tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33488833.post6457932751329678312..comments2023-11-02T02:14:31.901-06:00Comments on ReadMoreWriteMoreThinkMoreBeMore: There Are No Stupid QuestionsDoctor Jhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13189506916480012553noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33488833.post-19648951436129340322011-12-01T08:05:55.413-06:002011-12-01T08:05:55.413-06:00lol nice blog stumbled upon
was kinda hard to unde...lol nice blog stumbled upon<br />was kinda hard to understand some bits thoAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33488833.post-24450508299628391072009-02-19T03:37:00.000-06:002009-02-19T03:37:00.000-06:00Good Dr.,It looks like I picked exactly the right ...Good Dr.,<BR/><BR/>It looks like I picked exactly the right time to get a dose of your medicine.<BR/><BR/>Though stupid questions are not limited to classroom philosophy, the way and degree to which the prospect of stupid questions bedevils the professor (and students) may be peculiar to academic philosophy. Here's why: to do philosophy one must be willing to abandon fundamental assumptions that may prevent one from beginning an inquiry anew. However, doing philosophy (vice achieving meditative Nirvana) requires assumptions on which models of fundamental concepts can be erected. But where does that leave the philosophical practitioner (suspended between the impossible emptiness of needing to (and to not) make assumptions)? The good ones always begin their tasks anew. Heidegger for example, thought he was moving forward with a bona fide philosophical project (fundamental ontology). But he found that the more he "thought" about the project, the more he had to begin again, until capturing the fundamental component of his project meant struggling to describe thinking without thoughts.<BR/><BR/>I have come full-circle in my understanding of what students are doing in philosophy classrooms (though I have scant recent experience there, I will not hesitate to share my opinion). Early on I thought philosophy classes were where the most authentic thinking was occurring. Then, I realized that philosophy classes required the same or similar amount of rehearsal of facts and methods as any other discipline. Finally, today, I believe that philosophy classes lead us to unlearn thinking by walking students through a pilgrimage to thinking (one that takes us through the despairs of pseudo- and non-thinking, to the precipice of thinking, and finally, hopefully, returns us to the beginnings of thinking).<BR/><BR/>I have developed a deep respect for what you (beautifully and aptly) called "simple-cum-brilliant" questions. They tend to be the ones that yield the most fruit. Also, they tend to be the ones that most quickly expose quacks: beware of those who will give lengthy explanations to simple questions. If the Buddha, can distill Nirvana down to 4 Noble Truths, why do we need an entire Foucault archive?<BR/><BR/>Your blog is one of my favorites. Thank you.Chris Grubbhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08107924419539858559noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33488833.post-49446229544038853402009-02-15T12:18:00.000-06:002009-02-15T12:18:00.000-06:00AnPan, your reflective interrogation assignment so...AnPan, your reflective interrogation assignment sounds good. I might give it a try.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33488833.post-59553463687348174012009-02-14T11:16:00.000-06:002009-02-14T11:16:00.000-06:00I liked the tenor of this post: I get an amazing n...I liked the tenor of this post: I get an amazing number of stupid questions of the first (you ought to know better) type, and I also have to be careful not to confuse those with the second type of question, which are actually smart and intellectually curious questions from students who don't want to parrot the material but rather to understand it! <BR/><BR/>However, your choices of examples of potentially stupid questions made me feel a little bit stupid, myself. Specifically, "who cares what [Philosopher X] thinks?" and "how can 'impossibility' be the condition for the possibility of 'possibility'?" Ouch. These are still hard questions for me: it's not that I don't know some good responses to them, but I do worry that they're answers I don't really believe (in the first case) or understand (in the second). I just don't find 'possibility' intuitively likely, or believe my own lies about the importance of a few of the canonical philosophers.<BR/><BR/>There's an assignment I use that you might like. It's called 'reflective interrogation.' At irregular intervals, I ask my students to write a paper in which they develop a question of exactly this sort of simple-cum-brilliant variety. Their task is to find the hard unanswered question in the text, and then explain exactly why it's so hard, why our answers matter. It's generally a rocky start, but by the end of the semester I get great results. <BR/><BR/>Some of them start with exam questions: "What does Descartes argue in the third meditation?" Then they spend the rest of the paper answering the question. But I chastise them and tell them to try harder, to dig deeper, to stop treating this like a math class where the superficially correct answers can always be found on page 72. It's the best way I've found to get my students thinking, treating the class as an opportunity for inquiry. Anyway, I'm reading the first batch this weekend, and your post was timely. Thanks Dr. J!anotherpanaceahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08170804573665745672noreply@blogger.com