By John Draeger, SUNY Buffalo State

As a moral philosopher, my introductory courses revolve around various controversial issues (e.g., abortion, euthanasia, hate speech, same sex marriage, invasions of privacy in the name of national security or commerce). It is not hard to generate discussion about these topics, but important philosophical issues often to get lost in the mayhem. My students try to keep things straight by focusing on particular bits of content. They hope that a laundry list of terms and distinctions will help them make sense of particular ethical issues. For my part, however, most of the interesting stuff occurs behind the scenes. I don’t much care about which topics we discuss because at some level I don’t think that we are talking about the particular topical issues anyway. Details matter, of course, but I am most interested in helping students uncover the underlying value conflicts common to many ethical debates. This, I argue, requires developing metacognitive awareness.

Consider three possible positions on hate speech: (1) ban hate speech on college campuses because it harms individual students, (2) allow hate speech because banning it would violate the rights of individual students, (3) allow hate speech because banning it would do more harm than good in the long-run. Now consider three possible views on governmental surveillance in the name of national security: (1) allow governmental surveillance because it promotes an important good (e.g., national security), (2) ban governmental surveillance because it violates the rights of citizens (e.g., privacy), (3) ban governmental surveillance because it does more harm than good in the long-run. Note the similar underlying value structures of these positions. One favors well-being (e.g., protect individual students or a nation) over other considerations. Another favors rights (e.g., free-speech or privacy) over harms to well-being caused by the exercise of those rights. The last considers two forms of well-being (e.g., short-term and long-term).

As an instructor, I know that teaching students a process by which they can uncover underlying value structures requires scaffolding and plenty of opportunities to practice (Duron, Limback, & Waugh, 2006). Among my many activities and assignments, I ask students to answer the following questions about each of the readings: (1) what is the author’s core insight/thesis? (2) what are the core values at issue? (3) what are the central philosophical problems at issue? (4) what are the central topics at issue? It is not long before students understand that the last two questions are not actually redundant (e.g., well-being versus rights is not the same as hate speech versus governmental surveillance).

This exercise helps students focus on what I take to be most important, namely the underlying value structure. It also sets up the next exercise in which I ask students to use the resources found in one reading (e.g., hate speech) to answer the topical question raised in another (e.g., government surveillance).  This can be difficult until students recognize there are values common across different topical debates and they recognize the similarities in the philosophical substructure (e.g., well-being over rights, rights over well-being, long-term well-being over short-term well-being). Because it isn’t always easy to fit one view into the structure of another, this exercise leads to many questions about each of the readings. As the semester moves along, we discuss each reading in relation to those that came before.  By the end of the semester, we pick author names “at random” and discuss the connections between them.

With an understanding the underlying value structure of a particular moral issue, students can begin to “think like a philosopher.” It puts them in a position to move beyond mere coffee shop conversation and the rehash of media pundit drivel towards a more careful consideration of the issues. Through the process outlined above, they begin to notice when their discussions lapse into media drivel and thus when they need steer the conversation back towards the underlying value structure. Insofar as this exercise moves students towards the ability to consciously and explicitly understand the substructure of values underlying a wide variety of ethical issues, it moves them towards a more sophisticated understanding of those issues and towards a metacognitive awareness of their own learning.

References

Duron, R., Limbach, B., & Waugh, W. (2006). “Critical Thinking Framework for Any Discipline.” International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education, 17 (2), 160-166.