1.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b>\u00a0How long has the Department of Philosophy offered the Part One \u2018Reason and Argument\u2019 module (PP1RA) and why have you decided also now to offer a new Part Two module \u2018Truth and Bullshit\u2019 (PP2TBS)?<\/b><\/p>\n
The module \u2018Reason and Argument\u2019 was offered for the first time last year. It is a revised version of a long-standing skills-based course called \u2018Critical Thinking\u2019.\u00a0 My colleague Professor Emma Borg redesigned the course for First Years to include a career component in line with the University of Reading\u2019s push to include career advice and placement opportunities in curriculum design.\u00a0 \u2018Truth and Bullshit\u2019 is based on a module that I taught at the University of Chicago that was called \u2018Telling the Truth: Scepticism, Relativism and Bullshit\u2019.\u00a0 The course was developed as part of a Tave Teaching Fellowship\u2013a competitive teaching award at the University of Chicago\u2013and it subsequently also won an award for course design from Chicago\u2019s Center for Teaching and Learning.\u00a0 \u00a0The idea behind the \u2018Truth and Bullshit\u2019 course is to introduce central topics in philosophy that will have broad appeal not just to students majoring in philosophy but also to joint-degree students across the School of Humanities and the University. And it\u2019s a really fun class to teach!<\/p>\n
2.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b>Your specialism, Dr Hansen, is the Philosophy of Language (contextualism, experimental semantics and pragmatics, the meaning of colour terms).\u00a0 Why were you in particular asked to convene and teach both the existing module \u2018Reason and Argument\u2019 and the new module \u2018Truth and Bullshit\u2019 in the Autumn Term?<\/b><\/p>\n
\u2018Reason and Argument\u2019 is concerned with analysing arguments that occur in natural language—as they appear in things we read, what people say on television etc.\u00a0 I am interested in the relationship between natural language and logic in my research. One important component of the module involves getting students to learn how to translate natural language arguments into different formal languages used in elementary logic, and to recognize both the strengths and limitations of these simple logical languages. \u00a0\u2018Reason and Argument\u2019 assumes that truth is something we should care about and teaches students how to evaluate the truth or falsity of statements and the validity of arguments.<\/p>\n
One way of looking at the \u2018Truth and Bullshit\u2019 course is as investigating what \u2018Reason and Argument\u2019 takes for granted. The course involves asking questions about the nature and value of truth. And it connects debates in philosophy of language with other areas in philosophy by asking questions like \u2018what is the importance of truth versus the importance of other competing values, like usefulness?\u2019<\/p>\n
3.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b>\u2018Reason and Argument\u2019 is a compulsory module for all first-year Philosophy students.\u00a0 \u2018Truth and Bullshit\u2019 is an optional second-year module.\u00a0 Why do you think it is so important for students to think about truth in their philosophical studies and why should they care about thinking about it?<\/b><\/p>\n
To the extent that we care about getting things right, we should care about truth. And more specifically, truth is a central concern of \u2018Reason and Argument\u2019 because in this course students are learning to use basic logical systems that have truth as a central component.<\/p>\n
4.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b>Tell me about the academic content of the module \u2018Truth and Bullshit\u2019.\u00a0 What are the aims of the module and what are students expected to do<\/i> to fulfil its requirements?<\/b><\/p>\n
The aim of \u2018Truth and Bullshit\u2019 is for students to think hard about the nature and value of truth. The first part of the course concentrates on different theories of \u2018bullshit\u2019 from some recent philosophers including Harry Frankfurt and G.A. Cohen. \u00a0The second part examines classic theories of truth, as espoused by philosophers like Bertrand Russell and William James.\u00a0 The third part of the module asks why should we care about truth. In that part of the module we read work by Richard Rorty, Stanley Fish, Nietzsche and Foucault.\u00a0 Between Part Two and Part Three of the module we read George Orwell\u2019s \u20181984\u2019 and \u2018Politics and the English Language\u2019 and think about what happens when we give up on the idea of truth. Students are evaluated on two essays and an exam. For the first essay I ask students to do some \u2018bullshit hunting\u2019 to find something that illustrates one of the theories of bullshit that we talk about. The second essay will cover theories of truth and scepticism about the value of truth.<\/p>\n
5.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b>\u2018Truth and Bullshit\u2019 investigates theories of the nature of \u2018bullshit\u2019, \u2018objective\u2019 truth, and forms of scepticism and relativism about truth through a series of case studies drawn from contemporary politics and academia.\u00a0 What are these case studies, why did you choose them and how do they elucidate these theories?<\/b><\/p>\n
An example of a case study that we use from academia is the \u201cSokal Hoax.\u201d In the mid-90s, the NYU\u00a0 physicist Alan Sokal submitted a nonsensical essay to a cultural studies journal. He took the fact that the journal published his essay to reveal that postmodernist cultural studies was more interested in a producing a certain kind of fashionable jargon than with saying things that were meaningful and true. I also use examples from politics and the use of political language to \u2018reframe\u2019 political issues. For example, the Republican consultant Frank Luntz was involved in the Republican party\u2019s substitution of the phrase \u2018climate change\u2019 in place of \u2018\u2018global warming\u2019 (to make the phenomenon seem less alarming), and also with the renaming of the \u2018estate tax\u2019 as the \u2018death tax\u2019 (to make the tax sound like something that should be opposed). \u00a0Democratic consultants, including the linguist George Lakoff, have also attempted to shift opinion through framing issues differently.<\/p>\n
6.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b>We are bombarded constantly with contemporary disputes in the popular media about the value of truth and the nature of \u2018bullshit\u2019.\u00a0 How does the module \u2018Truth and Bullshit\u2019 help students to learn how to discern truth from lies? \u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
Well, one thing we do is discuss the difference between bullshit and lies and look at competing theories of both. I\u2019m not sure that by itself would make you better at telling truth from lies, but it will at least let you draw some helpful distinctions. So we examine, for example, Frankfurt\u2019s idea that the bullshitter wants to conceal the fact that he or she doesn\u2019t care about the truth whereas by contrast the liar wants his or her audience to believe the liar is telling the truth, and to come to have a false belief about the world.<\/p>\n
7.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b>\u2018Truth and Bullshit\u2019 will be taught not just through lectures but seminars in which students will be encouraged to ask questions and try to answer the questions posed by the lecturer, so that they are forced to think, rather than just being spoon-fed information.\u00a0 How will you encourage this form of Socratic-style dialogue between lecturer and student? \u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n
I do use the American law-school style \u2018Socratic method\u2019 in my classes, where I ask students to \u2018recite the facts of the case\u2019 rather than simply lecturing at them. But that\u2019s just the start of getting students to think like philosophers. One way of encouraging students to start asking their own questions involves getting students to state their own views about the topics we\u2019ll be covering in the course on the very first day of class.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s how this approach works in the \u2018Truth and Bullshit\u2019 class. Most contemporary professional philosophers think that we know things and that knowledge requires true belief.\u00a0 So they think at least some of our beliefs are true. \u00a0But I have found in teaching philosophy to undergrads that the default attitude sometimes is scepticism about truth and knowledge. When they first come to class some students tend to argue that there are no truths and will say things that suggest that they think truth is subjective or perspectival.\u00a0 So at the beginning of the course I ask them to give me examples of true statements, false statements and \u2018bullshit\u2019, and ask for an explanation of what makes something true.\u00a0 I hang on to these answers until the end of the course, when I ask them to critique (or defend) their earlier statements based on what they\u2019ve learned in the course.\u00a0 The purpose of this exercise is to get them to see that they already have implicit commitments about truth, even though they may never have tried to articulate them. \u00a0The exercise also shows them how hard it is to have a fully developed, defensible theory of truth!<\/p>\n
8.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/b>Skills training and development and enquiry-based learning are so important for our students in this difficult economic climate.\u00a0 \u2018Reason and Argument\u2019 is the module in which the Department of Philosophy introduces its Career skills component including how to produce a good CV and how to make the skills developed in a Philosophy degree transparent to future employers.\u00a0 What particular set of skills does the module \u2018Truth and Bullshit\u2019 train our students in and help them develop? \u00a0<\/b><\/p>\n