Posted on Friday, March 16, 2018

The Molemen & Plato’s Cave Today

One-sheet for SOPHIA Conversations

Printable PDF.

Here is our one-sheet document on “The Molemen and Plato’s Cave Today.” For short, you can just call it “Plato’s Cave Today.” The idea is to think about problems for conceiving of truth and knowledge, which lead to difficulties in trusting politicians, news sources, scientists, and more. Plato’s famous cave metaphor is explained in short for anyone who’s unfamiliar, and we invite chapters to pick a question that they’d most like to talk about together. After thinking about it and perhaps another for a time, flip over the page and consider the “Bread Breaking Questions,” questions about how and where the concepts discussed so far are sometimes applied and with challenges.

This one-sheet document is part of a series to come of one-sheets about episodes of Philosophy Bakes Bread. We’re calling them “Slices of Philosophically Baked Bread.” It would be great if local SOPHIA Chapter participants had the chance to listen to episodes of Philosophy Bakes Bread (such as this one, Episode 1 of the show), but we try to avoid requiring homework before people come to our events.

Instead, we want to ensure that everyone has a document that is one sheet of paper (front and back sometimes) that each person can read at the start of the event in a few minutes. Then, conversation can open up with everyone literally on the same page.

James William Lincoln has kindly taken on the job of creating our one-sheet documents for each episode of Philosophy Bakes Bread. We’ll be posting and cataloging one-sheets on other matters and topics, such as on pieces published in Civil American, plus we plan to post one-sheets that our members and chapter leaders gather or create.

If you have ideas for future one-sheet documents that could be great for SOPHIA to use in our chapter meetings, let us know! Email Executive Director Eric Thomas Weber with your idea.

Posted on Friday, March 16, 2018

‘It’s Over Debbie’ – Euthanasia

One-Sheet for SOPHIA Conversations

John Lachs facilitating a SOPHIA symposium in Oxford, MS.

John Lachs of Vanderbilt University

This piece was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1988 and inspired a firestorm of responses. Dr. John Lachs proposed this as a one-sheet document for a conversation that he and Executive Director Weber organized in Oxford, MS, in 2008 on “Ethics at the End of Life.” This one-sheet document was hugely successful for spurring inspired yet civil conversation about values at the end of life, as well as whether there should be freedom in end-of-life decision-making, what sort, and what kinds of policies make sense for end-of-life circumstances. The JAMA withheld the name of the author this piece by request.

Printable PDF.

The document is available on the JAMA Web site as an image file. For a printable, searchable (OCR’d) version, click here, on the Adobe PDF logo on right, or on the image here below:

Posted on Wednesday, December 21, 2016

Faith Without Dead Dogma: A Reply to Hay

Civil American, Volume 1, Article 5 (December 21, 2016), https://goo.gl/IywlxM.

| By Shane Courtland |

After reading a thoughtful response from Dr. Hay regarding my previous blog post, I thought it would be helpful to discuss my philosophical pedagogy. Even if you have never taken a philosophy class before, the core elements of my teaching method are still applicable outside of the classroom. Moreover, describing how I teach philosophy should better show what I mean when I say that “Philosophy is a method” and “I worship that method.”

When we discuss various topics, I insist that the class be bound by three rules. Their observance helps facilitate learning of the philosophical method. They are as follow:

In my class, you not entitled to your own beliefs. Everything that you claim to be true in class, you must be able to justify via argumentation. If you get “called-out” to justify your view and you cannot … you must, at least for the time you are in class, give up the claim that others should agree with your view. Obeying this rule means that no one can stop discussion by merely saying, “Well, I have a right to my own opinion.”
If you assert a view, the burden of proof is on you. If you get “called-out” to meet the burden, and you cannot … you must, at least for the time you are in class, give up that view. Obeying this rule means that no one can rebut criticism by merely replying, “Well, show me that I am wrong.”
You must be civil. You cannot use hate speech (narrowly defined, as by law); there can be no threats of violence; there is no interrupting; etc.

With these rules respected, I will entertain any questions or claims pertinent to our class discussion. And, when I mean any, I mean that I will only stop the discussion for pragmatic considerations (e.g., the discussion is too much of a tangent, we are running out of class time, etc.).

(more…)

Posted on Tuesday, December 13, 2016

What Philosophy Is For: A Reply to Courtland

Civil American, Volume 1, Article 4 (December 13, 2016), https://goo.gl/wAlReN.

| By Sergia Hay |

I wholeheartedly agree with Shane Courtland when he writes in Civil American that being a philosopher means “giving pride of place to open discussion, encouraging intellectual diversity, and allowing a difference of opinion regarding even dangerous ideas.” I also believe it means, among other things, laying bare assumptions, defining terms, distinguishing between seemingly similar concepts, and resisting dogmatism. But having faith in philosophical method is worthless unless we keep in mind what the method is actually for – to allow us to inch closer to the truth even if we aren’t guaranteed a certain, secure, or imminent arrival to it. Therefore, I don’t agree with Courtland that a full embrace of philosophical method entails taking any and every theory seriously. While philosophical method does not always settle our questions, I believe its value lies in ruling out answers that are weaker than others and even disqualifying those that were derived fallaciously.

I also encourage students to draw various and competing conclusions on controversial topics like physician assisted suicide and the moral principles grounding the market system. But I do not ask them to build arguments where strong arguments cannot be built, for example on the torture of babies or the political exclusion of particular religious groups.

Like Courtland, I encourage students to express their views in class. I make pleas for courageous participation of those with minority views so that the entire class can benefit from a rich palette of ideas to consider. However, this is all done within certain acceptable bounds of conduct. Racial slurs and ad hominem arguments don’t have a place in these discussions because they are attacks and serve to erode the minimal amount of trust we require to hold ourselves together in discussion.

Since the election, I’ve been spending a lot of time considering John Stuart Mill’s On Liberty and his reminder of the danger inherent in thinking that our reasoning is infallible. We are human and we make mistakes. But I’m becoming convinced that certain ideas and public expressions of those ideas not only harm others directly (like racism and sexism), but also harm those who hold those ideas. Unlike bad tasting medicines, furthermore, such expressions offer no compensating good, but only harm. Philosophy shouldn’t just open the flood gates of all opinion. It should also help us to be gate keepers of good will and integrity. When considering the history of our discipline, we can appreciate other thinkers, like Socrates, who have attempted to be guides on our way to truth. His method was not used merely for its own sake, but for the purpose of calling us to examine ourselves and to live well. We should not have faith in mere tools alone, but in the judgment which ought to guide their use.

Dr. Sergia Hay is SOPHIA’s Membership and Chapter Development Officer and is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Pacific Lutheran University. She is representing only her own point of view in this essay. For more information about Dr. Hay, visit her profile page in SOPHIA’s Directory.

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