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]

Chapter 9 - Comments on Sections

9.1 and 9.2 both rehearse 9.2. You should ask the class to read 9.2 in advance of working through either. The self-classification in 9.1 is supposed to label people in ways that will lead to discussion. If people don't like their labels (e.g. the "mystic" label) they'll have to say why. And you can take people who have very different profiles according to the scores and ask them to probe their differences. For example, you could take the person with the highest number of (a) choices and the person with the lowest and ask them to explain their reactions to the Medicine item, and to comment on each other's explanation. Then you can ask people with in-between profiles to comment on the deeper roots of the differences between the first two people.

9.3 (1) supports (a) or (b) [ambiguous, taken in isolation], (2) is opposed to (a), (3) supports (c), (4) supports (c), (5) supports (a), (6) opposes (a), (7) supports (b). If students take (4) supports (a) rather than (c) you might argue gently with them, but there is no point in making an issue of it. You could refer them to 9.8 For (i): (2) (and is thus relevant to the tension between (1) and (2), both Aristotle). For (ii): (3) (but of course St Tom would not think of talk about angels as speculation).

9.5 Points that I would expect to emerge from the discussion (so it's up to you to make them emerge):
o A visual description of an object does not state its function, or whether it is alive, or how it operates, or what it is composed of.
o Our words and concepts presuppose theories of how things work, what they are made of, and what the laws of nature governing their interactions are.
o Our visual and other experience is much richer than any manageable linguistic description can capture. When the description is in purely sensory terms then it is even harder to capture the experiential as well as the physical aspect.
I have expressed these in terms that would not be accessible to many of your students, so you will have to get the points across more patiently and interactively.

The second activity in which students write out their own "translations into sense-datum language" is best done by having students look at each other's translations and then commenting to the class on the differences between them.

9.7 (A)-(1), (3), (7); (B)-(4), (1); (C)-(1), (4); (D)-(2), (3); (E)-(7). Of course, the class may find other good connections. (A) seems to me harder to read than the others. If you expect to be short of time or if your class is not good with old-fashioned prose you might ignore (A). The text describes a strategy for working through the material in small groups. A whole class could simply discuss the quotations one by one (possibly leaving out (A), or leaving it till last) and then quickly run through the list of objections afterwards, seeing which ones sum up points that have been made.

Of the unstated assumptions (i) is made in (C) and (B) and is vulnerable to (1). (ii) is made in (D) and is vulnerable to (1) and (2). (iii) is made in (B) and (D) and is vulnerable to (2). This is a harder activity than the first one. At any rate, by working through it you may be better prepared to guide the class through the first one.

(D) makes an interesting link between empiricism and moral relativism (not that either has to imply the other). (E) is a famous and fascinating thought experiment, Molyneux's problem, which twentieth-century psychologists such as Richard Gregory have worked on. You may find the class has very divergent opinions about (E).

9.8 This is a combined exposition and activity section. In (i) to (v), the "idea" in (i) is a belief, in (ii) a concept, in (iii) a sensation, in (iv) a combined sensation and belief, in (v) a combined belief and concept. In (a) to (f), (a), (b), (f) refer to beliefs and (c), (d), (e) to concepts. (a), (b), and (d) could be taken both ways.

9.10 I would rank the order of relevance of each of the problems (1) to (4) to each of the situations (a) to (g) as: (a)-(4), (3); (b)-(2), (1); (c)-(1), (3); (d)-(1), (3); (e)-(3), (1); (f)-(4), (3); (g)-(3), (4). Note how different kinds of limitations seem to apply to different kinds of knowledge. (d) has connections with (E) of 9.7; it raises difficult questions of the sameness of concepts. If Gabriel can understand enough physics to know the characteristics of red light then he can share a concept of "red" with sighted people. (h) was worded so as to avoid this issue.

9.12
(i) - (f) - (1), (7)
(c) - (4)
(d) - (6)
(ii) (e) - (2)
(iii) (a) - (5), (3)
(iv) (a) - (5), (3)
(v) (b) - (4)
(d) - (6)
(vi) (f) - (1), (8)

Though this may seem like a rather mechanical activity, the point it brings out is very interesting and important: that when we use A as evidence for B we usually (always!) take for granted some fact C, which itself can be supported with evidence, but only taking something else for granted. To see this is to move beyond the simple "foundationalist" model of evidence of traditional empiricism. As long as you get the students to begin to grasp this, and to begin to grapple with worries about circularity deriving from this, the activity is working. (These worries are treated in more depth in chapter 11.)
You can make this activity more animated and provoke a discussion by asking some probing questions. What would it take to convince you that the phases of the moon are caused by mice? What evidence could suggest that red-haired people feel pain differently? Could there be (scientific, empirical) evidence that the universe is, say, a hundred years old? For each of these, which of the assumptions that we usually take for granted with the subject matter in question would have to be suspended?

Chapter 9 - Test
Mark each of the following as true or false:

(1) Empiricists believe that nothing exists unless you can see it.
(2) Empiricists like science because it is hostile to religion.
(3) Empiricists think that you can only think in words.
(4) Empiricists approve of scientific theories that are based on evidence.
(5) Empiricists believe that you should believe only what you have evidence for.
(6) Empiricists believe that all evidence is based on the use of the senses.
(7) Locke thought that children have innate ideas.
(8) Locke thought that there are no innate ideas.
(9) Locke used "idea" to mean something we believe and something we perceive.
(10) Locke held that all thoughts are made up out of experiences.
(11) Empirical evidence is always completely certain.
(12) Empirical evidence is often completely uncertain.
(13) People who disagree about a theory can often agree about what evidence would
settle their disagreement.
(14) For any theory there is evidence that would convince anyone who disbelieved
it.
(15) For any two people and any theory they disagree about there is usually some
evidence that would bring them nearer to agreement