Teacher's Guide - Class Planning Guide

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The Contract
Part 1 - [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] | Part 2 - [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] | Part 3 - [12[13] [14] [15]

See the note about the use of chapters 10 and 11, after the planning information for chapter 10, above.

Chapter 11 - Comments on Sections

11.1 There is a reference, in this section and later in the chapter, to the method of falsification in science, which is discussed in 10.12, which you may not have covered. So a couple of sentences of explanation from you might help.

11.2 The box towards the end should be filled in like:

The two conclusions that are not supported are (b) and (d). This is not to say that these conclusions are wrong, but that the example has not illustrated them.

I think that the best way to use this section is to have the class work through it as a homework assignment, and then to use difficulties they had doing this as a basis for a discussion of the three general points about background beliefs.

11.3 The point of the story is to show how development of moral beliefs is prompted by factual discoveries (or at any rate, changes in factual beliefs). There are two deep underlying issues, which are not too hard for your class to grasp and discuss. Is this prompting a matter of reason (would it be irrational, intellectually wrong, for one's moral beliefs not to respond to these facts)? And does the process make its end point more objective than its beginning?

The answers to the specific questions about the example are: (i)-4, 5; (ii)-2; (iii)-1; (iv)-4; (v)-3, 4, then (a)(v)(3); (b)(iii)(1); (c)(iv)(4); (d)(ii)(2); (e)(v)(4). You should use these as a way of getting at the deeper questions by asking of particular triples of moral development, factual discovery, and background belief (e.g. (ii)(2)(d)) whether having the background belief, and making the discovery, it would then be crazy not to change one's moral belief. Could you maintain that women were inferior creatures on discovering that the chief's wise decisions were all made by his wife? The importance of background beliefs in this is that they show that the process is not magic - we don't get moral development by deducing it from empirical facts but by stirring empirical facts in with other moral beliefs. (So, clever students will point out, we could instead reject the background beliefs. Yes; see where this leads.)

11.4 The quotes from Goodman and Rawls are quite hard, but the process is illustrated by the simple example of how you modify a ban on killing, given conflicts with particular cases. The hard question that a discussion should engage with is whether, given lots of particular problems to think out, lots of empirical facts to accommodate, and lots of time to think out how to put all the pieces together, we will move to an overall more coherent and more defensible set of moral ideas. Do we get nearer to being able to reconcile a revulsion at killing with the need to defend ourselves and the fragility of the distinction between causing and allowing? (If the discussion is not taking flight, press on the causing/allowing distinction with reference to death: what is the difference between not helping someone who will die without your help, and killing them? That will get a reaction.)

11.5 It would be asking a lot of the students to have them absorb and discuss the material in this section during one class session. Best to have them read the examples leading to the self-classification and work out their classification in advance. Best also to have read the dialogue in advance, though not to have answered any questions about it. Then in class you can begin by having them reread the dialogue and answer the questions about it.

Alfa is an optimist about moral progress, in the special meaning given the word earlier in the section. Beth begins the dialogue as a pessimist about moral progress, and ends it with a position that doesn't fit into any of the three labels very well. It would not be wrong to describe Beth as ending up as cautious about moral progress, since she remains doubtful that the changes amount to progress toward any truth. But Beth could also be described as someone who admits that there is progress in terms of moral convenience but doubts that there is progress in terms of moral truth. (You can press students who describe Beth as cautious about moral progress to explain her caution further.) Were Beth pushed on the consistency of accepting some progress while thinking that morality might be an illusion, the best replies would be the second and fourth. (The first doesn't make the asymmetry she wants; the third uses a picture of science that she has not accepted.)

The most important of the conclusions listed is that reflective equilibrium is like falsificationism. The only conclusion that is just not supported by the dialogue is the second, that there are dissimilarities between utilitarianism and empiricism. (There are; but the dialogue doesn't bring them out.)

If Beth had remembered what she didn't challenge at the white diamond point, then at the end she could have cashed out her option by asserting the third listed statement, that if reflective equilibrium exists then ethics resembles science. Alfa could best reply to what Beth says at the black diamond point with the first listed statement. It follows from his general assumptions while all the others would require some special new argument. (The second is consistent with his conclusions though. The fourth is of course inconsistent with them; he'd be crazy to take that line.)

At the black star point Beth makes a point that could be used to resist what Alfa says about the true morality being the one that works socially. Truth may require more than just ways of agreeing on beliefs; it may require links to real facts, of which perception gives one special kind. At the white star point Alfa is producing this theory about true morality. To accept the conclusions he is headed to you don't have to buy this theory. In fact you don't have to buy any line about moral truth or moral facts at all, as long as you accept that there is reasonable change of moral beliefs which works in a similar way in morality and science. (Of course, it's more interesting if you can get an account of moral facts, a moral realism too.)
If you run your class by beginning with one of the activities on the dialogue, then don't insist on doing them all. A discussion may get going which will make all the points that the later activities would make. On the other hand, you may begin, especially with a smaller group or one that talks freely, simply by saying "Beth seems not to be standing up to Alfa very robustly - does anyone want to argue more aggressively than she does?" Then bring in the points I make above at the appropriate moments. Or you could focus on the question at the very end of the section, and ask: "Alfa says that morality is true if it works socially: is this right? Does someone who buys into moral progress have to also buy this?"

11.6 It is not essential to discuss this section in class, as long as it has been read. (But there may be questions and objections arising from it.) It could serve as the end-point in a course based on the first two parts of the book, possibly augmented with material from Part III, as discused in planning your course.

Test questions on chapters 10 and 11

These questions cover topics in chapters 10 and 11. You are unlikely to have covered all the topics, but you can draw from these to make up one or more tests to fit what you have done.

Some of the assertions below are clearly true, some are clearly false, and some are controversial, in that philosophers can make strong cases both for and against them. Mark each of them as True, False, or Controversial. (Philosophical remark: some of the controversial assertions are true and some false: but we may not know which for a long time, if ever.)

(1) A way of acquiring beliefs is accurate when it gives very few false beliefs.
(2) A way of acquiring beliefs is informative when it gives very few true beliefs.
(3) A way of acquiring beliefs is accurate when it gives nothing but true beliefs.
(4) A way of acquiring beliefs is informative when it gives enough true beliefs.
(5) An informative way of acquiring beliefs will always result in many false beliefs.
(6) An accurate way of acquiring beliefs can never be informative.
(7) Older accounts of knowledge, such as empiricism, tend to aim at accuracy rather
than informativeness.
(8) Empiricism shows us how to achieve beliefs that are both accurate and informative.
(9) Fallibilism aims at informativeness rather than accuracy.
(10) Fallibilism aims at acquiring false beliefs as a means to useful beliefs.
(11) Empiricism can easily explain why it is reasonable for you to believe that other
people have experiences like yours.
(12) The assumption that other people have perceptions and thoughts is a background
belief for many other beliefs.
(13) Empiricism aims at finding evidence for all beliefs, including background beliefs.
(14) The argument from analogy claims that everyone has the same experiences.
(15) The argument from analogy tries to show how you can use evidence about people's
behavior to support beliefs about their minds.
(16) The assumptions of folk psychology can serve as background beliefs for many of
our beliefs about particular people on particular occasions?
(17) Empiricism can easily show why the assumptions of folk psychology are true.
(18) Empiricism has difficulty explaining why we have reasons for many of the
background beliefs that we use when thinking about other people.
(19) Folk psychology is the body of superstitions and traditional illusions that people
believe about one another.
(20) Folk psychology is the beliefs people use to explain what they and other people do.
(21) When you have an explanation of why something happens you have to believe the
explanation is true.
(22) The inference to the best explanation says that when you have a good explanation of
something, and you have no better explanation, then you should believe that what it
says is true
(23) Good explanations are more likely to be true than bad ones.
(24) People always know what is true about their minds without being told.
(25) People's friends usually know things about them that they do not know themselves.
(26) When a person and someone who knows her well disagree about her mind or
character, the person is always wrong.
(27) The best available explanation of something we have experienced is always true.
(28) Believing even the best possible explanation of a phenomenon will sometimes result
in false beliefs.
(29) If you reason by the inference to the best explanation then you have a chance of true
beliefs you cannot get by reasoning by induction.
(30) If you reason by the inference to the best explanation then you will sometimes get
false beliefs that you would not have got by reasoning by induction.
(31) The method of falsification says that when you can see how a hypothesis could be
wrong you should accept it.
(32) The method of falsification says that you should try to think of hypotheses that
you could test.
(33) If a theory is false then we can think of a test that will show that it is false.
(34) The method of falsification says that when you have tried hard to test a hypothesis
in a way that might have showed that it was wrong, and it has passed the test, then
you should consider believing it.
(35) The hypothetico-deductive method describes how, by having true consequences and
explaining observed facts, a theory can come to be believed.
(36) The hypothetico-deductive method describes the life cycle of a theory, starting with
an imaginative idea and ending up either in the scrap heap or among accepted
theories.
(37) The hypothetico-deductive method gives reasons for believing that most scientific
theories are true.
(38) The hypothetico-deductive method gives reasons for believing that most scientific
theories will eventually be refuted.
(39) Fallibilism is the claim that we are usually wrong.
(40) Fallibilism is the claim that just about any of our beliefs could turn out to be wrong.
(41) When it looks at first as if some evidence supports a belief, it usually turns out that
the connection between the evidence and the belief only holds if we assume some
other beliefs.
(42) Background beliefs connect evidence to beliefs.
(43) Background beliefs are always true.
(44) We can never tell whether a background belief is true.
(45) If you are convinced a coin is biased then no amount of evidence can persuade you
otherwise.
(46) Some background beliefs make it very hard to find evidence against some theories.
(47) Folk psychology makes it hard to find evidence against the belief that people have
minds.
(48) Sometimes experience changes our ideas about what is right and wrong.
(49) If experience can change our ideas about right and wrong then some of those ideas
must be true.
(50) If experience changes your ideas about how you should treat others then you must
already have had some ideas about how you should treat others.
(51) Experience shows us that all people are morally more important than all animals.
(52) Experience shows us that animals are just as morally important as people.
(53) Experience that makes it reasonable to believe that all people are morally equal will
only change the beliefs of people who already think that some people are morally
important.
(54) Reflective equilibrium is a situation where you can be sure that all your beliefs are
true.
(55) If your beliefs are in reflective equilibrium then your beliefs about particular events
and about general principles will fit together in a coherent pattern.
(56) The moral beliefs of good people are in reflective equilibrium.
(57) The beliefs of very few people are in reflective equilibrium.
(58) The aim of getting your beliefs nearer to reflective equilibrium is like the aim of
believing testable hypotheses.
(59) Moral beliefs that are in reflective equilibrium are true.
(60) If you aim to get your beliefs nearer to reflective equilibrium then you should begin
by clearing your mind of all traditional beliefs.
(61) If you aim to get your beliefs nearer to reflective equilibrium then you can allow
yourself to hold on to some traditional beliefs but you should find ways of testing
them.
(62) Fallibilists are very pessimistic about the possibility of getting any true beliefs.
(63) Fallibilists are very pessimistic about the possibility of ever having no false beliefs.
(64) Fallibilists are optimistic about the possibility of getting some true beliefs about
important matters.
(65) In both science and ethics our opinions change.
(66) In both science and ethics our opinions are always getting nearer the truth.
(67) In both science and ethics our opinions can always be changed by new discoveries.
(68) Empirical evidence can often show that a scientific theory is wrong.
(69) Empirical evidence can often show that a moral belief is mistaken.
(70) If we had enough evidence we would be able to see what moral beliefs were best.
(71) If we had enough evidence we would be able to know what theories of the universe
are true.

Note: The intended Controversial ones, with (in brackets) the more likely of the True/False answers, are: 6 (F), 23 (T), 33 (F), 59 (F), 66, 70, 71
See also the note on "true/false" after the chapter 1 test.