Tuesday 8/28

Introduction

Readings

(none for today)

Synopsis

We began today by reviewing the syllabus and discussing the mechanics of the course. The requirements are simple: weekly problem sets and a final examination, all as scheduled on the course's homepage. The grading scheme is admittedly complicated, but it simplifies to saying there is a carrot and a stick. The carrot is that the grades recorded at the end of the semester will be rescaled 'A' to 'C'. So no matter how much you might struggle with the material, no matter how badly you do on the quizzes or the final, you can't do worse than a 'C', unless (and here comes the stick) you have more than two unexcused absences. Then your grade gets hammered into oblivion--50 points lost per excessive unexcused absence. The upshot is that you can easily get a 'D' or even fail the course if you miss class more than twice. Otherwise, you can be sure of at least a 'C'. I hope, of course, that you will strive to do better than what amounts to the bare minimum.

Now, as I was thinking about how to run this course, I thought back to all the times I've taught it and realized I was never very happy with how it went. Then I thought all the way back to when I took Intro to Philosophy and realized with horror that I couldn't remember it. At all. Not a bit of it.

Something is amiss, and I think the problem has to do with how we think about philosophy. To wit, thinking of historical or topical surveys as appropriate for an introductory philosophy course is a mistake--elementary and common, perhaps, but a mistake nonetheless.

It's technically a category mistake, like asking to see the U.S. after driving through all fifty states, as if the U.S. were the same kind of thing as (or in the same category as--hence "category mistake") just another state.

You see, despite the fact that the University is organized according to various disciplines like Biology, Theater, Chemistry, English, Mathematics, Philosophy, Education, Business, and so on, putting Philosophy on the grand list of disciplines is like thinking of the U.S. as just another state like Texas or Delaware.

Philosophy, I would argue, is not a distinct discipline in the same way Biology is a distinct discipline from English with its own subject matter and its own history. Fundamentally, the subject matter of philosophy is the subject matter of every discipline; the history of philosophy is the history of every discipline.

Yet if philosophy has neither its own set of topics nor its own history, what, then, is philosophy?

I think in this at least Wittgenstein was right: Philosophy, he said, is an activity. It is something you do.

Think about riding a bicycle. We're not going to study bicycle mechanics. We're not going to learn about famous cyclists. We're not going to study the history of cycling, or memorize who won what race when.

We're going to get on bicycles and ride.

Some of you will pick it up quickly. You'll be zooming around the room in no time.

Others will fall, a lot.

Eventually, though, we should all be up and riding.

Just don't try to explain to anyone else what you're doing in Intro to Philosophy. Make something up. It doesn't matter what.

It may get bumpy at times, but I hope that, unlike me, you'll remember your introduction to philosophy. If Wittgenstein was right, you will.

The upshot of all this is that this semester, we won't study philosophy or philosophers, we will do philosophy.