This course is a staple in the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University that aims to sharpen techniques for philosophical exposition and argumentation. The specifics of the course vary a bit from instructor to instructor. When I began teaching the course, I wanted to stress group work, class presentations, and the drafting process. The class centers around the group, not the individual. The reason is simple: doing philosophy well requires community. No individual, no matter how gifted or persistent, is able to do philosophy as well as a group. In this class, groups (of approximately 3 to 4 students) are required to write a conference-length philosophy paper together (~3000 words), receiving feedback and constructive criticism along the way. After students form groups, they pick a topic to write about—inspired by the readings from class, though students are free to pick any suitable philosophical topic if their interests fall outside of the assigned readings.
The aim of the group emphasis of the class is to facilitate multilayered feedback: during the course of writing the paper, group members will provide feedback to each other, groups will read and provide feedback to other groups, and finally, I offer feedback during the entire process. In addition to giving feedback on papers, we also spend time in class exploring and dissecting classic and well-written philosophical papers (e.g. Singer’s ‘Famine, Affluence, and Morality’) to learn from their exposition, argumentation, organization, etc. Spending class time slowly reviewing how a seminal philosophical paper was written, structured, and so forth is often useful for the students to see techniques and approaches to writing a rigorous philosophy paper.
The pedagogical goals of the class are to facilitate student development of social and collaborative skills, polish their writing skills, and learn to better convey abstract and complicated ideas in simple, clear, and concise language—skills that transfer to many walks of life and many occupations. These goals accord nicely with my favorite part of the class: the final presentation. It is exciting and fulfilling to see students present their polished work after weeks of polishing, collaborating, and debating in the process of creating a well-crafted philosophical paper. I’ve even had a few students from this class write a paper that got accepted to academic conferences.
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Jimmy Alfonso Licon
Jimmy Alfonso Licon is an Assistant Teaching Professor in the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University. He teaches classes ranging from bioethics and environmental ethics, to philosophy of law and philosophy of time. His research focuses on ethical and epistemic aspects of cooperation, signaling, and ignorance, and in philosophy religion and philosophy of law.
