Good afternoon. The first item of business this afternoon is time for reflection. Our time for reflection leader today is Dr Federico Luzzi, outreach and knowledge transfer officer with the philosophy department of the University of Aberdeen.
I have been asked to say a few words about the value of philosophy.
Philosophy invites us to think about some difficult and important questions. To be honest, it also invites us to think about some difficult and not-so-important questions. But always when doing philosophy, we ascend to higher-order thinking: we think about what we think and why we think it. In this way, philosophy serves to continually challenge the views we hold, whether they are reasonable or the result of bias, prejudice or preconception.
While completing my studies, I became interested in the educational value of discussing philosophical questions in groups outside academia. Since then, I have facilitated those discussions with primary school children, school teachers, prisoners, ex-drug users and the general public. I have discovered just how powerful an educational resource such discussions are. That should not be surprising, as studies have demonstrated the intellectual benefits for primary pupils who take part in weekly group philosophy discussions, including higher IQ and greater self-confidence.
It is helpful that many philosophical questions presuppose no prior knowledge. They can be explained to a six-year-old in 30 seconds. For example: do we have an obligation to help people in need, even distant people we have never met? What justifies punishing criminals? Is there a morally significant difference between doing harm and allowing it to happen? The lack of a received view—even experts disagree on central philosophical questions—shifts the focus on to participants, who are encouraged to express their views and justify them with reasons.
I have seen philosophical questions stimulate dazzlingly creative thinking among participants of those group discussions, thinking that is nevertheless regimented by a critical stance. Philosophy, after all, is not a subject where anything goes; whatever is said must be backed up with plausible arguments.
What I find even more important are the social benefits. Doing philosophy in a group setting teaches us that, on difficult issues, there may be several reasonable views other than our own, that disagreement is to be expected and tolerated, that, nevertheless, some views do not stand up to critical scrutiny and should be rejected, and that figuring out what we ought to think about difficult questions is a process best done with others, through discovering, comparing and assessing all available views. Consequently, I think that philosophy is valuable: not just for academics and teachers, not just for primary school children, prisoners and ex-drug users but for everybody. Thank you.
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