This paper argues that Plato’s “what-is-T” questions offer a more instructive method for introducing students to philosophy than his use of the Allegory of the Cave. In supporting this claim, the paper presents a Socratic dialogue that illustrates how what-is-T questions along with an answer to said questions via a list (a list-of-T's) can be used as a starting point for introducing philosophy. However, this Socratic dialogue also reveals that this initial answer cannot succeed and so it motivates Plato’s preferred answer which involves defining T by giving its essential characteristics. In addition to providing a summary of this dialogue, the paper responds to the objection that introducing philosophy to students in this way is too challenging for beginning students.

While it is often undesirable and difficult to introduce highly complex arguments in large introductory philosophy classes, it is important to do so at least once in the semester as it challenges students, shows how philosophical debates often go beyond one’s initial intuitions, and illustrates how meaningful answers often turn on close attention to logical minutiae. This paper provides an example of an advanced debate on the free-will response to the problem of evil that can be used in introductory courses in the philosophy of religion. The paper provides a skeleton of two lectures that the author has used (suitable for two fifty-minute lectures and one fifty-minute discussion section) and discusses two common difficulties students face when learning this material.

While it is customary for instructors when teaching a philosophical text to point to where a philosopher lays out their overall plan and then let students fill in the pieces, no such passage exists in Aristotle’s “Nicomachean Ethics.” While many philosophy courses focus on analyzing arguments, Aristotle’s work provides students a unique opportunity to learn how to assemble the parts into a coherent whole. This paper describes an assignment where students are asked to construct a diagram that visually represents the structure of Aristotle’s work. In response to the tremendous success of this assignment, the paper examines the assignment’s precedents, suggests a theoretical basis for its success, and details its practical benefits.

This paper urges the importance of including conditional proof as an inference rule in the teaching of elementary symbolic logic. The paper explains how to make clear to students that conditional proof is valid. This is done by a little proof that shows that hypothetical syllogism (or the chain rule) is both intuitively valid yet redundant. Teaching conditional proof not only aids in a deeper understanding of the meaning of “if” but also provides a strong reminder to the student that they have not proved that the conclusion is true but instead have shown that the conclusion follows from the premises.

This paper takes up and provides three answers to the question “Why study philosophy?” Beginning with a discussion of why this question has been ignored in literature pertaining to the teaching of philosophy, the paper turns to an analysis of what it means to ask about the importance of philosophy, pointing out that the question is ambiguous with other questions like “why should so-and-so study philosophy” or “why does so-and-so study philosophy.” The author then provides three answers that are similar to those provided by Hume: one should study philosophy because it may contribute to the entertainment, instruction, and reformation of mankind. The paper argues for the superiority of these answers over traditional responses and points to the importance of this question in teaching philosophy.