|
It came to my attention last term
that some 6th Form colleges were getting into trouble concerning the contents
of their Philosophy courses. The issue was that they were offering AS, A-Level “Philosophy”
yet the content was either that of Religious Studies, or Religious Studies and
Ethics, and Possibly Philosophy of Religion and Ethics... in none of these
cases is it correct to call the course Philosophy
straight. It seems that from the article, apart from the one mention
of metaphysics, the contents seem to be ethical/religious. Which is fine, (I’m
neutral on that) but NOT if its called ‘Philosophy’. I'm not denouncing Philosophy of
Religion, or Ethics from Philosophy as subjects WITHIN philosophy, I would
certainly denounce Religious Studies, that's surely for theology etc... So, the issue is that 'Rise of
Philosophy' and reports on the popularity of Philosophy at A Level are
potentially very misleading, if they are supposed to represent an inclination
towards philosophy of young students. It might just be that the inclination is
more towards Religion/Ethics/Politics. I am one who would ask what of
metaphysics, philosophy of language, maths, science, mind, psychology, history
of philosophy, epistemology, logic and the rest of it? I'm sorry that my information comes
from informal talks with tutors at my university, and I can't give you names of
institutions guilty of mislabelling, or of the enquiries by academic board’s
authorities etc... However, do a search on the net and something I'm sure will
pop up, and pay close attention to the prospectus/syllabus of individual
institutions, and judge for yourself whether the course is rightly called
philosophy, or should be named 'Ethics' or 'Religion' etc. An ironic twist, is
that GCSE Advance RE seems to be more philosophical (in syllabus content) than
some A Level "PHILOSOPHY" courses! The last point is that this issue
could clearly be properly addressed if the research methods are sorted. For
instance, re-do the statistics only including properly labelled courses, I
mean, proper philosophy courses at GCSE/A Level etc, then see how big the rise
in philosophy really is. The news paper is not responsible for this, obviously,
it is their source. Not that it’d help with public perception, I doubt
that the newspapers would be inclined to make important distinctions in content,
ethics/politics, philosophy of religion/religious studies – philosophy/all
of the above… Of course, the stats might have been produced with the
proper data I recommend, but I doubt it considering that intuitions have
actually been GETTING AWAY with the mislabelling… Even if anywhere were
interested in getting proper stats for the ‘Rise of Philosophy’ I
doubt it would be an easy thing, u’d get an awful lot of relativism about
how to define the subject, and I guess you’d even get those arguing that
courses that are merely ethical or religious in content are rightly labelled philosophy… oh well…
I’m not going to opine on the issue of ‘What is Philosophy’…
I could offer nothing more than intuitive reflection. Best, Craig French |