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]

Here and in other "planning information" sections, "read" means the class should be asked to read the section, whether or not it is discussed in class. "Read for class" means that the class should read the section before a class meeting, if the topic is being covered. Usually that meeting will then work through a section that rehearses, follows up, the material in the section they have read. "Work through" means that the section has material for a group activity clarifying the material in it or another section. "Email" means that the section provides material that could feed an email discussion between students or between students and teacher. Some sections are classified as "essential," others as "less essential," which generally give different ways of covering the same or closely related ground as the essential topics, and "optional," which are stimulating topics that are related to the theme of the chapter.

There are four sections that it is essential for the students to read in advance of class meetings (1.1, 1.5, 1.9, 1.12). For each of these sections there is at least one follow-up section that elicits discussion of it. For 1.1 there is 1.2, for 1.5 there are 1.7 and 1.8, for 1.9 there is 1.10, and for 1.12 there is 1.13. So if you plan to get through this chapter in a week you should schedule the required reading so that all three essential sections are read in advance, and in the class after they have read one of them a follow-up section is worked through. If you think your class is intellectually quite sophisticated and you would like to get through the preliminaries fast, you could cover the absolute core in two classes.

The pedagogical aim of this chapter is to establish the idea of questioning beliefs, even firmly held and apparently obvious ones. The student should leave the chapter understanding that it is not obvious what is obvious, and that the activity of looking for reasons for beliefs can have interesting and unexpected results.

Chapter 1 - Comments on Sections

1.1 This section should be read by students as a background to the rest of the chapter. It doesn't need class discussion, though students may want to raise questions about it.

1.2 You should get the students to write down their scores on the questionnaire before you get to the crude classification of intellectual personality or the more subtle diagnosis. The discussion of the differences between students' answers should tend toward comparisons of the advantages and disadvantages of having the various personalities. What true and false beliefs are different personalities more or less prone to acquire? What practical activities are helped or hindered by having one or another intellectual personality? That is not to say that you should squelch a lively discussion if it is not going in this direction. But you should try gently nudging it toward some evaluative questions.

Students may protest against the labels that the diagnoses force on them. Ask them to say why the labels don't apply. Is it that the definitions used in the text are misleading? Is it an accident of the examples that were used? Why is the label unwelcome: what's wrong with being a dogmatist or having unconventional beliefs?

1.3 Note that at least four of the claims have a religious aspect. It is thus likely that differences between students about their plausibility will be related to different attitudes to religion. The section should encourage a discussion on how such disagreements are resolved. So you might choose two people whose views are very different on one claim, for example (5) or (9), and ask each of them what discovery might make them agree with the other. Then, once this had established the idea that one can imagine evidence which one doesn't expect to find, you might ask the class what evidence might make them less sure of (1), (6), or (11). Another purpose of this section is to undermine the idea that one either believes something or disbelieves it. Often one has no opinion, or has a slight tendency to believe which falls short of belief. So you might take (1), (6), (11) and ask which of them is more certain and which has the greatest chance of turning out to be false. Then move on to (4), (10), or (5), (7) - depending somewhat on which ones the class classifies as convictions - and ask the same questions. Is it equally hard to imagine evidence against (3) and (4)?

1.4 This section is meant to bring out the fact that no authority is self-interpreting: one always needs to make decisions about what words mean and whether a principle applies to a particular case. You might discuss the problems of taking the Ten Commandments as a mechanical guide to morality. What does "thou shalt not kill" really mean (does it forbid killing in self-defense - does it permit capital punishment)? What counts as adultery? On the physics and chemistry textbooks example, you will probably find that the students easily see that problem (a) arises with (2), (b) with (3), and (e) with (1) and (4). They may need more prompting to see that (f) arises with (5) - does the law of the conservation of energy apply to human "energy"? - and that (c) arises with (6) - if the book mentions chemical or physical topics but contradicts other textbooks are we to count it as a textbook or as an imposter? Problem (d) is an all-purpose worry about any supposedly self-sufficient source of information, especially when combined with (e), but it doesn't particularly apply to any of (1)-(6).
The class will not need convincing that chemistry and physics textbooks could not be an all-purpose guide to belief. Ask them which of the problems that arose with the textbooks would also apply to other sources of belief: sacred books such as the Bible, perception, the things your parents taught you.

1.5 This section has the heaviest prose so far, so you should check that the students found it readable. If they did not, each time they have read a section in preparation for a class you will have to spend time making sure that they were not baffled by it. The point of the section is to explain the appeal of trying to deal with the fear that we might be caught in a closed-belief trap by trying to show that many of our beliefs are certain, that there is no way that they could be false. You will probably find that the students do not find it plausible that most of our beliefs are certain, especially after working through the previous sections. But most of them will think that some of our beliefs are completely certain, and some of them will think that it is these beliefs that give us the only assurance we can have that everything we believe is not one systematic delusion. With luck, you will find that some students agree with this idea and others do not, so that it is clear that this is both an appealing and a controversial strategy.

You might find it useful to read section 2.1 before leading a discussion of this section, especially the discussion of how the authority of traditional belief might constitute a closed system of beliefs.

1.6 This is included just for stimulation and amusement. The philosophical points are (a) how hard it is to know the truth even in simple situations and (b) the intuitive links between skepticism and paranoia.
Box 3 This is also not intended for classroom discussion. The main point is the idea - associated with Quine and Duhem - that any belief can with enough ingenuity be reconciled with any evidence. Material such as this, and other boxes and sections such as 1.6 that are not meant for classroom discussion, may still provide a source of allusions and examples for discussions prompted by other sections. And reading them can help students get in the right frame of mind to have reactions to other sections.

1.7 I think it would help to say explicitly to the class before working through this section: your inclination is probably not to take the tree-worshipers seriously, but working through the section might convince you that there could be a whole way of looking at the world which makes much more sense than at first seems possible, and from that point of view your beliefs seem absurd. (This is a way aliens might think, and they might be right.) So you will have to make the students write down serious objections to the tree-worshipers' view of the world, and then do some quick thinking eliciting responses to the objections. It would be best to have the class pool their objections, and then work together to think of the tree-worshipers' replies. The example of the flat-earthers is similar. If you work through this part of the section yourself in advance you may be able to run the discussion in a less regimented way in which you simply ask the class for evidence that the earth is not flat, and for each piece of evidence show what standard belief a flat-earther might challenge in replying to it. One hard abstract question you might slowly find your way toward is: given that a clever enough flat-earther is unlikely to be caught in outright contradiction, is there something lacking in their whole system of beliefs, after they have made the changes necessary to preserve their position, which gives it the overall characteristics of a delusion?

1.8 This section is nonessential but raises two potentially very useful issues. First, how social pressure works to make one believe things and sometimes disbelieve what one's own senses and intuitions tell one. The workings of the party on Winston can be taken as an exaggeration of the ways the desire to conform and the threat of being different work on each of us. Second, more subtly, how when we lose our grasp of how to tell what is true we begin to lose our grasp of what the difference between truth and falsity is. Winston begins to think that perhaps the party can change the past by declaring that things have happened.

1.9 The aim of this section is to separate different things that "doubt" can mean, in order to focus on the philosophically most important sense, in which doubt does not aim at showing that a belief is false but that we do not have good grounds for holding it. (Or, yet more sophisticated, that we do not know whether we have good grounds.) To a philosophically trained person this distinction is as simple as the difference between rejecting a conclusion and rejection as a conclusion. But if you put the point this way to most beginning students a few eyes will light up while most of them will remain completely blank.
One point to making these distinctions is to show that you can be a philosophical skeptic without being insane. And you can be a philosophical skeptic about religion or morality - ask what our reasons are for believing in God or thinking that rape is evil - while being a Christian or a moral person.

1.10 This section rehearses the distinctions between kinds of doubt. You will find that different students classify the doubts differently in part because of different interpretations of the motives and meanings of the speakers. For example, in (7) some students will take Belinda to be defending the possibility that murder is justifiable, and others will take her to be ironically challenging our confidence that our values are always correct. So the real work is likely to be done in teasing out the reasons why students' answers deviate from the "obvious" responses, which are: (1) [(5)] vulgar doubt; (2) [(5)] (6) [(7)] (8) careful doubt; (3) (4) [(7)] philosophical doubt. (I have put in [square brackets] cases that could be classified in two ways equally naturally.)

1.11 Make sure the students understand the "strongly agree or disagree," so that a firm atheist should put 4 by (a). As with 1.2, some students may challenge the labeling that the questionnaire applies to them, and this fact is to be exploited rather than glossed over. The most promising route to a philosophical discussion starts with the fact that some - perhaps most - of the students will come out as more skeptical about some kinds of beliefs than others. Why is this? Why might someone be dogmatic about science but not about religion? Why is someone who is dogmatic about religion likely not to be skeptical about moral matters? (The answer to this last is not nearly as obvious as it may at first seem.)

1.12 This section introduces an important dimension to philosophical doubt and skepticism, to test and elicit reasons for our moral principles. The second half of the section brings out the tension between moral seriousness - thinking that some things are really wrong, and not just a convention we all agree to go along with - and skepticism. The resolution is philosophical doubt: one can take the wrongness of, say, murder with full seriousness and still ask where the wrongness comes from.

1.13 The obvious answers are that Carina is cynical, [Arthur] and [Eduardo] are questioning, Betty and [Eduardo] are pathological, and [Arthur], Daniel, and Felicia are philosophical. (Again [square brackets] indicate cases that could be taken two ways.) Some may not think that Eduardo is pathological, and indeed he is a normal child, but I defined the term in a specific way to include everyone who does not understand the words adults use to express moral beliefs. One promising route to a discussion here is to ask whether the philosophical doubters can be sincere in their moral beliefs while still asking for reasons for them. A particular doubt may arise about Felicia, who seems to lack some features of a good person. Let that discussion go where it may, as long as it remains clear that the point is that a moral skeptic does not have to be a cynic, not that no moral skeptics are cynics.

The questions about which ones to associate with and which ones to permit to act on their convictions are there to elicit opinions about the value of moral skepticism. With luck, some people will say that they would rather not associate with Felicia, but that she should be allowed to go around undermining others. Probing why they say this will bring up some interesting issues.

1.14 This section covers a historical topic that fits well with the themes of this chapter, but is not essential to it. Some students will be relieved to see famous philosophers like Socrates and Plato appearing, to reassure them that they really are studying philosophy. There's no point in doing this section unless it takes a whole class session, at least, and the students have read it in advance. (Of course, one option is to take two weeks and read the whole Meno, using this section as a guide.)

Of the four possible conclusions for the selection from the Meno all can be found in the passage. So none are really wrong. But the main conclusion, the one the others are meant to support, is that the definition of virtue as power is wrong. It is only by understanding the dialogue this way that we make it an instance of Socratic skepticism, in which people are shown not to understand basic issues as well as they think they do.

At the very end of the section the question is raised of whether you have to be able to define a word in order to understand it. The "Juliet" example is there to suggest that perhaps sometimes people do use a word without knowing much about what it denotes. (Love-struck teenagers may not know much about what love is, and to that extent have a weak grasp of the meaning of "love.") You might also allude to the test for legal responsibility sometimes invoked, that one can be held responsible for crimes if one understands the difference between right and wrong. If Socrates was right, would any of us pass this test?

Chapter 1 - Test

Most students will find most of these questions easy. Some may provoke a useful moment of reflection. And some may be worth discussing afterwards, especially if most members of the class get some questions wrong.

Mark each of the following assertions as True or False:

All beliefs are equally true.
Whenever someone believes something false there is evidence against it.
False beliefs can usually be defended against true evidence.
A moral skeptic is always cynical about moral matters.
A philosophical skeptic thinks that other people have false beliefs.
Religious dogmatism means believing in God.
If you know something you don't believe it.
If a belief is certain then there is no evidence against it.
If there is no evidence against a belief then it is certain.
In a false belief trap someone has so many false beliefs that they cannot understand the reasons why their beliefs are false.
The certainty assumption gives the only way out of the false belief trap.
Religious dogmatism is the only way of avoiding moral skepticism.

Note 1: Sometimes in response to a true/false question students may find that they know that one answer is the one that the course has been prompting, but in fact they believe the opposite. You could consider using a variant answering system in which students can write, for example, "F" rather than F, or the like, and then write a couple of sentences of explanation at the bottom or on the back of the test. Marks would be awarded for knowing what answers the course is prompting, but intellectual honesty would be its own reward.

Note 2: Students have access to this website too. You may worry that they will have seen the test in advance. I don't see this as a big worry, as if they have learned the right answers from seeing it in advance they will have reflected on the material. You may worry about students passing the answers on to one another. In that case put the questions in a different order, rephrase some of them, and add a few more of your own. You needn't say in advance what day you are giving the test.