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I clicked around to see which topics were actually taught to undergraduates in the first philosophy program Google showed me (happened to be Yale): http://philo

I clicked around to see which topics were actually taught to undergraduates in the first philosophy program Google showed me (happened to be Yale): http://philosophy.yale.edu/undergraduate-program/undergraduate-courses-2015-2016 http://philosophy.yale.edu/undergraduate-program/undergradua... The first five: * An examination of major figures in the history of Western philosophy * An examination of attempts to reconcile the evils of this world with the existence of a perfectly good God, with special attention to proposed solutions to this problem that appeal to human free will in explaining why God allows evil. * An introduction to formal logic. * An introduction to ancient philosophy, beginning with the earliest pre-Socratics, concentrating on Plato and Aristotle, and including a brief foray into Hellenistic philosophy. * An introduction to major figures in the history of modern philosophy, with critical reading of works by Descartes, Malabranche, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and Kant. Of those, only formal logic is neutral. The rest has an obvious bias.

whatshisface 11y ago
Interesting. Yale seems like an outlier here - Stanford's program only has two history of philosophy courses[1]. It's possible that, for better or worse, the ivy league mindest is to focus on the foundation of our own legal system. (A huge number of lawyers start in philosophy.) Still, history isn't the same as philosophy. At my university, Aristotle is actually mostly studied by the classics department. http://exploredegrees.stanford.edu/schoolofhumanitiesandsciences/philosophy/ http://exploredegrees.stanford.edu/schoolofhumanitiesandscie...
- Scarblac 11y ago
  Good point, of course if I only select a single data point it may be an outlier (and showing the first five was clear cherry picking on my part). Still, even at Stanford, the history of philosophy courses seem to be about Western philosophy entirely.
eli_gottlieb 11y ago
Interesting! So first they teach their undergrads a year or two of completely outmoded Greco-Roman and religious stuff based on bad metaphysics, and then they manage, near the end, if the student hasn't dropped out, to throw in an introduction to formal logic and actual modern philosophizing. This does a lot to explain why so many highly-educated people believe in outmoded stuff based on bad metaphysics when it comes to philosophy: it's what was taught in their classes!
- bobwaycott 11y ago
  > This does a lot to explain why so many highly-educated people believe in outmoded stuff based on bad metaphysics when it comes to philosophy: it's what was taught in their classes! How many of these highly educated people who believe in outmoded stuff based on bad metaphysics when it comes to philosophy actually took >1 philosophy courses that helped them arrive at these ideas? I am willing to wager vanishingly few. More likely, they never engaged much philosophy at all, and certainly didn't learn anything about metaphysics, epistemology, etc. They're probably just basing these outmoded ideas on intuition, received beliefs from childhood, and various other sources.
mcguire 11y ago
Neat. I checked UT Austin and found Dan Bonevac was teaching one session of intro. (Bonevac is the once and future chair of the department and a very good teacher.) The textbook (which he co-wrote) looks very good. This is the TOC for th first section, Ethics Ethics 1 Ethics in the Philosophical Traditions of India 1.1 Karma and dharma in Hindu thought 1.1.1 From The Bhagavad Gita 1.2 The Bhakti Movement 1.2.1 Akka Mahadevi 1.2.2 Janabai 1.2.3 Lalla 1.2.4 Mirabai 1.3 Early Buddhism 1.3.1 The Buddha, from The First Sermon 1.3.2 From The Dhammapada 1.4 Songs of the Buddhist Nuns 1.4.1 From Psalms of the Sisters 1.5 Buddhist Virtues 1.5.1 From The Lankavatara Sutra 1.6 Jainism 1.6.1 From the Acaranga Sutra 1.7 The Skepticism and Materialism of Charvaka 1.7.1 From Sarva-Darsana-Samgraha 2 Chinese Ethics 2.1 The Virtue Ethics of Confucius 2.1.1 Confucius, from The Analects 2.2 The Intuitionism of Mencius 2.2.1 From Mencius 2.3 Xunzi’s Pessimistic View of Human Nature 2.3.1 Xunzi, from “That the Nature is Evil” 2.4 Confucian and Neo-Confucian Women Writers 2.4.1 Ban Zhao, from Precepts for My Daughters 2.4.2 Ban Zhao, “Traveling Eastward” 2.4.3 Li Qingzhao, from Hou hsu 2.4.4 Li Qingzhao, from Complete Poems 2.5 The Virtue Ethics of Daoism 2.5.1 Laozi, from Dao-de-Jing 2.6 Daoist Women Writers 2.6.1 Yu Xuanji, from Poems 2.6.2 Sun Bu-er, from Poems 3 Ancient Greek Ethics 3.1 Socrates on Virtue 3.1.1 Plato, from Laches 3.2 Plato’s Conception of Virtue 3.2.1 Plato, from the Republic 3.3 Aristotle on Virtue 3.3.1 Aristotle, from Nicomachean Ethics 4 Medieval Christian, Jewish, and Islamic Ethics 4.1 The Ethics of the Fathers 4.1.1 From the Babylonian Talmud 4.2 Augustine on Weakness of Will 4.2.1 Augustine, from Confessions 4.2.2 Augustine, from On the Trinity 4.3 Al-Farabi on Happiness 4.3.1 Al-Farabi, from The Attainment of Happiness 4.4 Maimonides on Happiness and Virtue 4.4.1 Moses Maimonides, from Guide of the Perplexed 4.5 Aquinas on Law and Virtue 4.5.1 St. Thomas Aquinas, from Summa Theologica 4.6 St. Catherine of Siena on the Paradoxes of Wisdom 4.6.1 Letter to Monna Alessa Dei Saracini 4.6.2 Letter to the venerable religious brother Antonio of Nizza, of the Order of the Hermit Brothers of St. Augustine at the wood of the lake 4.7 Christine de Pizan’s Feminism 4.7.1 Christine de Pizan, from The Treasury of the City of Ladies 4.8 Virtue in St. Teresa of Avila 4.8.1 St. Teresa of Avila, from The Ways of Perfection 5 Ethics in Modern Philosophy 5.1 Princess Elizabeth’s Critique of Reason in Ethics 5.1.1 Elizabeth to Descartes—The Hague, August 16, 1645 5.1.2 Elizabeth to Descartes—The Hague, September 13, 1645 5.1.3 Elizabeth to Descartes—Riswyck, September 30, 1645 5.1.4 Elizabeth to Descartes—The Hague, April 25, 1646 5.2 Hume’s Empiricist Ethics: From Is to Ought 5.2.1 David Hume, from A Treatise of Human Nature 5.3 Kant’s Deontology 5.3.1 Immanuel Kant, from Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals 5.4 Madame de Stael on the Passions 5.4.1 Madame de Stael, from Influence of the Passions upon the Happiness of Individuals and of Nations 5.5 Utilitarianism 5.5.1 John Stuart Mill, from Utilitarianism 6 African Ethics 6.1 The Ethiopian Enlightenment 6.1.1 Zera Yacob, from The Treatise of Zera Yacob 6.2 The Communitarian Utilitarianism of the Akan 6.2.1 Kwame Gyekye, from An Essay in African Philosophy: The Akan Conceptual Scheme 6.3 East African Islamic Ethics 6.3.1 Kai Kresse, from Philosophizing in Mombasa http://bonevac.info/301/Introduction_to_Philosophy/Description.html http://bonevac.info/301/Introduction_to_Philosophy/Descripti...

whatshisface 11y ago

Interesting. Yale seems like an outlier here - Stanford's program only has two history of philosophy courses[1]. It's possible that, for better or worse, the ivy league mindest is to focus on the foundation of our own legal system. (A huge number of lawyers start in philosophy.) Still, history isn't the same as philosophy. At my university, Aristotle is actually mostly studied by the classics department. http://exploredegrees.stanford.edu/schoolofhumanitiesandsciences/philosophy/ http://exploredegrees.stanford.edu/schoolofhumanitiesandscie...

Scarblac 11y ago
Good point, of course if I only select a single data point it may be an outlier (and showing the first five was clear cherry picking on my part). Still, even at Stanford, the history of philosophy courses seem to be about Western philosophy entirely.

eli_gottlieb 11y ago

Interesting! So first they teach their undergrads a year or two of completely outmoded Greco-Roman and religious stuff based on bad metaphysics, and then they manage, near the end, if the student hasn't dropped out, to throw in an introduction to formal logic and actual modern philosophizing. This does a lot to explain why so many highly-educated people believe in outmoded stuff based on bad metaphysics when it comes to philosophy: it's what was taught in their classes!

bobwaycott 11y ago
> This does a lot to explain why so many highly-educated people believe in outmoded stuff based on bad metaphysics when it comes to philosophy: it's what was taught in their classes! How many of these highly educated people who believe in outmoded stuff based on bad metaphysics when it comes to philosophy actually took >1 philosophy courses that helped them arrive at these ideas? I am willing to wager vanishingly few. More likely, they never engaged much philosophy at all, and certainly didn't learn anything about metaphysics, epistemology, etc. They're probably just basing these outmoded ideas on intuition, received beliefs from childhood, and various other sources.

mcguire 11y ago

Neat. I checked UT Austin and found Dan Bonevac was teaching one session of intro. (Bonevac is the once and future chair of the department and a very good teacher.) The textbook (which he co-wrote) looks very good. This is the TOC for th first section, Ethics Ethics 1 Ethics in the Philosophical Traditions of India 1.1 Karma and dharma in Hindu thought 1.1.1 From The Bhagavad Gita 1.2 The Bhakti Movement 1.2.1 Akka Mahadevi 1.2.2 Janabai 1.2.3 Lalla 1.2.4 Mirabai 1.3 Early Buddhism 1.3.1 The Buddha, from The First Sermon 1.3.2 From The Dhammapada 1.4 Songs of the Buddhist Nuns 1.4.1 From Psalms of the Sisters 1.5 Buddhist Virtues 1.5.1 From The Lankavatara Sutra 1.6 Jainism 1.6.1 From the Acaranga Sutra 1.7 The Skepticism and Materialism of Charvaka 1.7.1 From Sarva-Darsana-Samgraha 2 Chinese Ethics 2.1 The Virtue Ethics of Confucius 2.1.1 Confucius, from The Analects 2.2 The Intuitionism of Mencius 2.2.1 From Mencius 2.3 Xunzi’s Pessimistic View of Human Nature 2.3.1 Xunzi, from “That the Nature is Evil” 2.4 Confucian and Neo-Confucian Women Writers 2.4.1 Ban Zhao, from Precepts for My Daughters 2.4.2 Ban Zhao, “Traveling Eastward” 2.4.3 Li Qingzhao, from Hou hsu 2.4.4 Li Qingzhao, from Complete Poems 2.5 The Virtue Ethics of Daoism 2.5.1 Laozi, from Dao-de-Jing 2.6 Daoist Women Writers 2.6.1 Yu Xuanji, from Poems 2.6.2 Sun Bu-er, from Poems 3 Ancient Greek Ethics 3.1 Socrates on Virtue 3.1.1 Plato, from Laches 3.2 Plato’s Conception of Virtue 3.2.1 Plato, from the Republic 3.3 Aristotle on Virtue 3.3.1 Aristotle, from Nicomachean Ethics 4 Medieval Christian, Jewish, and Islamic Ethics 4.1 The Ethics of the Fathers 4.1.1 From the Babylonian Talmud 4.2 Augustine on Weakness of Will 4.2.1 Augustine, from Confessions 4.2.2 Augustine, from On the Trinity 4.3 Al-Farabi on Happiness 4.3.1 Al-Farabi, from The Attainment of Happiness 4.4 Maimonides on Happiness and Virtue 4.4.1 Moses Maimonides, from Guide of the Perplexed 4.5 Aquinas on Law and Virtue 4.5.1 St. Thomas Aquinas, from Summa Theologica 4.6 St. Catherine of Siena on the Paradoxes of Wisdom 4.6.1 Letter to Monna Alessa Dei Saracini 4.6.2 Letter to the venerable religious brother Antonio of Nizza, of the Order of the Hermit Brothers of St. Augustine at the wood of the lake 4.7 Christine de Pizan’s Feminism 4.7.1 Christine de Pizan, from The Treasury of the City of Ladies 4.8 Virtue in St. Teresa of Avila 4.8.1 St. Teresa of Avila, from The Ways of Perfection 5 Ethics in Modern Philosophy 5.1 Princess Elizabeth’s Critique of Reason in Ethics 5.1.1 Elizabeth to Descartes—The Hague, August 16, 1645 5.1.2 Elizabeth to Descartes—The Hague, September 13, 1645 5.1.3 Elizabeth to Descartes—Riswyck, September 30, 1645 5.1.4 Elizabeth to Descartes—The Hague, April 25, 1646 5.2 Hume’s Empiricist Ethics: From Is to Ought 5.2.1 David Hume, from A Treatise of Human Nature 5.3 Kant’s Deontology 5.3.1 Immanuel Kant, from Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals 5.4 Madame de Stael on the Passions 5.4.1 Madame de Stael, from Influence of the Passions upon the Happiness of Individuals and of Nations 5.5 Utilitarianism 5.5.1 John Stuart Mill, from Utilitarianism 6 African Ethics 6.1 The Ethiopian Enlightenment 6.1.1 Zera Yacob, from The Treatise of Zera Yacob 6.2 The Communitarian Utilitarianism of the Akan 6.2.1 Kwame Gyekye, from An Essay in African Philosophy: The Akan Conceptual Scheme 6.3 East African Islamic Ethics 6.3.1 Kai Kresse, from Philosophizing in Mombasa http://bonevac.info/301/Introduction_to_Philosophy/Description.html http://bonevac.info/301/Introduction_to_Philosophy/Descripti...