Philosophy in College Beyond the Philosophy Major
It’s not just budget cuts that are leading some colleges and universities to get rid of their philosophy major programs. Sometimes its legislation.
[Untitled (dry wall hammer) by Jim Dine]
It’s unlikely that Indiana will be the only state to adopt such a measure (perhaps other states already have?).
Legislative, budgetary, and cultural threats have some people thinking about how philosophy can maintain a curricular presence on campus in the absence of a dedicated major program.
Some have suggested and implemented cross-curricular programming, such as “ethics across the curriculum” initiatives (see, for example, “Philosophers and Embedded Ethics“). At the same time, such programs have come in for some criticism (see, for example, “The Counterfeiting of the Humanities“). Perhaps philosophers need to consider the role of philosophy in their institution’s core curriculum or general education requirements. Maybe there needs to be extracurricular philosophy as well.
The topic will be the subject of an upcoming conference put on by the Prindle Institute of Ethics at DePauw University. “Philosophy Beyond the Major: A Conference for Faculty and Administrators” will be taking place in December and registration for it is still open. The aim of the conference is to “explore how philosophical thinking can be meaningfully integrated with other disciplines—and how we can communicate its value beyond the traditional major.” Check it out.
In the meanwhile, discussion of the problem and options for addressing it are welcome here.
From what I understand, it used to be the case, mostly, that science majors would take one or two courses in the history of their discipline. If we could revive that tradition (a victim, perhaps of the so-called Science Wars), philosophers doing History & Philosophy of Science (HPS) or Science and Technology Studies (STS) might have a place. I could imagine such a philosopher being attached to history or sociology departments, if not to a science department.
It might be beneficial both to the sciences and to HPS/STS. Generally — and there are, happily, plenty of exceptions — the former have tended, when they philosophize, toward naïve, triumphalist narratives about science, while the latter have tended toward hyperbolic, debunking narratives. Each could use a dose of the other.
The broader public might benefit as well, as a shared understanding of how science as a human endeavor actually works filters out into the public as students enter industry and the corporate world.
This is just one suggestion. And it should go without saying that I don’t want a world where philosophy of science is the only philosophy.
Philosophy works .Why try to reinvent the wheel.
Yes.
On the one hand, the dominant side in Iran — that is, the Islamic Republic and its proponents (including Islamists, Islamic reformists, religious intellectuals, the dominant segment of “Iranian academics” in “the social sciences” and “humanities”, leftists, mercenaries of the regime in the West, etc.) — promotes an attitude that “philosophy” is an ideological instrument, namely “Islamic” philosophy, serving the expediency of preserving this theocratic Islamic government.
On the other hand, again in Iran, there are extremely few academics in the social sciences and humanities who have been promoting and striving for secular democratic values, among whom I believe I am one in the field of philosophy.
So, my living experience under this theocratic regime — and its proponents, and the relationship with Westerners, those who benefit from maintaining this totalitarian and theocratic regime — and my academic background and thoughts have led me to this idea: philosophy is not a part of the humanities; rather, philosophy is an independent science and form of knowledge.
Yes
How can you not do philosophy out of the philosophy department? What’s the point? Teaching and learning how to apply philosophy way of thinking and development of ideas is crucial in every subject and discipline outside of its own department, not to mention philosophy in real life, e.g. theraputical and educational settings
At some point you have to stop trying to survive in a system that is a race to the bottom and instead outright criticize and oppose the system. At some point there has to be a banding together of all the humanities to oppose the outright assault on higher education and the liberal arts.
In Denmark, all university students take a course in Videnskabsteori og etik – Philosophy of science and ethics. I work at the Centre for Science Studies at Aarhus University, and our teaching responsibities in the Centre are to teach these courses to all the science and engineering students at AU. I regularly teach the chemistry and medical chemisty students – and the course is designed for them, with examples drawn from chemistry. So when I teach about the possibility of revolutions in science, we talk about the changes in chemistry that occurred during the early 20th C (the discovery of isotopes and the ordering of the elements by their atomic number). These courses are rewarding to teach, and many students enjoy them (though many do not see the relevance to their study program). But teaching only science students has also changed how I see philosophy of science. I have always leaned toward philosophy of science in practice (PSP) – I am even more committed to this way of doing philosophy of science.
Suppose that a USA Philosophy department offers several BA and BS degrees, e.g.,
BA Philosophy
BA Philosophy and Law
BA Philosophy and Applied Ethics
BS Philosophy and AI
BS Logic and Philosophy
If funding authorities use six-digit USA-Federal CIP {Classification of Instructional Programs) codes to define “program,” then they might require that each of these six programs meets the same enrollment threshold, even though in aggregate, they average over that threshold, there is no significant added cost to the department from administering those six programs, and having programs so-differentiated is ‘good advertising’ at least in the sense that having such an array of programs increases the total number of Philosophy majors. CIP codes do not necessarily provide an accurate description of what constitutes a program for purpose of Return on Investment (ROI) analysis.
https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds/cipcode/browse.aspx?y=55
38) PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGIOUS STUDIES.
• 38.00) Philosophy and Religious Studies, General.
◦ 38.0001) Philosophy and Religious Studies, General.
• 38.01) Philosophy.
◦ 38.0101) Philosophy.
◦ 38.0102) Logic.
◦ 38.0103) Ethics.
◦ 38.0104) Applied and Professional Ethics.
◦ 38.0199) Philosophy, Other.
• 38.02) Religion/Religious Studies.
◦ 38.0201) Religion/Religious Studies.
◦ 38.0202) Buddhist Studies.
◦ 38.0203) Christian Studies.
◦ 38.0204) Hindu Studies.
◦ 38.0205) Islamic Studies.
◦ 38.0206) Jewish/Judaic Studies.
◦ 38.0299) Religion/Religious Studies, Other.
• 38.99) Philosophy and Religious Studies, Other.
◦ 38.9999) Philosophy and Religious Studies, Other.
I don’t know how the Indiana law was implemented, but even if it did not use CIP codes, they have been used elsewhere and may yet be used in other states or universities.
A university that adopts the Delaware model to set cost baselines for the purpose of determining ROI will use CIP codes to define “program.” https://ire.udel.edu/cost/getting-started/fee_schedulenew/ (Also, access to the Delaware data is expensive and limited; there is no guarantee that departments will have access.)
Hi David. You have highlighted one of the problems with the Indiana legislation. We had to close 52 programs, on paper, in my university. But very many of the cases were like your example: it *seemed* like there were more programs than there were, because some disciplines introduced fine distinctions for various purposes. A few examples: the different degrees in math education, actuarial science, and pure math now need to be combined into *one* math degree with different tracks; biochemistry had to merge back into general chemistry, etc. etc. [I’m not in those departments, so I’m not really up-to-date on these proposals and my examples need a pinch of salt].
Legislators don’t understand how any of this works, so they’re making unnecessary tasks for us. This is not to mention that there was good reason in the first place to have separate degrees in actuary and biochemistry. But Philosophy is a different story, because to save it as a BA we’d need to merge with a different discipline.
Gen Ed will not save you. It may buy you time but it will not save you.
After 20 years of arguing that all humanities courses are equal because the content doesn’t matter because they are good for “soft skills”, philosophy is fungible in the minds of admin with English and history, and those departments are bigger and will hire adjuncts in a hot minute. Add to that concurrent enrollment driving down Gen Ed enrollments and the case for the major disappears.
That matters. Losing the major is usually the trigger that allows them to cull tenured faculty lines (“no longer within the mission.”). That’s why they’re all now moving to “numbers of graduates per year”, a metric that didn’t matter before 2023.
Where you might fare better: upper division service courses (usually applied ethics) for bigger majors on campus.
Ba philosophi
When I studied philosophy, at the BA level it was compulsory to choose for a minor which was in my case “political and social science”. Other options that time were e.g. religion, law, history etc.
At the MA level I studied at the University of Ghent, known for its strong emphasis on ethics.