonstrating its relevance to their lives. This year I’m experimenting with movies and videos, both through mail services and free content on the web, and I think the results may actually be working, though the semester is admittedly still young.  read more »