Helping Students Become “One-Handed” Writers

There has been a push recently to encourage more “forward facing” philosophy, a long overdue and welcome development in our profession. However, for better or worse, what gets called “public philosophy”– the aim of this push– remains pretty vaguely defined. On the one hand, some argue that public philosophy should have real-world applications, though their critics worry that this amounts to a reductive instrumentalization of philosophy. On the other hand, some argue that public philosophy need only be readable and comprehensible by the general public, but they have critics, too, who worry about a different ilk of reductionism, the kind that plays fast and loose with complex ideas that require philosophical rigor. In my view, both aspirations are admirable, and both criticisms are valid.

See what I just did there? I said, basically, nothing.

For those who regularly grade undergraduate essays in Philosophy, this “one the one hand” / “one the other hand” format is surely familiar, and can be maddening. During his first term in office, President Truman famously complained that whenever he turned to economists for advice, they always gave him an account on the one hand coupled with a contrary account on the other. Truman lamented, “Give me a one-handed economist!”  And I feel his pain.

So, this semester, I tried out an experiment meant to help my students become “one-handed” writers. Before I get to the actual essay assignment, though, I want to say a few things about what I think is at the root of students’ impulse to write like they do.

About decade ago, I wrote a post on this blog decrying what I called “lazy relativism,” or the very common tendency of students (and not just students!) to default to a claim like “what’s true for you is true for you, and what’s true for me is true for me.” In my analysis, which has only been confirmed over and over again since I first offered it, most people for whom this is the default claim aren’t actually relativists. That is, they do NOT believe that whatever they’re saying is both truth and false, nor even that truth itself is relative. Rather, they tend to make this claim when they find themselves in a heated contest of ideas and either (a) come to see any further debate about it as futile, (b) do not want to appear rude or disrespectful of their interlocutor, or (c) want to present themselves as “fair and balanced.”

So, the “lazy” in lazy relativism is really meant to point to the fact that their relativism is not so much avowed– even less so defended– as it is simply chosen as an escape hatch in an uncomfortable conversation.

While I readily acknowledge that not every hill is one to die on, I have a whole spiel that I give my students throughout the semester about lazily adopting relativism simply because they don’t feel like arguing. First, I tell them, it is essential to understand that disagreement, all by itself, does not constitute disrespect. Being able to posit a well-informed claim that you believe to be true, argue for its merits, and argue against the demerits of the opposing position, is the hallmark of a philosophical mind and the only hope for democracy. Second, “fair and balanced” does not mean “takes all comers”; there are positions that can and should be rejected outright, for any number of (scientific, philosophical, historical, moral) reasons that are not matters of opinion or taste. And, finally, the ability to “see both sides” can be a virtue, but it is not a position. The world goes on, people will vote and commit themselves and decide matters. Things both significant and mundane will be resolved in the favor of one side or another. And it will all happen without the influence of those who remain in the nowhere of “both sides.”

Look, I have no interest in cultivating zealots or dogmatists. I genuinely do appreciate the caution, the cultural sensitivity, and the humility that postmillennials bring to sensitive discussions. But, when that caution becomes pathological, as I think we can see it has in our current “post-truth” political climate, it’s time to step in and insist on some training in one-handed writing.

So, here’s what I assigned.

On the day I was to distribute the midterm exam in my Technology and Human Values course this semester, I gave students two lists: one was a list of ten emergent technologies, and the other was a list of ten reasons to be concerned/worried about emergent technologies.  I asked them to rank both lists on a scale of 1-10. For the first list, 1 was “technology I’m most concerned about” and 10 was “technology I’m least concerned about”; for the second list, 1 was “most important reason to be concerned about technology” and 10 was “least important reason to be concerned about technology.”

Then, I gave them 5 minutes to fill out their rankings. Here were the two lists:

TECHNOLOGIES:

• AI / Machine Learning
• Facial Recognition software
• CRISPR
• Autonomous Vehicles
• Social Media Algorithms
• Robotics
• Comprehensive Social Ranking Systems (e.g., Sesame)
• Programmable Matter
• Blockchain / Cryptocurrency
• Nanomedicine

REASONS FOR CONCERN:

• Threat to privacy
• Threat to democracy
• Threat to freedom
• Existential threat (threat to “humanity”)
• Threat to our ability to distinguish true from false
• Unknown or unforeseeable consequences
• Threat to public safety
• Environmental threat
• Threat to religion or religious truths
• Likely to increase social injustice (racism, sexism, homophobia, income inequality, unequal distribution of benefits/risks, etc)

After they completed their rankings– which, by the way, I had them do first in order to force them to think about the tech they were concerned about and the reasons why they were concerned before they knew why I was asking them to think about it– I told them that this exercise was a prelude to their midterm exam. Then, I gave them the instructions for the midterm essay, which were as follows:

(b) “The [Reason] Argument Against [Technology] Is Exaggerated”

These midterm essays have been, by far, the best I’ve ever read.

Op-eds are for one-handed writers, to be sure, and I really wish I had thought to use this format before now. (I told my students the Truman story and emphasized to them that I wanted one-handed writers for this essay.) To briefly return to the nothing I said at the beginning of this post, it is actually my view that essays by professional philosophers today (myself included!) are almost always unnecessarily long, adverb-heavy, and too beholden to the cult of citation. So, when I think of what I would like to see in “public facing” philosophy, it is almost exactly what my students did in this midterm essay: clear,  succinct, position-forward writing, with only the essential evidence included in the body of the argument.

A general rule of thumb for op-eds is that if you’re writing as an expert, your essay should be 20% evidence and 80% opinion, and the opposite percentages if you’re writing as a non-expert. I told my students this, but was pleasantly surprised to see that most of them wrote with “expert” percentages. That’s evidence that they’re taking their learning in this course seriously and thinking of themselves as knowledge-producers and not just recipients of knowledge.

BONUS: for those of you who have struggled to locate a thesis in your students’ essay, I really cannot recommend highly enough the strategy of forcing them to state their thesis right there in the title.

At any rate, I didn’t get a single “both sides” essay, which was a welcome relief. It’s important to give students’ other hand a rest from time to time.