Re: The Rise of Philosophy

["kate whitaker" <katewhitaker@gmail.com>]

I've always had problems with Ethics lessons/tutorials. You get a lot of people who are very rooted in their ideas thrashing it out over applied ethics such as vegetarianism, without touching on meta-ethics or thinking about the bases for their ideas. This isn't philosophy it's just arguing; a lot of the time people aren't prepared to criticise their own ideas, which, surely, is the whole point of philosophy.
At my college they offered philosophy A level, but also an AS level in critical thinking - this taught argument skills, spotting fallacies that sort of thing. Critical thinking is definately the sort of thing kids in schools should be learning, and that's the place to argue about George Bush.
As for philosophy, I think the woman referenced the article is right - philosophy sounds cool and that's why a lot of people take it (similar to the recent boom in psychology). It's only when they get to university that they realise it's not just about having opinions, and that you have to read, write essays and generally work!

On 5/4/06, Matthew Hodgetts <matthew.hodgetts@gmail.com> wrote:

Just found this in the Independent:

 

http://education.independent.co.uk/schools/article361684.ece

 

Apparently more people are now studying philosophy for A-level and highers. It just made one thing: in their classes they discuss George Bush. This got me thinking, is saying on the one hand he's good because x and on the other bad because y really philosophy? I'm not really sure. I'm fairly sceptical about ethics as philosophical study anyway as it seems that all we do is trade competing intuitions. (If you think that's all ethics ought to be, fine, but you need to argue for that first). Maybe I'm being too narrow minded in suggesting that all we can do is to try to look at the meaning of ethical langauge ( e.g. Hare, Blackburn et al, and Mackie). It just seems to be that only once we have a firm grasp on what ethics is and what "immoral" means can we even begin to worry about abortion or any other applied topic. One of my examiners' reports once criticised an answer to an applied ethics exam question (I think it was stem cells or something) for being "journalistic." I guess my point is that at the moment, anyone can give a journalistic answer to whether Bush is a good or a bad president, but being able to do so isn't particularly amazing or philosophical. What do you guys think?

 

Also I wasn't very impressed by the last paragraph claiming that philosophers don't have a lot of work to do. Try revising for finals!

 

M.