Mission Statement

The philosophy program offers courses in three general areas: 1) Liberal Education, which teaches the ideas of influential past and contemporary thinkers who have sought to understand the world in its most fundamental aspects and our experience of it. These ideas examine the nature of truth, the limits of knowledge, what we count as real, standards of right and wrong, beauty and world religions. 2) Methodology emphasizes methods of sound practical reasoning, deductive logic and language analysis. 3) Application critically analyzes non-philosophical disciplines.

For the purposes of the outcomes assessment process, one might divide up the learning objectives of philosophy into two broad categories: Knowledge Of and Knowledge How.

KNOWLEDGE OF:

Philosophy is a broad discipline which touches on an array of historical figures and ideas in addition to a number of topics. As such, the following division is proposed: 1. Historical knowledge, 2. Topical knowledge. Historical knowledge would include knowledge of a selection of the main ideas presented in the history of philosophy. Topical knowledge would include knowledge of the various issues which fuel philosophical speculation, both historically and in the contemporary world.

KNOWLEDGE HOW:

This aspect of philosophical training is much more difficult than the previous category to delineate with clarity. The idea is that one of the things which one gains through a philosophical education is a significant increase in analytical abilities, broadly conceived. That this occurs is not at issue as study after study concerning standardized tests confirm. (See, for example, the extensive study of test scores conducted by the U.S. Department of Education in 1985.) The question to be addressed here, however, is what, exactly, is increased and how, short of subjecting our graduates to standardized tests, are we to measure it?