Dominant Culture as a Guide to Philosophy?

I spent a day in Montana's capital city of Helena, working with other philosophy faculty to solve the "transferability problem" faced by students as they move from one college to another. The group consisted of me, three other old white guys (I think I was the youngest, though!), two younger women (one a Montana native, that is, Blackfoot), and a younger Filipino-American guy.

It's a noble effort. Bring together philosophy profs from the various units of the Montana University System. They then develop a list of universal course outcomes and come up with standard course names & numbers. The idea is to help students that transfer from one college to another in their quest for an undergraduate degree. General education requirements always contain some sort of philosophy courses such as "Introduction to Philosophy" and "Introduction to Ethics." Allegedly, when students transfer schools, they frequently lose credit for courses they have already completed, and then have to take (and pay for) additional courses that are substantially the same as what they've already taken...

It's a a noble effort, yes. Something like the search for a universal or world language.

Remember Esperanto? You know, the universal language that was to foster international peace & understanding. Esperanto was truly universal--that is, if your universe consisted of western culture. And if your ideal for a "real" language was based on experience with French, German, Polish, and Russian. Never mind those non-western languages. Forget Chinese. Forget Arabic. Siksika'? Forget it.

And that is, in part, how the first session of the Montana Philosopher Kings transpired. "Philosopher King?" As in Plato's Republic? That's the problem: dominant culture provides us a ready answer to what is "universal:" white, male, and western.

Suprisingly, we made remarkable progress in developing common course outcomes for "Introduction to Ethics."

For some reason, however, we tumbled like the Tower of Babel when it came to "Introduction to Philosophy."

Turns out "Introduction to Philosophy" means (to some, anyway) "Introduction to Western Philosophy." If the course is not about the specific philosophical problems and if it does not provide some historical overview of Plato, Descartes, Hume, Kant, etc. then it does not count as an Intro Philosophy course. By this measure, an introductory course called "Blackfeet Philosophy" certainly does not qualify.

This, it seems to me, is very wrong. Philosophy, even in its most narrow western definition as the Greek "love of wisdom" seems to be a universal phenomenon among human cultures.

The epistemological, ontological, and other problems raised by western philosophy are certainly interesting. But does western philosophy have a lock on these things? I cannot answer that question in a definitive, comprehensive way, since my knowledge of non-western philosophy is very limited. Sure, I have your educated person's token knowledge of Zen Buddhism, Taoism, Confucianism, and so forth. But from what I do know, any of these approaches would raise all the important questions and provide a basis for all the fruitful discussion that I believe is central to an "Introduction to Philosophy" course.

I recall my own Introduction to Philosophy course with the amazing Professor Martha Montgomery at Drexel University. Plato's Socratic Dialogues was our text. Socrates lived through that class, and so far as we students were concerned, Martha had sat with the old man on his deathbed when he drank the hemlock. There was little mention of Descartes or Hume or Quine, or of traditional names for philosophical "problems" such as Moore's disbelief, a priori knowledge, or mind-body dualism. Guided by Martha's talent for elenchus, however, the course left its mark on me and was instrumental in shifting my career away from engineering.

More recently, Thomas Nagel has taken a similar approach with his little book, What Does It All Mean?" Like Martha Montgomery, Nagel leads us through the process of philosophical inquiry without making it a lesson in the history of western philosophy or a laundry list of technical terms.

As a course fulfilling the general education requirement for "Introduction to Philosophy," I believe that "Blackfeet Philosophy" would serve perfectly well.

Montana Tech: another Butte secret

"We're not the School of Mines, damnit!" That's often my response to Montana kids (and parents) who believe that Tech is merely a mining engineering school.

I am with the communication program, but Tech also has exemplary programs in fields such as chemistry, environmental engineering, computer science, and general engineering. My program is Technical Communication--meaning that students learn everything from how to write a scientific paper, to how to design a website, to how to make a documentary film. They also learn the social context of their craft; as Mcluhan said, "The medium is the message." We are small group of six diverse faculty, and our interests range from environmental communication to historic preservation. See Montana Tech's Wikipedia entry in the links section.

At Montana Tech, classes are small and faculty have a lot of direct contact with (and interest in) students. This means that from freshman year on students know their faculty. Students have tremendous opportunities to work directly with faculty on research projects and community outreach.

Think of Montana Tech as a Liberal Arts college with a technical focus and cheap tuition. Sort of a public school version of Harvey Mudd. Without the LA traffic and air pollution. And with superb outdoor recreation: trout fishing, wild rivers, backcountry skiing, Alpine ski areas with no lift lines, a northern Rocky Mountain wilderness at our backdoor... Butte is one of the sunniest cities in the northern Rockies, and on most days you can see four mountain ranges from town: the Pintler Wilderness (50 miles to the west); the Highlands (15 miles to the south); the Pioneers (75 miles to the southwest); and the Tobacco Roots (75 miles to the southeast). The Continental Divide (aka the "East Ridge") runs along the edge of town.

The view looking west from Butte.

Of course, I think of my department as especially good -- see the student-designed departmental website at http://www.mtech.edu/hss/ptc/tc/media/ptc.htm. Our students have gone on to a wide range of careers including film, journalism, web design, software documentation, and technical writing. We have an elegant professional website designed by faculty, but unfortunately the institution recently redesigned its website and "they" seemed to have wiped out all the links to our department site. Shit happens (I'll talk about an academic's frustration with administrators some other time!).