Cultivating Phronesis

Teaching struggles

2011-12-13T16:55:00.001-06:00

Well, we're now at the end of a semester and, as usual, I feel like I've done a less that great job in all of my classes. I wonder if I'm in the minority by spending the last 3 weeks or so of classes berating myself for all the things I didn't do, should have done or did poorly.

In an attempt to not merely berate myself, I am also trying to figure out ways to improve things. And I think I have a moderately good handle, at least, on what the problems are. Yes, it's taken me this long to become just moderately comfortable with having identified the problems that have to be solved.

Here they are:

(a) Because I use primary texts, the reading is very difficult
(b) Students are a different levels in the class in terms of both where they start and how quickly they move in their learning
(c) Students aren't always clear on what I want them to be learning (part of this goes back to the reading being difficult)

Okay, so those are at least some of the problems.

What happens with the difficulty of the text is that either they do the reading and understand none of it, leading them to believe that they simply can't do it or they give up and just don't do the reading. And, of course, the latter frequently is a consequence of the former.

In an ideal world, we'd be able to spend time poring over the text and they'd learn how to read these texts. But, the ideal world is not a semester long increment of time. So, the ideal world is unlikely to come into existence.

One possibility is to simply not have them read the primary texts (which is basically what's happening now insofar as they are not really understanding the text so they might as well not be reading it). But, teaching students how to read difficult material is something that's important to me. Possibly I just need to get over this and focus on something else.

So, one thing I decided to do is write a supplement to the reading. A text which is basically the written version of what I typically end up saying in class (if nothing else, this would free up class time since they'll be able to read this). Yes, this means I'm writing a book over winter break.

But, the question is how to get them to read the actual primary texts if I'm giving them a supplement that walks them through it?

I suppose the question for me to focus on, for myself, is (i) whether reading primary texts is important and then (ii) why it's important. If it is important and I can figure out why, this may help me to make it important to the students.

I suppose I could do things like, in the supplement, as them to find where and how particular arguments are being made. So, I'd give them the framework and the conclusions, but then they'd need to find some of the pieces. Ah, a nice metaphor. I put most of the puzzle together but they still have to put some of the pieces in. Maybe this could work.

Then there's (b), the fact that different students are at different places in terms of learning, abilities to read, understand, etc. This is not a new problem but I started, a bit late in last semester, to gear assignments in a 'Bloom's taxonomy' kind of way. The new task is to make sure that students are working on assignments that are geared to where they are. This may mean that I have to do some sort of quiz or something to figure out where they are and then give them assignments based on what the quiz tells me.

This brings up another point. The final exam for my intro class this semester was fabulous. For the first time I feel like I really put together an exam that will tell me what they've learned. I gave them a case ahead of time and told them that they were going to have to recommend a particular action along with a rationale for the action. In addition, however, I gave them a 'bonus' question that was something they hadn't studied for. I'm particularly interested in how they did on this bonus question because it pushed them to make use of material in a way that I think they ought to be able to use it from the discussions that we've had in class. But, since they didn't know it was going to be on the exam, they didn't study for it. I figure that how they did on this bonus question will give me a very accurate reading of what they know about the information involved in that question.

Now, whether the exam will tell me that things are going well or not, that's entirely up in the air. But I'm feeling pretty good about having an exam that is more authentic and will give me information that is more useful than knowing whether they successfully crammed or not.

Anyway, back to problems....students aren't clear about what I want them to learn. Or, maybe how I want them to learn? Maybe they don't know what to do.

You'd think this would be easy enough. Just tell them what I want them to learn. But then they'll just write it down and memorize it. But this isn't learning. So, how do I get them to learn.

Here are my current thoughts: work with Bloom's taxonomy.

I can give them 'the answers' on the first day. But to get them from being able to mimic the answers all the way up Bloom's taxonomy to being able to create something new with the answers, that's something completely different.

This then brings me back to the reading. Is it important to have students read primary texts in an intro level class? What is it that I really want them to be learning? I suppose that the ability to read the primary texts is important only insofar as it's related to other things in the class that I want them to be learning.

Okay, enough stream of consciousness writing for today.

Philosopher? What's that?

2011-10-23T08:23:00.000-05:00

Since I ought to be commenting on papers and journals, now is the obvious time to write something for this blog.

I've been fairly busy of late (with "of late" being the last 6 months to year). I've been fortunate enough to be viewed as having something worth saying (or being good at saying stuff) and so have been a speaker at a steady stream of conferences. I thought I'd posted about this before, but as I look through my posts, I seem to have not.

Oh, what's the 'this' I thought I'd posted about but didn't?

Well, let me share.

At these conferences I'm essentially talking about learning theory and some stuff about the brain. So, basically psychology and neuroscience. And, no, I'm neither a psychologist nor a neuroscientist. And, that's the thing. I stand up in front of a whole bunch of folks with a microphone, go through my slides, give a presentation that is well-received. Then folks tell me how much they appreciate a philosopher's perspective. A friend of mine, when I asked for feedback on my presentation, prefaced it with "first of all, don't lose your 'philosopher voice'." But the thing is, I don't say anything that I consider to be remotely philosophical. I keep wanting to ask folks "what, exactly, did I say or do that you think was philosophy?"

The best I can come up with, at this point, is that I have a particular 'take' on things (aka the world) and this is, in some way, a 'philosophical' take and thus, no matter what I'm discussing, I'm doing philosophy.

I'm not at all opposed to this interpretation, but it does really make describing what I do or bring to a conversation difficult. It's like being an interpreter/translate except what I do is translate ideas into my way of thinking about them and connecting them. I don't really add new ideas, I just put them together in ways that people find interesting/charming/mildly elucidating.

Really? Is this what philosophy is? Well, I suppose when I look at my favorite philosophers, maybe this is what philosophy is.

This brings me to the next topic: what, in addition to my special little twist on things, do I have to contribute to conversations? I can't keep going to these conferences and saying the same thing over and over (not only would that get remarkably boring, but there are folks for whom psychology and neuroscience actually are their area of expertise). What do I have to say that is different from what everyone else is saying that is worth hearing? What insight in terms of actual content or 'angle' do I have to add to the conversation? I mean it's all fine and good to be a good public speaker but shouldn't I have something original to say instead of just sharing what other folks have said?

So far, I've been largely walking in other people's footprints in my shoes, but I suspect that I could start making my footprints talking about something that isn't already being discussed. But what is that? The suggestion given by one person (who I really respect) is that I might be 'the next Parker Palmer' — how cool would that be? I really do like Palmer's work and I think that it does need to be updated. I suppose that instead of waiting for him to update it, I could start thinking about those things and be the updater.

I suppose.

Anyway, that's what I've been thinking about.

Oh, article that I've been working on for forever has been accepted (I still do not understand the 'fused participle' grammatical error that I apparently make willy-nilly. And, yes, I've read H.W. Fowler's discussion of it and it still makes no sense to me) and I've got two other articles out and not yet rejected.

AND, in even bigger news, I'm still off of facebook. I appear to not have been spending as much time on facebook as I thought because I haven't experienced any sort of increase in productivity and I haven't really supplanted facebook frittering away of time with another way to fritter away time.

Detoxing

2011-10-01T12:23:00.003-05:00

I wish I could say it's an experiment but it's more of a survival tactic. I'm going cold turkey from Facebook.

Every night as I get ready to go to sleep, I reflect upon the day and how much time I've wasted on FB and resolve to stay off of FB the next day, delete games that suck time, lock myself out. And then each morning, I'm back online wasting hours of my day. So, last night, when I made my nightly resolution that would not be followed through the next morning, I retrieved my computer, went in and changed my FB password to something too long and complex to remember (I used ISBN numbers of one of the books laying around — I don't remember which), used a random word generator to toss in two word and then randomly chose a word out of a book. Too late I realized that I could have used a password generator that comes up with basically impossible to remember passwords.

Anyway, the only way for me to get into FB now is for me to tell FB that I can't remember my password and have them send it to me. Hopefully, this will be enough of a barrier. I sincerely wish that FB would allow me to both get off and then put myself onto an irreversible "don't ever let me back on this again" list. But, I'm thinking that it may not be in their best interest to provide such a service.

It's now been more than 12 hours since I've been on FB. Okay, if we take out the hours I was asleep, it's now been 5 hours since I've been on FB. How sad is it that this is probably some sort of record for me? One thing I'm noticing is that I feel disconnected. What I'm missing is sharing things. Hence my turning to this and sharing here instead.

What is this about? I managed for much of my life (that is, the good 40 or so years prior to the appearance of FB in my life) to not need to share every damn thought that popped into my head. Now I feel compelled to toss my thoughts out into the universe. It's not that I expect or care that someone's reading or really paying attention, there's something about the sharing itself that I miss regardless of the feedback or lack thereof. Just the act of sharing give me a sense (imagined or not) of being connected.

Is this a good or bad thing? Is writing here, an obvious way to share and feel connected, having a negative effect elsewhere in my life? Is this need to share something that I should be indulging or is it something that I ought to view with suspicion and as evidence of some sort of character flaw?

Regardless. It's weird' since I never felt like I needed to share until I took away the ease of doing so.

Fun times

2011-09-15T07:37:00.001-05:00

I realized, as I was closing in on the last day of discussing Gorgias in my Ethics class, that students were not quite as excited about this text as I am. Okay, that's an understatement. I suspected that they were lost and dazed and realized that this is not an ideal spot for students to be.

So, I decided to go with the following in class. I told them that some students leave this text with one overarching question <dramatic pause> "Who cares?" or, put in slightly more sophisticated form, "Why should I care about Gorgias?" I then appointed one person to count the number of people in the class who were in this position while I stepped out of the room. In my first class only 5 people admitted to being in this position while in my 2nd class 21 people admitted to it. The first class was, as far as I'm concerned, lying. But the 2nd class, 21? Sheesh.

Anyway, I then asked them to come with all the reasons someone might give for believing that they should not care about this text. After they did this (and I put all the reasons on the board), I asked them to now advocate on behalf of Socrates/Plato and respond to these reasons. I told them that some of the reasons while factually correct might not be good reasons for not caring and that others if they were factually correct probably would be good reasons and so the task with these was to figure out if the claims were factually correct.

The take away of this was for students to really focus on what this dialogue is ultimately about. I wanted them really thinking about how this is relevant to their lives.

The exercise worked quite well.

But, it worked really well (and for my amusement) in my 2nd class. The reasons given were (a) it was written too long ago; (b) it's hard to understand; (c) it could have been said more simply and briefly; (d) not directly applicable to my job; (e) too long; (f) too confusing; (g) have to work with others to understand it; (h) no obvious right answer.

Of course, there was also the 'not relevant to my life' reason, but the above reasons are all true of the dialogue while lack of relevance isn't obviously true.

So, as they were working on determining whether any of these were good reasons for not caring (a philosophical exercise since we are interested in what counts as a good reason for something). I zipped upstairs to get my copy of, wait for it, the Bible. :-)

Of course, as soon as they saw it, many immediately realized my point. As, well, it also has characteristics (a) - (h) above. And then, since many of the students in this class are interested in heading off to law school, I noted that the Constitution also has these characteristics. It was fun to see their reactions to this and to hear them say that they supposed that what they really were saying is that they didn't like to work and liked things to just be handed to them. Fair enough. Who doesn't?

Anyway, we then discussed what the dialogue is really about (beyond the plot) which worked easily since our first reading was a Pulitzer prize winning play and we'd already established that texts can be about more than the plot. They did admit the given the topic of the dialogue "how should we live life so that we are most happy with the life we have lived?" that maybe, just maybe, this is still relevant to their lives.

It was fun. They had fun and, I think, really learned something. What else can a person ask for?

So, so close and yet.....

2011-07-28T08:42:00.002-05:00

Well, I'm sending off an article today that I started about two years ago (in the intervening time other articles have been revised and resubmitted, presentations have been given, classes have been taught, so it isn't only that I'm a slacker).

Turns out that I may have missed being cutting edge by just a few moments. In the last 2 years there have been just shy of 4500 publications on this topic whereas prior to that, well, I was pretty much up to speed in the area.

Instead of reading this additional stack of 4500 I'm going to send it off, hope that the core of my argument warrants an R&R and then I'll read whatever reviewers might be inclined to suggest I read.

If only I'd gotten it out two years ago. if only.

I'll bet there's something to learn here. But, I'm not entirely certain what it is.

A good book (movie coming soon)

2011-07-26T10:44:00.004-05:00

I just finished reading We Need to Talk about Kevin and I gotta say it's a really interesting read. Not a 'feel good' book by any means but a thought provoking book. Apparently it's been turned into a movie that's gotten good reviews from the Cannes Film Festival. I say read it before it comes out.

It's about woman's reflections on herself and her relationships with her family after her son has killed members of his high school. I like it because it authentically captures the ambiguity of life and the lack of clear answers without just leaving the reader with a nihilistic conclusion.

It's biology's fault

2011-07-26T10:26:00.002-05:00

So, in an effort (a clearly failing effort) to actually get some work done, I've made use of a program that prevents me from getting onto facebook. Now, I've used programs like this in the past that give one the ability to lock oneself out of facebook, but they've had the fatal flaw of making it possible, with just a few clicks, to easily gain access again. Clearly the people who find those programs helpful either have vastly more will-power than I do or they are just not all that bright.

Anyway, this new program is such that once you've set the timer (which unfortunately maxes out at 24 hours) you can't access the pages you've 'blacklisted' and you get do anything (aside from get onto a new computer) that will give you access. You can delete the program from your computer and you'll still be locked out. I suppose if I knew more about computer code I could undo it, but here's where my general laziness kicks in and my willpower is subsumed by my unwillingness to exert the effort. Yes, any success I've had is due to a strange and lucky confluence of my flaws.

What I'm really trying to avoid are the damn games on facebook. I can get sucked in and play the stupidest of games for hours at a time and then, not only have I wasted hours of my time doing something that isn't in the least bit worthy of my time, but I also then feel horrible for having wasted my time in this way.

A brief tangent: one of the most memorable articles from the NYTimes Magazine is this one on slot machines and how they are designed to maximize the amount of time (and, thus, money) one spends on them. It was written back in 2004 but it is one that I'm frequently thinking about.

So, onto biology. What is going on that I (and lots of other smart folks) will spend loads of time on seriously mind numbingly dumb on-line 'games' (I say 'games' because things like Farmville are not in the least games except in the sense that flipping a coin is a game — they take no skill or thought, just lots and lots of time)? Yes, we get a jolt of some sort of hormone that makes us feel good when we do it but why do we get a jolt doing this instead of a jolt for looking at a wall?

I think it's because we, being the social creatures we are, love interaction and love being causes of something. Have a museum exhibit that has a page of text to read and some folks will read it. Have the same exhibit that requires folks to push a button to make the text visible and I'm guessing more people will read it.

I think that these games suck us in because we are causing something to happen by clicking on a particular button. We like interaction. We are not, in our biological/neurological/genetic makeup, solitary beings. So, when given the chance between reading or writing, we (and by 'we' I mean 'me and I suspect you') opt for doing that which gives us an immediate result. The immediate evidence of our ability to cause something in the world.

Risk vs. Regret Aversion

2011-06-21T08:10:00.003-05:00

As I'm working on revising an article, I'm referencing risk aversion which, because one needs to cite every claim one ever makes regardless of how self-evident one thinks the claim is, led me to look for articles and I came across an interesting distinction (and how I love a good distinction!). The suggestion made was that while some people are risk averse others are regret averse and that the latter can appear to be the former.

I'm fascinated by this because, well, here's my Rawlsian decision making method: given a particular decision one is struggling with, assume that no matter what decision you make it's going to not turn out well, which decision would you rather make in the event that it won't turn out well?

I've always thought this was a test regarding risk and one that works for me because I'm risk averse. But, now I'm wondering if this is about regret — which outcome would you prefer even if it turns out badly? Even as I type this, though, I don't think that the test, itself, differentiates. I think that depending on the reasons one gives this could be a test of risk or regret.

And this gets me to the next thought which is whether there really is a distinction or is it just that 'regret aversion' is more accurate than 'risk aversion.' That is, do people really avoid risk qua risk?

I think that the distinction makes sense but I think that I am just regret averse, not risk averse. I think that the distinction makes sense because of the following thought experiment:

You are given a lottery ticket — a ticket that if it is the winning ticket will get you $5000. Someone offers to buy the ticket from you for $500. You take them up on the offer and they go on to win the $5000 with the ticket you sold for $500.

It is conceivable to me that some folks would prefer to sell the ticket for $500 and would not experience regret (they might even be able to smack themselves in the head and laugh about it because, well, they got the $500 and they didn't have to worry about having not taken the $500 and the possibility of not winning the $5000. That is they opted out of the psychological angst of losing all.

This scenario suggests, I think, that risk aversion is about avoiding a particular psychological experience that is in the moment (i.e., not a consequence of the outcome of the experience). A risk averse person may avoid an experience that they admit is completely safe because they experience a particular response to it — say, roller coaster rides — that is associated with the felt danger of the experience (because the whole point of the roller coaster ride is to give someone a 'safe' experience of plummeting, no?).

I think that the regret averse person is the person who looks to the available end results and decides which of the results they'd most, well, regret given the psychological experience they would have to 'endure' for that result. So, it isn't the the bungee cord jumper doesn't experience fear but that she is willing to look past the fear to the rush at the end of the experience while the risk averse person gets stuck at the fear part.

I'm not sure. Even as I write this they seem to collapse into each other again and 'regret aversion' simply seems like the more accurate description but then right when they're about to merge into each other, they seem to be a little bit different.

I think the moment of possible conflation is when I think about risk averse folks as focusing on the cost and regret averse folks focusing on the outcome. So far, these are two different things. But does anyone really avoid cost in and of itself and not because they think that the cost is not worth the outcome? So, that's where they begin to conflate. BUT, it could be a matter of the attitude one takes that then influences how one weighs the cost in comparison to the outcome such that the regret averse person is, a more optimistic (?) person (or, the risk averse person will say 'more reckless') and the risk averse more pessimistic (either as a consequence or cause — I suspect as both which then reinforces each). That is, a risk averse person will focus more on the risks and, thus, become more pessimistic and, thus, become more risk averse. While the regret averse person has the attitude that things will basically turn out okay. And so there's where the conflation seems to disappear.

Does this matter? probably not. I think this is a symptom of the fact that I'm rewriting an article that I am intellectually over but have to rework for a revise & resubmit if I want it published (and I do) and so as I work on it I'm finding other puzzles in what I'm using to do something different and intellectually interesting. The trick is going to be restraining myself from interjecting these new thoughts into this article since this article just needs to be done and out of my life.

2011-06-20T08:59:00.002-05:00

Well, here it is more than midway through June. Summer is flying by.

I have many thoughts about many things (surprised?) but will limit myself to just one (possibly more will sneak their way in).

I watched the Tonys last week and I'm reading Tina Fey's Bossypants and decided that I want to be friends with Neil Patrick Harris and Tina Fey (and Gwyneth Paltrow, Jane Lynch and, I'm sure, many more). I've also returned from a conference where I met some interesting people and I continue to want to be friends with Parker Palmer & Diana Chapman Walsh (and Sharon Daloz-Parks, Arthur Chickering, and bunch of folks I can't think of).

Reasonably, you may be wondering why I share this information. Because as I was cataloging the list of people I want to be friends with I realized that (a) most people I meet also want to be friends with these folks and (b) these folks probably aren't all that different from other people except that they are well-known. This led me to: conservatively, I'd guess that 25% of the people I meet are, probably, fairly fabulous people (more generously, 75%) but that I don't get to know them the way that fame and books let me believe I get to know these other folks.

I'm thinking there's probably a conclusion to reach from this.

Cutting Edge, Way Behind the Times or Really Not So Bright

2011-04-06T07:34:00.002-05:00

Here's a question for anyone out there inclined to answer: how does one know if an idea is worth pursuing (as in spending the time writing down and sending off to a journal)? I have ideas, and I find at least some of them interesting, but I have no sense, at all, if the ideas are worth sharing or ought to be hidden because they'd reveal my basic cluelessness. The problem is that I have no idea for how to go about figuring out the answer to this. I've tried doing journal searches but my fear is that my not finding something is due either to my idea being so painfully obvious that no one has written on it since the 16th century (and JSTOR doesn't go back that far) or, what I think is more likely, I'm using search terms that just aren't helping me find the relevant articles. I suspect that there's this entire conversation or branch of philosophy that holds just about all the views I do and they've got a nice articulation of my 'novel' ideas but I just can't figure out the correct search term to find this little community of right thinking people.

I suppose I could take the time to write things out, send it off somewhere, get rejected and told that what I'm doing is not new because.....and then I'll be told what relevant loop I've not been a part of. But that seems like a fair amount of work to just be pointed in the right direction.

Not everyone is like me

2011-03-31T07:57:00.002-05:00

Yes, an obvious truth but one that I've been spending a good deal of time discussing with my students. I think that as humans we have a tendency to assume that other people basically have the same 'take' on things as we do (while simultaneously believing that no one really understands us; but I think that the 'I am alone in the world' stance is one that hits most of us rarely and that most of the time we think most people generally see the world the way we do). There's lots of evidence anecdotal and otherwise to suggest that we think that most people (particularly those who we like) share most of our views even if we have no evidence beyond liking them that they have the same views. My suspicion is that at least part of this is due to the fact that if we view our view of the world to be the correct one — or else we'd have another one — and we figure that if we like someone they are unlikely to be the sort of person who is wildly irrational.

Anyway, onto how I've bumped into this in my own life. I recently went to a roundtable discussion that was about certain aspects of teaching and, well, due to the particular title it ended up that the folks who were there were not the usual cadre of folks but instead people who I vaguely know and have no reason to think I don't like, but who I really have never had a conversation with.

Well, the discussion made me realize the extent to which my thinking about teaching and students is not universally shared and that my views on teaching and students are viewed as being marginally naive, at best, and downright silly at worst.

I believe (and have evidence, data, etc to back it up) that most anyone can learn and become good at most anything given enough practice and the right kind of teaching (of course what counts as the 'right kind' of teaching is likely going to depend on the student and so the teacher is going to have to work to figure out what the student needs). Apparently, this is just crazy talk according to some folks. People were taking the position that some students simply CAN'T do some things and no amount of work or effort on anyone's part is going to make this possible. In fact, the phrase 'would need a brain transplant' was bandied about as the only means by which some students could succeed in some classes.

Wow. Just, wow.

Now, granted I could be wrong in my belief that any student can learn anything, but given that we can always be fallible, isn't it better to believe that students can learn and we just need to figure out how to make that happen (and risk being mistaken) than to take the position that some students simply can't learn and risk being mistaken in this direction? I mean it seems far worse to believe that a student can't learn, write them off when, in fact, they could have learned than it is to believe that the can learn and keep trying and have that be wasted energy because they simply can't learn. In the former case, we as teachers aren't learning anything new, aren't being self-reflective about our own practice and are probably sending the message to the student that this is all about them. If we're wrong and it isn't all about them, we've just unjustifiably caused this student to have certain beliefs about him or herself that are just false. And, we've not done anything to grow ourselves.

Okay, I've gotten that out of my system now. thank you for listening.

after talking it out....

2011-03-27T06:53:00.002-05:00

.....I've figured out my (white) relationship to (black) history.

Looking at Royce who talks about community being defined by a shared historical moment crucial to self-identity and a shared goal for the future, I was trying to figure out to what extent DuBois was telling me something about my community. After talking about it with some folks (and, I kinda suspect, looking a bit clueless), I realize that I was missing a key aspect of Royce.

Having a shared historical moment doesn't mean that we all have the same relationship to that moment. Thus, the experience of Black folk that DuBois is talking about is a part of my history but I have a different relationship to that experience than, say, Black folks do.

So, perhaps I am a bit clueless for it having taken so long to get to this, but, in my defense, it was that I was working with less than ideal reading of Royce.

Talking Race

2011-03-24T08:39:00.002-05:00

I am firmly committed to the belief that we (particularly we white folks) need to be talking about race. And, I am firmly committed to teachers taking a leading role on this. However, it scares me. Mostly because I know I'm not 'trained' to do this and that I'm potentially opening up a can of messiness. Of course, the fact that the messiness is there and just not talked about is all the more reason to get things out and into conversation, but still....

Anyway, my class is reading and discussing W.E.B. duBois The Souls of Black Folk and I think things are going well (though it does make me want to teach an entire class on the Harlem Renaissance which I'm pretty much sure I can't squeeze into my course rotation).

Discussing duBois on the heels of discussing Royce is interesting. (1) It'd be really surprising if duBois hadn't studied with Royce and (2) Royce has really interesting things to say about interpretation (one person working to help a second person to understand a third person) which is what duBois is doing in this piece (duBois is explicitly making white folks his audience) and (3) Royce has really interesting things to say about community.

It's this last one that's led me to some interesting 'places.' To what extent is the history of Black Folk my history? As I thought about this and talked it out a bit, I've come to the realization that I, too, have a divided soul as I try to understand myself as both American and white.

Here's what got me thinking.....despite my ancestors not being anywhere near this continent during the Revolutionary War, I view this part of history as part of my history. I understand myself to be American (in the United States, Norte Americana, sense of the word). Without thinking I use the pronoun 'we' to discuss US history. That is, until 'we' morphs into 'white folks' as in 'we drove the American Indians from their land.'

Is, say, jazz legitimately a part of my history? Gospel music? The pain of reconstruction South? DuBois notes that Black folk have particular and important things to contribute to America's sense of who we are, but how do I (or can I) claim it as part of my history?

I really want my history, as someone who is a US citizen, to be inclusive of all. I don't think that US history is the history of white folks. But, it also seems naive, arrogant, weird, downright wrong (pick any or all of these) for me to include the non-white experience in the US as my history (yet, weirdly, it doesn't seem weird for me to include the male experience as part of my history -- do two weirds cancel each other out?).

So, is jazz a part of my heritage as a white US citizen? Do I have to identify with only the winners in the history of my country when I have been a very clear beneficiary of them winning?

Discuss.

Emotional Whiplash of Teaching

2011-03-22T08:12:00.002-05:00

Part of my break was spent reading Parker Palmer's The Courage to Teach which is a book that just makes me happy. Primarily it makes be happy because Palmer gets at some interesting aspects about teaching — namely the extent to which teachers teach who we are — while admitting that he sometimes feels like an utter failure as a teacher. His words leave me feeling less alone and wanting to be a better person. [as a sidenote, a while back I asked two folks I greatly respect if they ever had days when their classes just crashed — a not so subtle plea for sympathy and commisseration — and both responded with 'no'. Talk about a self-care strategy that completely backfired]

Yesterday, the Monday after break ended up giving me instances of feeling like a pretty good teacher and instances of feeling like I probably should have dedicated my career to something like data entry. Of course, the fact that I teach 4 classes on Monday's is part of it. Due to a series of events, my initial (and quite beautiful schedule) was destroyed and replaced with what is, at best, a less than ideal schedule.

I left my first two classes feeling pretty good about things. Students seem to leave class having learned something and not disliking me or the material. The second two classes kinda tanked. Part of the problem, I think, is that the second two classes are upper level classes and I find upper level classes so much more difficult to get going than the lower level classes. In particular, with these two classes yesterday we were discussing material that I find absolutely interesting, fascinating, world-altering.

Unfortunately, classes spent on this sort of material rarely goes well and I think it's because I go into the class assuming that everyone's going to have found it as fascinating as I first did and conversation will just take off of its own accord. And, well, frequently the unimaginable happens and the students don't find the reading nearly as amazing as I did and I spend much of class time just being puzzled at the difference between my response and theirs. And, class doesn't going well. Not a huge surprise.

So, I really need to start spending more time thinking through very specific tacks to take to get students engaged even when I think that their engagement is pretty much guaranteed by the intrinsic fabulousness of the article.

AND, I need to start working on helping students to develop the skills to really look for what's cool and interesting in the reading and meet the text part way. Why is it that I can read just about anything and find something interesting in it to connect to something else and help me better understand things that aren't in the reading, but my students can't? What is it that I'm doing without even thinking about it that I need to be making explicit to my students so I can walk them through the process?

spoiled

2011-03-12T08:19:00.002-06:00

I have clearly gotten spoiled.

For the last year or so, I've been fortunate enough to have been able to go to a conference on teaching and learning every couple months (this is what happens when you blanket the teaching and learning conferences with proposals and a huge number of the are unexpectedly accepted). Each time I go to one, I am reminded that (a) I'm not alone in my interests and passion; (b) I have much to learn and many ways to continue to grow and (c) I need to take the time to put into practice what I know since it is so easy to get lazy and fall back on what's been 'good enough' in the past.

I am, unfortunately, now in the position of not going to another conference until the beginning of June. June!

I have come to so enjoy the experience of these meetings, getting to know and spend concentrated time with folks that I'm really missing it.

Luckily, I have started a couple reading groups on campus focused on teaching so that should hold me until June, but it's gonna be really difficult.

The Entire student

2011-03-04T07:24:00.003-06:00

I just read a journal entry from one of my students, a very bright, very engaged, very motivated student. He commented that he is going through a bit of a crisis triggered by Hume. Hume notes, accurately I think, that reason is and ought to be a slave to the passions (contra a handful of philosophers, say, Stoics, who'd say that we need to use reason to control our passions). This student notes that he's spent his entire life trying to 'fine tune' his rationality and has realized that he is no happier because of it. He can appreciate the intelligence and care gone into arguments, but he misses and wants wisdom, not truth (and, yes, I want to hug him for this). So, instead of doing the reading for class, he find himself reading material from Buddhism, Thomas Merton, etc.

I have long believed that college education (in the classroom at least) treats students only as minds and not as whole people (thank you Dewey for making the point that students are, in fact, people and we need to treat them as such). Students, and all people, crave meaning in life and if they can't find it in the classroom, they are (a) going to look for it elsewhere (see the success of 'non-denominational' fundamentalist churches as one place where they find it -- these churches explicitly target young college students) and (b) think of college as only a place to learn college related skills and not things that are important to life.

So, how do we, in the classroom, work to remedy this? We appear to be contributing to the schism between intellectualism and real life instead of working to undermine it.

More on grading...

2011-02-27T06:57:00.002-06:00

Oh, it's been a long time. Not that there's nothing to write about, just haven't been writing.

The issue of grading continues to occupy me for all sorts of reasons. There's the Dweck stuff that provides evidence of what we grade shapes what attitude students take (duh). If we grade products, students focus on performance and looking good; if we grade effort, students focus on learning.

There's also the publication of research alleging that students learn virtually nothing in the area of critical thinking skills in the first two years of college. This research was put together by looking at CLA exam data. The CLA (College Learning Assessment, I think) is an exam where students are given a bunch of documents and a task — along the lines of 'write a report for your boss making a recommendation for dealing with this problem.' None of the documents is perfect or without the possibility of error, bias, etc. Some of the documents are completely irrelevant to the task at hand and there's basically no way to arrive at certainty regarding the problem. All this is to say that it's working to closely mirror a real life situation. Not surprisingly, students who have learned how to take multiple choice exams well and who have been given assignments that tell them exactly what to do, well, these students don't do all that well.

Then there's a conversation I've been having with my brother-in-law about the college graduates he hires and the attitudes they have toward their own accomplishments. His experience has been that young people expect promotions and raises for simply doing what their job descriptions requires of them. They seem to not grasp that promotions are the result of doing more than what one's job description requires of them.

Now, me being me, I'm not inclined to blame the students. I think we've essentially taught them this. If they do what we ask and don't mess it up, they've gotten As. Why wouldn't they expect that doing one's job and not messing it up would be evidence of deserving a promotion? They've gotten As for being able to identify which, out of 4-6 available answers, is the correct answer, why would they know how to think critically?

So, here's my radical thought....what if grades were predictive of future success? How would we do this? What would grades have to measure?

I suspect that future employers would love it if grades played such a role. Students think/know that grades are important for getting jobs, but I doubt that they could clearly articulate what a grade says about them other than they got that grade in that class. Or, that they are able to get good grades. Not a hugely marketable skill.

I suspect that if we could do this, we'd really be grading for the things that we value (critical thinking, willingness to move beyond comfort zone, actual learning). And, I suspect that we can come up with a grading system that both ends up providing this information while simultaneously acting, during the semester, as a way of motivating students to accomplish the desired goals.

Now, when I tell me student these things (about my conversation with my brother-in-law, my intention to grade them on their learning in the course and the obligation they have to provide me with evidence of on-going learning and commitment to continual forward movement) they look like deer in the headlights. They report that the love the concept, they really do want to learn, they really do want to become better, etc. But they also admit that they've never really been asked to work this hard. They are used to having X number of exams and, thus, having to study for, maybe, 3X number of days and then also going to class. They are so used to school being paint-by-number, that when asked to move beyond this, they are both liberated and frightened (which makes sense since freedom is scary).

So, I do what I can to hold them to these standards, push them to take responsibility for their learning while, if nothing else, being with them in the frightening parts so they don't feel alone.

Anyway, those are my thoughts o' the day. There's more on different topics for later.....

Grading experimenting

2010-12-18T08:51:00.000-06:00

Well, the semester is over and I'm not done grading (obviously) but I thought I'd do a quick update of the approach I've taken to grading and what I'm seeing so far.

At the beginning of the semester, I told students that none of their work would receive grades but that all would receive comments. They did receive my 'paper grading standards' which would enable them, very easily, to translate the comments into grades should they have cared to do so. I told them that their final grade in the class would be determined by how much they learned as demonstrated through the various means they were given throughout the semester. They had to consistently maintain on-line journal on the reading & their thoughts on the reading, participate, submit self-assessments every three weeks (detailing how they thought they were doing and how they could improve and how the class could improve) and then depending on the class a combination of exams, papers and/or projects.

Part way through the semester I decided to give students the ability to 'make a case' for their grade and so told them to also submit a portfolio in which they argued for what grade they deserved according to criteria that I laid out for them (the criteria for the semester grade mirrored, closely, the grading standards for the papers).

Oh, I also said that if they were putting in 100% effort into the class, they ought to be doing A quality work and getting comments on their work indicative of this and if they weren't, that this meant they should come and talk to me so we could figure out how they could expend their energy more effectively.

Again, the theory behind all of this is Carol Dweck's (and I assume other folks') work that when students focus on grades they, shockingly, focus less on learning. And when emphasis is put on effort and learning, well, weirdly, students seem to learn more. Go figure. And, there much, much literature on the importance of metacognition (thinking about thinking) and writing something that involves reflection over a semester of work to assess one's learning is a fairly good example of this.

So, jump forward to the week or so before the end of classes and I share this idea with two colleague who are each in different colleges than mine and each other. They did not react as I needed them to react (what I needed, of course, was to be showered with affirmation of the brilliance of this method and how could this not be the best, most effective way ever to do thing). Thus, I freaked out a bit. HOWEVER the freaking out was a good thing because it forced me to think through some things that I hadn't previously thought through.

Some ever so quick background: one of the insights I had a few years ago is that the most important moral question is what kind of mistakes are better to make. That is, given that we are going to make mistakes, presumably, we should err on the side of caution, but then the moral question becomes which side is the side of caution.

Back to grading and my realization prompted by freaking out.

My true fear in all of this is that some student is going to make the case that an A is deserved, that the work done for the semester will not support such a claim, that I'll given the grade actually deserved and then (and here's the to-be-avoided aspect) student will challenge the grade, I'll have to go through some sort of bureaucratic something or another, will share with colleagues who aren't friends of mine what I'm doing and I will be publicly chastised, and thus humiliated, for this approach to grading. This fear is, of course, fostered by rhetoric about syllabi being 'contracts' and colleagues who grade based on point systems, etc.

Yes, I have theory on my side, but fear of exposure as incompetent is powerful.

Whoops, still haven't gotten to the realization.

I realized that adopting this approach to grading was one that, in fact, increase the likelihood that some student will challenge the grade and this will, more likely than not, be the student who is focused on grades and not learning. And, I could avoid this outcome by adopting a method of grading focused on points and grades that is essentially geared towards avoiding the challenges of grades from students who are going to take advantage of a system where one 'makes the case' for one's grade as evidenced by learning. BUT doing this would, as far as I'm concerned, not be in the best interest of other students who actually are interested in learning or could be shifted from a focus on grades to a focus on learning. So, this was, I realized, a case of choosing which side would be erring on the side of caution. Do I want to have a grading system that is designed, to at least some extent, to prevent students who are focused on grades from trying to 'game' my approach and might end up challenging grades? And in so doing, not achieve what could be much more beneficial outcomes for other students? OR do I want a grading system that emphasizes and, hopefully, fosters learning at the risk of those grade-focused students who will game and, possibly, challenge.

When I put it this way to myself, I realized that I'd rather err on the side of creating a grading system that really encourages learning but opens the possibility of students being general pains in the butt. I would rather focus on helping the students who really care than focus on eliminating possible loopholes for the students who don't care.

Back to the present. First, I've discovered that of the two colleagues whose reactions (that is, lack of absolute affirmation of my brilliance and teaching acumen) freaked me out, at least one of them is considering a method similar to this. Second, I've since found out that at least some English professors and some Theatre professors use this same grading method (so less cutting edge, but also less alone). Third, and this is really most exciting, the students are not hating this. Most are taking it seriously and my First Year Seminar students are really taking it seriously and are thinking about their learning and their progress over the semester in ways that are very exciting. In fact, it's the first year students generally who are taking to this much more than the upper level students. And, I've had students who are at other levels who have said that they really appreciate being able to make a case for their grade and, more importantly, their learning because they believe that many times their grades in classes don't really reflect their learning.

But, yes, I'm also learning that students appear to believe that a B means what I think a C means. That is, many students, disregarding the grading criteria that I handed out both at the beginning of the semester and closer to the end, are arguing that because they are basically aware of the material and know more now than they did at the beginning of the semester that they deserve a B in the course. What's weird is despite my repeated insistence that they provide evidence of their learning, documented evidence of learning, many are reported what they are thinking or talking about outside of class as evidence.

And, yes, I've already run across one student who is arguing for an A who is, based on the way the case for the A has been presented, I'm pretty sure setting up a challenge to the grade I pretty much told, when asked, they were likely to get. The student's case for the grade references none of the criteria noted as relevant to grades and, well, reference other things.

Oh, one last thing that's sort of related. I've come up with a really good way to translate grades into something that's easier to conceptualize (at least it's easier for me and I imagine it's easier for students).

One way to think about what a grade means is in terms of any future career you may have.

A: You are working in a way that makes you an obvious person to promote to a position that has more responsibilities and requires more. You could, with confidence, go an in talk to your boss about this and know that your boss would be on board.

B: You are working in a way that make obvious that you are someone for the boss to watch as someone who has potential to be promoted at some point in the future. You could go in and speak to your boss about the long term goal of being promoted and your boss would take you seriously

C: You are a good worker. You do your job, but do nothing that makes you a candidate for moving upward (or downward)

D: Your boss is likely to take you aside and tell you that if things don’t improve, you are not long for this particular job

F: Firing is in your immediate future and will surprise no one when it happens.

I'm finding this really helpful.

"why didn't anyone ever tell me this?"

2010-11-05T11:09:00.000-05:00

This is what a handful of my students said when I told them that most folks who have been successful in business have not majored in business and most people who are successful journalists have not majored in journalism.

Why hasn't anyone made sure this was understood by these students who are majoring in business and journalism? Just wondering.

2010-10-17T16:15:00.001-05:00

The semester has started (and is about half way over) and all is good. I've been able to coordinate a reading group discussing How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience and School and the discussions have been really good. I think that it's something that the participants are finding valuable. If nothing else, it's getting a handful of folks from across campus to interact who wouldn't typically interact. So, I'm feeling good about that.

In fact, I'm working on a proposal for reading groups next semester one focused on Parker Palmer's Courage to Teach with the idea being to help faculty find our teaching 'voice.' And the other will be focused on a book about student learning (right now I'm thinking of Nurturing Independent Learners: Helping Students Take Charge of Their Learning but we'll see).

Anyway, to the less good things I've discovered. This is stuff that just regularly goes on that I'm typically unaware of.

#1) I've been told (and had it confirmed) that at least one 'division' at school honestly doesn't like students. I'm guessing that the students they like are viewed as the exception rather than the rule. This just makes me really sad for the faculty and the students alike.

#2) I have had quoted at me, twice in one day on separate occasions, a professor who has students take a class identifying their 'strengths and weaknesses' and who, on the students' interpretation, tells the students to spend their time focusing on further developing their strengths and not to waste time on turning weaknesses into strengths. Good lord, who does this? The one student who was telling me this was upset because her desired major was not in keeping with her strengths. I noted that just because something is currently not a strength is not a reason to think it can't be a strength since your strengths are just things you haven't had much practice in. The second time I heard it was in defense of the basic premise that there's no point in trying to change and grow.

Now maybe the faculty member didn't intend for this to be what the students heard, but it seems to me a fairly predictable consequence of telling students to focus on developing strengths instead of trying to create new ones. How many physicians didn't like the sight of blood the first time they saw it? How is this piece of advice not a suggestion to not learn and not explore new ideas or skills?

More later.

Well, since you asked.....

2010-07-28T08:56:00.000-05:00

....here's one thing that I've been thinking about/tossed out into the world. I'm thinking about following the example of a couple folks I know and grading next semester based primarily/only on effort. Using language like

Your grade in this class will reflect my assessment of your engagement with the material in the class, the quality of your contribution to class discussion and the learning of your classmates, the depth of your understanding of the material and your ability to move beyond the material to develop your own ideas that take seriously the material but are not simply a repetition of what is in the reading or what others have said in class. I will also be assessing your development of certain dispositions the acquisition of which are crucial to continued success in all areas of life. As I develop my assessment throughout the semester I will rely extensively on your assessment of your development both with regard to understanding of the particulars of this course and your progress in the different skills and dispositions that you should be working on. Thus, your thoughtful effort on your self-assessment is very important.

If you put in 100% work (and I’ll detail what I take to be indicative of 100% work) then you’ll get an A in this class. Less the 100% and you won’t. You’ll be given multiple opportunities to make the case to me that you have put in 100% effort into your work.

At any point in the semester, if you would like to check in about anything (including how to improve in the class or your grade at the moment) please do not hesitate to come and speak with me.

Individual assignments will be commented on, but not graded, and you are encouraged to rework all of your assignments in response to the comments.

Your grade in this class is a guaranteed A if and only if I am convinced that you are putting 100% effort into the course. Your behavior throughout the semester will provide evidence to me of the level of effort you are putting into this course.

Yes, that's "if and only if" which means only those who put in 100% effort will get As and everyone who puts in 100% effort will get As. Oh, and the self-assessments are guided and due once every 3 weeks.

In case you didn't head over via the link to In Socrates' Wake, here's my reasoning.

(1) I know one person who has done this and have heard of another. In both cases, the result has been that students work harder and do better than under other grading systems. Further, the grade distribution ends up being about the same.

(2) Research shows that by rewarding performance people, predictably, focus on performing well (crazy, isn't it?). BUT, in an effort to achieve the best performance, people tend to minimize risk and attempt that which they are more certain they'll perform well at.

(3) Research also suggests that by rewarding that which is produced we are communicating that competence either exists or doesn't exist. If we instead reward effort we communicate that competence can always be increased. In fact, some have suggested that students' (our?) tendency (when such a tendency exists) to put things off at to the last minute is a defense mechanism. By not putting in full effort, one can preserve one's sense of ability in the face of a poor grade by noting that one didn't really do all they could The logic here is that if one put in one's full effort and still didn't do well, well, then there's no explanation beyond inability. A fun fact: many people think that being good at something means not having to work hard at it, thus, having to work hard (even with success) is evidence of not being very good. Warped, eh? Not that I don't fully believe it myself.

(4) What I'm thinking is that I want all students to work really hard — and I think that with maximum effort students will do really well. If they don't, then I need to work with them to make their effort more effective. I think this is part of my job as a teacher. Vygotsky (Educational theorist extaordinaire) posits that students learn ~~best~~ when what they're being asked to do is just slightly beyond what they are currently able to do. If they're asked to do that which is vastly beyond what they are able to do they quit (not an unreasonable response) and if it's too easy, they just sit back and do nothing (again, not unreasonable). Assuming that I've got students at a variety of levels (sidenote: the variation of ability in any high school classroom is about 6 grades. Shockingly depressing, isn't it?), then having each student at a point where they are going to learn is at best a crap shoot. That any students learn is simply a matter of me accurately pitching things. If I, instead, focus on effort, then it seems plausible that all students will work within their 'proximal zone.' Without focussing the grade on effort, I don't know how else to accomplish this.

Of course, one of the big problems here is how to assess effort. I grant this is a problem but not one so large as to undermine the entire project.

One of my interest is whether there are problems with this plan independent of practical difficulties.

I think that the biggest problem comes from disagreement or, rather, mystery about what a grade is supposed to indicate. That is, what does it tell people who aren't in the class. I asked some colleagues (via FaceBook) what grade a student should be able to get in a class (a class graded based on the quality of that produced) if they are putting in maximal effort (assuming that the teacher is doing their job and that the student isn't taking a class that is beyond that which they should be taking). This of course brings up problems with introductory level classes that function as 'weed out' classes. One of my colleagues said that for the intro level course in his department even getting a C with maximal effort is not guaranteed. My thinking is that this kind of class can only serve to make those who put in massive effort and still don't do well (say, a B) are going to run screaming from the discipline. And, doesn't this sort of system just reinforce the idea that being good at something is equivalent to not having to work all that hard at it? Or not having to spend a huge amount of time to absorb it?

Someone on the blog where my thoughts were posted said that he thought getting an A in an Intro to Phil class should be indicative of having 'philosophical ability' but I think this is where I'm going to strongly disagree insofar as I don't think there is anything like 'philosophical ability' that folks' either have or don't have. I think it's the sort of thing that is cultivated and some may take longer to cultivate than others. I can't imagine that one semester is long enough to determine whether someone is going to be a 'successful' philosopher. Geez, Kant didn't begin to really hit his stride until fairly late in life.

I think I'm done for now.

Any thoughts on this? Anyone? Be gentle.

ps. If you think this is worth maybe writing up and submitting to a journal, please feel free to share. thanks.

Some links...

2010-07-28T08:11:00.000-05:00

Yes, it's been a long time. And, yes, I've done a good deal in the past months. But, now, I shan't be documenting them all since, quite frankly, it probably wouldn't be all that interesting to read about.

However, there are some good things out there to read. Here are some links:

Diana Chapman Walsh is one of my favorite people, EVER. I want to grow up and be like her (or at least be *liked* by her — and there's some evidence that she just might). Anytime she's gonna be at a conference, I do my best to get to that conference....that's how fabulous she is. Here's an article by her that's in Inside Higher Education.
Then there's this article in the New York Times reporting on a study that documents the importance, long term, of one's kindergarten teacher.
Here's an article challenging the whole 'you must publish in order to be a good academic' thinking. The fact that I agree with the sentiment may have drastically colored my assessment of the article.

Catching up

2010-06-20T08:18:00.000-05:00

I just received two books I ordered from Amazon and it turns out they are essentially the books I was thinking I might write (the one even references a relatively obscure James text that I was thinking of referencing). The good news, however, is that, unlike the James text that was written 100 years ago, both of these were published in the last year. I'm not quite cutting edge, yet, but I'm getting closer to it.

Oh, the books? Why Students Don't Like to Learn and How Learning Works

It's like being 18 all over again

2010-06-13T10:04:00.000-05:00

I grew up in Orange County California, where I felt unbelievably out of step. For those who don't know, Orange County is one of the most conservative places in the US (or at least was when I was growing up there). This is a place where Ronald Reagan was thought to be too liberal, black folks are questioned by police because the only explanation for their presence is the plan to commit crimes, and Fox News is taken to be the gospel truth. Again, needless to say, I felt considerably isolated and a bit crazy growing up there since I most definitely didn't/don't share these views. Then I went to college and discovered that I wasn't completely alone and that, in fact, Orange County was a bit of an outlier.

Jump forward a considerable number of years and I'm going through this again. A recent Leiter Reports discussion focusses on the question of which philosophers of today will be viewed as important in a century (Hume was not viewed as all that important in his day and age and now is a must read and folks who were viewed as really important then have faded into near obscurity) and all of a sudden I discover that I'm not the rebel/idiot I thought I was.

I went to graduate school where, to put it mildly, W. V. Quine was god. I'd capitalize 'god' if it weren't for the fact that it was also made abundantly clear in graduate school that any sort of theistic beliefs were evidence of being ill-equipped for intelligent thought. So, I dutifully learned my Quine but all the while didn't really enjoy what he had to say (not that I found it false, but, just, not all that worthy of being risen to god status). Of course, I just took this to be indicative of the fact that I'm probably a fraud and got into (and out of) graduate school based on a mistake. I much preferred, and continue to be influenced by, Hilary Putnam and Nelson Goodman. Of course, in good Woody Allen fashion, I assumed that my preference for their work (in terms of being interesting, important, fruitful) was evidence that they were not all that good (sorry H & N).

Well, back to the Leiter Reports discussion. Looking through the comments, it appears that, at least according to folks posting comments, Quine is either (a) wrong or (b) saying something so painfully obviously true as to be unworthy of further discussion — just incorporate his point and move on. Further, Putnam (and to a lesser extent Goodman) is pointed to again and again as someone who will be viewed as important 100 years from now. And a bunch of the other names noted as being important in 100 years are also folks I know and appreciate.

So, maybe I'm not the fraud I thought I was. Maybe.

Beliefs about Brains

2010-05-10T08:40:00.000-05:00

I hesitate to even share this because I draw on Dweck's work so much in my writing that if other people start to read her, my writing may end up simply stating what everyone already knows. But, being the benevolent person I am (and knowing that, maybe, 6 people in the world read what I write here) I share this article on Dweck's work.

More on Rawls OR People I want to be more like

2010-05-06T10:08:00.000-05:00

Being an academic or, perhaps, being a reader, I always find myself thinking that I'd really like this writer or that writer. Well, I've learned that just because people write things that you admire it doesn't follow that you will admire them. I've heard a few stories about theorists whose theories I've admired that have completely disillusioned me. Though, on the flip side, I've never met a person I've admired whose theory I didn't also think was pretty darn interesting and worth learning from.

Rawls, apparently, was an incredibly kind person. When in the audience where someone was critiquing his work had to basically be forced to stand up and respond to the critic (I've also heard that he was extraordinarily shy which may have been a consequence of his stuttering — the fact that, like me, he stuttered endeared me to him right away).

He also had incredible integrity as an academic. He would, instead of finding flaws in works he taught (and, I'm going to assume, read) he would say that it was too easy to critique someone in hindsight and that more interesting was to figure out what was of worth and significance in a position, to really understand what the person was saying and why and then work with that. My guess is that part of this was a consequence of his stuttering (I only stutter under some circumstances now but it used to be so bad as to make me unable to speak and from this vantage point you end up really appreciating people who are patient and listen instead of trying to finish your sentences for you or quickly tear down your ideas). I didn't know that Rawls taught this approach to philosophy but when I did, it was a breath of fresh air since that's the way that I had begun to both do and teach philosophy and it was definitely something that had not been encouraged in my education. To discover that this was Rawls' approach gave me the beginnings of a community (unbeknowst to the other members, of course).

My one brush with Rawls was when I went to my sister's graduation. She and two of her friends organized a dinner for all three of their families and I ended up sitting across from one of her friends' grandfather. Here's the conversation we had (the grandfather doesn't end up being Rawls):

Him: So, you're a graduate student? What are you working on?
Me: I'm writing my dissertation on ethical theory.
Him: Really? What about?
Me: Oh, it'd bore you.
Him: No, I'm interested. Tell me.
Me: I'm defending a particular method of defending moral positions
Him: Really? What method?
Me: Seriously, we can talk about something else. It's seriously boring to most people
Him: No, really.
Me: It's a method of another philosopher who's gotten lots of criticism
Him: Who?
Me: Really? This professor who teaches at Harvard, John Rawls.
Him: Jack?
Me: No. Professor John Rawls
Him: Yeah, Jack. He's my cousin

So, I return to graduate school and a few weeks later there's an envelope in my box with a return address of Harvard Philosophy Department and "J Rawls" scrawled above it. Of course, I'm thinking someone's playing a joke on me. I open it up and there's this note from Rawls saying that his cousin told him that I'm writing a dissertation on him and that he wanted me to know that he's currently working on a book (it was Political Liberalism) and if I wanted a copy of the manuscript he'd be happy to send it to me. Of course, being the dolt I am, I wrote back said 'no' I wasn't working on his political theory as much as I was working on moral epistemology and then proceeded to take the opportunity to clarify that my understanding of a basic point was correct (and the point was so basic as to not warrant even asking if I was correct).

So, there you go, my little story. I carried that letter around with me everywhere I went. In fact, I should probably get that old briefcase out and rescue that letter.

Rawls has, admittedly, set the bar very high but there are a few other people I would like to be like because their level of integrity and kindness is so incredibly high. My dissertation advisor — whose kindness and integrity is demonstrated with each passing year to be even higher than I had ever imagined as he continues to provide me with support — and a few administrators I've had the good fortune to work with.

Rawls on Religion

2010-04-30T09:11:00.000-05:00

I love Rawls. Love. I love the person...at least from what I've heard about him from folks who knew him. I love his theories. I love his writing.

I just read part of the most recent book published of his writings. It's a book on his views on religion. One of the fascinating things about the book was the discussion about whether to publish it. It's his undergraduate thesis (yes, his undergraduate thesis) and a piece he wrote in 1997, but didn't attempt to publish, about his views on religion at the time. The question was whether to publish these things given that he, obviously, hadn't published them. All those who participated in the discussion pretty much decided that he would not have wanted these things published (seeing as they were not polished either in writing or argument) but they also decided that publishing these things would not harm his stature and would serve to bring light to him as a person (and probably generate another couple hundred dissertations on him — in a good way).

Anyway, I read the intro and the piece written in 1997 (skipped the undergraduate thesis and the commentary because, well, who wants to read an undergraduate thesis that will just make you feel like your stuff is horrible when compared to that which a 21 year old wrote? Yes, I do refuse to read Mill and Hume's works written when they were mere children. No I don't, but I do feel like a failure when I read the stuff they wrote when they were youngsters). It was interesting — he rejected orthodox Christianity (but not Christianity as a whole) and embraced an ecumenical, we should be working on understanding religious beliefs position — not surprising at all.

I found myself feeling a bit sad for Rawls because so many people have written so much, in theology, dealing with the issues that led him to reject orthodox religion (the problem of evil and the injustice of predestination) that it seems he could have really benefited, personally, be being parts of those conversations. Here's a guy who left for WWII intent on becoming a priest and returned turning to secular philosophical writing. The personal cost of that which changed his mind would have been enormous and being part of the wider conversation of folks who struggled and made meaning may have really benefited him.

Yes, I'm completely guessing Rawls' emotional state.

Quite frankly I think most everyone would benefit from reading what's really going on in theology then they could stop being so stupid about religion.

Language Learning Fun

2010-04-22T09:15:00.000-05:00

So, as I think I've noted before, I spend a good deal of time with a young child (YC). YC is just about 18 months and is learning vocabulary at lightening speed. She hears a word, she repeats a word, experiments with using it, pays attention to corrections and tries again. Seriously, we spend about 5 minutes in front of the refrigerator with her pointing to things, me saying what it was, her repeating, pointing to something else, saying something, me correcting, her pointing. It could have gone on all day, but I have a vague memory of my mother chastising me for standing in front of an open refrigerator for too long and so we ended the exercise.

Anyway, despite her learning very quickly and very accurately, YC insists upon calling the bird feeder 'mommy'. This has prompted me to theorize that she isn't using words the way that we (and she, ultimately, will) use words. She isn't using words to refer to objects in the world, but to something else — maybe the feelings she experiences when the words are being used in a way that she's learned is correct usage? The thing is that her mommy is the one who is in charge of the bird feeder at her house. So when she's pointing to the bird feeder and saying 'mommy' (and she does repeat 'bird feeder' when I say it, but then she says 'mommy' pretty soon after) she's not labelling the thing; she's got to be doing something else.

Gotta say I always (okay, almost always) hated philosophy of language (because no one has really be able to explain to me the point of it in a way that convinces me it matters), but if philosophy of language deals with stuff like this, I could completely get interested in it.

Footnotes to Plato (and, maybe Aristotle)

2010-04-18T10:32:00.000-05:00

I'm currently reading William James Talks to Teachers (which, happily is freely available as an e-book) and this, along with the other history I've read this year (Dewey & Royce) makes me really wonder if anyone seriously reads this stuff anymore. So much of what all of them wrote could quite seriously be published today and no one would bat an eye because it's exactly the same as what's being published today in terms of content.

It's this sort of stuff that brings my writing to a halt. I started reading James to get some sense of what's been done before me and I realize that, in fact, the entire conversation going on in much of educational theory (I exaggerate only a tiny bit) pretty much happened 100+ years ago and folks are, for the most part, saying exactly the same thing.

Stuck

2010-04-15T13:16:00.001-05:00

I've read in Langer's book on Mindfulness that very few people know what the imperative "pay attention" is really asking of them. And, in fact, attempting to focus our attention on one things with some sort of laser-like precision is really remarkably counter-productive.

I'm working on trying to figure out what sorts of responsibilities, if any, students have in the learning process and I've hit a snag. I don't know what it means to 'try.' I mean I get that if I'm sitting and looking at at hammer and nail that I am not actually tryng to hammer in the nail. But if I get the hammer, do something in the direction of the nail and someone says to me "you aren't trying" or "try harder," what does that mean? Seriously, if you told someone to 'try harder' and then responded with 'what does that mean?' How would you answer?

So, I, who have never, ever thought of myself as a phenomenologist find myself for the second time in the last few months trying to hunt down the "phenomenology of...." This time it's the "phenomenology of effort" and last time the "phenomenology of learning" but, seriously, I'm an analytically trained philosopher. Of course, one of my students who has taken classes with a faculty member who self-identifies as a phenomenologist (the faculty member, not the student) assures me that what I mean by "phenomenology" is not what phenomenologists mean by it. And, then I'm just, well, baffled.

It's possible that what I'm referring to as "phenomenology" (and I'd argue in a way that is a correct use of the word, even if not historically accurate) is what my analytic brethren call 'qualia' and I have no idea how phenomenologists use the term.

But, it turns out that there's a little (teensy - 8 citations via scholar.google) body of literature on this and it's typically involves the discussion of 'moral phenomenology.'

Anyway, back to figuring out what it means to try.

Amended:

Well, I'm trying to learn from one of my idols, John Rawls, and instead of solving the problem try to avoid it. I think that what I've discussed above is interesting and worth discussing, but for my current purposes, I think I've figured out how to avoid the issue altogether. Phew.

Ideas having minds of their own

2010-04-14T10:14:00.000-05:00

As my fiction writer friends know, I am fascinated by the claim they make that characters in their stories frequently have 'minds of their own' in terms of what is or isn't going to happen to the character. Similarly, when a friend of mine told me that ever since she was a kid that she's heard voices in her head, I quizzed her on what these voices sounded like. Did she mistake them for people who were in the room with her? Or a radio?

What does the experience of 'having voices in one's head' or 'characters in stories taking control of the stories' feel like? (I similarly am intrigued by what it must feel like to feel like someone is one sex trapped in the body of another — and there's some really cool related neuro stuff detailing folks who have never had limbs still having 'phantom' limbs. But, I have no idea what it feels like to feel like a woman in a woman's body even though I am a woman in a woman's body. I suppose it's one of those things that one can only feel if one is out of sync (though, sometimes, I do feel like I'm a left-handed person trapped in a right-handed person's body — hmmm, funny or not taking others experiences seriously?) .

Anyway, I'm working on an article (and to paraphrase a comic I once read, there's nothing like trying to write something out to really make clear to yourself how truly unclear your thinking is) and the article is turning into something I really hadn't expected it to. Each time I think I have it back on track, it swings back to the other track (and, yes, I have now given in and am just following where it leads). But is this what fiction writers are talking about? If so, it's considerably less interesting and exciting than I was led to believe. Thus, I will assume that this experience is nothing like what they are experiencing.

Is Civility that Unusual?

2010-04-10T06:50:00.001-05:00

So the background to this story is that I was going to apply for a position at another institution (and still may at yet another one — not that I'm looking to leave where I am but because there are a couple positions out there that look interesting and so why not just test the waters?). I had begun filling out the HR on-line documents and when I returned to upload my cv, the job had disappeared from the HR site. Confused, but thinking that it had been exactly 2 weeks since the job had been posted, I emailed the Vice Provost in charge of the search. I got a nice little note back saying that they had gotten so many qualified applicants that they decided to stop accepting applications. Now, of course this is odd and I'm guessing they have an inside candidate, but that's neither here nor there.

Here's the relevant part of the story: I emailed back, thanking her for the information and noting that next time I'll have to act more quickly. Not a big deal email, certainly not effusive in any sense, but I, very quickly, got a response from her thanking me for being so kind and understanding and noting that not everyone has responded this way. Okay, seriously? Did other people really respond by ranting and raving? Of course, this is rhetorical because I know that they do. From a purely self-interested perspective how does such a response accomplish anything beyond making the ranter/raver feel good? It's not like the folks in charge of the search are going to say "oh my gosh, you are right, please, please send in your application." And from a pure decency to other human being perspective, why take the time and energy to be unkind to someone else? Really? What does it accomplish? Why not be just minimally decent and say nothing or be ever so slightly decent and thank the person for responding (which they really didn't need to do)?

Sigh.

Teacher's too smart

2010-04-07T10:36:00.000-05:00

As I was wasting time (precious time of which I have very little, I might add) on facebook (my id is more powerful than just about anything), I came across one of the students I'm fb friends with in a conversation where one of the students used as a reason not to take a class with a particular professor that the professor is "too smart for me."

Quite some time ago, a very wise friend of mine who works closely with students who have academic difficulties told me that when students say that a particular professor is 'brilliant' this invariably means that the student is unable to follow what the professor is saying and, yes, this certainly deflated me since I was taking student perception that I was brilliant as evidence that I was, well, brilliant.

There is something terribly wrong in a system that takes students and makes them believe that if they don't understand something that this is a flaw in them and not a flaw in the presentation. Of course this happens to everyone and it's interesting to note when lack of understanding is a fault of the person who doesn't understand (I don't understand Ingmar Bergman films and feel less intelligent because of this) or when the lack is the person who is trying to communicate (if directions for assembling something make no sense, I rarely take this as evidence about my abilities).

Obviously, lack of understanding is not always evidence of the same thing. Sometimes it's the person trying to understand and sometimes it's the person who's trying to communicate. I think I'm pretty good at figuring out when it's my fault and when it's the other person's fault, but how do I figure that out? And how do I help students figure it out?

But, seriously, no student should avoid taking a class because the professor is 'too smart for them.' I can't imagine a possible world where a teacher being remarkably intelligent would be a good reason to not take a class. Unless there's a corresponding belief that really intelligent people are unable to communicate to less intelligent people. And, now that I think about it, I think that there is this belief.

I'll have to ponder this a bit. More later.

If I were in charge of things....

2010-04-06T09:32:00.000-05:00

....well, clearly, all would be much better but I have a specific recommendation to address in this post.

I haven't shared this with many folks, but during my sabbatical I've been taking guitar lessons — I've always wanted to play the guitar and have found a most amazing teacher and am making, I think, some fairly decent progress.

In addition, about 10 years ago, I started taking martial arts classes and progressed far enough to get my red belt (that's one before black in the school I was in). I learned various styles of external martial arts (northern & southern kung fu) and then a variety of internal arts (tai chi, bagua, Hsing I & liuhebafa) — I stopped training about 5 years ago when other things started taking priority in my life.

The point here is that these are two things I started and was, in both cases, an absolute rank amateur (I was studiously not athletic as a child and no one I know would ever call me musical - my mother has told me that I couldn't "carry a tune in a tin bucket" - yes, more fodder for therapy). And in both situations have struggled do learn things that haven't come easily. I think that doing this has made me a significantly better teacher because I've had to work really hard to learn things and have been completely at the mercy of my teacher.

So, here's my recommendation: all teachers should be required to take classes in something completely outside of their comfort zone so they can experience what our students experience.

I think there's also something really important to learn not only in experiencing 'studenthood' but also in watching teachers whose livelihood depends upon students choosing to return. Teachers who work in schools have the luxury of having students who have to show up. Rarely does our paycheck depend upon students willingly showing up. Both my martial arts instructor and my guitar instructor depend upon students who want to come back (and, I presume, on students recommending them as teachers to other potential students). As a result they have to teach in a way that makes the student not hate instruction but that also successfully instructs.

I read loads and loads about teaching theory, educational psychology, developmental psychology, philosophy of education and these two teachers (particularly my guitar teacher) have happened upon the very principles that research has developed.

So, I think all teachers can learn a huge amount not only be being students but by experiencing being taught experiencing teaching from people whose livelihood depends on success.

There you go. That's what I'd do if I were in charge, require all teachers to take classes outside of the comfort zone. We make students do it and we should never do to others what we are unwilling to do ourselves and everyone would really benefit from it.

Updating (again)

2010-04-03T11:46:00.000-05:00

Well, the snow is gone. Good points: um, snow is gone. Bad points: may be approaching the sunset of sabbatical.

I've been getting some good writing done. Stuff to send off, stuff to rewrite and stuff to develop into a book proposal.

Got two more proposals for conference presentations accepted

I have become addicted to chocolate covered raisins...why had I not happened upon these before?

Have actually begun thinking about my career as a career....even looking at some job openings. Kind of weird, particularly given that I have no desire to move, but....

Really enjoying sitting outside on the deck and watching the dogs run and play

Hypothesis Regarding Assignments

2010-03-25T07:13:00.002-05:00

If we find them boring to grade, students find them boring to do.

Discuss....

Uh oh, another troubling conclusion

2010-03-09T08:32:00.000-06:00

One of the topics I've been reading about during my sabbatical has been young adult intellectual development which, along with the topic of brains, is super, super cool stuff. But, I'm now wandering toward conclusions about higher education that, if correct, basically mean we are doing everything wrong. Or, rather, to the extent that we are doing anything right, it's probably accidental.

I just finished reading Kegan's In Over Our Heads and have started his (I think) first book Evolving Self and his most recent book (written with Lisa Lahey) Immunity to Change. After finishing IOOH I emailed Kegan (I love email since it allows you to correspond with folks you'd never randomly call or write letters to and most of the time they actually respond - very exciting) and asked him what else I should be reading. Well, happy, happy day, I've actually been reading all that he suggested as relevant.

ANYway, onto higher education. Basically, if what I've been reading is correct (and I don't have much reason to believe it isn't), people are more successful in life (and feel free to define, operationalize, assess, whatever 'successful' any old way you want) when they are able to think in more complex ways and that complexity of thought is a developmental issue. That is, we go through different 'stages' of conceptualization of the world with each progressive stage allowing for more complexity than the last.

So, if complexity of thought is a crucial component (nearly sufficient, it seems) then should this be what we are aiming at in higher education (really, all education)?

It is true that people who have college educations are at a higher level of development in all areas (even when controlled for things like class, race, gender, etc) but I'd argue that this is a happy accident and not the product of anything intentional. What would higher education look like if we took as our primary goal moving our students through different developmental stages (in all domains)? How would our curricula change? Our pedagogy?

I'm pretty sure we'd still teach courses in math, science, history, literature, but why we teach these would change. The topics wouldn't be the ends but the vehicles. To borrow from Buddhism, they would be the raft, not the shore.

Both this, and yesterday's thoughts have me pondering what is the purpose of institutions of higher education? I do believe research is important but where should research be happening? Is it just a convenience to have researchers also be teachers? A historical happenstance that hasn't been altered? Should it be changed? How could it be changed in a way that lead to the best research being produced?

Need to Find the Flaw in My Thinking

2010-03-08T08:51:00.000-06:00

Hmmm, so I have long thought that having a PhD in something is not enough to make someone a good college or university teacher and I've long suspected that having a PhD isn't even necessary to being a good college or university teacher. But, now I'm beginning to think that it's an actual detriment to being a good teacher and is simply a historical accident - the result of scholars needing to have patrons and 'earn' their pay by teaching the patrons' children and then, if monks, to continue the education of the next generation of monks.
I'm setting aside the issue (a fairly large one) of the socialization one gets as one works towards and then achieves a PhD - a socialization that is, I think, rather antithetical to both teaching and taking seriously, really seriously, fields other than one's own. I'm thinking more of the message that it sends to students - that one needs to be an expert in a field to read about it, have ideas about it or talk about it. I don't see how it doesn't send this message and given this message, it's no big mystery why students are resistant to speaking in class, offering their own interpretations of material, etc. I mean, no one goes to a physician for guidance on developing one's own diagnostic and curative skills. We go to make use of the physician's skills in these areas. I can understand why, when I need expert advice on something, I'd go to an expert and it seems reasonable that going to an expert I should basically shut up and listen to the expert.

So, isn't having classes taught by folks who are, ostensibly, experts in their fields communicating the idea that only those who are experts ought to have opinions? Now, this may be fine if, in fact, we are living in Plato's Republic instead of a democracy, but in a democracy does this make sense?

Someone, please, explain to me the flaw in my thinking because I'm fairly certain that few of my colleagues are going to agree with me on this and I'd prefer to not be viewed as more crazy and out there than I already might be.

Teacher's Oath

2010-03-06T07:27:00.001-06:00

From Random Thoughts of Louis Schmier blog:

I swear by Athena, Goddess of Learning, Métis, Goddess of Wisdom and Thought, St. Gregory the Great, Patron Saint of Teachers, and St. Thomas Aquinas, Patron Saint of Students, and all the wise rabbis of the Talmud I will fulfill this oath and covenant:

I will give a damn about each person in the class! I will care! I will support! I will encourage! I won’t just mouth it, I will live it! Each day, unconditionally!

I will teach to nurture, not to weed out. I will greet and embrace and accept each student. I will not greet anyone with the expectation that he or she will fail. I will not treat anyone as dumb and unwanted. I will treat everyone as capable and belonging here. I will greet each person knowing she or he has a unique potential to be cultivated. I will greet each person knowing that she or he can learn, achieve, and succeed. I will have faith in, belief in, hope for, and love of each person. Each day, unconditionally!

I will treat each class as a “gathering of sacred ones,” of diverse, individual, noble, and very special human beings. I will treat each person with equal dignity and unqualified respect. I will not let anyone go unnoticed; I will not allow anyone’s face to get erased;

I will not let anyone go nameless; I will not place anyone in the background; I will not place anyone in the shadows of the corners; I will not shun; I will not ignore; I will not belittle; I will not demean. Everyone will start with a clean slate; I will not judge anyone by the ring in her belly button or the tattoo on his arm or the clothes she wears or the whispers of other people or a GPA or the accent of their speech or the color of their his or her ethnicity or his religion or her gender or his sexual preference or whatever else;
I will never be negative. I will be upbeat, offering nothing less than praise and/or positive, constructive critique. I will focus on each student and her or his learning, and worry about my teaching later.

I will be there to help each student help herself or himself become the person she or he is capable of becoming.

And, nothing will mean a thing if I don’t help each student help herself or himself become a better person and live the good life.

I make these promises solemnly, freely, and upon my honor. And if I keep this oath faithfully each day, may I enjoy a life overflowing with fulfillment, meaning, purpose, accomplishment, and satisfaction, respected by all in all times; but if I swerve from it or violate it, may the reverse be my lot.

So, I take this and I'll do my best to fulfill it. But, I'm a bit hesitant to call this a promise since I know I'm not going to be able to fulfill this all the time and I don't like making promises I can't keep. I will, however, keep it at least as an aspiration to be taken seriously.

I am hitting that point in my sabbatical where I'm wondering how I'm going to take what I've learned back to the time when I'm back on campus and all that that entails.

Not that I don't have a good portion of sabbatical left — I better, I've got a handful of articles to get done! But, it is nearing an end and I don't want to have sabbaticals be these gaps that intervene once every 7 years but stay isolated to that one year.

Most of what I've learned as to do with teaching (given that all the reading I've been doing connects back to that somehow) and scholarship.

I want to radically change my teaching which will be scary because I've gotten good at what I've been doing and it isn't as if what I've been doing has been failing. But, it can be better. Much better. Much, much better. And I need to commit and work on that.

I want to keep on participating in the conversations I now see myself as able to contribute to and that are conversations that I think are worth having - I can have many a conversation about any number of things that are probably not all that important. If I've learned anything on this front this year it's that I do have things to contribute and, more importantly, others think so too. My very wise advisor told me that scholarship takes just the right balance of arrogance and humility and that most people have too much of the former. I've always feared that one of my character flaws has been arrogance, but maybe not or maybe not in the right places. So, in addition to committing to the teacher's oath (and, seriously, if someone could come up with a teacher version of the caduceus that physicians have as their symbol I'd be overwhelmingly happy), I'm committing to continuing to read and write and participate in the wider conversation.

More on this later.

Just very cool book

2010-02-13T09:24:00.000-06:00

Well, I thought I was rereading Mark Johnson's book The Meaning of the Body, but either I have an extraordinarily bad memory (which I don't think I do) or I have, in fact, not read this book before. Regardless of which it is, it certainly feels as if I'm reading it for the first time. And, wow. It's really interesting. This is another case where I wish I could be taking a course on this book (or, better, with this author).
He's talking about the way in which our physiological being directly shapes our conceptual understanding of the world. Happily, he's drawing on much of the material that I've been reading (Tomasello, developmental psychology, neuroscience, James and Dewey). It's so, so nice to discover that what I've been reading has some sort of coherence.

He's radically anti-representationalist. Okay, maybe not radically, but sufficiently for most representationalist to say that he's radically anti-representationalist. He's making some really interesting points about the subjective experience of thinking what it feels like to think, to search for the right word, to understand. The big bonus is that while I've always been drawn to his work on metaphor, neuroscience has now gotten to the point where much of his work that had been theoretical has some fairly good science that lends credence to it. And this is science that I've been reading and making sense of for the last couple of years and for a different purpose.

Of course, my big puzzlement is why hasn't his work gotten more attention? Then again, most of the folks who I think are most interesting and on the mark haven't gotten all that much attention (Goodman, Elgin, Putnam, James, Dewey). Hmmm, all of them are American Pragmatists — and Johnson places himself quite squarely in that camp.

Anyway, very interesting book and it's given me support for the direction that I've been thinking. Of course, the fact that I've been spending time reading folks like Antonio Damasio and talking to folks who are working with him also gives me a good deal of support on this front.

Brains are cool.

Things to get done in the next 8 months

2010-02-11T10:04:00.000-06:00

Seeing as, generously, I have 8 months left to this sabbatical.

Articles:

Impact of physical environment on learning
Young adult development clashing with that of the older adults in their lives (with bad results)
Psychotropic drugs used to enhance academic performance
The subjective experience (qualia) of learning
Temptation of Privilege
Evidence-based learning and the responsibility students

Book Proposal:

Working off article that keeps getting sent out

Syllabi

Well, the sabbatical will end with classes starting

Hmmm, that's not an insignificant list.

Conferences can be fun

2010-02-08T10:06:00.000-06:00

I returned last night from my most recent conference and it ended up being a very positive experience.

I got their early and so was by myself, eating at the bar the first night (feeling very alone and friendless). But once the conference got started I ended up making friends and never ate alone again.

I got some good ideas for future teaching (did you know that there's sites on-line that make it easy to create comic strips?) and got positive responses to my presentation.

I was very well-run and I look forward to keeping in touch with the folks I met.

Comments Policy Changed

2010-02-02T09:03:00.000-06:00

On the off chance that anyone actually reads this blog (as opposed to stumbling across it and then leaving immediately), I have changed the comments settings. I didn't realize that I had prevented anonymous posts.

But, if you're going to leave an anonymous post, please don't be mean. It'll keep me up at night and cause me much angst.

Suggestions Welcome

2010-02-02T09:01:00.000-06:00

Here's my current quandry:

I received $200 worth of Borders gift cards for Christmas. Most of the books I want to buy (and there are many) I can get cheaper on Amazon - frequently by buying used books through some other retailer that Amazon, puzzlingly, tells me about.. It chafes to spend more money, even though it's gift money, on a book when I could get the book for less (if I use the Borders website and try to buy used books through them, I can't use the Borders card).

Now, it just so happens that Borders also sells, in addition to books, a Sony e-reader that has gotten good reviews and if someone had just given me this for Christmas, I'd have been very happy. But, the choice to purchase it is just laden with land-mines (fyi - choice is not a good thing...the toothpaste aisle in the grocery store sucks up an unreasonable amount of my time as I try to figure out which choice is the right one).

(1) Would reading pdfs (that'd be the primary reason to get an e-reader) on a tablet be a good idea? All the reviews say that reading on e-readers is less taxing on eyes than reading on a regular computer screen and all tablets that are out now are not of the e-reader variety

(2) Should I get the Apple ipad (silly name notwithstanding)

(3) Then the ever present, should I wait until the next tablet, e-reader comes out

Now, if I don't get this e-reader from Borders and, instead, get either a tablet or get nothing, I still have the Borders gift cards to contend with and the spending more (of someone else's) money than I would of my own money.

Infants, Causation & Light Switches

2010-02-01T17:38:00.000-06:00

So, a while back I read the Philosopher Baby book (or something like that). I've also read (and assigned for class)Tomasello's The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition in which Tomasello spends a great deal of time discussing human intellectual development. Now as I read Johnson's Meaning of the Body I'm getting more stuff on infant 'meaning-making.' Clearly, I do have coherent beliefs, I'm just completely unaware of the coherence.

Anywhoo.

Reading about the fact that infants need to learn about causation, I was reminded of something that I don't want to forget that has to do with infants and causation. The young child in my life, let's just use YC to preserve anonymity, was sick, clearly feeling like crap. She, however, did not know why she was feeling like crap. So, being the good little scientist all of us are, she set about making any adult who was holding her, flip every switch, pushe every lever, do everything she could think of. It was pretty clear to me that she was trying to figure out how to make the crappiness stop. She just turned 1 and probably doesn't have a very good sense of what sorts of causal relationships make sense and which don't. It just made sense to her that in the past she'd been able to alter her experience in the world by light switches being flipped, stereos being turned on or off, etc. It just stood to reason that alter her crappy-feeling experience should have been able to be altered by some sort of switch being flipped as well.

Cool, eh?

Research

2010-01-31T07:29:00.000-06:00

First of all, let me say that I'm really enjoying doing research. And, for the first time in my life I really think I have something to say that might, actually, be worth other people hearing. So, this isn't bitterness about having to write, research, publish. I'm honestly enjoying this.

Having said that, I have to say that it seems to me publishing, at least in my field, has changed. And not for the better.

When I was in graduate school, publishing was not expected (and lest you think this was just my school, two hotshots in philosophy were briefly at my grad institution (not as students) and neither of them published much (if anything) in graduate school. The expectation these days is to publish, publish, publish. At least by the time your finishing graduate school and, ideally, while you were an undergrad. Now, seriously, after, say, 6 years in a field, how much can a person really have to say that's worthwhile? I'm guessing that much of this is publishing just to be publishing. Further, how can encouraging folks to publish with this little experience under their proverbial belts not, at the same time, encourage some arrogance?

A quick glance around the articles being published suggests not that these articles are horrible, but that they are, largely, inconsequential. Maybe I'm overly cautious when I write, but I try to make sure that what I'm adding to the conversation is actually something new which means I have to do a fair amount of digging into the history of the topic (and related topics) to find out what's already been said. And, I agonize that what I'm saying, in addition to being new, is not entirely trivial. Again, I'm not saying that what's being published is bad but I wonder if there wasn't such a push to publish whether folks would actually be inclined to publish things. Does every author who is publishing feel like what they're saying in the article needs to be said, is actually adding to the conversation and will move it in a helpful direction?

At least one of our graduates who went on to a very good graduate school ended up dropping out to go into business because he decided that much of the field was about focusing on very specific little problems that were mostly all about proving how smart the author was or capable of analysis but not about really contributing to the betterment of a conversation.

So, there's this on the one side.

On the other side, I really don't fully understand how the push to publish so much actually helps us to do our jobs. Maybe I'm not a very good philospher, but I'm not seeing how the majority of articles published actually make the world a better place. I'll grant, happily, that there is a role for academics in general and philosophers in particular in the world. But writing highly specialized articles for other philosophers who are conversant in that highly specialized area doesn't seem to me to be adding much to the world. I am more than happy to consider that this position of mine is mistaken, but I don't see how all of the time spent on research, writing, etc. by so many people is actually a good use of time. Or, rather why it makes sense to spend large amounts of money paying people to do this with their time. Is it just that given the vast quantity of stuff being produced more of value would be produced than if very little were being produced because we (writers) are fairly bad at recognizing what has value and what doesn't?

Then there's the sense I have that most people in academia (or maybe just my field - but I doubt it) view teaching as something that they have to do in order to do what they really want to be doing. Or, even if they love teaching, they pretty much view teaching as something that you either know how to do or don't....it's basically a matter of mastering a couple basic concepts and then there's nothing left to learn.

As far as I can tell, the historical sources of academia are two: (a) monks and (b) artists/thinkers who had patrons. The monks were working out some real problems in the church (or at least problems that they took to be real) and the artists/thinkers had patrons, I'm guessing, because the patrons thought that it'd be a nice feather in their cap to have been a patron to highly talented person G. But once we add in the teaching part of this -- particularly teaching when the students are diverse and aren't going on to become monks -- that the rationale for research and writing begins to dwindle.

But, maybe the higher quantiy will produce more quality work (while also producing more lesser quality work) than low quantity would argument is the rationale. It does make sense to me is a long term, utilitarian way even though it doesn't make sense on a individual, person to person, article to article way.

Another way, maybe, to think about it is who does more with their lives...a professional athlete or a high school coach? But who do most athletes aspire to emulate?

I am now beginning to ramble and so I shall sign off and go do some writing!! :-)

People and Buildings

2010-01-27T11:19:00.000-06:00

Just finished the book People and Buildings which was interesting on at least two fronts. First, the content. It's a selection of articles focussed on the intersection between social science and architecture. Second, the era in which is was written. The book was published in 1972 and all the articles had been written in the '50s and '60s.

Content:

A couple articles stand out as particularly interesting without me having to look back at the table of contents.

(1) The reason I bought this book was to have and read the article by Maslow (and then a follow-up of the article) that examined the effect on mood of rooms that were "Beautiful", "Ugly" and "Average." These articles provided the evidence that, shockingly, the nicer the room, the more envigorated and optimistic folks in the room are. One of the interesting aspects of the study was that not only were the people who volunteered to be subjects actually subjects, but the people who volunteered to be the examiners were also subjects. Neither the volunteer subjects nor the volunteer examiners knew the true purpose of the study.

(2) An article that looked at the layout of courtrooms (where the judge, jury, prosecutor, defense, court reporter sit) in different countries and "reading' them as reflective of each country's conception of justice. It never really occurred to me that courtroom in different countries would have different arrangements but a moment of thought makes it clear that it would make sense if they did. One thing that was particularly interesting to learn is that the court reporter actually reports different things in different countries. I'd just assumed that everywhere there was a word-for-word transcript of the proceedings. Nope.

(3) An article on the design of toilets. Seriously, who knew so much went into the design of a toilet? Favorite sentence: (in the context of getting rid of urinals for men) "There is also not much question but that it [removal of urinals] would encourter a great deal of psychological resistance since it would, in effect, deny the male the free use of his greatest glory and would condemn him to assume the position of a woman." I'm pretty sure that the writer was not being sarcastic.

(4) An article pointing out what is probably obvious to every single person in the world except me (though, once pointed out it is, I admit, painfully obvious). Namely, that which is "beautiful" and "respectable" is also providing evidence of wealth insofar as it is unnecessary. The author, specifically, points to lawns as (a) a particularly US obsession and (b) something that shows one has the money to buy and maintain land that is not, in fact, being used. Further, he notes that the appropriate "look" of a lawn is that of a well-grazed pasture but having an actual animal grazing would be unthinkable. This article made me think about my mother's insistence, back in June, that I needed new sandals. I told her that I had a brand-new pair of sandals, purchased last year, and didn't need new ones. She insisted that I needed to get a new pair. So, being 'in fashion' means 'having enough money to purchase clothes even new clothes aren't necessary to achieve the purely utilitarian purpose of clother (protection from the elements)." Yes, frighteningly obvious, but I'd never really put it all together. This reminds me of my students calling my phone (the free one that I get for simply having the phone plan I do) a 'ghetto phone.' If I were to wear exactly the same clothes everyday (though clean them every single night so I always had clean, good smelling clothes), I would be viewed as, well, since I'm a professor, eccentric, but in any other professional field, I'd be viewed as just weird. It's weird that looking poor is something to be avoided not because being poor means that one is hungry, cold, more likely to be sick. But because being poor is disgraceful.

(5) An article about the importance of sharing one's deepest thoughts with others and that contemporary society does not make this easy. I thought this was particularly interesting since it touches on something I've thought for a long time (and anything that reflects what I already think is, by definition, fascinating). I've long believed that what most (all?) people really want is to be known for who they really are (whatever that means) and to be loved while still being known.

Anyway, this author notes that with life (and this was back in the late '50s) being so focused on work that people come home at the end of the day and just want to withdraw and rest - making withdrawal a habit. I'd add to this that something from another of the articles that privacy is a scarce commodity and the more money someone has the more privacy they can afford. If we take this idea and combine it with the idea that being 'in' is 'appearing wealthy' then most of us aspire to have privacy (or at least the option of privacy). And with people going into debt to appear to have more money than they do, we have people who spend huge amounts of money on houses that have huge yards, back decks, no front porch, vacation spots that are houses not, say, campgrounds. We focus providing more and more means to withdraw. And while we may want, in the moment, to withdraw, long term this is not what makes us happy since habitual withdrawal makes close connections with others (being known) nearly impossible. Take away point: we're doomed.

(6) Another article (or two or three) was about things like personal space, which are recognized to be culturally variable but noted how nearly impossible it is for us to overcome our culture on this front. Even if we know, intellectually, that our desire for a certain amount of space between ourselves and another is a complete consequence of our culture, we still get incredibly annoyed and are inclined to project negative personal characteristics at those who are of a different culture and don't respect our space. What was also discussed is the extent to which other things which we'd think are not context dependent or culture bound actually are. Things like how bright light needs to be in order to read, or what height steps are the most comfortable or what counts as an annoying level of noise.

Anyway all in all, a very cool book. I'm glad I bought it. I clearly love sociology, but I only really like reading the results. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't enjoy doing sociology which I suspect involves a great deal of developing studies, etc.

Publication date:

I was very weird to read a book that regularly used the word "Negro" and 'he' and 'man' as, I think, gender-neutral terms. Also, the word 'slum' was used a great deal and I don't think anyone really uses that word in academic writing anymore.

There were quite a few articles on new public housing and the moods of people before and after moving to the new public housing developments (from the slums). And also articles that discussed the kids who lived in the public housing. It'd be really interesting to look at these same developments 50 years later and talk to these kids who are now in their 60s.

I now move to read Body, Mind, and Architecture and then carefully read Mark Johnson's The Meaning of the Bodoy: Aesthetics of Human Understanding. I hope to have a draft of this article (for which I think I need to read these two books) by the time I leave for the East Coast next Thursday. Oh, and by the time I leave, I should probably also have my presentation for that conference pretty well hammered out.

Keywords

2010-01-25T08:07:00.000-06:00

I have fully embraced the on-line search abilities of contemporary research. I love being able to sit in my comfy chair and find loads of articles and books. The one difficulty, however, is finding the key to unlock the vault and find all that's been written on a subject. That elusive keyword for the Boolean search.

I imagine that all of academia is a huge flow chart with different little pockets of discussion. I also imagine that what I'm interested in and reading about is already being discussed (or has been discussed and put into the past) by all who are in the know (of whom I am not one). However, I never find that little pocket because I don't know the right keyword.

So, imagine my delight at having come across the key words for my interest in architecture "evidence-based design." Very, very exciting.

But, now this adjectival phrase "evidence-based' leaves me a bit baffled. As a descriptor, "evidence-based" became popular when teamed up with medicine and has made its way into teaching (the conference I'm going to in a couple week is about 'Evidence-Based Teaching"). But what is it contrasted with? Seriously. Was medicine not evidence based before? Were they just really lucky with all those vaccines, surgeries, etc?

I know that the call for evidence-based behavior has, in fact, changed disciplines and made attention to evidence (or at least the request for it) more commonplace, suggesting that, in fact, we didn't use evidence before. But how weird is it that we didn't use evidence before? I know that with teaching some folks continue to resist the need for evidence believing themselves experts at teaching because they learned and think that the request for evidence is just insulting. Clearly, it isn't that we were just doing things with no reason; we must have had some reason for our behavior (whether teaching or practicing medicine) but it didn't meet the criteria of being evidence. So, what was it? Intuition? Self-proclaimed expertise?

Ipods & Privacy

2010-01-23T17:45:00.001-06:00

I am now making my way through People and Building a collection of essays on, well, people and buildings. More specifically, looking at knowledge we have from psychology and sociology and how this knowledge is relevant to the design of buildings.

The article I'm reading right now, about privacy, connects with an observation I made to someone a couple days ago. I was talking about my perception that there are very few public spaces (real, live public spaces, as opposed to virtual public spaces...this distinction is, I think, important and I'll come back to it) and that even when folks are walking around we try to turn public spaces into private ones through the use of ipods and cell-phones.

This article talks about privacy as a 'scarce resource' and something that we all need. That is, we all need to be able to 'withdraw'. And this connected up with an article I read a few months ago about young people valuing privacy differently than older folks as evidenced by their willingness to share all sorts of stuff on the internet, to keep in constant contact with folks, etc.. This got me to thinking about whether the remarkably public (well, quasi-public, since it's pretty easy to just sit back on watch on the internet without jumping in) way in which young people live their lives (on-line and off-line) explains the strong desire for privacy as gained through ipods and cell-phones. I wonder, given the amount of time that young people spend on-line and the almost addictive quality of it, if 'private' spaces simply don't seem to exist anymore. Even the most private of spaces may be experienced as less private and more public in virtue of our posting on facebook where we are and what we are doing. How many spaces are there where we can 'withdraw'? And do young people have these spaces?

Okay, now that I've typed it out, this isn't nearly as interesting as I first thought it was, but there we go.

There is something, I think, to the 'quasi-public' nature of the internet since when on-line we can be much more deliberate about how we present ourselves to others. Like I said, not nearly as interesting once I typed it out as it was in my head.

Multiple minds

2010-01-23T09:11:00.000-06:00

So, I received feedback about one of my articles today. The article was rejected, which I can live with since I tossed the paper together in about a week to meet a deadline, but what's really interesting are the comments.

The reviewers were supposed to answers questions with a number btwn 1-5 with all 5s meaning that the paper was really good on just about all fronts and all 1s meaning it was really bad on just about all fronts. One reviewer gave it just about all 5s with a
few 4s sprinkled in while the other reviewer gave it mostly 1s and 2s with some 3s and I think one 5 (for provocative). If two reviewers have such wildly divergent views on exactly the same paper, this provides reason to take seriously the personal nature of responses to papers (I happily grant that a really good paper would get 5s from all sorts of reviewers and that a really bad one would get all 1s).

This reminds me of a paper I turned in in graduate school. I'd been working on it for a really long time and asked a professor to read it. This professor absolutely trashed the paper (almost entirely on the quality of the writing, not the substance of the argument), went through with a red pen, crossing things out, rewriting, just scewered the entire thing. Needless to say I was upset. So, I gave the paper to my advisor (who, I assure you, comes as close to walking on water as anyone could) and asked him to tell me if it was as horrible as the red marks suggested it was.

His reponse was "I am of three minds. 1/3 of the time, I agree with what you had written; 1/3 of the time I agree with the changes X made and 1/3 of the time I don't have a preference between what you wrote or what X changed it to."

So, what's to be learned from all this? I'm not entirely certain, but whatever it is, it's made me feel fairly good.

Writing about the obvious

2010-01-16T11:24:00.000-06:00

How does a person (namely, me) go about writing about that which is just obvious?

Here's the general thesis of the paper I'm currently working on: "Classroom design tells us what we think learning is. And most influential beliefs about how learning happens are wrong while the beliefs about the purpose of learning are, at best, uninspiring."

This seems so painfully obvious to me that I can't believe I'm even considering writing about it. But, if it is obvious, then why are we designing classrooms the way that we are (and by 'we' I do not mean me)? Do we not care about learning?

So, I assume what I think is the more generous interpretation, namely that what I'm writing about is either not obvious (unlikely) or something that needs to be brought to forefront (at least possible). This seems a better interpetation than we just don't care - if nothing else, it gives me hope.

Now I'm trying to make the argument (without actually relying upon scientific data) that our environment influences us emotionally. Now, I'm not using scientific data because, seriously, this is something that at least ought to be clear to someone once they think about it. My task, then, is to walk the reader through this thinking so that it becomes clear to them. For those who already agree with me, well, I suppose they should stop reading and move onto something that might actually affect their lives [a complete tangent: I just realized why people use "impact" (incorrectly) as a verb....because when using 'impact' you don't have to agonize over which of "effect" or "affect" to use. A phenomenon becomes clear.].

At the moment I'm trying to make the case that what we experience through our senses (colors, sounds, surfaces, smells, etc.) influences our emotional states and I'm, again, stuck with this seeming just obvious to me.

I'm tempted to just say that being able to sense something means that we are able to be emotionally affected through that sense (nasty smells, sights that make us turn away, sounds that make us cover our ears). I suspect, however, that (a) I need to argue this (and actually can, I think) and (b) I'm treading on ground well-worn by philosophers in, say, the 18th century. So, there we go. Bounced back from the cutting edge soo quickly.

Yes, my name is Hume. Nice to meet you.

Teacher, know thyself

2010-01-15T12:27:00.002-06:00

Either a new realization or a reminder of an old one. All teachers, regardless of level at which they are teaching, ought to be well-versed in developmental psychology and should be continually be updating what they've learned about developmental psychology.

I strongly suspect that most teaching 'problems' (at least at the young adult level) are a consequence of teachers knowing nothing about where their students are developmentally (whether it's emotional, intellectual, whatever) and, perhaps more importantly, knowing nothing about our own intellectual and emotional development.

I think that we have a tendency to believe that any changes we've experienced since our time in college have (a) been non-existent and that who we are now is basically the same person we were then only with more experiences and knowledge but that our general way of seeing the world is basically the same - we have new knowledge, but not a new way of relating to that knowledge or, and this may just be a variant of (a), (b) been a result of simply more information, buckling down, really trying, etc. and can be duplicated by simply demanding that students believe the right things, buckle down, really try, etc.

With (a), we assume that our interests, questions, ways of looking at the world are the sorts of things that it's reasonable for our students to share insofar as there is really nothing all that different between them and us. We don't think of our current interests as being interests we have in virtue of where we are developmentally and, thus, not the sort of that students are going have. With (b), we just demand more out of the students and chastise them for not being in the same place, never recognizing that it's virtually impossible (at least that it's possible that it's virtually impossible) for them to do the things we are asking them to do, just like it's impossible for a 4 year old to really appreciate the importance of eating healthily.

When I think about my varying conceptions of 'friend' throughout my life, I realize that, given my current definition of 'friend' the folks I considered my best friends in junior high, high school and college wouldn't come close to meeting the standard. And I honestly think that at these younger ages I was literally incapable of seeing the world a different way.

Developmental psychology says that as folks go through adolescence, part of what happens is that they begin to realize that emotions are in them and not a trait of the thing causing the emotions. On another blog there's a discussion right now about teaching email etiquette to students (I'd say all etiquette) and it occurs to me that many of our students view their intended results as the only results that there are and that any other results are not their responsibility even if forseeable, predictable, etc. I suspect that young adults are so consumed with their inner lives and establishing themselves as an individual that they view the internal sense of themselves as that which is real and that everything else if not illusory is certainly insignificant and anyone who pays attention to clothes, language, hairstyle, etc. is just shallow. (Of course, I'm not saying that young adults live be these rules only that they hold others to them).

Anyway, I shall mull about this some more, but I think there's something to this (and, if there is, it's probably something already widely known and I'm just late to the party).

Loyal to Loyalty

2010-01-15T10:37:00.001-06:00

As I near the end of The Philosophy of Loyalty, a few thoughts....

(i) love, love, love Josiah. Please let him not have been a jerk in real life.

(ii) the gist of his argument (unless something major transpires in the last chapter) is:

Humans experience tension btwn the desire to be authentic to themselves and the need to define authenticity with reference that which is outside of them (society, family, etc)
Loyalty to a cause alleviates this tension as one identifies oneself as the player in something larger than oneself, thereby uniting the inner and outer
What cause? Of course there are good causes and bad causes, though regardless of the cause, loyalty is a good for the loyal person and the inclination to be loyal should never be discouraged, though the target could be. Anyway, the appropriate target, generically, is loyalty. We should be loyal to loyalty (hence the never discouraging loyalty part).
Any substance to this? Yes, one should never be loyal to a cause that makes it difficult for others to be loyal to their causes (this has quite the Kantian flavor to it -- also in the idea that we must choose that to which we are loyal).
and....having committed to being loyal to loyalty the particular way we choose to do this can be through means that are conducive to our personalities, etc.

(iii) after making this basic case, he makes some interesting points about how to facilitate the trait of loyalty (one which he thinks is scarce in America [a complete sidenote: though this book was written 100 years ago, take off the date and hand it to someone, change the gender specific 'he' and 'men' to something non-gender specific and no one would doubt it was written recently. His criticisms of the US are as poignant today as when he wrote this].

People are loyal to lost causes: I found this particularly interesting because this explains why so many folks in power claim to be persecuted. It's way easier to be loyal to something that is persecuted than something that's already won. We want to be loyal to causes that need us.
Loyalty requires some level of idealization - typically we use the past to achieve this. We talk as if the way things used to be were the ideal and now we are working to retain that which we once had. He notes that art is frequently used to achieve this idealization.
Instilling the desire to be loyal is one that must start young and, interestingly, he notes the use of stories with clearly defined heroes and heroines as a way to do this with children. He also suggests sports but cautions that the loyalty must be, ultimately, to fairplay and that adults can get too involved with sports and turn it into something that is ugly and what we call loyalty but is really a mockery of it

(iv) I'm impressed with his awareness of psychological development and his discussion of what means are effective at what ages for instilling the trait of loyalty. I also think that most people (at least in the US) are not very developed on the loyalty scale. I think, for the most part, we are stunted at the 'team loyalty' stage and have not be able to move to what Royce thinks is the ultimate goal....loyalty to humanity.

Getting Closer

2010-01-12T12:55:00.001-06:00

So, I'm reading and loving The Philosophy of Loyalty and have just found out that The Limits of Loyalty by Simon Keller won the APA book prize. This means I'm getting closer to being cutting edge - as in the footsteps toward the cutting edge that I'm walking in are fresher.

woo hoo.

Someone Else's wisdom

2010-01-07T12:21:00.000-06:00

A nicely put post on the value of 'useless' majors is found here.

Newton & Leibniz

2010-01-04T07:57:00.001-06:00

There's a word for an idea that's time has come and then comes into being simultaneously in different places. In evolutionary biology, there's a similar concept (parallel evolution?) such that beings very similar to one another independently evolve (Australia is riddled with animals similar to, but different from animals in the rest of the world). The idea I'm most familiar with that arose at the same time is calculus with the burning question being "who was first?" Leibniz or Newton? To me it doesn't really matter who was first, the more interesting question is why did they both come up with the same idea at about the same time?

How is this relevant to me (given that everything I write about is relevant to me)? I've become more and more convinced in the last few years that the area that philosophy really needs to be looking at is the issue of decision-making. Whether there is an absolute truth (moral, scientific, etc.) or not is irrelevant given that we are unlikely to gain access to it. Nonetheless, we must decide what to believe and decide how to behave. Saying we don't know the absolute truth doesn't remove the necessity for decision making.

I, of course, just assume that I, in my little, insignificant corner of the world, have happened upon a question that was probably asked and answered during the Middle Ages (or at least by Kant) and now I'm finding out, more and more, that this question is the question that is hot right now in philosophy. Now I certainly didn't come up with this question by keeping up with all that's being written in journals, listening to the most influential folks in the field speak, or any other avenue there might be to current conversations...I am simply not keeping up with current conversations but am, instead, wandering around in my little world of reading, every year, Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and The Metaphysics of Morals, Hume's Treatise and Enquiry, Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, Plato's Gorgias, Mill's Utilitarianism and On Liberty, Waldron's Theories of Rights, Glendon's Rights Talk and Civic Virtues (I can't remember the author of this off the top of my head) and I'll probably be adding Pogge's book on rights. Then add to this my regular reading and pondering of James, Dewey, Royce (♥), Goodman and Elgin (♥). But, seriously, that's about it. And, yet, I've arrived at the same place that other more important and influential people have. And they even have a name for it "Practical Reason" and "Action Theory."

Wonder how this happened.

Publishing & Perishing

2010-01-03T09:21:00.001-06:00

I've just started reading Josiah Royce's The Philosophy of Loyalty and love it.

I have a huge number of books I want to read, both fiction and non-fiction and am having a very difficult time deciding which to read. Reading fiction during the day makes me feel guilty which takes me to the non-fiction. But then I don't know where to start. If I had some sort of clear cut research agenda, I suspect that the task would be a bit easier but given my approach of "I'll just keep reading stuff that's interesting to me and an idea worth pursuing in a paper will emerge" the choice of books is not easy. So, instead of architecture, moral or intellectual development, neuro stuff or even philosophy of education, I've settled on Royce. I've been wanting to read this book for a while and since nothing else was calling to me, I figured maybe this would give me some good 'soil' in which other ideas could be planted (yes, a dismal metaphor but nothing else is coming to me).

Anyway, so far a very interesting book. But I am struck by the question of whether any of the books from the early 20th century American Philosophy would ever be published today - and I'm assuming that this material is still quite relevant today. Given the conversational tone of most American Philosophy (at least that I like) and the interest in addressing everyone, not just professional philosophers, I can't imagine any contemporary philosophical journal accepting this stuff. I'd love to have someone experiment and see how many journals turn down big name philosophers work because their arguments aren't clear, they haven't addressed the obvious criticiams to their positions, etc.

My suspicion, many of the most influential philosophers of the past would have never published and, thus, never been influential if they were needing to publish today....Oh, and just to make myself crystal clear, I am in no way, shape or form suggesting that anything that I don't get published comes even close to being of the same caliber of what these folks wrote. I'm perfectly willing to accept that the world will not be much worse off if what I've written never sees the light of day, I'm not willing to say that of the folks I'm thinking of (James, Royce, Kant, Plato, etc,).

Workshops & Farms

2009-12-23T07:56:00.004-06:00

So, I continue to read The Timeless Way of Building by Christopher Alexander and what I've just read articulates, nicely, a thought I've been having. Alexander, it turns out he's a fairly big deal in the world of architectural theory, argues, as far as I've been getting it, that we, humans, desire, what he calls, "the quality that has no name." We want to feel "alive," to be fully present in everything, to be who we "really are." Now, I know that there are some serious problems in terms of what these things really mean, in some sort of metaphysical sense, but I think that most of us understand what they mean phenomenologically, i.e., we've all experienced the feeling even if we can't justify the feeling as corresponding to something real. He further argues, and I already believed this so little argument was necessary, that this isn't a feeling we can achieve simply through inner work. That our surroundings are important to this -- it's noteworthy that those who do focus on inner work do so in very particular places (or at least, I'd argue, desire to).

Anyway, the thought I've been having recently has to do with the increase in so-called service-industry jobs and the decrease of manual labor - farming, factories, etc. And what I've realized is that it isn't so much that I feel bad for the workers (assuming that they can get new jobs or that their jobs are phased out only when they retire and that everyone else is employed) and it isn't so much some sort of amorphous "way of life" that I think is intrinsically good for a society (though I do strongly believe this following the good Mr. Thomas Jefferson), but that it seems to me that children who grow up with parents working in these sorts of jobs experience a particular view of the world that is important and can't be gained when one's parents work in other types of jobs.

Alexander notes that in workshops (I have a friend whose parents and, now, brother make violins and bows at 'the shop.' The picture above is taken in the shop) work and family life are not separated but interact daily. Children see what work is, may run in and out, etc. Families are the focus and people are integrated. Life is not divided into 'work' and 'non-work' and 'work' isn't this mysterious thing that happens somewhere else. I think that the 'romance' (if we want to call it that) of the mining towns, are the stories we hear of the men coming back at lunch to eat, all covered with dust, or, if not that, at least live with the mine and be with it constantly.

Now, of course, I'm not saying mining was a good job or that these are careers to be aspired to, only that there's something to a population where people grow up being surrounded by integrated lives. I grew up never really knowing what my dad did (he was an engineer - and I had no idea what this was except it didn't involve trains) and, to tell the truth, I continue to not know. I once took the little girl living next door to me to 'take your daughters to work' day and she could not have had a more boring day - and this was with me doing my best to make life as a professor exciting. With more 'professional' jobs, kids will grow up with 'work' being something mysterious and separated from life, and, quite possibly, something that consistently takes someone away from life.

Anyway, Alexander's idea, I predict, is not to go back to the lives of farming and workshops, but to reorganize our cities so that work and home are not entirely separated. I suppose that the 'at home office' gets to this, but he wants to make it systemic, not individual to individual. I'll keep reading and see what he comes up with.

NYTimes Article regarding Consciousness

2009-12-22T08:21:00.000-06:00

And the link

What got me started on this

2009-12-21T12:08:00.009-06:00

Crappy white plastic tables.

We had had desks in our classrooms that were the sort I had when I was in high school and college. The kind that were unkind to people who were left-handed (although every once in a while there'd be a special 'left-handed' desk) because you had to "enter" the desk and your right arm was to rest on the desk while your left hand, I don't know, wrapped around the top of the desk. They weren't so much desks as "desk-chair" combos.

So, this is what we had, along with chalk boards, regular fluorescent lights and some sort of non-carpeted flooring (not wood or tile, something that had to be waxed).

Then came the 'improvements.' I have since refused to talk about classrooms being improved and will only agree that they have been renovated - I grant the what's in the rooms is now newer. All desks were taken out and replaced with aforementioned crappy white plastic tables. The tables are, in addition to being stark white and plastic, are rectangular and have wheels so that they may be moved -- this is the major pedagogical breakthrough that these tables provide, the ability to move them (not that the others were bolted down or heavy or immovable for any other reason, but I digress). Oh, and two people can, comfortably, sit side-by-side on the long side of the table (though putting two folks facing them on the same table doesn't really work). The students now sit on plastic blue chairs the choice of which baffles me. These are plastic blue chairs (fairly sturdy plastic) that look like folding chairs. But, lest you get excited about the possibility of actually folding the chairs, no folding is actually possible. These only have the appearance of being able to fold. Now why someone thought that the folding chair look is a good one and didn't conclude that folding chairs look the way they do only because that's what makes it possible to fold them, I do not know. So, we have white plastic tables (with wheels) and blue plastic imitation folding chairs.

Now before I continue, I should be perfectly clear that faculty were provided with input on the choice of classroom furniture and I did not take the opportunity to go and look at what was available. But, reliable sources tell me that this was the best of the bunch.

In addition to replacing the desks, the blackboards were removed and replaced with nice shiny, equally stark, white white-boards, the old fluorescent lights were replaced with new fluorescent lights and carpeting was put in.

The classrooms now bear a striking resemblance to racquetball courts (minus the nice wood floors) and classrooms, with 'tables' now instead of 'desks' are typically arranged in one of two ways: (1) the tables neatly lined up in rows facing the 'front' of the room (where the white board is) is or (2) in a very large rectangle -- all the tables arranged to form the 4 sides of the rectangle with the inevitable remaining tables pushed into the middle and the unused or broken chairs piled on top of each other in a corner.

To say that I didn't like this change upon first glance would be an understatement. But my breaking point was the day I was supposed to teach, I think it was Aristotle. Here we were about to discuss work I used to emphasize the importance of the slow reading of text, carefully understanding something, meditating upon an idea and I was supposed to do this in a room that had the intimacy and allure of a racquetball court. Oh, and the windows are tinted so opening the shades to use natural light is possible only when the sun is shining very brightly. At that moment, I decided that careful, interesting thought couldn't possibly happen in that sort of environment. And I set about finding evidence that the actual space in which one learns, thinks, studies actually has an effect on the quality of one's learning, thinking, studying.

Next post....how a perfectly good gathering space was ruined with more white plastic

Aesthetics & Architecture

2009-12-20T08:08:00.004-06:00

Well, I have discovered, much to my surprise, that as I've been following this little trail of books on design of buildings and rooms that I'm fairly squarely in aesthetics and, what's more exciting, is that I'm in a moderately new area of aesthetics (new as in the last 10-15 years which really is new in philosophy) called environmental aesthetics with my interest being in built environment as opposed to naturally occurring environment (which would be "the wild" and even US national parks probably wouldn't easily qualify as "the wild").

Regardless of having found myself in a new field or not, I'm finding this stuff just fascinating and has me wondering how much someone who graduates with a degree in architecture actually learns about this stuff and, if it is learned, how much is actually used. Or is architecture, in practice, less about art and more about satisfying the customers desires? Of course, I'd say that most customers could be fairly easily educated on this stuff since what I'm reading about is the way in which design influences how we feel and that with a well designed space, people will simply be happier in their space and who wouldn't want that?

Reading and thinking about this stuff reminds me of a favorite article of mine "The End of the Museum" by Nelson Goodman in which he notes that art should be experienced in the everyday not in museums. It seems to me that architecture and food are the two arts that still have the potential to be widely experienced by folks in their artistic form but are more likely than not experienced only in their utilitarian form and the artistic form is reserved for those who have a significant amount of money.

So, I'm going shopping today (yes, the Sunday before Xmas, not my idea) and what am I thinking about? The design of the 4 malls in town and why it is that the newest mall is the one that I find so icky to be in - despite the fact that it has more stores that I really like than the mall I prefer. You'd think that when designing a mall you'd work on making it the sort of place where one would linger and, thus, be more inclined to purchase. But, then again, I always think it's stupid to make grocery stores frigid so you want to get out as quickly as possible -- again, don't you want folks lingering a bit with the thought that the longer they are there, the more likely they are to purchase things? Maybe it doesn't work that way. Maybe the longer we are somewhere the more likely we are to come to our sense and put stuff back that we don't really need/want. So, perhaps making malls & grocery stores vaguely hostile is a good thing. Whatever. I'm off to read The Timeless Way of Building.

Changing Spaces

2009-12-14T09:14:00.002-06:00

I've moved on my next book (The experience of place) and in the Introduction something the writer said reminded me of an important alteration of space in my (remarkably mundane) life.

I spent a couple weeks each summer between the ages of, probably, 8 and 14 at Girl Scout camp and I remembered these weeks as some of the best times of my life. The bulk of these weeks were spent at Camp Scherman (I have only recently learned that there is a c in Scherman) which is in the San Jacinto mountains. Through these weeks I came to fall in love with this part of California. However, back to the change in space topic.

When I first was going to camp at Camp Scherman, all the roads within the camp (or at least all the roads we, as campers, walked) were dirt roads. In fact, one of the songs we sang ("Scherman Song") had the line "Where the road's a little dusty and the trees a trifle few." The last time I was there they had paved the roads. I'm sure there were good reasons for this, but from my perspective it just ruined the place. I don't know if the ruin was that it was in such contrast with my memories or that with paved roads the rustic, far, far away from civilization nature of the place disappeared, but, nonetheless, I never wanted to return.

Another moment of change of place comes to mind. This one from college and is a two-parter.

The college I went to I applied to and then enrolled, sight unseen. Or, rather, unvisited. The beginning of my first semester was the first time I'd ever entered the state in which my colleged resided. The pictures sold me on the place (along with the reputation). And the campus didn't disappoint (though it did set unreasonably high expectations for all future campuses).

Each summer class reunions happen on campus and it is a big to-do with each class that was celebrating it's x reunion (where x is exactly divisible by 5). One summer I worked the reunion in the capacity of being on the little shuttle that took alums who didn't want to walk from place to place. I was the tour guide, pointing out to the older alums what it was they were seeing on campus that hadn't been there when they had been students there.

I remember very vividly some of the older alums talking about all the trees that were on campus (one of the things that I liked the best) and noting that when they were students there they had really enjoyed the openness of the campus.

That story serves to segue to my most recent visits, as an alum, to that campus and, while no more foliage has grown, more buildings have been built. Unlike my experience with Camp Scherman it doesn't feel to me as if the campus has been ruined with these new additions (in fact, I envy some of them - particularly, and weirdly, one of the parking garages) though the new additions have certainly driven home the fact that upon my graduation no one saw fit to freeze the campus in time as a tribute/shrine to my having been there.

Anyway, this is unlikely to be of interest to anyone but me. Happily, this is unlikely to be read by anyone but me :-)

So, my stories of changing space. More on my college campus is certainly going to be discussed in the future since it did establish many of my expectations of what one's physical environment should be.

Thinking about Space

2009-12-08T16:42:00.001-06:00

So, I'm reading about, and, thus, thinking about, the physical spaces we occupy and what makes them appealing - with the ultimate target of classroom and building design that is conducive to learning. As I've been doing this, I've been recalling the depictions of physical spaces that have captured my imagination. Part of this is inspired by an article which uses a quote from one of the Harry Potter books in which one of the classrooms is described (the classroom of the really spacy potions professor, if I recall correctly) making the case that along with many other characteristics, classrooms should be, I think they say, "enchanting."

My list of spaces that have captured my imagination:

Sam's tree in My Side of the Mountain
Whangdoodleland in Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles
Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory (first scene in the movie where everything is made of candy minus the Oompa-Loompas who just freak me out)
Wonderland of Alice in Wonderland
The museum in The Mixed Up File of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

One of the books I read relates a story about Jonas Salk being stuck on his work on the polio vaccine and spending a few weeks at the Abbey of Assisi where he said that the space itself was so conducive to creativity that it sparked the idea that ultimately led to the successful vaccine. What is it about particular spaces (whether built by humans or existing in nature) that is conducive to imagination, creativity, curiosity? That gives us the freedom to consider new idea or questions? That encourages us to do so? Encourages us to go beyond ourselves? I don't know what the answers are, but I'm certain that white rooms with white plastic tables, white boards and fluorescent lights are not the answer. I think it's the same reason we can sit for hours sitting and staring into a fire without getting bored. To be continued.

Minds & Brains

2009-12-03T08:51:00.002-06:00

I'm a member of the International Mind, Brain, Education Society (IMBES) because I'm interested in teaching and I think that brains are really cool. I've just finished reading a book on Architecture and Neuroscience (Brain Landscape) which I found generally underwhelming but which did force me to a thought. Namely, I'm, ultimately, more interested in minds than I am in brains. This book forced me to this because the connection between architecture and neuroscience seemed, ultimately, forced. The author kept saying that what neuroscience can do is help us understand why we respond to particular things in particular ways. What I don't understand is why this piece of information could be of interest to an architect qua architect.

At the last IMBES conference I went to there was a session the focused, if I'm remembering correctly, on the importance of neuroscience to education. I desperately want there to be connection but I fear that the direction is less from neuroscience to education than from education to neuroscience. That is, I think that things that we learn from practices in education can direct neuroscientists to ask questions that they may have not otherwise asked.

From my perspective I think that what I'm really interested in is psychology and what facilitates learning. What I'm most interested in, at the moment, is what effect a person's physical surroundings (classroom, campus, etc.) have on their ability to learn. I suspect that the intermediary is to look at what effect the physical surroundings have on one's emotional state and then to look at what emotional states are most conducive to learning. I'm not sure that understanding the mechanism by which the physical surroundings cause the emotional state is one that's particularly important to know...at least for my purposes. Not that this will stop me from reading about the brain (I'm part way through Reading in the Brain: The Science and Evolution of Human Invention and it's unbelievably interesting. I'm just not sure that understanding the mechanism of the brain helps us to be better teachers. I guess the question is whether understanding the mechanism of the brain helps us to better understand how we learn or, rather, how we learn at a macro enough level that teachers can intervene. Of course, understanding how the brain works helps us understand how learning happens, but is it at such a micro level as to be, largely, irrelevant to the teacher?

I suppose the question I could be asking is what kind of information about the brain could possibly be useful for me as a teacher. At this particular moment, I can't think of anything. I can see that having neuroscientific facts that support psychological claims will make the psychological claims more persuasive and, for that reason, are politically useful. But is there anything beyond that??

Addendum: I think I've changed my mind on this front. I think that knowing things about the brain can help us, potentially, know what's universally true of humans and not merely culturally true of some humans (may). I think there are other ways neuroscience can help, but I don't have the energy to type it all out at this particular moment.

Updating

2009-11-16T07:44:00.003-06:00

Wow, it's only been a month since my last posting?

I suppose lots has happened on the scholarship front. I've given one presentation at a conference (which generally boosted my ego and confidence regarding my ability to give presentations at conferences), I've submitted 4 proposals for 2 conferences for presentations (see previous parenthetical comment for the reason this was possible), I've written 2 papers (found the call for papers about 1 1/2 weeks before the due date) for yet another conference (accepted papers will be published in journal) -- of course found out, after pounding out 2 papers in a ridiculous period of time, that they only allow one submission per person (a piece of information well hidden -- about three links from the main cfp -- on the webpage). I also submitted a proposal to comment on a 'target' article in a journal, the proposal was accepted and the commentary has been written and submitted and, unless I've completely misunderstood the concept, said commentary will be published.

Not a good deal of reading going on but some productive time nonetheless. It terms of actual observable validation from my 'peers' -- all that really matters in academia -- two things out in the universe that have been or will be viewed by more than an editor or reviewer.

On the downside, the article, that I actually continue to feel really good about despite being rejected at every turn, has been rejected, yet again, and, yet again, for the same reason "content and issues raised...were not appropriate for publication in our journal" and then an explanation that given this reason for not publishing no constructive comments would be forthcoming.

Response #1: It took 2 months to reach this conclusion? Other journals of at least equal prestige have given me exactly the same response with literally days. That's 2 months I could have spent getting this article rejected from other journals. Geez.

Response #2: What exactly does it mean to say that the 'content...was not appropriate for publication in our journal'? I've been taking the high self-esteem road and assuming that this meant the topic, but given just a teeny bit of neuroses on my part I realize that this very phrase could be referrring to the presentation of the topic. "Content" is remarkably vague.

But, I think I'll stick with #1 if for no other reason that the commentary I wrote was in response to an article for the journal in question and the article is radically unlike what I wrote and I'd say both less interesting and less well-written. But I think this is indicative of the fact that the journal's audience is, again, a less academic audience. I'm beginning to understand that when journals claim that they are 'interdisciplinary' they don't mean the same thing by that word as I do. I think of the different academic disciplines. I think they mean different career disciplines. So, while I've written something that is not exclusively philosophical - drawing, as it does, on social science and more rhetoric oriented philosophy (Mark Johnson's work), it is very academic and probably not all that accessible to the average healthcare worker.

Nonetheless, I'm getting very frustrated with just trying to find the right venue for this article. I've gotten no helpful feedback on it to actually make it a better article given it's audience. My suspicion is that this article is really something that ought to be expanded upon and turned into a book (should the idea warrant expansion). There is a good deal going on in the article and so that's what I should really be doing. BUT, doing this would get me off the track of focusing on reading and writing about teaching and making my foray into philosophy of education. So, I what I may end up doing is working on the education stuff until May and then spending next summer turning this article into multiple articles and/or a book proposal. Who knows

On the education front, I'm excited. I have a box - literally there's a box downstairs next to my desk - filled with books that focus from a variety of approaches the impact of physical environment on our ways of thinking. The big challenge I have now is which book to read first. I've gone through and selected the 6 or 7 that look the most interesting and now am likely to read them starting with that which was written the earliest and then move toward the present. The only problem with this is that the one book on architecture and neuroscience was published either this year or last year and I don't know if I'll be able to put this one off. My hunch is that I'll be reading that one simultaneously with The Poetics of Space.

There we go. Much sharing. Little of interest to anyone. Oh, and then there's this little religion article that I have started and have to get out of my system. I have no idea where to send this to get published (assuming that what I'm saying wasn't already said 1500 years ago).

Catching Up

2009-10-13T08:24:00.000-05:00

I haven't posted in a long time, but I have been reading. No good reason to list what I've read, but I have been reading.

So, here's a question that I'm thinking of pursuing: what happens when we think of autonomy as a skill to be developed instead of a quality or characteristic that an individual has or doesn't have?

Of course there's about a zillion books on autonomy and I don't have the time to read all of them. However, the question of autonomy does come up in philosophy of education as the question of whether autonomy should be the goal of education. I'm thinking that maybe I can interject something half way inteligible into that conversation.

I'm running into the problem I always do when I try to get into a conversation. Namely, I am so behind in a conversation that is already on-going that I feel entirely ill-equipped to jump in and participate. Of course, reading everything that's been written up to this point on a topic, while potentially necessary, is not going to be conducive to me actually getting anything written and into the conversation. And while I'm perfectly happy to just read and learn, there's an expectation that I publish and some of my professional goals require that I meet this expectation. But the question is always when have I read enough to be able to foray into the fray?

All I know at the moment is, not yet.

Citations

2009-08-28T08:38:00.004-05:00

I continue to read The Morality of Freedom and I submitted my article to another journal which, hopefully, is a more appropriate venue. Raz' work continues to be interesting and dense. There isn't much of coherence I can say beyond that except if I have any skill it's recognizing when someone else is doing something interesting and important - as I think Raz is. I say that I have this skill because others apparently have reached the same conclusion (others in the know) and I reached mine without relying on them.

My big accomplishment in this area (and why there is no place on a cv for this sort of accomplishment, I do not know) is with Karen Warren's "The Power and Promise of Ecofeminism." I found this article when it had just been published for the first time in a journal. I had heard the term ecofeminism and wanted to find something for my Intro to Women's Studies class. I found Warren's article, loved it and thought it significant. This article has now ended up being anthologized all over the place and is widely viewed as one of the defining articles of the movement....and I recognized its importance on my own. If anyone can figure out how to put this on a cv or otherwise make it possible for me to take advantage of this little skill of mine, please feel free to share.

But, "citations." As I read through Raz' work, I realize that the likelihood that I will ever write such a book is, at best, miniscule. It isn't quite literally inconceivable but it's quite close to being practically inconceivable. Not a big deal for me or, I suspect, a huge loss to the world (though we'll never really know, will we?). Anyway, you can tell a big deal philosopher (and I'm realizing I have a tiered conception of philosophers with me being onthe 3rd tier) when their writing makes virtually no reference to anyone else's work. All they're doing is articulating their position and the reasons for it. Of course they bring up possible objections and then respond, but the need for citations is minimal given the fact that what they are doing is not derivative at all on someone else's work. Now, I think I could fairly easily write such a work but the likelihood that anyone would either (a) take me seriously or (b) need to take me seriously is rather low. Further, even if such a work were brilliant, the likelihood that some no name out of no where is going to get something like that published seems, to me, rather low. But perhaps I underestimate both myself and the publishing world. Who knows.

Anyway, my tiering system. On the top is the 'royalty.' These folks are putting forth original work, are at the center of the conversation and not paying a huge amount of attention to anyone but the other royalty (I'm going to generously assume that this is for lack of time not because of any character flaw). Then there are the folks who are wanna-be royalty. They spend their time looking for theoretical implications, inconsistencies, etc. One might say that they are the scholars of the royalty. They spend their time discussing the work of the royalty and may, at some point, move up to being royalty. Again, they are paying attention mainly to the royalty and each other (again, lack of time, not character flaws). Then there's folks like me. I have little desire to be royalty (not that I'd refuse the honor if bestowed upon me, but I'm not really actively pursuing it - not for lack of time but lack of self-esteem & interest) but I am interested in what the real world implications are for non-academics of what the work done by those 'above' me in the hierarchy. So, I spend my time, when writing, trying to connect ideas to each other and make them accessible and relevant to folks who don't have the time or inclination to read this stuff.

Of course, I do think that some of my stuff is mildly original and worth looking at by those higher up, but, in all honesty, I wonder how original it really is -- I mean, seriously, there's thousands of years of thinking and I've barely read any of it; what's the likelihood that I've arrived at some conclusion that's never been reached before? Statistically remote, at best.

I suppose this puts me in the position of being a perpetual student and translator for those who are not students (perpetual or otherwise). It all works out okay because I really like what I do.

Moving On

2009-08-27T06:53:00.001-05:00

Well, first things first. I heard back about my article. And it's a good news/bad news kinda thing. Good news: The reviewer thought it was interesting and didn't appear to have any criticisms of what I wrote. Bad news: The reviewer thought that it wasn't a good fit with the journal. Kind news: The reviewer did suggest two journals that he thought were more appropriate. So, I have to figure out which of these two I want to try first and then send it along to them.

In terms of ego, good news. In terms of wanting to be done with this and move on, less good news. But, overall good.

Second, I'm reading through Raz' The Morality of Freedom. Wow. It's a really good book but dense. Very dense.

I only skimmed the first part of the book that has to do with the setting up of the problem (political authority and what limits it, theoretically) and plunged directly into his conception of rights and then will move onto his discussion of autonomy (my primary reason for reading this) and then well-being. I've given myself 3 weeks (which is now more like 2 1/2) to decide whether this idea about autonomy as a skill is one worth pursuing in an article and, in that vein, am not reading Raz as carefully as I would need to if I knew I was going to have to be proficient with his ideas. I'm just going for a general grasp, enough to know if I should go back later for a deeper understanding.

His conception of rights is an interesting one. Basing the idea of being a right-holder on (a) having benefits and (b) having well-being that is intrinsically valuable. He thinks that the inclusion of (b) makes his view compatible with those like Hart & Wellman who focus on a choice (as opposed to beneficiary) view of rights. Raz thinks that his concept of rights is, basically, neutral in terms of particular theory -- I'm not entirely sure he's correct on this point. Not that I have reason to disbelieve, but it's the sort of claim that I am hesitant to believe without really doing some hard-core grappling with his ideas. But said grappling will have to wait.

One of the things that I like about Raz is that he's a good ol' fashioned analytic philosopher by which I mean that he consistently is elucidating and making distinctions where distinctions haven't previously been made but which also tend to evaporate some disagreements. However, these distinctions take some time to fully grasp. (Hmmm, having a very Jacob wrestling with the angel morning with all these wrestling metaphors). One is his distinction between being intrinsically valuable and being ultimately valuable. I'm pretty sure that these descriptors refer to interests (as opposed to well-being which he's very clear to note has to be intrinsically valuable). Intrinsically valuable interests are less value than those that are ultimately valuable -- ultimately valuable are a subset within the intrinsically valuable. He also has referred to, and will be discussing later, different ways that something can be intrinsically valuable.

So, dense stuff. Good stuff. Wishing I was i grad school taking a class either about this guy or, better, with this guy.

End o' the book

2009-08-23T06:39:00.003-05:00

So, finished The Philosophical Baby not much of huge excitement in the 2nd half of the book.

Okay, maybe not entirely fair.

Some interesting things on babies sense of self -- at a certain point, babies (again, under 3) will recognize themselves in a video shot just moments before seeing it, but won't get that the sticker put on their head moments ago in the video might still be on their head, while 4 year olds will immediately check their heads. There was some discussion, and I can't really remember all of it so it must not have made that much of an impression on me, of kids' sense of time - basically, they don't have a linear sense of time. This is in keeping with kids not being focused in on one thing but instead taking everything in. They take everything in both on a physical plane and then also on a temporal plane, not really distinguishing where or when in particulars.

Also, infants don't keep track of how they gained knowledge even when they can keep track of knowledge. When kids were told that the drawer had an egg in it and then were later asked (a) if the drawer had an egg (they'd answer 'yes') and then (b) how they knew, the answers they gave as to how they knew were largely unrelated to how they had really found out. Gopnik's theory (and it sounds plausible to me) is that babies' beliefs about the world are changing so rapidly that keeping track of where they got information is going to take up a good deal of time, energy, brain power and that reflecting upon source of knowledge as a way to determine authenticity of claim is something that only becomes useful once the majority of one's beliefs are fairly stable. Like I said, this makes sense.

Gopnik also makes the moderately mundane point that infants learn about love and relationships from their caregivers but then makes the more interesting point that the caregivers are also learning from the infants. That both caregivers and infants are teaching each other. This is an interesting way to think about the relationship being more reciprocal.

Lastly, and I think this is what irritated me, Gopnik makes a foray into ethics and, well, as someone who specializes in ethics, it wasn't terribly groundbreaking - and a bit historically inaccurate. Still, a few interesting points. Infants appear to be naturally inclined to help others and to want to stop the pain of others. Multiple studies back this up. Most of my students insist (with paucity of evidence) to claim that all humans fit Hobbes' misanthropic conception, but little evidence backs this up. Also, it appears that at a young age all but psychopaths make a distinction btwn the wrongness of breaking rules and the wrongness of hurting others (with latter being worse). Psychopaths, predictably, see no problem with harming others. In fact, psychopaths don't even recognize certain facial expresssions as indicative of pain whereas very young kids (younger than 3) do recognize such signs.

So, in the end, good book or not? I'd say it's an interesting book for someone who isn't familiar with infant development and so would recommend it to folks who are either non-experts but interested or to give to folks who the giver want to get interested.

Now I move on to Raz' Morality of Freedom!!

View of the World

2009-08-20T06:51:00.003-05:00

After reading Temple Grandin's book Animal Translation (I think that's the name of it) I hypothesized that infants would be likely to perceive the world in the way that non-human animals do instead of as how adult humans do. Turns out that there's actually evidence in support of this. Take-away point: I was right :-)

Gopnik compares adult's capacity to 'pay attention' (a concept that is, actually, fraught with complication since paying attention is something that we do without thinking about it but when we do think about it we tend to think it's something it's not - but I digress) to a spotlight. When we pay attention to something, everything that we are not paying attention to fades away so that we can listen to someone in a noisy room and focus in only on what they are saying (which I think is evidence of a really amazing ability). Babies' attention she compares to a lantern - that is, babies don't discern and focus on one thing but are taking everything in. This makes evolutionary good sense, Gopnik says and I agree, because babies don't know what info is important and what isn't so taking in everything increases the chances of capturing that which is needed later. But, as evidenced by infants constant sleeping, doing this is amazingly taxing and ultimately takes up so much time that we'd all be reduced to infant dependence if we didn't move from this to learning what we need to be paying attention to and what we don't.

Gopnik makes the point that babies are more aware/conscious than the rest of us (she notes that we don't quite know what consciousness is but if we say that anaesthesia is what dampens it, then infants have more consciousness because it takes more anaesthesia to put an infant out for surgery). The connection to Grandin is that Grandin (who has autism) argues that animals perceive the world more in particulars - that is, taking in details more than taking in the general picture. [she also makes the interesting hypothesis that there's a continuum of how animals perceive the world with more or less particulars as compared to general pictures and that folks with autism are on the continuum between adult non-autistic humans and other mammals]. So, infants are seeing more particulars than we are. Gopnik notes a study in which infants notice very small alterations in images that non-infants don't.

Overall, this stuff continues to be cool. Gopnik's on-going hypothesis is that by better understanding infants brains/minds we can better understand ours -- this is a standard neuroscience approach: better understanding of the person with the major anomaly (say, reporting an inability to see but still having the ability to walk without bumping into things, picking things up, reporting accurately what's in front of them) helps us to better understand how the majority of us without the anomaly function.

A concept that Gopnik floats is the idea that 'consciousness' isn't one thing to be understood, but, instead, that there are many things that we do with our 'mind' each of which has a separate explanation. Much in the same way that we don't understand the body as much as we understand the different components of the body and then how all of these work together. An interesting idea that I'm guessing has traction in the neuro- world and will gain traction in philosophy.

Okay, need to finish this book so I can move on to Raz. BUT I also have been thinking about Royce and his Philosophy of Loyalty and really want to get to that too. Discipline. Must read Raz first for this next article.

Imaginary Friends

2009-08-18T11:25:00.002-05:00

In keeping with the general theme of this book so far, that causal thinking makes possible counter-factual thinking, we move to the imaginary. And, well, to jump to the fun facts: (1) it's more social kids, not less, who have imaginary friends -- they find people so interesting that when people aren't around, they make some up; (2) imaginary friends are very common and (a) typically forgotten and (b) frequently passed on to siblings; (3) kids don't really think that the imaginary friends are real; (4) fiction writers frequently have 'imaginary' friends - we just refer to them as 'characters.'

Allegedly I had an imaginary friend when I was a kid. I say 'allegedly' because my parents claim that said friend was only mentioned once - to a teacher, I think. I'm inclined to think that I was testing the boundaries of what my adults would believe and not that I actually had an imaginary friend the way that some people have.

The idea behind the imaginary friend is that kids are starting to understand other minds and so come up with imaginary people to play around with the notion of someone else having a mind different from their own, but still understandable and subject to some common psychological laws.

I'm particularly intrigued by the discusison regarding fiction writers since, well, I've always found intriguing the claim that many writers experience their characters as real and, ultimately, in charge of what happens in the story being written. I've spoken with folks who write fiction to find out if they really do experience characters this way and they say they do -- and who am I do say that they are lying?

Another interesting point was that kids who don't have characters presented to them (via books, tv or movies) are more likely to make up their own characters -- kinda makes sense (and would explain why I didn't have imaginary friends seeing as I read nonstop as a kid). And, kids who spend more time interacting with adults are more creative -- again, not a huge shock seeing as spending time with adults probably means that the adults are attending to the child, asking the child questions about why, how, etc. Constantly asking the kid to imagine different scenarios and explanations. Happily for the development of most kids, we don't teach children the way we teach college students - by telling them the right answers and then getting irritated when they don't remember them.

So, this makes me think that one of the questions of teaching - how to help students become creative is the wrong question. We all begin creative and then most of us stop -- just like we all start out curious, loving to learn, etc and then somehow that part of us is killed (or at least viewed as the immature, unrealistic, naive part of us). The better question may be how to we help folks to embrace the curiosity we are all capable of and once revelled in? Work on that.

Troubling Claim

2009-08-17T18:22:00.003-05:00

"The core idea of neuroscience is that our brains are a kind of computer, though far more powerful than any of the actual computers we know about. Psychologists try to find out exactly what kinds of programs our brains use, and how our brains implement these program " (43)

Johnson & Lakoff have a nice article ("The Metaphorical Structure of the Human Conceptual System") discussing the pitfalls of adhering to only one metaphor to explain something (in this case, obviously, the mind/brain). Having read this article I'm made nervous when someone commits themselves to just one metaphor to understanding something (their point is that if we use only one metaphor we will only recognize that which is made visible by that metaphor). Though I have to
thank Gopnik for being so upfront about the metaphor she's using. I do wonder, though, in what way she thinks the brain is like a computer - is it only in the way that it "runs" programs? Where do these programs come from and what's a program that it's distinct from the brain? I tend to favor a more organic (as opposed to mechanical) conception of the brain - thinking of it more as a topiary and the neural pathways as, well, actual paths in a forest.

I doubt that what Gopnik is saying here is going to be seriously effected by her metaphor (this is pretty macro level stuff she's discussing) but the whole brain/computer metaphor bothers me fairly seriously since it's so mechanical and seems fairly committed at the outset to simplistic dualism. But, she is trying to communicate to laypeople and maybe she is correct that neuroscientists tend to think this way -- I tend to be more interested in cognitive science at this point and try to make as few commitments about brains as I can. But, still, I'm pretty sure that the whole computer/mind/brain thing is kinda outdated.

Warming up

2009-08-17T10:38:00.005-05:00

One of the most difficult things about teaching young adults is that they look & sound so much like us that it's easy to think that the only difference is that we have more accurate beliefs about the world than they do -- because we've had more education or more experience. This doesn't happen with infants. We know - or at least it ought to be fairly obvious to us - that infants experience the world in a radically different way from adults. It hasn't been until fairly recently that developmental psychology (even professionally) left us with the impression that development pretty much ended when we were "full grown." Twenty-one or fifty-one, the only difference was going to be factual beliefs. We know now (okay, I'll shift to I). I know now, that in the same way that infants and I experience the world in radically different ways so do I and my 21 year old students and this isn't just because I've got more accurate beliefs in my head. There's a working through of beliefs as we get older that leads not only to different beliefs, but a different way for beliefs to relate to one another.

It's fairly standard these days for folks to at least be familiar with phrased like "moral development" and "intellectual development" even if the phrases aren't terribly well understood. Understanding that my students were in a different place in
terms of intellectual development, how they were understanding the world, what they expected from explanations, education, etc. was a huge breakthrough for me. It's made me realize that teaching is about figuring out where students are and then using the best tools I have to help them move forward. I can't teach students by teaching them the way I would best learn any more than I can teach my dogs to do something by simply sitting down and explaining it to them (if you feel the comparison between dogs and students is offensive to either dogs or students, then you have too limited experience with one or both of the members of each category).

Onto the book of the moment Philosophical Baby. She's looking at what infants (which she is defining as younger than 3) are cognitively capable of and what this tells us about ourselves. She notes, for examples, that infants are radically different from adults (not a terribly huge surprise) but not in a way that implies that infants are deficient. In fact, on her reading, it's the adults who could be said to be deficient. (In the butterfly/caterpillar analogy it's the adults who are the boring, staid caterpillars).

Human brains begin with zillions of neural pathways which atrophy as the brain ages (and this begins at birth) as neural pathways aren't used (think about footpaths through the woods) [infants perceive certain sounds - from different languages - up until a certain point (like 3 months?) when they stop perceiving sounds that they don't hear are a regular basis (so Chinese infants literally do not hear some sounds in English past a certain point and likewise for infants who grow up hearing only English can they not hear some sounds in the Chinese language). Cool, eh?]

Anyway, apparently it has long been thought that babies (again, anyone younger than 3) is incapable of (a) causal thinking or (b) counter-factual thinking (i.e., what would have happened if instead of doing what you did, you did this instead?). Turns out that of course they're capable of that and perhaps even more able than we are. She notes that we become far less imaginative as we get older and far less "connected" to our imagination as we get older ('connected' is my term, not hers). She notes that it had long been claimed that kids couldn't tell the difference btwn the imaginary and the real but then she trots out a bunch of evidence (much of it stuff all of us have probably seen) to make the case that kids can tell the difference but it's that kids experience the imaginary very vividly. The way that I think about it is that I know that scary books and sad movies are fictional but this doesn't make them less scary or me less likely to cry. Clearly the imaginary is vivid to me to some extent - I suspect different people experience the imaginary more and less vividly depending on the person. Kids, she's suggesting, experience the imaginary very vividly.

Another interesting point, thus far, is that kids can have their minds wander and explore all sorts of possible worlds in a way that adults, with deadlines and responsibilities can't (not that this stops me) and for this reason kids are the ultimate source of creativity in any society. Adults experience possible worlds through literature, movies, tv. And some of us, if we are very, very lucky, get things like sabbaticals to take the time to explore and think. BUT, this is a serious rarity. Some of, again, if we are very, very lucky, get to have jobs that allow us to do this on a regular basis. So, we have arrived, again, at one of my conclusions of the importance of art and possible world-making in any society.

A last interesting point (and then I shall return to reading), what she's said suggests (and perhaps she actually says this, I can't remember) that the lengthening of childhood (that is, as a time without or with minimal structure and responsibilities) is, in fact, a good thing since it lengthens the period of time when we are encouraged (or could be encouraged to imagine). I think that too few people take advantage of this.

Okay, off to read more!

How I shall spend my sabbatical!

2009-08-17T09:15:00.003-05:00

So, my sabbatical officially starts in one week (we'll assume that the beginning of fall semester is the official starting date though, more realistically, it started the end of last semester because if I had to teach this coming semester I would have spent all summer fussing with syllabi and obsessing of book selections). As of Saturday, I sent off my first article ("The Vocabulary of Health Care: A Failure of Rights"). There is every reason in the world to believe it'll be rejected (I'm fairly certain it's too long for this journal though they give no word limit), but at least I've gotten something written and sent out.

I move now to get some reading done before I move to my next writing project. The next project is a section of the last that I finally realized had to be excised since it wasn't adding anything but confusion to the last. It's looking at the implications of looking at autonomy and health as things instead of something closer to skills. I'm going to argue that being an autonomous or healthy person is analogous to being a speaker of a particular language and that conceptualizing autonomy and health this way makes a significant difference in how we think about individual responsibility in general and health, in particular.

After this (and, I think, moving naturally from this) I'm going to move to focus on issues in education -- educating young adults, education & neuroscience, education & ethics.

But, the difficulty of this all this is that I am so easily distracted by things like on-line games. So, I'm going to use this blog as a way to force myself to stay moderately on task. I'm going to write, here, summaries, analysis, etc. of the books I'm reading. Thus, if there are long periods of time when I've posted nothing, well, feel free to email me and take me to task for wasting time. Few people in the world are lucky enough to have this sort of time to sit, think and create so to squander it is just irresponsible and disrespectful. Yes, we shall be focusing on shame as the primary motivator. I have fabulous 2nd and 3rd order desires; it's just that my 1st order desires for mindlessness and mindnumbing tend to win most of the time. As I've said before, fabulously strong id and superego; the ego, on the other hand, is puny and without power.

Books I'm currently reading and will, therefore, be posting on: The Philosophical Baby by Alison Gopnik (this is about neuroscience & philosophy) and Joseph Raz's The Morality of Freedom. The latter is for the next work on autonomy and the former is for the education work. Obviously, I'll be reading the former first and the latter later ('obviously' as in 'the way that is least conducive to long term goals but most in keeping with what I want in the immediate' - see above comment about 1st, 2nd & 3rd order desires.

So, off to read!!

Ways I would Change my little corner of the world if I had the means to do so

2009-04-20T07:34:00.003-05:00

(1) Students would have more time to focus on what's going on in classes so that they could really learn something instead of just worrying about getting a good grade

(1') Getting a good grade would be impossible if students weren't actually learning something

(2) There would be some days when classes would be cancelled simply in virtue of it being beautiful outside and we all need to remember the importance of enjoying life

(3) We'd have more common spaces where we could sit, work, casually socialize, see, be seen, feel a part of a larger community

To be continued....

Thinking about Obama

2009-01-18T16:50:00.002-06:00

So, I'm listening to all the stuff about the inauguration and am very excited about Tuesday. But it's interesting to me that Obama is consistently referred to as African-American and with reference to the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. I find it interesting because in a very significant way (at least I think it's significant) Obama is not part of the African-American legacy in the United States. He does not have ancestors who were slaves, who were threatened by death when they went to vote, who were educated in segregated schools. Even though (I think) everyone knows that his mom was white (Kansas-white) and his dad was Kenyan, he's talked about he's an average African-American kid who grew up in South Central LA (not Hawaii, probably our most diverse state) and made good.

How would things be different if both of his parents were alive? What would those images have done to our understanding of Obama as "Black"?

I am Sisyphus

2009-01-14T06:18:00.001-06:00

Well, just a few more days of break and I'm actually in fairly good shape. Books are chosen, syllabi are basically written, new websites for each class have been created (Rights & Responsibilities, Paths to Knowledge and Health & Social Justice). And in the midst of this, I completed grading from last semester, went through my semesterly angst and despair as I rethought all that happened last semester and all the things I should have done differently, went to Mexico and thoroughly enjoyed Merida, Yucatan where the daily high temp was at least 93 every day I was there.

[Um, Bryan Karrick, my favorite weather person just said that we are going to be experiencing the coldest weather of years in the next few days. This can't be good. ]

I love the beginning of the semester for the same reason I love Mondays and early mornings....there's hope. Everything's fresh and new and the possibility of everything going fabulously exists. A nice counter-balance to the despair that I feel at the end of the semester (Fridays and afternoons as well).

Computer Woes

2008-12-08T10:36:00.000-06:00

So, my home computer is, well, inoperable. The very nice man at the Apple store said that it is what they call "vintage" or, less glamorously, "obsolete." So, now I must decide what to do. I have, as far as I can tell, 3 live options (see James "Will to Believe" for reference on "live options"). I can (a) buy a new computer. I'd get the new MacBook and then probably a Dell screen to expand my viewing options; (b) I can get a new hard drive installed in the old computer or (c) I can do without a home computer, lug my work computer back and forth.

So, let's go backward.

(c). I suspect that since it's my work computer, I'm only supposed to do work on it. Thus, I would be breaking some sort of rule if I were to, say, put my new copy of Spore on my work computer. Also, lugging a computer back and forth probably increases the likelihood of said computer getting broken.

(b) Given the "obsolete" nature of the computer, it is both warranty-less and at the point where other things (I don't know what) may start to break. This wouldn't be so much of a problem except that being obsolete they may no longer have the parts to replace whatever breaks next (which could be in moments or years)

(a) Well, I've learned all about the environmental and health hazards that accompany the production and disposal of anything mildly computer oriented and, thus, there are some good ethical reasons (like not wanting to contribute to said hazards) for not getting a new computer.

So, I'm thinking that I'll be going with the new disk drive, but if someone wanted to give me a new MacBook it'd be rude of me not to accept.

2008-12-06T05:54:00.001-06:00

Just in case there were doubts about Hume or about the importance of those around us to our happiness, there's this.

Fortune

2008-11-30T07:53:00.002-06:00

After reading this about brutal attacks on girls/women who attempt to get educated in Pakistan (many of whom are not deterred), I'm struck by the extent we who have what others suffer for take what we have for granted and squander it. In the same way that people who are starving would be appalled to see the food we throw away, I'm sure many would be equally appalled at the many other things we treat recklessly as if having little or no value.

So, what to do about it? How to use what I've been given and she's been denied through no merit of mine and no fault of hers? What is the best use of my undeserved fortune?

The Vagaries of Humanity

2008-11-30T06:50:00.006-06:00

Just a reminder of the enormous possibilities of humans.

On the one hand we have heroes. The employees at the Taj Mahal Hotel who literally took bullets for the guests (here) and women who have lived through the worst I can imagine and work to help other women (here)

On the other hand there are the folks who are willing to stampede into a WalMart at 4am leading the death of a temporary employee (here and here). Then there's shootings at Toy 'R Us.

Humanity certainly is a many splendored thing.

We've got amazing art, architecture, music, sacrifice and then horrific crimes, genocide, apathy, poverty, greed, immense creativity regarding how to kill and harm others, consumption to end all consumption.

Of course, from my perspective, it's worth mentioning that, in many cases, the moments of human triumph and horror, the behavior is propelled by the group. One person doesn't make a stampede. The hotel staff had an ethos of helping.

An interesting discussion of the logic behind the panic of stampede (here) suggests that this idea of never having enough and what happens if we somehow find ourselves without the flat-screen tv is crucial to what's behind these moments of human horror. Is it feeling that we aren't part of the group and that we have to fend for ourselves or we'll be lost and without? That we have to eradicate the others because if we don't they'll take what we want (the worst I've ever been cursed at was when I accidentally "stole" someone's parking space -- we were coming from two different directions and I didn't see her).

What then is the thinking behind the moments of heroism? There is something to the fact that these heroes don't view themselves as heroic as doing that which needs to be done (a sentiment that was shared by many of those who helped during the Holocaust and in the genocide of Rwanda).

It's far easier to understand the moments of human panic and our creativity for hurting others than it is to understand the moments of sacrifice and what we, optimistically and self-flatteringly, call "humanity."

I am going to go out on a limb and say that the staff at the Taj Mahal Hotel, the women in Pakistan exemplify the Christmas spirit far better than the folks at WalMart and Toy R Us and that I could learn a good deal from them.

Regulating Emotions

2008-11-30T05:34:00.000-06:00

Hmmm, so folks are only now getting around to what Aristotle, et al were saying more than 2000 years ago? NYTimes article on whether emotional responses can be altered

I Robot

2008-11-24T19:31:00.001-06:00

Of course Isaac Asimov thought of it first but....what do you think? Are robots more likely to be moral in battle than humans? Here's the article

Moral Bankruptcy?

2008-11-23T10:26:00.004-06:00

So, I'm reading Shrader-Frechette's Taking Action, Saving Lives and amidst all the really "fun" (and by "fun" I mean staggeringly depressing) facts is this one "A 2005 study by Harvard Medical School and Harvard Law School showed that half of all US bankruptcies are caused by medical expenses" (37).

sigh.

J.S. Mill

2008-11-20T06:46:00.002-06:00

So I'm rereading a chapter of Mill's On Individuality and though I always resist liking Mill because everything just a little bit too wrapped in up in a nice little package with a beautiful bow and I always get a sense of "why didn't anyone else (hint, hint Aristotle, Kant, Plato) come up with this before it's just soooo obvious" when I read his stuff, I have to say I always have and probably always will love On Liberty. I think it's less the details and more his conception of what it means to be human, fully human. And in this area he is certainly not saying anything different from what every philosopher before and since has said. But the focus on working to really be who we can be and not settle for what we could get away with and survive on always gives me a bit of a rush.

Of course, I do believe that he's a bit overly optimistic in the power of individuals but I also think he's right on about the force of society in developing or discouraging true individuality.

This piece (I'm reading chapter 3) reminds me of the Monique Wittig quote "I am not telling women to be happy only do you know that you are capable of happiness."

Brains are cool

2008-11-12T13:28:00.000-06:00

If you don't agree with me that brains are cool, well, seriously, you are simply mistaken. The simply fact that you can wiggle your toes, that you can sort out a conversation yelled into your ear at a party from the loud music and conversation around you is sufficient evidence on its own that brains are way, way cool. But if you need more evidence, I'm more than happy to supply it.

For now, however, go read this article.

Gorgias 2008

2008-10-12T07:53:00.010-05:00

Okay, so I've been thinking about a story that was related to me by some of my students. It's an example used in a book that first year business students are reading. A woman decides that she wants $100,000 and goes about figuring out how to best (legally) get it and she successfully achieves her goal. She decides that she wants to achieve her goal by writing a book and then researches what books sell the best, discovers it's weight-loss books and then churns out a weight-loss book (not really having any expertise in the field whatsoever) and in 6 months her book is wildly successful (in terms of sales).

I'll grant you it's clever. But so is running an ad in the NY Times requesting people send you $5 and then making $100,000 that way, being a gossip columnist or marrying someone who is fabulously wealthy, childless, lonely and very old. Perfectly legal and not forcing anyone to do anything that they don't want to do.

But all of these just strike me as dishonorable ways of making money, particularly if the point is simply to make lots of money. Making money this way is just taking advantage of someone's willingness to trust, vulnerability, etc. I happily grant that no one is being forced to do anything against their will but it just seems like taking the low road, sacrificing doing your best, working to do something that someone could really take pride in.

Do folks really want to be the sort of person who would do this? I can sort of get being willing to, if the situation gets bad enough, but wanting to be this sort of person?

WWYD?

2008-09-26T12:18:00.001-05:00

What would you do? Or, maybe more fun, what would Yoda do?

So, the first time that a student said this to my face was some time ago, but it wasn't the last time and I suspect many more students think this than actually share. The essence of the comment was

I don't care what Aristotle has to say about anything. I don't want to understand Aristotle. There is nothing Aristotle could say that could possibly change my mind about anything. I can't think of any good reason to become familiar with anything he had to say

Now, of course, this is heresy to me, the philosopher, but I suppose I get that some people may not find Aristotle simply self-evidently interesting. But, I'm curious, how would you helpfully respond to such a student?

Experiment — Formal Invitation

2008-09-26T08:39:00.001-05:00

Okay, so here's a formal invitation to come and visit me in my office. I've been sitting here listening to my music thinking (a) other people really ought to hear this fabulous song and (b) other people really ought to be telling me what other music I should be listening to (movies I should be seeing, etc.).

So, if you feel inclined, please come by and share.

Fulfilling Life

2008-09-23T13:59:00.002-05:00

So, some people say that what is fulfilling or meaningful to one person isn't necessarily going to be fulfilling or meaningful to another and that, basically, whatever someone thinks is fulfilling or meaningful is fulfilling or meaningful. That is, we can't be mistaken in our beliefs about what is going to give our lives meaning or fulfillment.

Now, let me was philosophical for a bit. When we talk about life being "meaningful" or "fulfilling" we are talking about life in a particular way. That is, the way that we experience life and we experience life with our minds. So, a life is meaningful or fulfilling insofar as it is experienced so by the mind.

The experience of the body is positive or negative depending upon the health of the body, correct? People with healthier bodies have a more positive experience of their bodies than do those who have less healthy bodies (particularly as they grow older). Now, clearly, people's beliefs about what is going to lead to a healthy body is irrelevant to the question of what really is going to lead to a healthy body. That is, our beliefs about health can be correct or incorrect.

So, if this is true with regard to our bodies (because all human bodies are, essentially, the same) why wouldn't the same be true of our minds (since all human minds are, essentially, the same)? Why would we think that Brittany Spears view of what is going to make her life fulfilling is, in fact, going to make her life fulfilling? It seems pretty clear that people who think that their lives will be made fulfilling and meaningful by acquiring lots of things, having meaningless sex, taking lots of drugs are, in fact, mistaken about what is going to make their life fulfilling or meaningful and no matter how deeply they believe this is irrelevant to the truth of the matter.

I'm also fairly clear that serial rapists and child molesters are not, in fact, wise regardless of what anyone might think or the fact that they may unintentionally say something insightful. I don't think that this is simply my opinion but a judgment that is defensible and if one disagrees and says that all rapists and child molesters are wise they are simply mistaken insofar as it is inconceivable to me that they could produce an argument that uses the relevant words correctly and reaches their conclusion without making some sort of serious error.

Thoughts? Questions? Obvious errors in my thinking?

Interesting article

2008-09-13T10:05:00.005-05:00

What Makes People Vote Republican? Jonathan Haidt

A very interesting article. Haidt works in moral psychology (a really interesting subdiscipline in philosophy). Here's a bit from the introduction:

Our diagnosis explains away Republican successes while convincing us and our fellow liberals that we hold the moral high ground. Our diagnosis tells us that we have nothing to learn from other ideologies, and it blinds us to what I think is one of the main reasons that so many Americans voted Republican over the last 30 years: they honestly prefer the Republican vision of a moral order to the one offered by Democrats. To see what Democrats have been missing, it helps to take off the halo, step back for a moment, and think about what morality really is.

Go read the article in its entirety.

Seeking Failure

2008-09-10T06:58:00.004-05:00

Odd title to a post, I know. But I'm just about finished with Carol Dweck's Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (she also wrote the more academic, but no less wonderful, Self-Theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development) and it really is one of those life altering books. The basic idea that she's communicating (and she has the research to back it all up so this isn't just hypothesis on her part) is that there are essentially two ways of understanding ourselves and others.

First is that each of us has a set personality, capabilities, talent, etc. and that you simply have what you're born with and there's going to be a point in time where you simply hit the limit of your gifts. Second is that all of these things are developed and that with hard work (and only with hard work) can achieve just about any level of capability.

Shockingly (not really), those who have the first mindset (the fixed mindset) work hard to avoid failure and, as a result, end up not challenging themselves (insofar as challenging oneself creates the possibility of failure and failure is evidence of having arrived at the limit of one's abilities). On the other hand, those with the growth mindset view challenge in a positive light. They are less interested in proving that their "talent" is very high and more interested in improving and view challenges as the only way to improve.

For me this comes down, to a large extent, about ways of viewing failure. With a growth mindset, not only do we not view failure as an indication of anything beyond a need to work harder but, further, failure is a good thing. It points out where we need to work harder. In fact, it seems to me that with a growth mindset we'd actually (freakishly) seek failure because it would provide us with the information we need to improve.

This idea of seeking failure isn't all that unusual. Scientists do it all the time, in the same way the growth mindset would. Scientists come up with a hypothesis and then test it. The way to test a hypothesis is to figure out what sort of evidence would prove the hypothesis false and then work to see if that evidence exists. So, you figure out an experiment that is most likely to prove the hypothesis false, if it is indeed false, and if the experiment doesn't prove the hypothesis false, then you are safe going another day believing the hypothesis. BUT you continue to search for those experiment that might ultimately disprove your hypothesis.

I, of course, would never have come up with this on my own. Who seeks failure? Isn't failure in something evidence of being a failure. Nope, that's stinky fixed mindset thinking. Failure really is simply a situation that shows where improvement is needed. Once we know where improvement is needed then we can set to achieving said improvement.

A radically new (and kind of scary) way of thinking. I want to think this way and see that it makes sense. But, it certainly isn't a way of thinking that comes terribly easy to me. So, it's going to take time and I'm likely going to backslide, but I'm off to work on having more of a growth mindset and less of a fixed mindset. Wish me luck!

Riddle Me This...

2008-09-04T16:49:00.003-05:00

.....how would you define "teaching"? This isn't a terribly important question in the grand scheme of things (at least not nearly as important as getting a handle on what learning is or what ought to be learned). Perhaps, a different way to ask the question is what do people typically called "teachers" (like myself, your favorite teacher in high school, etc) do in the classroom (very broadly understood as where classes meet) that can facilitate or impede learning?

What powers are "teachers" given and do we use them as well as we could to facilitate your learning (and learning of what)?

Like I said, this may not be a hugely relevant question, but I'd be curious to hear/read your thoughts.

Prepositions

2008-09-03T08:13:00.002-05:00

The title of this blog could have been many other things. "Duh." "I'm an idiot" "Slow learner" were all seriously considered but this one seems a bit more clever.

I've read a good deal of stuff on learning and teaching so you'd think I'd have figured this out already. But reading something, agreeing with it, understanding it are one thing. Putting into practice is a whole different story.

The preposition in question is with.

Yesterday in class, students were merrily going along having a discussion they were enjoying was related to the reading and was relevant to their lives. Things were going well by all objective standards. But I wasn't convinced they were getting to the points I thought were important. So, in the 5 or 10 minutes of class, I basically took over and pointed out what I thought was important.

This would be more of the preposition at.

Instead, I could have easily (if I had taken a moment to step back) connected what was of interest to the students to some main points in the articles and they would have taken, on their own, the conversation to a deeper level understanding of the readings and the relevance of the readings in their lives. But, what they got was, potentially, an understanding of how these readings are relevant to my life. ugh. ugh. ugh.

must. remember. to. learn. from. my. own. mistakes.

In this vein, FYS 40, you will be getting another paper topic which you may choose to write on instead of the first one I gave you. This second topic will focus on the very good, relevant (to the articles and to your life) points you brought up in class.

2008-09-02T16:38:00.003-05:00

Okay, all you student-type people. You need to help me determine when it is and isn't helpful (really helpful, not just convenient and easier for you all) for me to talk in class. And, just so you know, if we're going to err, let us err on the side of me talking too little as opposed to talking too much. Somehow, you all need to figure out a way to help me on this.

Work on it and get back to me :-)

Meaningful Life

2008-09-01T07:44:00.002-05:00

I'm going to assume that there are few people who want to have a life devoid of meaning and instead assume what makes me happy...that everyone wants a meaningful life. Now, there are two questions to be asked here that I think get conflated. I think what people jump right into is the question of how to have a meaningful life, what does one need to do or not do in order to have a meaningful life. The question that I think may need to be asked first is what is a meaningful life.

Put in different terms, suppose I told you that I wanted a blerg for my birthday (which, by the way is September 13th so you don't have that much time to be wasting on this front). Before you could figure out what to do to get me a blerg, you need to figure out what a blerg is. So, back to meaningful life. It seems that before we can ask what we need to do to get a life of meaning, a meaningful life, we need to figure out what it is that we're aiming toward. If we don't know what our target is, how on earth can we move toward it?

Time to Reflect

2008-08-28T17:45:00.003-05:00

I need to remember that I need time to reflect. Thus, what I say in class will sometimes be followed with amendments and amendments to those amendments as I have the time and space to reflect.

Case in point: Today when discussing the different between possessive, performative and proactive knowledge, Caitlin and Katie, separately made the point about different learning styles. I don't think I responded in a way that was as helpful as could have been. There is good reason to believe that different people have different strengths and weaknesses when it comes to ways of getting information (for example, I do very well with reading, less well with listening). Interestingly, we can typically become better at that which we are weak at, but it also makes sense to build on our strengths. Further, I honestly encourage all of you to make use of different ways of getting information (I couldn't get links to audio versions of readings but if you can find them cheaply, I encourage you to listen as well as read the texts).

But, I think that the strengths and weaknesses individuals have at getting information is different from what Perkins is talking about. I'm fairly certain, and my copy of the article isn't in front of me, that he's interested in how we think about what it means to know. Does knowing mean possessing information? Or, does it mean be able to use the information when called upon to do so (the performative understanding)? Or, does it mean knowing when the knowledge could fruitfully be used and using it well? I'm fairly certain that Perkins is arguing that the latter type (proactive knowledge) is not taken all that seriously -- I'm thinking, in particular, where he discusses the preferability of competent proactive knowledge over excellent performative knowledge.

When he discusses how to facilitate proactive learning in learners, it isn't by emphasizing reading or not reading, etc. It has to do with the circumstances under which the reader needs to get the information (however that may be most conducive for that particular student). I'm pretty sure Perkins is definitely opposed to students being told to read chapter 2 in preparation for being tested on chapter 2. I don't know that he'd be opposed to students being given a problem (that they are interested in) that involves using information from chapter 2 (though adapted to the situation) but the students have to figure it out. I think that Perkins believes that if students use the textbook this way (as a resource instead of a manual to be memorized) they will learn the information in a way that will make it more likely that they'll see it's applicability elsewhere.

So, I think that Caitlin and Katie were talking about something different from what Perkins was talking about and I think that I did not do a very good job of (a) noticing this or (b) making this clear.

It bears mentioning that Perkins is saying more than this, but I wanted to clarify the difference between talking about styles of gaining information and the purpose for which one gains information and that Perkins is interested in and values a particular purpose (namely, usefulness in life and not just in the classroom) over others.

Among other things, what have I learned from this? To slow down and force myself to reflect at the time instead of letting everything come to me in dribs and drabs over the next hours (and you know that I'll be wanting to come back and amend this).

Thoughts? Comments? Statements of Outrage? :-)

Questions Generated August 27th

2008-08-27T10:35:00.004-05:00

Anyone want start hypothesizing on some answers or ways of understanding these question or even what other information we might need in other to start developing some hypothesized answers? Use comments to work on this or make a link to this post in your blog and work on developing some answers

1. Are there universally understood right and wrongs?
2. Do we adhere to moral standards only for fear of consequences?
3. Is morality learned or are moral standards part of our brains makeup at birth? ---Put other way, are morals a consequence of nature or nurture?
4. what's the difference between ethics and morals?
5. do we measure morality solely off of how guilty something makes us feel?

Preliminary Hypotheses Regarding Ethics

2008-08-27T10:25:00.005-05:00

Here are the hypotheses you all developed in your small groups on August 27th

As hypotheses, no evidence was provided (or asked for). How might you support, reword, challenge any of these? Use comments to have discussion or use your blog and make a link to this post and work on your reflections on your own blog.

Society determines what's right/wrong
Moral/immoral are not empirical; They are value claims (not provable)
Moral/immoral are concepts; right and wrong are actions
Decide on what is moral/immoral based on how it affects us
Actions are right/wrong based on culture, religion, upbringing, etc.
Deciding what is moral/immoral is subjective; mimics life: not science
Everyone believes that they are right
No universal concept of morality...ever
Ethics comes from past life/parents/religion
Religion can sometimes “butt in” and take over
Ethics is personal search for what is right/wrong
Most powerful determine ethics
Context matters
Morality cannot be defined by law; defined by circumstance/society
Need ethics to keep society functioning