Yearly Seminar on Teaching Philosophy

The next session of the Yearly Seminar on Teaching Philosophy will be hosted by Rita José Dias & Dina Mendonça. The session, entitled Application of Lewis Carroll’s Logic Game to promote Logic in Philosophy, will be face-to-face with online transmission, and will take place in room A101 (Tower A) of NOVA FCSH, at 6 pm.

To join the session via Zoom, use this link.

Abstract

Logic can be felt as one of the most difficult units to teach of the philosophy curriculum of secondary education in Portugal. This is due to the abstract nature of the subject and the way it difficult for students to adhere to the topic. In addition, meta-theoretical questions increase their difficulty for both students and teachers. Questions such as logical pluralism, the problem of the relationship between a logic and its justification, the reflection on the possibility of revising logical procedures and the way logic is at the basis of what legitimizes reasoning as rational, can plague the classroom without ever being addressed directly.

Lewis Carroll is a key figure in the history of logic, whose contributions can amplify pedagogical strategies. In The Game of Logic (1886), Lewis Carroll shows how through a game it is possible to promote the practice of logical exercises with less resistance. The ambitious goal is to increase the logical pedagogical tools accessible to both teachers and students. Firstly, the game can be used and applied outside the classroom, giving students a way to see the effective use of logic in real life, and secondly, it gives teachers the opportunity to provide a summary of the historical picture of the development of logic. Carroll’s game can also be used in other contexts of the schools year to test argumentation in different thematic units of the curriculum, such as Hume’s induction problem or St. Thomas Aquinas’ cosmological argument, in order to identify its formal structure.
We conclude by reinforcing the luminous quality of logic that, as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland had already shown, helps people think well precisely in the moments when the world makes itself feel more absurd.

More information available in Portuguese.

Yearly Seminar

The Yearly Seminar on Teaching Philosophy aims to create a discussion group on the teaching of philosophy, in continuity with the Masters on Philosophy Teaching and in order to include all those who are interested in thinking together about the teaching of Philosophy.

The Seminar will be divided into two parts, the 1st Part consisting of a theoretical presentation (ideally with application in the classroom context) and the 2nd Part in the discussion and sharing of issues in the Classroom (difficulties, problems, solutions, adaptations, etc.).

The Seminar will be monthly. Sessions will be in Portuguese and will last 1h30m.

Organisation

Dina Mendonça (ArgLab/PAIS)
Luís Manuel Bernardo (EPLAB)

This seminar will take place within the scope of the activities of the research group Philosophy and argumentation in society (PAIS), coordinated by Dina Mendonça.