student's guide

Contributing to class discussions is part of your course.
    Why?  Because philosophy above all is conversation, an exchange of ideas.
    However, it is not just any type of conversation.  The purpose is to move our thinking forward.

Contributing to class discussions online has both advantages and disadvantages.

•     The disadvantages are the lack of immediate interaction (I cannot just pick up on what you are saying, even interrupting you if I think I need to) and the inability to get at what you mean by seeing your face or watching your gestures.
•     The advantages are that you have a chance to think through what you want to say (in part because you know that you are not going to be interrupted if you hesitate) and to edit your thoughts before they go out.

Whether it is in the classroom or online, the key is to move our thinking forward.  This is how to do it.

We will call it the FRESH approach.

Focus.  Identify the question that has come up as clearly as possible.

• For instance, you might be asked for your reaction to a situation ("What do you think about the increasing number of single-parent families?"),
• to a statement ("Do you agree with what Plato said about evil being just ignorance?"),
• or to a person's actions ("Did Martin Luther King do the right thing when he took part in an illegal demonstration?").
• Maybe you are being asked to think through the best way either to define a term ("What do we mean by justice?")
• or to apply it ("Should we consider the death penalty to be itself an act of murder?").

Restate.  Think of whatever you say as in some way an answer to a question, then show that you get the point of the question by paraphrasing it (saying it over in your own words).  Often this itself moves things forward by removing some of the ambiguity or vagueness in an original question.

    For instance, for each of the examples above you might think of restatements like the following:

• "You are asking me whether I see the fact that more families have just one parent as a problem?"  (paraphase of"What do you think about the increasing number of single-parent families?")
•  "You want to know whether I accept the idea that no one could really do what he understood to be wrong." (paraphrase of "Do you agree with what Plato said about evil being just ignorance?")
•  "You are asking whether an act of civil disobedience is justified." (paraphrase of ("Did Martin Luther King do the right thing when he took part in an illegal demonstration?")
•  "You want to know what makes something count as an act of justice and maybe not just revenge." (paraphrase of "What do we mean by justice?")
•   "You are asking whether there is a difference between what a society does in punishing a killer and what the killer himself does."  (paraphrase of "Should we consider the death penalty to be itself an act of murder?")

Explore.  Either you are going to attempt an answer to the question or you are going to pose another question that takes us in some way inside the issue.

    For instance, each of the questions above invites us to go inside in these ways:

•         "Is it necessary for a child to have both father and mother present for normal development?"  (This can be seen as an empirical question that might be answered by going to the research available on child development.)
•         "Can something be wrong in one way and right in another so that an individual looks at the same action from different angles?"
•         "Do we mean to talk about whether an individual gets what he deserves in the sense that wrong actions should have uniform punishments?"
•         "Do we have a right to life that is absolute?"

Specify.  As you develop your response you want to see two things.  One is what you are taking for granted (your assumptions or presuppositions) and the other is what seems to be implied by what you are saying.  Above all, what limits are you putting on what you say?
    Let's imagine that you are dealing with Martin Luther King and the concept of civil disobedience.  Maybe you support the idea that King did the right thing, but you need to think of how someone might now ask you whether you would see a difference between acting nonviolently because of a question of conscience and acting violently for the same reason.

    This really is the body of your response.  You want to develop your argument as clearly as possible, using examples to make generalizations more clear.

Halt.  Know when to stop.  Your contribution to a conversation should inspire thoughtful response.  For that reason you should be brief and to the point.   Don't let your emotions run away with you, and  never go on the attack about someone's "real" reason for saying something.  Above all, be courteous and show respect for your classmates even when you disagree with them.

So let's repeat.  If we use the FRESH approach, you make sure that you

• focus on the issue,
• restate what you understand it to be,
• explore your own thoughts about it either by going right to an answer with its basis or you develop another question that might bring us closer to an answer,
• specify what you mean by setting limits on what you mean to take for granted or on what you intend to have follow, and
• halt when you have made your point so as to allow the conversation to keep moving.