My teaching experience is of 14 years in total. I have taught Introduction to philosophy, Ancient Philosophy, Logic, Ethics, while the content of Political Philosophy has centrally figured in my courses of Introduction to Philosophy and Ethics. I have taught two seminars in Political Philosophy: one dealing with Rawls' Theory of Justice, and another on Nozick's Anarchy, State and Utopia, and the criticism made to him by G.A. Cohen in Self-ownership, Freedom and Equality. Furthermore, I have taught a Seminar on the Epistemology of Quine. I have also been given the opportunity to teach History of Medieval Philosophy, History of Modern Philosophy, and Philosophy of Language a couple of times.
I have taught to diverse students in several schools, comprising: Philosophy, Letters and Educational Sciences, Sociology, Anthropology, Theology, Civil, Electrical and System Engineering, and Business.
My areas of competence are: Logic, History of Ancient Philosophy, Contemporary Analytic Philosophy, Ethics and Political Philosophy. I feel comfortable teaching all these courses, to which Special Topics in the Philosophy of Language, and Introduction to Philosophy must be added.
My long
term aim is to become a generalist, being familiar with all main
philosophical problems. I do not want to lose the systematic character
of philosophy: the answers it gives to several questions in various
subdisciplines must be amenable to be coherently integrated into a
single theory, so that they all share a family resemblance.
What do I expect my students to achieve after taking a philosophy course?
One general purpose such a course should serve is that of showing the student how to deal with a philosophical problem. It is expected that they will learn, by vivid example, how to wrestle with it.
My method of doing philosophy is analytical, which can be characterized by two traits. 1) On the one hand, its rationality. There is no convincing philosophy without argumentation. If one wants to justify an assertion, there is no other way but to reason so that the thesis one wants to defend is the conclusion of an argument. And this is a question of logic, not of intuition nor of experience. There are mechanical rules which help us to decide whether a sentence follows from certain premises. 2) On the other hand, we need to have clear notions to work with. One must define the key concepts one is using by means of pre-theoretical, common sense terms, which are easily understood beforehand. These are in a nutshell the two ingredients making up the essence of any serious and responsible philosophy: definition plus argumentation. I will demonstrate these in my lectures.
However, if philosophers are united in following the methodological desiderata outlined above, they are more obviously separated by the conclusions each arrives at. Authors represent different positions within the philosophical spectrum. And this strife of ideas causes any inquirer to wonder who is right. Each author has made a compelling case in favor of his or her own views. Perhaps the beginner might be perplexed here, without knowing what to think. It is well known that ancient skeptics suspended judgment because the opposing trends were equally appealing, and they could not make up their minds. Yet, my courses will not aim at making the students doubt everything. Quite on the contrary, it will infuse faith in our capacity to make rational options. We only need a strategy that will enable us to overcome our initial quandary.
And here additional methodological guidelines enter the scene, to complement those already given. Which theory should one prefer? If two theories are more or less on a par concerning their empirical adequacy, that is better which is simpler, or has a greater explanatory power. There are criteria which instruct us in the decision making. There is no room for skepticism. One can take a position being to a certain extent confident that one's choice is the least problematic. I will not claim that we arrive at indisputable truths. I am far from such an infallibilism. But we can find arguments that relatively justify us in believing that our theory is the best. Of course it is not at all easy to irrefutably prove this, or perhaps it is even impossible. But we do not aim at unanimity, and divergence of opinions will remain. One sensible goal of a philosophical discussion is that we should participate in a constructive dialog, trying to make it clear where the weak or strong points are, or which dangerous or desirable consequences follow from one or other conception.
As a result, students will engage themselves in the doing of real philosophy. They should have began to acquire the habit of posing problems, critically examining several answers to the question, and then evaluating the pros and cons of each proposal, so that at the end, each student should be able to make an informed and reasoned decision concerning which theory among the alternatives appears to be the most satisfactory according to her or his own lights. The course will be an opportunity and an invitation to reflect upon debatable philosophical topics. It is hoped that, by the end, the students will possess the necessary knowledge to make an enlightened option and rationally ground their own convictions. They may thus expect to gain clarity of thought, and rational understanding.
Concerning Logic,
let me elaborate what my preparation is. While being undergraduate, I
was trained in non classical logics, specially many-valued and
paraconsistent ones, under the guidance of Lorenzo Peña. And while in
Pittsburgh, I had the opportunity to study The Logic of Inconsistency
with Robert Brandom, who co-authored the book with Nicholas Rescher,
with whom I also took a couple of courses. I also studied Advanced
Logic, I and II, with Nuel Belnap, course dealing with metalogical
theorems, and non standard systems extending classical logic.
Immediately after graduating of Licentiate of Philosophy, in 1986, I taught logic twice, in the Human Sciences School of the Pontifical Catholic University of Ecuador, and later, one more time, in its School of Theology. Then, when I moved to the University of Cuenca, I continued teaching the course, for six or seven years, to the students of Civil Engineering and Systems Engineering.
I used to teach the techniques to symbolize natural language sentences, to calculate tautologies in a three-valued logic by reductio ad absurdum, and to deduce theorems both at the propositional and quantificational level. The aim is to critically train the student to acquire the ability to see what consequences follow from certain body of information, or what assumptions must be made in order to infer a given assertion. In any case, the focus is on the argumentative relations between premises and conclusion.
It should be emphasized that the particular brand of many-valued and paraconsistent logic which I favor, the systems Aj and Aq, are strict extensions of classical logic (CL), that is, they contain -under an appropriate interpretation- absolutely all tautologies and all rules of inference of CL, without exception. Therefore, the systems of the family A are not rival of, or deviant with respect to CL. Rather, they constitute a welcome complement to it.
I have taught those problems that are most
likely to engage the student, such as the following. In
Ethics: What is good? Is happiness the supreme value? What are the
criteria determining what we must do? Do I have the right to harm
myself? In Political Philosophy: What is justice? What kind of state is
justified, and what are its functions? How do we justify human rights?
In Philosophical Anthropology: Do we have an immaterial soul, that will
survive the death of the body? What kind of liberty do we have? In
Philosophy of History: Does the history of humankind have some goal
toward which it is moving? In Philosophical Theology: Is evil
compatible with the existence of an almighty, omnibenevolent, and
provident God? If there is time, some questions from ontology or the
theory of knowledge can be reviewed.
All
these
problems are introduced in such a manner that at least two opposing
positions are presented with their underlying motivations. It is
important that students be aware of the different perspectives that
enter in the debate. As a result of being confronted with different
views, students will engage themselves in the doing of real philosophy.
I am concerned with a package of
fundamental questions that are of everybody's concern and interest. I
enumerate some of these. How should we live together? What moral
principles must govern our interaction, not only within a given
society, but also among nations? Is the utilitarian principle correct
(we must do that action which produces the greatest happiness to the
majority, or the one which diminishes the total amount of suffering
more than any other alternative action)? What is justice? Should it be
determined by historical, genetic principles or by patterned norms (to
each according to...)? Does justice require equality of distribution?
What is freedom, and what role does it play within a theory of justice?
What is the final goal we should aim at? What value ought to occupy the
first place in the hierarchy? What are human rights? How do we justify
them? What sort of rights do we have? Are there positive rights to
life, food, health, housing, work, etc? Is there a right to private
property? Is it absolutely inviolable? Under what conditions
appropriation of external resources is right? What kind of state is
legitimate? Is it obliged to redress undeserved inequalities? Is it one
of its functions to warrant the welfare of all its citizens? Is the
state morally required to improve the situation of the worst off, and
to secure them a decent standard of living, by making a redistribution
or by limiting the holdings of the better off? What do we owe to
[distant] others? Do we -individually and collectively- have a duty to
assist others in dire need? Can we extend the criteria for domestic
justice to the global level? What are the conceptions of the human
nature, of men, society, and the possibilities of life that underlie
the major theories? All these pressing questions demand from us an
urgent solution. Political philosophers have assumed the task to
justify whatever social or global institutions are needed to realize
and enhance the values that will be protected.
So
the
course is approached from the perspective of normative philosophy: we
will be concerned with ideals, justice, equality, freedom, rights and
duties. It is a kind of social ethics. It will examine different
manners of conceiving the suppositions and implications of these
values, their relationship, and the basis of our beliefs about them.
Last updated: March 1, 2009