Greg Jesson

I went to a lecture given by Dr. Greg Jesson from the philosophy department on Skepticism. I was really interested in the lecture because he was arguing for a position on skepticism that I tend to agree with. I was curious what he had to say on the matter and how he would argue his position.

Much of what he had to say was a set up for his argument. He was assuming that some people in the audience had little to no experience in philosophy. So he started out describing what skepticism was - the epistemological claim that no one can know anything. Then he went on to explain why skepticism is wrong. He went down the line, premise by premise building support for his thesis. The argument was very straight forward and fairly easy to understand if you had any familiarity with the topic. Philosophy is one of those things that you have to break your mind into, so if you have never exercised your mind in that way it will take some stretching before you get it.

To make things clear, Dr. Jesson used an overhead projector to display the layout of his argument. He had about 10 pages of notes to put up. It actually turned out to be a very bland lecture. The were too many words in paragraph form on his notes and the argument was so basic that it didn't really bring about any radical thoughts and discussions. He also sounded like he was yelling the entire time. I think all these things added up to an unfortunately boring lecture. I think it would have been better to have clearer notes and a more exciting thesis - one that cut across the grain rather than with it.

I think this is applicable to teaching in the sense that appeal and excitement matter. If what your teaching is not necessarily excited, it is your job as a teacher to find the excitement in it. Also, don't put up notes in paragraph form because there is no way that students can read all of them and listen to what you are saying.