Fred Feldman notes that, "It sometimes appears that the quality of our thought on a topic is inversely proportional to the intensity of our emotions concerning that topic." This observation is surely relevant to some philosophy courses, since they often involve trying to get people to think about topics and questions that they would rather not think about (this can especially be the case with topics in ethics and philosophy of religion) and get them try to understand and carefully, patiently and responsibly evaluate arguments in favor of conclusions they might think are false, bad, wrong, reprehensible, awful, etc. A "natural" response to all this, sometimes, is resistance, manifested in a variety of different ways. STUDENT RELATIVISM. 6 TI: Teaching-Philosophy. S 86; 9: 193-205 AU: 0145-5788 SO: IN THIS PAPER I OFFER AN ANALYSIS OF, AND SUGGEST SOME METHODS FOR DEALING WITH, A QUITE PARTICULAR AND PECULIAR PROBLEM IN TEACHING PHILOSOPHY. IT IS, PERHAPS, NOT A PROBLEM ESSENTIAL TO THE DISCIPLINE OR TO ITS TEACHING, BUT IT IS NEVERTHELESS ONE OF THE MOST SERIOUS, PERVASIVE, AND FRUSTRATING PROBLEMS CONFRONTING MOST PHILOSOPHY TEACHERS TODAY. I SPEAK OF THE PROBLEM OF STUDENT RELATIVISM--OR, SR FOR SHORT. IS: METAPHYSICS-; PROFESSOR-; RELATIVISM-; STUDENT-; TEACHING- AB: ENGLISH DE: Journal-Article
I am wondering if anyone knows of any psychological research on this kind of phenomenon, which I think relates to cognitive dissonance. I suspect there must be something out there, even something that directly relates to teaching philosophy or other "controversial issues," but I have yet to find it. But a deeper understanding of this phenomena would surely be helpful in addressing it and helping students develop the cognitive skills and attitudes (and virtues?) that philosophy can teach.
Here's a few things from philosophy that I've found relevant here. First, Richard Feldman on "argument stoppers."
Second, there are a number of articles in Teaching Philosophy on a phenomena called "student relativism," starting with this excellent article by Stephen Satris:
Sunday, May 4, 2008
The Psychology of Resistance?
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Nathan, you're definitely right that resistance to philosophical inquiry seems to originate, in part, in a desire to avoid cognitive dissonance. I think I see this most clearly when I ask students to think about ethical dilemmas: Many of them instinctually want to suggest facts that change the proposed situation so that one horn of the dilemma magically disappears. You certainly want to encourage their attentiveness to the facts of the case, but of course, students who propose these facts seem often to want to make sure there are no hard dilemmas to think about. I.e., with enough jiggering of the facts, there are no hard cases (much the less any bona fide dilemmas) in ethics.
I think it's very difficult to dislodge the notion that learning something always feels good, from beginning to end. The bad news is that cognitive dissonance isn't a nice feeling. The good news is that it's usually a learning opportunity. So how do we help students get from the former to the latter?
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