Philosophy and Science Fiction (Phil 331) course
Background: This course has been highly successful. The orientation is different than other philosophy and science fiction courses in three major ways.
The first is that it is not a first year or introductory course. I have tried this, and found that students found it something of a bait and switch, since the rest of their courses in philosophy were so different. Instead, this upper division course is aimed at philosophy majors and minors who have already taken upper division courses and are graduating soon. They will, for the most part, go off in the world and not become professional philosophers. The goal of Phil 331 is to show them how to take the skills in reading, writing, and discussing, that they have already honed in their other courses, and put them to use 'in the wild' on the kinds of material they are likely to encounter in their future. They can use these skills well, and in ways that meaningfully enrich their lives (not just, serve as useful job skills), but sometimes benefit from a nudge in that direction by practicing application of philosophical skills in a new way.
The second major difference is that I did not pair any 'standard' philosophical readings with the sci-fi. We just read these texts, as philosophical. Or, more aptly, read them as philosophers, and did philosophical work on and with them. In past courses, I found that the standard philosophy texts I paired ended up looking half-thought-out and clunky compared to the sci-fi. After helpful discussions with my sometime colleague Jorge Sanchez Perez about what makes a text a philosophical text (that one reads it as such), we just read these books, as making long-forms arguments for e.g. certain views of personal identity, or colonial violence, or language and translation, etc. All of these works were chosen to have multiple different kinds of themes students could pick out, if they had taken social/political philosophy, or phil language, or phil mind, or phil of science, or meta-ethics, and so on.
The third major difference was relying on long-form science fiction/fantasy works. There are many great and philosophically relevant short stories out there. At the same time, sometimes a short story can focus on just one theme or idea, or, can give a kind of thought experiments that leaves many details open or unspecified. In contrast, the longer works, of novel length, have to get more specific about many of the details, and sustain the idea over hundreds of pages in a way that allows the readers to, for example, evaluate counterfactuals set in that world with more consistency among readers.
In terms of general format, the course was divided into roughly three sections. The first involved the most obviously ...
The first is that it is not a first year or introductory course. I have tried this, and found that students found it something of a bait and switch, since the rest of their courses in philosophy were so different. Instead, this upper division course is aimed at philosophy majors and minors who have already taken upper division courses and are graduating soon. They will, for the most part, go off in the world and not become professional philosophers. The goal of Phil 331 is to show them how to take the skills in reading, writing, and discussing, that they have already honed in their other courses, and put them to use 'in the wild' on the kinds of material they are likely to encounter in their future. They can use these skills well, and in ways that meaningfully enrich their lives (not just, serve as useful job skills), but sometimes benefit from a nudge in that direction by practicing application of philosophical skills in a new way.
The second major difference is that I did not pair any 'standard' philosophical readings with the sci-fi. We just read these texts, as philosophical. Or, more aptly, read them as philosophers, and did philosophical work on and with them. In past courses, I found that the standard philosophy texts I paired ended up looking half-thought-out and clunky compared to the sci-fi. After helpful discussions with my sometime colleague Jorge Sanchez Perez about what makes a text a philosophical text (that one reads it as such), we just read these books, as making long-forms arguments for e.g. certain views of personal identity, or colonial violence, or language and translation, etc. All of these works were chosen to have multiple different kinds of themes students could pick out, if they had taken social/political philosophy, or phil language, or phil mind, or phil of science, or meta-ethics, and so on.
The third major difference was relying on long-form science fiction/fantasy works. There are many great and philosophically relevant short stories out there. At the same time, sometimes a short story can focus on just one theme or idea, or, can give a kind of thought experiments that leaves many details open or unspecified. In contrast, the longer works, of novel length, have to get more specific about many of the details, and sustain the idea over hundreds of pages in a way that allows the readers to, for example, evaluate counterfactuals set in that world with more consistency among readers.
In terms of general format, the course was divided into roughly three sections. The first involved the most obviously ...
These are some recommendations for books or movies that could be on the syllabus, or, are just great reads.
First iteration of 331:
Second iteration of 331:
Additional book recommendations for courses like this (or, of interest to philosophers):
First iteration of 331:
- A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine
- A Psalm for the Wildbuilt by Becky Chambers
- Everything Everywhere All At Once (movie)
- Children of Time, Adrian Tchaikovsky
- A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet, Becky Chambers
- Iron Widow, Xiran Jay Zhao
- Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie.
Second iteration of 331:
- Babel, R.F. Kuang
- Bury Your Gays, Chuck Tingle [plus a reader of Chuck Tingle social media posts, available here]
- Spirited Away, Studio Ghibli
- Terraformers, Annalee Newitz
- Never Say You Can't Survive, Charlie Jane Anders
Additional book recommendations for courses like this (or, of interest to philosophers):
- Service Model, Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Shards of Earth trilogy, Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Children trilogy (-of Time, -of Ruin, -of Memory), Adrian Tchaikovsky
- Ancillary (-Justice, -Mercy, -Sword) trilogy, Ann Leckie
- Murderbot series, Martha Wells
- Light from Uncommon Stars, Ryka Aoki
- Rosewater trilogy, Tade Thompson
- The Wanderers, Meg Howry
- The Future of Another Timeline, Annalee Newitz
- The Culture series, Iain M. Banks
- The Algebraist, Iain M. Banks
- Semiosis, Sue Burke
- Seveneves, Neal Stephenson
- Nimona (movie; on netflix)
- Plus recent series in which students have been very interested in having discussions: Severance; Arcane: League of Legends