Students sometimes leave introductory courses in philosophy with no deep sense of the connection between the work of Plato and contemporary philosophy, with a view of Plato’s dialogues as a kind of literature, or with a somewhat shallow sense of the thrust of Plato’s philosophy. This paper proposes a pedagogical method that offers students a highly sophisticated understanding of Plato’s philosophy that is both applicable to lower-level survey courses and capable of being delivered in a limited amount of time. By emphasizing the process of dialogue, and that Plato can be understood as a participant in three simultaneous conversations, students are able to access Plato’s work in a more sophisticated manner, one that emphasizes the value of philosophy and its relation to their lives.

This paper assesses the educational benefits of showing films in philosophy courses in four ways. First, a Socratic justification is given for why contemporary films are an effective means for raising philosophical questions, illustrating important philosophical concepts, and making philosophy more accessible. Second, the authors discuss several specific ways that films can be used to teach philosophy in introductory and upper-level courses. Third, the authors describe two ways that films can be effectively incorporated into a course: by showing them during the classroom lecture period and by integrating films with assignments. Finally, the authors respond to four different types of objections to the use of films in the philosophy classroom.

This paper explains how a five minute-segment from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” can be an effective pedagogical tool for distinguishing validity from soundness and for explaining several other concepts relevant to critical thinking courses. After viewing the “We’ve found a witch” scene, students are given a transcript of the sketch and asked to put arguments into a valid form. Once these arguments have been represented, students are charged with determining whether the argument is sound and, if unsound, with determining which of the premises is controversial. The author argues that using this segment has a number of pedagogical benefits as it encourages real live critical thinking, can be used to teach additional critical thinking concepts (e.g. reasoning with analogies), and can help students be more cautious about making over-reaching claims in their own arguments.

Showing that the premises of an argument are not sufficient for (viz., do not entail) a conclusion a conclusion involves citing a counterexample that would show the premises of the argument to be true and the conclusion false. This paper distinguishes counterexamples by analogy (an argument with the same form as argument against which it is advanced but where it is clearly the case that the premises are true and the conclusion is false), counterexamples by possible conjunction (a conjunction of the premises and the negation of the conclusion), and counter-arguments (arguments directed against the truth of the conclusion). After detailing the logical differences between these concepts, the paper describes the pedagogical significance of this distinction and provides an assortment of test exercises for students.