Videos, Audios
After How We Argue: What comes next?
Discover Deduction and the 10 Box Model
Hurray for ThinkerAnalytix's course, How We Argue! I'm a convert; I require it of all my undergrads. And now what? What should I have students do after they’ve completed the class?
I begin by describing four persistent problems that HWA helps to address. Students tend to be uncritical, uncharitable, undemocratic, and lonely. But even after HWA they struggle to apply their skills to extended argumentative essays. Reading texts of 1000 words or more requires skills that are only implicit in How We Argue. We can help students learn to smoke out of complex essays an author's main claim, hidden premises, objections, and rebuttals.
A method I’ll call Discover Deduction teaches students to work with their opponents on a common task: discovering valid deductive arguments for an essay's main claim. A method I’ll call the 10 Box Model gives them a mental template with which to analyze any controversial argument. In this talk I’ll explain both methods, discuss potential shortcomings, and note some preliminary achievements. I conclude by describing a large quasi-randomized trial at NC State University to assess How We Argue's effectiveness.
The problem: My students’ thinking tends to be uncritical, uncharitable, undemocratic, and lonely. They also struggle to identify a speaker’s or text’s argument: its main claim, hidden premises, objections, and rebuttals. And they lack confidence in their evaluation of the argument’s soundness.
The solution: A method I call Discover Deduction teaches students to work with opponents to discover valid deductive arguments for each side’s main claim. I explain the method, discuss its shortcomings, and note its achievements. I conclude by describing a large quasi-randomized trial at NC State University assessing the method's effectiveness.
Can a cow think about her future? presentation at the Summer Institute on the Other Minds Problem: Animal Sentience and Cognition, University of Quebec at Montreal, June 26 - July 6, 2018.
Feeling matters, presentation at the Summer Institute on the Evolution and Function of Consciousness, University of Quebec at Montreal, June 29th to July 11th, 2012.
Interview with Tom Regan about his 1988 Los Angeles "War on Vivisection" speech (interview conducted at NC State University, April 2014).
Audios
Tom Regan's The Case for Animal Rights (2023). An essay written for the audiobook edition of The Case for Animal Rights. Martin Rowe of the Culture and Animals Foundation (CAF) invited me to make some personal observations about Tom's place in the history of animal rights. CAF marked the 40 year anniversary of the publication of the book with its first audio edition. Purchase the book through CAF or Amazon.
From Genetically Modified Crops to Fish and Farm Animals, KCRW radio, Aug. 20, 2010. A podcast hosted by Warren Olney.
Autonomy, Singularity, Creativity, a blog reporting on the culminating conference of this 3-year project at the National Humanities Center, Nov. 13 -15, 2008.