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THE PHILOSOPHER'S TOOLBOX |
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Have you ever been teaching and run into a brick wall with an introductory-level student just not "getting it?" One you just didn't seem to have the right tool to deal with? NOW you can have your very own PHILOSOPHER'S TOOLBOX, a purpose-built collection of tools designed expressly for dealing with those trying times! FEATURES: Choice of Colors! THE PHILOSOPHER'S TOOLBOX comes in your choice of colors: BENTHAM BLUE or RUSSELL RED. Full Featured! Twelve of the most helpful tools already included! Completely expandable! Add your own tools and materials as needed. Convenient! All your tools for one course in one place. Instructions Included! Comes with this helpful
simple user's manual that guides you
through the use of each of the twelve supplied tools.
1. David Hume and Buddha Shoestring The doctrine of "anatta" in Buddhism or David Hume's view of the self as a "bundle of perceptions" with no single thing (the "soul") that exists from birth to death (and beyond?) is sometimes difficult for students to grasp. Use the David Hume Shoelace to illustrate these ideas! Here's how: a. Grasp the shoelace by the tips, with one tip in each hand. b. Say to students that one tip is "birth," the other "death." c. Ask one student to pull out a tiny strand of fabric and tell the class how long it is, or tease one out yourself. (It will be about 1/4" long at most.) d. Explain that each "strand," though small, is a "perception" or an experience, and that it's possible for the shoelace to LOOK like one "thing" from tip to tip, but that it's actually composed of thousands of tiny discrete threads that only look continuous.
Utilitarianism is sometimes called the "greatest good for the greatest number" theory. But introductory level students often focus on the "number" rather than the amount of good, thinking that a small amount of good for a great number of people is the moral choice rather than a large amount of good for a few people. It's the amount of good that matters more than the number of people affected. Here's how to use the Jeremy Bentham Gum to illustrate this! a. Ask the class if anybody wants a stick of gum. Count the number of people; usually it's several. b. Take out ONE stick of gum. Ask if the 12 or so people wanting a stick of gum would like to get 1/12th of a stick. Usually this is not an acceptable division; few people would get much pleasure at all out of 1/12th of a stick of gum. c. Explain that although 12 people would be getting some "good" from the gum, that the amount of good each person would get would probably be minuscule. d. Ask if dividing the gum between two people, or maybe into thirds or fourths, would be better: Would anybody want a half of a stick of gum? e. Explain that Bentham's Utilitarianism is concerned with distributing the gum so that the most "good" is obtained, not so that the largest number of people get a share.
Kierkegaard says that a human being is an "existential paradox." The most amusing way that he says this is the most dense for students: "The self is a relation which relates itself to its own self, or it is that in the relation [which accounts for] that the relation relates itself to its own self: the self is not the relation but [consists in the fact] that the relation relates itself to its own self." Without an active "third term" that unites the opposites by an act of will, a person can fall into the "sickness unto death" (despair) by losing one of the opposite sides of himself. Now you can use these handy "Soren Kierkegaard Magnets" to illustrate this difficult point! Here's how:
a. Grasp one magnet in each hand so that the same "poles" are facing each other. (You can tell this because the magnets will repel each other when brought close together.) b. Show what happens when you bring these magnets close to each other: They fly apart. Try to hold them together, showing that this does require a bit of attention and a bit of effort; if one stops the effort or the attention, the magnets fly apart. (You can "ham it up" a bit here, showing the magnets flying off onto the floor.) c. Now explain that a person is not just the two magnets, the two "opposites" like "finite" and "infinite," but requires a "positive third term" (effort) to hold these two opposites together. That's an "existential paradox."
OPTIONAL: I have sometimes used John Mullen's book Kierkegaard's Philosophy: Self-Deception and Cowardice in the Present Age in teaching about Kierkegaard. He has a section on the difference between a "one-dimensional" and a "two-dimensional" marriage. Using four magnets, you can explain why trying to find the "opposite" in a spouse is not becoming a full person.
 The second "noble truth" is that the cause of suffering is craving. Using a chocolate donut as an illustration makes this easy for students to grasp; just follow these simple instructions!
a. Explain the first two "four noble truths" briefly, and include that it is not the having of a thing or the not having of a thing that causes suffering, it is one's craving for the thing. b. Then ask the students to think briefly about what they are suffering from at the moment; give them 20 to 30 seconds to reflect. c. Remove the donut from THE PHILOSOPHER'S TOOBOX. (Note: Do not remove it until this point.) d. Slowly begin to eat the donut, with as much delight as you can show. e. As the students begin to complain, continue to eat until you have had several bites. f. At this point, ask the students if they are suffering about anything that was not on their list of a few moments ago. g. When they obviously say "yes," point out that a few moments ago they did not have a chocolate donut, but they were not suffering. It was not the absence of the donut that caused suffering, it was their current craving for the donut.
The Bhagavad Gita is a difficult text in part because the advice Krishna gives Arjuna in fighting his relatives seems to be inconsistent with viewing all souls united in Atman. If Arjuna really at bottom IS "Atman," why does he have to pretend to kill anybody? If no "Soul" can ever die, why does Arjuna have to play the role of soldier? Using the Arjuna Deck of Cards helps students see why! Here's how:
a. Take the deck out of the package. It will be in "perfect" order, nothing out of place, no disorder at all. Atman/Brahman. b. Ask the students if we can start playing cards just like this. No? We have to shuffle first; it would be boring to know in advance what each card will be. c. Shuffle the deck. This is the "destruction" side of the endless cycle of creation and destruction. But Atman doesn't need to have a physical deck of cards; they are all in Atman's imagination, as is the world. d. Deal out the cards in a game of solitaire. One of the Jacks will be "Arjuna." When he shows up (with a little help sometimes) ask if we're Atman/Brahman/God, if we can turn the Jack into a Four if that's what we need. Of course we CAN, but that would be no fun; the "game" would not play well unless we keep the Jack the same Jack in the next cycle through the cards. e. Explain that Atman/Brhaman can change the rules; the Jack/Arjuna doesn't have to stay Arjuna, but the game would NOT work if Arjuna became the Queen of Hearts. We need Arjuna to stay Arjuna, playing that role, in this round of cards, even though it might take many "reincarnations" when Arjuna/the Jack shows up in the deck again and again.
This is one for the professor, not for the students, but it provides a visual image to clarify Kant's approach. Some philosophers write so logically, so precisely, that one must follow them with very strict, disciplined explanations. Other philosophers are a bit looser in the structure of their argument. Kant is such a logical, formal thinker that dressing in a more formal way helps me as a teacher be more formal in my explanations. Here's how the tie helps:
a. Bring the tie to class b. Put it on just as class starts, explaining that Kant's explanation of the "categorical imperative" is so formal and logical that it will help the teacher be more formal to wear a necktie. c. Teach about the categorical imperative. (See if this doesn't help you be more formal and more logical!)
7. Immanuel Kant Nesting Dolls The "Categorical Imperative" has three formulations, according to Kant, for whom they are all logically equivalent. Students don't easily grasp this. I try to show how Kant "unpacks" the idea of "good will" through "will" and through "effort" and through "intention" and through "thought" and through "concepts and content" to get to a "maxim" that has as its concept pure logical consistency. I do this using the "Kant Nesting Dolls." Here's how:
a. Start by showing the doll to the class, and explaining that the ideas "inside" the doll are basically the same as the outside idea, only unpacked. Start by saying "Here we have good will. Now let's unpack it to see what's inside it. What is "will" anyway? b. Open doll to remove second smaller doll. Say "This is "intentional effort." c. Continue to unpack until you get to the scrolls, and then unpack the three formulations of the Categorical Imperative. In the Analects Confucius discusses both the "golden rule" and the "principle of the measuring square." These can be shown, making the concepts much easier to grasp. (I sometimes start with a "paper rule" that is just a bit short, designed for those selling something, and another "paper rule" of just over a foot long, designed for those buying things, before asking what a "golden rule" might look like.) But here, the point is to show Confucius social concern as a three-dimensional relationship, not just a relationship between two persons or two ends.
a. Remove the measuring square and ask what it's for. Point out that there are two unequal "sides" and three "ends." b. Then discuss Confucius' idea that one should not treat one's father the same as one treats one's child; one should treat one's father the way one wants to be treated by one's child. These are not "equal" but they are proportional. c. Then point out that the person using the measuring square is at the intersection of the sides, the father is the "long" side and the child is the "short" side. These are not "equal" but they are being treated appropriately.
Many of you may not have use for this, but I teach several sections of Dante's Inferno to examine issues of character and vice. The three "beasts" that block Dante's way and force him to take a detour through hell to find his way through life again are very easy to show here. I usually ask the students to write down for themselves in their notebooks (not for sharing with the class unless they wish) what the "three beasts" shown would symbolize for them; what might "trap" them from being able to continue on their way through life?
Hume's idea that causality is merely a "habit" and the observation of "constant conjunction" rather than "necessary connection" is another concept students frequently have problems grasping. Here's how to use this pointing stick to help:
a. While I am casually holding the stick in my hands, I ask if we get our knowledge of causality from "matters of fact" (observations) or "relations of ideas" (necessary truths that we can predict even before we make any observations. b. Then I say "Well, if we DID get our knowledge of causation from relations of ideas we will know what will happen before we see anything. Let's see: Can I stand this thing up on its end? I then proceed to try to stand it up on the desk. Some students will predict that I can, thinking that they know this "a priori." c. I then start trying to stand it on other things. It ususally DOES stand up. d. Then I ask "Can I stand it on its side on the blackboard?" This would mean it would just hang out at a right angle from the vertical blackboard, suspended. Students say "no." e. I then try, and surprise! It DOES stand up. (The stick actually has a small magnet and our blackboards are metal backed. If yours are not, find a similar metal vertical surface to use.) f. A bright student will try to figure this out, but the point is that we could not have predicted before observing it that this would happen; we get our knowledge of cause and effect from senses, not from reason alone. In Ethics, I have students read a short section from THE WEALTH OF NATIONS as a moral theory that combines Bentham and Hobbes. We start with the "division of labor" in making pins, so I bring in pins.
a. Give each student their own "pin." b. Ask them: How many steps would it take to make one of these? How long would it take you if you did it all by hand, doing all the steps yourself? c. Go over the section in the reading where Smith says it would take 18 steps, and then explain how much easier and more efficient it would be to have 18 people each working at one machine rather than trying to have one person do all the steps himself.
(NOTE: In each box of pins are a couple of brass colored ones. These are fromSmith's Edinburgh, Scotland. I looked all over one afternoon for "straight pins" because I thought that was what Smith was discussing, but it seems nobody in Edinburgh sells pins. So I stopped at a stationery store and bought some thumb tacks as a substitute. In talking to the clerk, I discovered that the term for these was not "thumb tack" but "drawing pin." Later reading confirmed that Smith probably was using "thumb tacks" as his example, not dressmaker's pins.
12. Maurice Sendak's Pierre and Heidegger. a. Assign a reading on Heidegger's concepts of "care" and "being unto death." b. Read the book Pierre to the class c. Ask the class to explain to you any connections. Additional Tools: Use the space below to add your own list of "tools" that you have added to THE PHILOSOPHER'S TOOLBOX.
Warranty
Your PHILOSOPHER'S TOOLBOX contains the finest tools and materials to be found. It is warranteed to be free from defects and workmanship for a period of one year from the date of purchase.. Return THE PHILOSOPHER'S TOOLBOX to place of purchase, or write the manufacturer for full refund.
No warranty is made for the usefulness of this product for any purpose; no liability is assumed by the manufacturer for misuse or for the consequences of the use of this product. The manufacturer reserves the right to substitute teaching tools of equal or greater value if necessary.
Manufactured in Forest Park, Illinois. Direct all correspondence and inquiries to: John Wager 211 Elgin #6B Forest Park IL 60130 email: jwager@triton.edu Copyright 2004 John Wager
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