An idea for a seminar

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I was musing the other day about the possibilities for changing higher education. I am fond of a seminar model in which there are about 6 to 8 students. The professor assigns material and in each class period a student presents a paper on that material, which is discussed by everyone in the seminar.

With the prospects for institutions this fall up in the air, I was thinking that I could offer a seminar, either this summer or in the fall. The title would be “Ways of knowing,” and it would deal with epistemology. A list of topics:

1. British empiricism and the Quine critique
2. Bayesian rationality
3. Forecasting–Tetlock Superforecasters
4. Complexity–Manzi Uncontrolled
5. Human nature and cultural influence–Pinker The Blank Slate, Harris The Nurture Assumption
6. Human nature and cultural influence–Henrich The Secret of our Success
7. Human nature and cultural influence–Mitchell Innate
8. Cognitive biases–Kahneman Thinking Fast and Slow
9. Cognitive biases–Haidt The Righteous Mind
10. Cognitive biases and motivated reasoning–Kling The Three Languages of Politics
11. Order and design–Don Boudreaux The Essential Hayek

My ideal seminar students would be college age and self-motivated.

16 thoughts on “An idea for a seminar”

  1. This is a fantastic idea. Imagine, with all the innovations that surround us, we return to the teaching methods of Aristotle as the best way forward.

  2. FWIW
    Pinker/ Harris/ Henrich/ Mitchell (don’t know haven’t read it) are maybe a bit the same ground, I personally found “Nurture Assumption’ a bit thin. Henrich definitely, dynamite

    Following Haidt/ Kling. One from: “Road to somewhere”- Goodhart (UK centric), “Revolt of the public”- Gurri, “The decadent society”- Douhat, “Identity”- Fukuyama.

    My 2c

  3. Arnold,

    Might you consider offering also a graduate or professional version of the seminar?

    PS: A useful handbook is Jon Elster, Explaining Social Behaviour, 2nd, revised edition (Cambridge U. Press, 2015). Unlike the books on your list, this one isn’t a monograph to discuss in a week; it’s a thread to weave across a semester.

    PPS: If inquiry about history deserves a week in the syllabus, then C. Behan McCullagh, Justifying Historical Descriptions (Cambridge U. Press, 1984/2009) is a neglected classic. It’s worth the price of admission just for the summary of criteria in ‘arguments to the best explanation of available evidence.’

  4. Manzi’s “Uncontrolled” is one of my personal favorites on the list:

    “This statement is not to make the trivial point that social sciences are not like physics in some ineffable sense, but rather that the social sciences have not produced a substantial body of useful, nonobvious, and reliable rules that would allow us to predict the effect of such proposed government programs. I believe that recognizing this deep uncertainty should influence how we organize our political and economic institutions. In the most direct terms, it should lead us to value the freedom to experiment and discover workable arrangements through an open-ended process of trial and error.”

  5. Question for the ASK audience:

    Best books or articles to fill my knowledge gaps on the following two topics on the list?

    1. British empiricism and the Quine critique
    2. Bayesian rationality

    Thanks in advance for sharing.

      • These links are definitely worthy of a blog post on Bob Loblaw’s Law Blog. Thank you!

        Barry Zuckerkorn and Tobias Funke got (somewhat justifiably) banned from a certain blog (that rhymes with ASK), so Mr. Loblaw was summoned instead.

        No habla espanol!

        https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mwWAsNZTnug

    • Re: Bayesian rationality.

      Perhaps start with:

      Jon Elster, short section about “Rational beliefs,” at pp. 244-246 of his handbook (listed in my comment above). See also Elster’s brief discussion of social epistemology (rationality, rumors, collective action, snowballing) esp. at pp. 395-396.

      C. Behan McCullagh, section about “Bayes theorem,” at pp. 57-64 of his book, Justifying Historical Descriptions.

      The online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has an overview by William Talbot:
      https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology-bayesian/

    • You seem to know more about this. Can you help me? How useful is it to read the first chapters of Jaynes’ book, Probability Theory: The Logic of Science (2003)? It looks interesting.

  6. Without exception, all of my most memorable classes from college and law school were seminars that followed this format.

  7. With an epistemology based on “ “Practice is the Sole Criterion for the Truth,” it is obvious why the ChiComs will win the war for global control.

  8. An excellent grad seminar I took had about 20 students, and each week, a different team of 2 presented that week’s material and led the discussion. The deal was that if you were leading that week, you had to meet with the professor a few days before (if memory serves, we met on a Friday and class was on a Tuesday) to preview your planned lesson to the professor and ask any questions.

    It’s a good way to make sure each student masters at least some portion of the material and also gets practice leading a grad seminar.

  9. This is amazing—definitely do an essay for Heterodox Academy or Academic Questions outlining what this would look like. I would be inclined to apply to do it as an honors elective at my college. Bob Maranto, University of Arkansas

  10. I could read all of those books if I had a quarter of just this seminar. Having already read at least some of those books before.

    Ambitious is right.

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