A few weeks ago, I posted the following quip as my Facebook status: You don’t really get _Civilization and its Discontents_ till you bring up a child. And then, a week or so later: Apropos of my recent comment that you don’t really get _Civilization and its Discontents_ till you raise a child: I don’tContinue reading “Making the Abstract Concrete”
Category Archives: Pedagogy
Studying the Social
This coming fall semester, I will teach, ostensibly for the second time, a class titled Social Philosophy. I say ‘ostensibly’ because, though I have taught the Class Formerly Known as Social Philosophy, this is most assuredly not your grandfather’s Social Philosophy. Brooklyn College’s philosophy department offers a pair of related classes: one titled Political Philosophy, andContinue reading “Studying the Social”
Teach Them Yo Damn Self
Tim Egan writes, in the midst of some sensible commentary on Walmart and Starbucks’ role in combating inequality: It’s a sad day when we have to look to corporations for education… But there is a certain kind of education–especially in the technology sector–for which it makes eminent sense to “look to corporations for education.” ToContinue reading “Teach Them Yo Damn Self”
On First and Second Languages-IV: Bringing Up Baby
I am often asked, by well-meaning friends, “Are you going to teach your daughter how to speak [Hindi, Urdu]?” My answer, invariably, is “I’ll try.” So I’m trying. My efforts at teaching my daughter Hindi-Urdu consist primarily of speaking to her in it, with occasional lapses into English. These lapses have become more frequent. IContinue reading “On First and Second Languages-IV: Bringing Up Baby”
Academic Writing In Philosophy: On Finding Older Writing Samples
Yesterday, while cleaning up an old homepage of mine, I found some old papers written while I was in graduate school. Overcome by curiosity–and rather recklessly, if I may say so–I converted the old Postscript format to PDF, and took a closer look. The first is titled ‘No Cognition Without Representation’; its abstract reads: AContinue reading “Academic Writing In Philosophy: On Finding Older Writing Samples”
The Campus Bell, From School to College
When I began school, I passed into another zone of discipline. The most prominent marker of that regime of control was not the corporeal form of the stern schoolmaster but rather, the sounds of a bell ringing. It was the aural code that dominated the next twelve years of my life, slicing up the schoolContinue reading “The Campus Bell, From School to College”
The Black Absence in Academic Philosophy
Jason Stanley recently posted the following interesting status message on his Facebook page: The first sentence of this article is “Nationwide, just over 5 percent of all full-time faculty members at colleges and universities in the United States are black”. If that is so disturbing as to give rise to this headline, what are weContinue reading “The Black Absence in Academic Philosophy”
History as Chronicle of the Inevitable
From Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America: [A]s Lindbergh’s election couldn’t have made clearer to me, the unfolding of the unforeseen was everything. Turned wrong way round, the relentless unforeseen was what we schoolchildren studied as “History,” harmless history, where everything unexpected in its own time is chronicled on the page as inevitable. The terrorContinue reading “History as Chronicle of the Inevitable”
How Best to Introduce Scientific Reasoning
A couple of days ago on Facebook, by way of crowd-sourcing syllabi preparation for an undergraduate critical thinking course that includes a unit–three to six class sessions–on scientific reasoning, David Grober-Morrow threw out the following query What do you most wish that undergraduates (science and non-science majors) understood about scientific reasoning? This is a veryContinue reading “How Best to Introduce Scientific Reasoning”
The Terror of the Formerly Utterly Incomprehensible
Yesterday’s post detailing my rough introduction to calculus in high school reminded me of another encounter with a forbiddingly formidable mathematical entity, one that in later times served as an acute reminder of how even the utterly incomprehensible can come to acquire an air of familiarity. One reason for the rough ride I experienced inContinue reading “The Terror of the Formerly Utterly Incomprehensible”
Samir Chopra 