You might be right that I’m reading too much into what you’ve written. However, I suspect (especially given the other comments in this thread and the comments on the reddit thread) that the reading “Philosophy is overwhelmingly bad and should be killed with fire,” is the one that readers are most likely to actually give to what you’ve written. I don’t know whether there is a good way to both (a) make the points you want to make about improving philosophy education and (b) make the stronger reading unlikely.
I’m curious: if you couldn’t have your whole mega-course (which seems more like the basis for a degree program than the basis for a single course, really), what one or two concrete course offerings would you want to see in every philosophy program? I ask because while I may not be able to change my whole department, I do have some freedom in which courses I teach and how I teach them. If you are planning to cover this in more detail in upcoming posts, feel free to ignore the question here.
Also, I did understand what you were up to with the Spirtes reference, I just thought it was funny. I tried to imagine what the world would have had to be like for me to have been surprised by finding out that Spirtes was the lead author on Causation, Prediction, and Search, and that made me smile.
I don’t know whether there is a good way to both (a) make the points you want to make about improving philosophy education and (b) make the stronger reading unlikely.
Yes; hopefully I can do better in my next post.
if you couldn’t have your whole mega-course, …what one or two concrete course offerings would you want to see in every philosophy program?
One course I’d want in every philosophy curriculum would be something like “The Science of Changing Your Mind,” based on the more epistemically-focused stuff that CFAR is learning how to teach to people. This course offering doesn’t exist yet, but if it did then it would be a course which has people drill the particular skills involved in Not Fooling Oneself. You know, teachable rationality skills: be specific, avoid motivated cognition, get curious, etc. — but after we’ve figured out how to teach these things effectively, and aren’t just guessing at which exercises might be effective. (Why this? Because Philosophy Needs to Trust Your Rationality Even Though It Shouldn’t.)
Though it doesn’t yet exist, if such a course sounds as helpful to you as it does to me, then you could of course try to work with CFAR and other interested parties to try to develop such a course. CFAR is already working with Nobel laureate Saul Perlmutter at Berkeley to develop some kind of course on rationality, though I don’t have the details. I know CFAR president Julia Galef is particularly passionate about the relevance of trainable rationality skills to successful philosophical practice.
What about courses that could e.g. be run from existing textbooks? It is difficult to suggest entry-level courses that would be useful. Aaronson’s course Philosophy and Theoretical Computer Science could be good, but it seems to require significant background in computability and complexity theory.
One candidate might be a course in probability theory and its implications for philosophy of science — the kind of material covered in the early chapters of Koller & Friedman (2009) and then Howson & Urbach (2005) (or, more briefly, Yudwkosky 2005).
Another candidate would be a course on experimental philosophy, perhaps expanding on Alexander (2012).
Though it doesn’t yet exist, if such a course sounds as helpful to you as it does to me, then you could of course try to work with CFAR and other interested parties to try to develop such a course.
I am interested. Should I contact Julia directly or is there something else I should do in order to get involved?
Also, since you mention Alexander’s book, let me make a shameless plug here: Justin Sytsma and I just finished a draft of our own introduction to experimental philosophy, which is under contract with Broadview and should be in print in the next year or so.
Though it doesn’t yet exist, if such a course sounds as helpful to you as it does to me, then you could of course try to work with CFAR and other interested parties to try to develop such a course.
Is this an open invitation? Because such a course sounds even more helpful to me than it does to you, I suspect. I probably have a lot of catching up, learning and de-corrupting to do on myself before I’m at a level that would be useful rather than waste CFAR’s* time, though.
As a point of reference, I’ve recently been shifting my life goals towards the objective of reducing and understanding “knowledge” and “expertise” as quantifiable, reduced atomic units that can be discussed, acquired and evaluated on the same level of detail and precision as, say, electronic equipment or construction machinery is currently for IT businesses or construction contractors.
I suspect my best path towards this is through an in-depth analytic study of inferential distance and the interlocking of concepts into ideas, and how this could be fully reduced into units of knowledge and information such that it would always be clear, visible and obvious to a tutor exactly which specific units are required to get from A to B on a certain topic, and easy to evaluate which one is lacking in a student.
However, while people are often impressed with just the above statements, I cringe at the fact that I can only say it, and am only grasping at straws and vague mental handles when trying to make sense out of it and actually work on the problem. And it feels almost like an applause light to say this to you, but it seems like everything in this area is… just… going… too… slow… and that really bugs me a lot.
* and those “other interested parties” (Who are they, if you know any examples?)
Of course, you may always contact CFAR about such things. Whether it goes any further than that will vary.
As for “other interested parties,” I recall coming across philosophy and psychology professors who wanted to develop CFAR-like courses for university students, but I don’t recall who they are.
You might be right that I’m reading too much into what you’ve written. However, I suspect (especially given the other comments in this thread and the comments on the reddit thread) that the reading “Philosophy is overwhelmingly bad and should be killed with fire,” is the one that readers are most likely to actually give to what you’ve written. I don’t know whether there is a good way to both (a) make the points you want to make about improving philosophy education and (b) make the stronger reading unlikely.
I’m curious: if you couldn’t have your whole mega-course (which seems more like the basis for a degree program than the basis for a single course, really), what one or two concrete course offerings would you want to see in every philosophy program? I ask because while I may not be able to change my whole department, I do have some freedom in which courses I teach and how I teach them. If you are planning to cover this in more detail in upcoming posts, feel free to ignore the question here.
Also, I did understand what you were up to with the Spirtes reference, I just thought it was funny. I tried to imagine what the world would have had to be like for me to have been surprised by finding out that Spirtes was the lead author on Causation, Prediction, and Search, and that made me smile.
Yes; hopefully I can do better in my next post.
One course I’d want in every philosophy curriculum would be something like “The Science of Changing Your Mind,” based on the more epistemically-focused stuff that CFAR is learning how to teach to people. This course offering doesn’t exist yet, but if it did then it would be a course which has people drill the particular skills involved in Not Fooling Oneself. You know, teachable rationality skills: be specific, avoid motivated cognition, get curious, etc. — but after we’ve figured out how to teach these things effectively, and aren’t just guessing at which exercises might be effective. (Why this? Because Philosophy Needs to Trust Your Rationality Even Though It Shouldn’t.)
Though it doesn’t yet exist, if such a course sounds as helpful to you as it does to me, then you could of course try to work with CFAR and other interested parties to try to develop such a course. CFAR is already working with Nobel laureate Saul Perlmutter at Berkeley to develop some kind of course on rationality, though I don’t have the details. I know CFAR president Julia Galef is particularly passionate about the relevance of trainable rationality skills to successful philosophical practice.
What about courses that could e.g. be run from existing textbooks? It is difficult to suggest entry-level courses that would be useful. Aaronson’s course Philosophy and Theoretical Computer Science could be good, but it seems to require significant background in computability and complexity theory.
One candidate might be a course in probability theory and its implications for philosophy of science — the kind of material covered in the early chapters of Koller & Friedman (2009) and then Howson & Urbach (2005) (or, more briefly, Yudwkosky 2005).
Another candidate would be a course on experimental philosophy, perhaps expanding on Alexander (2012).
I am interested. Should I contact Julia directly or is there something else I should do in order to get involved?
Also, since you mention Alexander’s book, let me make a shameless plug here: Justin Sytsma and I just finished a draft of our own introduction to experimental philosophy, which is under contract with Broadview and should be in print in the next year or so.
I look forward to your book with Sytsma! Yes, contact Julia directly.
Is this an open invitation? Because such a course sounds even more helpful to me than it does to you, I suspect. I probably have a lot of catching up, learning and de-corrupting to do on myself before I’m at a level that would be useful rather than waste CFAR’s* time, though.
As a point of reference, I’ve recently been shifting my life goals towards the objective of reducing and understanding “knowledge” and “expertise” as quantifiable, reduced atomic units that can be discussed, acquired and evaluated on the same level of detail and precision as, say, electronic equipment or construction machinery is currently for IT businesses or construction contractors.
I suspect my best path towards this is through an in-depth analytic study of inferential distance and the interlocking of concepts into ideas, and how this could be fully reduced into units of knowledge and information such that it would always be clear, visible and obvious to a tutor exactly which specific units are required to get from A to B on a certain topic, and easy to evaluate which one is lacking in a student.
However, while people are often impressed with just the above statements, I cringe at the fact that I can only say it, and am only grasping at straws and vague mental handles when trying to make sense out of it and actually work on the problem. And it feels almost like an applause light to say this to you, but it seems like everything in this area is… just… going… too… slow… and that really bugs me a lot.
* and those “other interested parties” (Who are they, if you know any examples?)
Of course, you may always contact CFAR about such things. Whether it goes any further than that will vary.
As for “other interested parties,” I recall coming across philosophy and psychology professors who wanted to develop CFAR-like courses for university students, but I don’t recall who they are.