Philosophy 122: Infinity introduces philosophy exclusively to first-year students. It is one of several thematic introductory courses taught in my department, where some of us have given up the traditional survey course in favor of classes with themes that can foster student engagement and buy-in from the start of the term. I also teach a course on philosophy of education as an introduction to philosophy; others in the department introduce philosophy using Perspectives on the Self and Existentialism, for two further examples. Infinity is innovative not just in its content, especially at this level, but in its team-based learning (TBL) pedagogy; in its scaffolded writing assignments (it’s a writing-intensive class); and in its use of a course mentor. Let’s start with the content.
Most students come to college with no robust idea of what philosophy is or what studying philosophy entails. We instructors often think of our work in terms of our areas of specialization, in terms of the content. A survey course allows us to show students a variety of areas of philosophy, in part with the hope that all students find at least some areas to be of interest: perhaps they aren’t taken by epistemology, but maybe they’ll like the ethics.
We can, alternatively, think of philosophy as set of methods, skills that can be applied in various content domains. Studying philosophy requires careful reading toward charitable interpretation, argumentation using reasons and various perspectives, and critical evaluation involving thoughtful questioning. The skills needed to do philosophy are transferable among classes, both in philosophy and in other areas. So, the skills we use in a topical introductory course like Infinity can be ported to courses in ethics, philosophy of language, or existentialism and phenomenology; or they can be taken to literature or physics courses. Emphasizing skills over content helps to integrate philosophy into the curriculum and make it more clearly useful to students.
Moreover, introducing students to philosophy by focusing on a single content area does not restrict the instructor from demonstrating different methods of doing philosophy. In Infinity, we explore lots of content by traditionally canonical philosophers: Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Galileo, Descartes, and Russell, as well as some philosophers less-often read by undergraduates, like Buridan, Duns Scotus, and Nicholas of Cusa. We work through four units with varying content: infinities of division; infinities of addition; God and infinite ideas; and, in light of questions about the relation between axioms and certainty, incompleteness and the human condition. I also use literature to generate and illustrate the philosophical problems. The novel A Certain Ambiguity, by Gaurav Suri and Hartosh Singh Bal, engagingly links philosophy, mathematics, and religion, perfect themes for my course; Prof. Suri (now a psychologist at San Francisco State University) has graciously joined the class by Zoom a couple of times. Some Borges stories and Sartre’s No Exit also give us lots of lively illustrations of core philosophical ideas. Our studies of both Cantor’s work and non-Euclidean geometry allow us to do some rudimentary set theory and mathematical philosophy, demonstrating further methods.
I also encourage students in Infinity to learn to do philosophy, rather than merely to learn about philosophy, by using innovative pedagogical methods, especially TBL. Philosophy is most thrilling, especially for students, when we communicate and collaborate, hearing various perspectives and working out our own ideas in conversation with others. TBL de-centers the instructor, creating parallel conversations in groups of four to seven students, and reducing social barriers to collaboration. We raise difficult questions in philosophy classrooms, so including diverse perspectives is essential. Students are more comfortable testing their ideas, vulnerably opening themselves to criticism, in small groups of teammates than in a large classroom discussion. A peer-evaluation process helps to improve team functioning, as do readiness assessment tasks, short quizzes on basic concepts taken both individually and in teams at the beginning of each unit.
For class meetings, I prepare materials for productive philosophical experiences and get out of the way, empowering students to take charge of their own learning. I assign, ordinarily, two to four team activities for each 75-minute class meeting. We start class with a little framing, and then teams get to work seeking consensus on an activity. When the task is complete, teams share their results, which we can discuss as a whole class, highlighting key aspects of the team conversations. At that point, I can lecture, ad hoc, if the results of the activity merit clarification. If not, we’re off to another activity, during which I sometimes even leave the classroom, because teams of first-year students often start conversation better when I’m not around. I’ve shared some sample activities along with the syllabus, below.
The worst part of teaching is reading disappointing student work; the longer the work, the worse the pain. To improve both my life and my students’ learning, and inspired by scholarship in the psychology of learning, I use short, scaffolded writing activities, building and integrating skills through the term: extracting a short argument and representing it as efficiently as possible; illustrating abstract ideas originally and concretely; generating and classifying a variety of kinds of questions; contextualizing and asking a question as we would in a colloquium; writing a letter to a philosopher describing the work of another philosopher. The semester’s writing culminates in a standard argumentative essay, which students approach after having practice and feedback on the earlier fine-grained writing skills; students submit a draft and write (and receive) two sets of peer comments before producing the final version. At the end of the semester, I assign a creative project to teams: they may write a story or a podcast or a game or a painting, or whatever their team decides.
Course mentors for first-year courses at my institution, supported by our dean’s office, are used to help students to transition to college. They are not TAs. They do not do grading. They are placed in courses for student support. I typically reserve 5% of the course for the mentor to develop an activity that can enrich the class. During the pandemic term of this course, Fall 2020, the mentor wanted to work on wellness, especially sleep. She developed an assignment for keeping a self-care journal. Because we didn’t want to ask students to share their private thoughts, we asked students instead to reflect on the content of their journal four times during the term, giving them encouraging feedback and a completion grade.
I aim for bullshit-free syllabi, and hope that the one I present here strikes you that way. I try to integrate accessibility and wellness statements into the course goals, and frame them positively. I present a detailed schedule, with dates, to which I stick closely, so our typically overextended students can plan ahead. I find that students actually use the syllabus, checking things off as we work through the term, which I take as a sign that it’s constructed usefully.
One serious problem with the course, and my main dissatisfaction with it, concerns its dearth of women philosophers. I typically invite a woman to work as course mentor; putting students from underrepresented groups in leadership roles helps to counterbalance the sexism and other forms of exclusion in our discipline’s history and perpetuated by a syllabus full of canonical work. Explicit discussions of the problem in class are also useful. But my main goal for future iterations of the course is to diversify the syllabus further.
The Syllabus Showcase of the APA Blog is designed to share insights into the syllabi of philosophy educators. We include syllabi in their original, unedited format that showcase a wide variety of philosophy classes. We would love for you to be a part of this project. Please contact Series Editor, Dr. Matt Deaton via MattDeaton.com or Editor of the Teaching Beat, Dr. Sabrina D. MisirHiralall via sabrinamisirhiralall@apaonline.org with potential submissions.
Russell Marcus
Russell Marcus is Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophy at Hamilton College, specializing in philosophy of mathematics and philosophical pedagogy. He is vice president of the American Association of Philosophy Teachers; the founder and director of the Hamilton College Summer Program in Philosophy, a two-week laboratory for pedagogical innovation; and a co-recipient of the 2020 APA Prize for Excellence in Philosophy Teaching.
