Question How do you think technology will affect the teaching and practice of philosophy? During my undergraduate degree (in philosophy), I took notes in numerous classes on a laptop and could download papers from a variety of journals as PDF. I have seen numerous academic perspectives regarding technology and learning - from Bert Dreyfus' idea that the podcast of his lectures at Berkeley on philosophy and literature reduced class attendance, to law schools having "laptops off" sessions to science professors encouraging (or even requiring) graduate students to blog about their lab work. I even saw a theory that ethical theories are implicitly tied to the technology of their time - the printing press linking with Kant, utilitarianism, Mill-style liberalism, the mass media of television, radio and newspapers doing the same for Rawls and Nozick. And, of course, many philosophy professors like Brian Leiter now have blogs and some have podcasts too. At technical conferences, we use technology to provide things like "backchannels" during discussions where the topic is discussed during the talk - people post links, argue, throw insults around and involve outside experts. It is a sort of live peer review. A speaker recently came onto chat during a conference for some informal pre-talk peer review. Would you consider having a backchannel chat running in the background (or perhaps broadcast up on a screen) during, oh, Introduction to Metaphysics? As someone who is an avid user (and amateur programmer) of technology and a prospective philosophy graduate student, I would be interested in specific anecdotes or perspectives that you have on how the philosophy classroom and the daily practice of philosophy professors is going to adapt or cope with the shift to the Internet. In short, could the Internet spark a significant shift in philosophy as it is currently studied and practiced?

Accepted:
December 15, 2007

Comments

Computers have found their way into philosophy over the lasttwenty years or so, though philosophers disagree about the significance of thisfact for philosophy itself. Many philosophers see technology merely as an aidto productivity. There probably aren’t many professional philosophers who stilluse typewriters; most use computers for writing, and e-mail and the web for scholarlycommunication. The use of “Web 2.0” tools, such as blogs, wikis, and the likehave been adopted by still a minority of philosophers, and there remains a fairdegree of skepticism about the usefulness of such tools for research purposes.The availability of online access to many journals is a great help, thoughaccess and availability varies widely by institution, and by journal. There areonly a handful of “online only” journals. No established hard-copy journal thatI know of has gone exclusively online, though most have made back issuesavailable electronically, often through jstor.org or other aggregators. Use ofthe web by scholarly societies varies. The American Philosophical Associationprovides information for members (including Jobsfor Philosophers) through itswebsite (http://www.apa.udel.edu/apa/index.html)but one still can’t join or renew membership online. Specialty sites, such asthis one, and blogs like Certain Doubts(http://fleetwood.baylor.edu/certain_doubts/)and Pea Soup (http://peasoup.typepad.com/peasoup/)have strong followings.

Digital technology has had a significant “back-office”impact on journals, publishing generally, and conferencing. Many journals andphilosophical conferences allow electronic submission of manuscripts. Somerequire it. Manuscript handling for books is largely done electronically, withe-mail still the most widely used method for sharing files. Some conferencesprovide electronic pre-prints of papers in advance of the conference. Occasionallyteleconferencing is used. At an international conference I helped organize in Tokyo, we beamed in a speaker with high quality real-timevideo from the U.S.who would have otherwise been unable to present. I think that most philosophers would find theidea of back-channel online discussion unattractive. It is expected thatconferees will attend to the presenter, and will reserve comments for theallotted discussion. Most philosophersstill read prepared talks, and few use multi-media aids. Laptop use amongconferees during sessions is still rare, in my experience.

As a faculty member at a liberal artscollege, I can report that faculty as a whole don’t enthusiastically embracedigital technology in teaching. It’s probably somewhat generational. There arestill many faculty who came of age before the widespread use of computers, andare not enthusiastic users exploring the cutting edge. As easy as computers are to use these days,innovation requires a certain comfort level with technology, and often facultyare aware that they are less comfortable with technology than their students.But innovation is occurring, and there’s a good deal of inter-institutionalcollaboration. One example is an organization called NITLE (National Institutefor Technology and Liberal Education – htttp://www.nitle.org)Some faculty use social software in teaching. I have made extensive use ofonline discussion forums in some of my courses. As the quality of such toolsimproves and the tools themselves become easier to use in open-source packagessuch as moodle (http://www.moodle.org) Iexpect that we will slowly see wider adoption. In upper division courses it’seasier than ever to find and assign and make available relevant journalarticles. One isn’t constrained to the offerings in a particular anthology. I have also found the use of instantmessaging services for “virtual office hours” to be very effective. Theseactivities and services only work well when they are carefully planned andcircumscribed. For example, in the courses in which I use them, I makeparticipation in online discussion forums a required part of the course work,with clear expectations for contributions. When I offer virtual office hours, Iprovide clear guidelines for students about both my availability and theexpected scope of such real-time discussions. For example, I won’t discuss duedates, extensions, and other business matters during virtual office hours.

You ask whether the Internet will “spark a significant shiftin philosophy as it is currently studied and practiced.” In some sense, theshift has already occurred. I doubt that most philosophers working twenty-fiveyears ago could have imagined the extent to which networked computation wouldfigure into philosophical communication. But the question of whether theInternet and digital technology broadly construed will change the way we dophilosophy in some fundamental sense, is a more difficult question to answer.Much of philosophical practice is unchanged by digital technology. We’re stillreading papers and books, evaluating arguments, and giving talks, gettingcomments, and writing papers and books. The technology helps us do this. But itdoesn’t appear to change the methods or subject matter itself. However, in thebroader context of scientific and cultural change, the larger question iswhether digital technology has changed scientific (and other) inquiry. If ithas, insofar as philosophy is a consumer of scientific ideas, and aninterpreter of conceptual change, then philosophy would also undergo somesignificant change.

I couldn't resist adding to Saul's thorough response. The combination of technology and philosophy raises many issues, of which two have intrigued me particularly, both of which were inspired by observing the online interactions of my teenagers. First is how the real-time communication technology so embedded in young people's social practices can be used in teaching philosophy. The second pertains to Saul's comment (above) about philosophy's role as an interpreter of conceptual change: I believe technology is very definitely shifting some of our standard philosophical concepts, especially in ethics (though this "especially" may be a reflection of my own specialization).

Like Saul, I've put some of the more casual forms of computer-mediated communication to use in my classes with great success, including an instant messaging account that I also call "virtual office hours" (here I thought I'd invented the term!). My students love it, especially when they're studying for exams, working on papers, or want to pursue a line of philosophical inquiry that they didn't feel comfortable bringing up in class (due to time or embarrassment constraints). I'm also on my university's facebook network, courtesy of one of my earliest students, who promised it would enhance my teaching effectiveness...and she seems to have been right (for reasons that I'm still pondering; see below). From the facebook, students who choose can visit my blog, which treats of various philosophical issues in ways they aren't normally treated by the coursework, and which seems to have sparked a gratifying amount of philosophical interest where there was none before. Also like Saul, I've instituted a few simple rules, though mine are self-imposed: for example, I will not request "buddy" or "friends" status with any student, though I will accept such a request from any; and if I am not a student's facebook friend, I will not visit his or her profile. I haven't found it necessary (so far) to circumscribe topics that I will discuss with students online; and if I've signed into IM, I'm fair game (though I do sometimes filter conversations with Away messages like, "Grading exams; please message with urgent questions only").

The second facet, the one I'm still pondering and still writing about, is the way electronically-mediated socialization is reshaping concepts like personhood, identity, integrity and privacy. For instance, people can gain a "rounder" (to use a literary term meaning fuller, more multi-faceted) familiarity with someone more easily than before, and this can be a very good thing...but it can also be bad, especially when the electronic data used to round out the person is in error or not intended for public consumption. As stated in recent New York Times Sunday Magazine article (describing for readers of my generation the younger generation's facility with online self-revelation), "Their concept of privacy is different from yours." Electronic communication leaves both the identity of the sender and the meaning of the communication subject to radical indeterminacy. A single embodied person can maintain two or more separate online personae, and two or more embodied persons can share one online persona. Interactional partners can be blocked, ignored or deleted -- or investigated, traced or tracked -- without their knowledge. All of these features of technology change the parameters within which we decide how we ought to be toward each other and deserve, in my opinion, serious philosophical investigation.

Oh, and one more brief comment, an anecdote: Saul noted that "[m]ost philosophersstill read prepared talks, and few use multi-media aids." This is quite true, at philosophy meetings, but can be a source of considerable anxiety for the philosopher invited to present at interdisciplinary conferences. I was fortunate to be on the program for the Society for Business Ethics annual meeting this past summer, where I expected to read my paper, without any multi-media enhancement, the way I always did. I soon discovered that everyone else -- except for the Presidential Address, on which level my paper was definitely not -- seemed to have PowerPoints, about which slides they spoke conversationally. Luckily, I'd made the acquaintance of a fellow philosopher who also happened to be a KPMG consultant, and he converted my paper into a very polished Keynote (Mac version of PowerPoint), which he operated remotely from his PDA, wowing the attendees -- and especially, me.