Department of Philosophy

The WARRANT Project: Learner-Centered Computer Environments For Critical Reading, Reasoning, & Writing

Preston K. Covey et al. — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 13:47:11 PST

This project developed a process-based textbook and computer-based tools to help students leam to read and write arguments. The project used process-tracing methods to observe inexperienced and experienced writers at work and developed a model of the cognitive processes required to write original arguments. The project also used participant observation methods to observe a writing class as the teacher and students explored strategies for writing original arguments. These observations provided a rich source of data for identifying problems that learners encountered and the solutions that they and their teachers developed. The textbook, The Architecture of Argument: Exploring Issues through Reading and Writing, D. S. Kaufer, C. Geisler, & C. M. Neuwirth, (Harcourt, Brace & Jovanovich, in press), draws upon these observations to present a learner-centered curriculum, one based on learners’ observed needs. The computer tools, Notes and Comments, were developed to help students and teachers overcome problems they encountered and to facilitate reading and writing processes.

University Studies Core Curriculum

Preston K. Covey — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 13:47:06 PST

Carnegie Mellon's proposal to the Pew Charitable Trusts in April of 1985 proposed a "renewal of undergraduate education" through the implementation of a university-wide core curriculum. The basic objectives were to develop (a) curricula that nurtured "fundamental - but critical - intellectual skills,” especially in writing and computing, as well as (b) interdisciplinary curricula that focused on "the relationships among science, technology, and the liberal arts.”

University Studies/Core Curriculum Final Summary Report

Preston K. Covey — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 13:47:02 PST

Carnegie Mellon's proposal to the Pew Charitable Trusts in April of 1985 proposed a "renewal of undergraduate education" through the implementation of a university-wide core curriculum. The basic objectives were to develop (a) curricula that nurtured "fundamental -- but critical - intellectual skills," especially in writing and computing, as well as (b) interdisciplinary curricula that focused on "the relationships among science, technology, and the liberal arts."

Value Analysis in Setting Priorities for the Regulation of Hazardous Substances

Preston K. Covey et al. — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 13:46:59 PST

It was the concern for environmental contamination and human exposure from the growing list of man-made chemicals that led to the set of environmental legislation of the 1970’s which in various ways deals with toxic substances in the environment. Because of the very large number of existing chemicals, and the significant number of new chemicals introduced every year, major regulatory agencies have limited their testing and regulating foci to a small subset of chemicals, presumably those with the greatest perceived threat to human health and environmental contamination.

Priority setting decision processes are being developed, whether systematically or in an ad hoc fashion, as regulatory agencies attempt to set priorities for chemical testing and regulating. These decision processes perforce involve a mix of scientific judgments and value judgments. The outcome of present priority-setting policies and procedures will likely shape regulatory agendas for many years to come and thus determine, for better or worse, the availability of environmental exposure levels of a vast multitude of chemical agents. Some agencies have adopted schemes in which the desired outcome is a ranking of chemicals based on a "hazard index" in order to establish priorities.The objective of the hazard index is to identify those pollutants or chemicals which have the greatest potential for environmental damages, especially to human health. Besides the large number of commercial chemicals, there is also a multiplicity of environmental effects which must be considered in setting priorities for testing.

In all programs for regulating chemicals, two basic categories of information are required: (1) the substance’s production volume, market distribution, usages, and ultimate disposal, and (2) the substance’s physical properties and potential for biological and environmental impacts. The latter category involves testing for physical/chemical properties affecting mobility and transport, degradability, biological accumulation, acute and chronic toxicity, mutagenicity, carcinogenicity, and teratogenicity. The variety of impacts and the large number of available tests have led to the proposal of a hierarchical testing procedure.

With available information on pollutants, ranking schemes have been developed to determine priorities from a mix of objective and subjective information. These have included a subjective allocation of priority points, as well as a scheme based on multiattribute utility theory and other scoring methods for setting priorities on chemical substances. A variety of ranking schemes are in use in federal agencies (Interagency Testing Committee, National Toxicology Program, National Cancer Institute, the pre-manufacture notice of the Toxic Substances Control Act, and others).

WARRANT - A Flexible Computer Environment for Critical Reading, Reasoning, and Writing

David S. Kaufer et al. — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 13:46:56 PST

The WARRANT project represents an attempt to teach reading, reasoning, and writing skills to students on powerful, large-screen personal computers, supporting high resolution bit-map display graphics and multiple-windowing. This report overviews and then details our current and expected progress on the project from January 1, I985 through September 30, I985.

WARRANT - A Learner-Centered Computer Environment For Critical Reading, Reasoning, and Writing

Preston K. Covey et al. — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 13:46:53 PST

The problem of literacy is not a writing problem alone. Skills of reading, writing, and reasoning are interactive and interdependent. Nonetheless, instruction in writing at the post-secondary level is seldom integrated with instruction in reading or reasoning. The obstacles facing such an integration are twofold: (1) W e don't have enough knowledge of reading, writing, and reasoning processes in specific task domains to integrate instruction; (2) W e have not, until recently, had powerful enough technologies to deliver instruction as flexibly as students need it in the course of their reading and writing.

W e propose to develop a computer system, WARRANT (Writing, And Reasoned Reading, About Normative Texts) that addresses both these problems. Built on a technology that will reach the college classroom in 2-5 years, WARRANT provides a learner-centered, integrated task environment and flexible guidance for critical reading, reasoning, and writing.

WARRANT combines the power of heuristic learning with learning by feedback from models. WARRANT will offer learners not only explicit strategies for working through a particular reading/reasoning/writing task, but funds of information about how other persons (both novices and experts) applied these strategies (with varying degrees of success) when working through the same task.

The outcomes of our project turn on viewing WARRANT either as a teacher capable of structuring effective learning environments or viewing it as a laboratory that will allow teachers to experiment with different learning environments to see which are effective, which not. Viewing WARRANT as a teacher, Covey and Kaufer will write a text that details effective learning environments for teaching normative reasoning, reading, and writing. Viewing WARRANT as a laboratory, Neuwirth, Kaufer, and Geisler, will write a book for teachers that details how WARRANT can be modified to test the effectiveness of different learning environments.

We plan to use the WARRANT system first in selected pilot courses, and then in our freshman core curriculum courses in composition and philosophic analysis. Formative evaluation of the system and its pedagogy is built into our protocol research agenda.

WARRANT'S CURRICULUM Strategies and Heuristics for Critical Reasoning

Preston K. Covey et al. — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 13:46:48 PST

WARRANT is designed to help teach, exercise, and integrate strategies of critical reasoning, reading, and writing. So, to begin with, WARRANTS curriculum has three important dimensions, three basic categories of task to organize for the student critical reasoning, reading, and writing tasks. We assume, as a matter of pragmatics and commonsense, that these tasks and associated skills are highly interactive and recursive. Thus, that they cannot be readily or practicably separated.

Logic and Liberal Learning: Some Salient Issues

Preston K. Covey — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 10:48:45 PST

“Logic” nominally belongs to the classical trivium, the common ground, the crossroads of traditional liberal education, through which all educated persons would travel. But what sort of “logic” should or could fill that role today?

Many teachers of logic today feel pulled in what seem two different directions: towards the more apparently practical utility of the emerging “informal logic” agenda; and towards the more apparently rigorous canon of formal logic, be it deductive or inductive. These alternatives are neither mutually exclusive nor exhaustive of the possibilities of what might constitute an organon for the liberally educated person today. I will review some salient approaches to teaching logic, and some salient issues attending those approaches, focusing on issues regarding the utility of formal deductive logic in modern symbolic guise.

Logic as a Tool for Discovery: What Sorts of Knowledge Can We Acquire Through Logic?

Preston K. Covey — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 10:48:42 PST

Whether 'given' by sociological survey or the human sensorium, whether described in natural language or technical terminology -- data do not constitute information until processed and interpreted by some inferential machinery. Access to information is always mediated by inference. Determining exactly what information is at hand often requires some logical artifice and analysis. This is true on the most elementary level of information exchange.

Moral Argument: Theory and Practice

Preston K. Covey — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 10:48:39 PST

There is a ’boom' in the teaching of ethics, across the nation and across diverse schools and departments of the arts and sciences and the professions. This is surely a good thing. And it’s apt to continue. And that is also a good thing. The question is of course: What in the way of ethics ought to be taught? This is an arguable matter to be sure, not to say one on which jealous disciplines wage minor holy wars.

New Media & Values Education

Preston K. Covey — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 10:48:35 PST

A critical look at technology in higher education should reveal a number of things, among them: undue expectations, mismanaged expectations, unfulfilled needs and promise, and needs and promise ignored. I will focus on the last issue, multi-media technology, and the conference theme of importing 'real world' information into education in ways that traditional media and methods cannot - information that is rich, ambiguous, messy, difficult to measure or manage, but crucial.

My paper will address the specific, ill defined but now widely touted need for more attention to ethics and values in higher education. I provide a framework for understanding some parts of that vast and complex need. Ethics and values education are not areas noted for exploiting either computer technology or 'real world' information, but they are areas where learning and inquiry can be improved thereby. I will provide some concrete illustration, with a videotape presentation of one multi-media learning environment for ethics. Among the messiest of 'information' to convey is the experience of valuation itself. Two of the videodisc applications briefly described below under Project THEORIA will be available for demonstration.

The application of multi-media technology to ethics and values education will raise more questions than it answers; but that's as it should be, since a sufficient benefit of the technology is to prove "a major stimulus for eliciting work and thought about teaching methods and how human beings learn" (Derek Bok, "Looking into Education's High-Tech Future," EDUCOM Bulletin, Fall 1985 -- a version of his 1985 annual report to the Harvard Board of Overseers, reprinted from Harvard Magazine, May/June 1985).

PROJECT THEORIA -- Interactive Video Media for Ethical Reasoning

Preston K. Covey — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 10:48:32 PST

Learning the art of ethical reasoning, like the art of surgery, requires at the very least an operating theater; like the art of scientific inquiry, a laboratory. Our project is to develop interactive video media to provide analogues of these facilities and 'hands on' experience in the relevant skills.

Our focus will not be on theory, but on its crux: hypothesis testing — and all that this down-to-earth activity ordinarily entails: acute, analytical observation; attention to reality; a good dose of imaginative experimentation; and a respect for the human sensorium, its rich and problematic data (which, in ethics, includes the perplexing deliverances of our feelings).

We will develop an interactive videodisc on the topic of euthanasia

To simulate the multiple perspectives, sensations, perceptions, and feelings that must inform our reflective moral experience (whatever the topic) and
To stimulate the cognitive and affective skills required for reflective reasoning, weighing and balancing evidence, principled decision-making, and competent moral judgment in realistic problem settings, under realistic duress.

Students using our videodisc will be cast in the role of a hospital ethics committee member who must deliberate whether to allow a severe burn victim to die, as he wishes. The Level III program will allow Socratically guided exploratory tours of rich case material, both documentary and dramatized. A Notebook facillity will allow the student to make notes or draft material for associated paper assignments.

For classroom use, the videodisc will include a Level O linear presentation of "Dax's Case," the case upon which our simulated material will be based, and a Level I program allowing selected tours through the case material from the perspectives of different principals (on the Roshomon model).

We will also produce a textbook. Values, Facts, and Feelings: A Pragmatic Guide to Ethical Inquiry, a companion Study Guide, and an Instructor's Manual.

Prospectus & Report: Center for the Advancement of Applied Ethics

Preston K. Covey — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 10:48:30 PST

In its first six months of operation, the C A A E has concentrated on fee-for-service seminars for corporations and government agencies, consulting, grant development for collaborative projects, and new curriculum for the university. The scope of the C A A E 's potential activities em braces the full range of practical ethical issues arising in the contexts of private and public organizations and professions. But our approach is to begin modestly and to build incrementally, a s our resources and comparative strengths allow. Our priority is collaboration with the world of practical affairs.

Risk and Regulation: Voluntary Risk Assumption in Ethics, Law, & Regulatory Policy

Preston K. Covey — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 10:48:25 PST

Life is rife with risk. This unassailable observation is often meant to calm our nerves, to counsel serenity, to render risk acceptable in this or that case. As if to say, with so much risk abounding, why not just relax and accept it as a natural cost of living?

We are naturally more discriminating. Especially regarding widely shared, societal risks induced by human artifice and susceptible to social regulation. Which risks are desirable? Which necessary? Which unacceptable? Which, in particular, have we some right to be protected against? And what regulatory measures do our rights enjoin, permit, or proscribe?

The acceptability of risk is a complex matter ~ in part, as a function of the complexity of risk itself; in part, as a function of irreducible normative factors in the assessment of risk. Risk assessment—societal risk assessment—in the final analysis involves the weighing and balancing of competing societal interests and basic rights. 1 argue that current dispute about risk assessment and health and safety regulation has neglected crucial rights and conditions of choice, consent, and voluntary risk assumption.

Technology at the Crossroads: Implications for the Liberal Arts

Preston K. Covey — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 10:48:22 PST

When controversy on innovation in liberal arts education is joined there is typically a lot of talk about the origin and meaning of the liberal arts. Much of this discussion, variously, takes flight on the wings of metaphor, comes to ground in argument from classical authority, takes root in etymological erudition, or waxes nostalgic about nineteenth century ideals.

This academic doxology can be as tedious a ritual as it is obligatory. But for humanists to forget their roots is suicidal. For philosophers to fail to define their terms is anathema. So, in addressing the need for a new agenda in liberal arts education, and roles for the computer and other technology in that agenda, I will say something about tradition and terminology, about what I take the philosophical mission of liberal arts education to be, and how that mission might assume new and powerful forais in our own contemporary institutional settings.

The Integration of Educational Computing in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Preston K. Covey et al. — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 10:48:20 PST

Carnegie Mellon University and its College of Humanities and Social Sciences have built, over the last decade, a tradition of leadership and innovation in educational computing. Now, we face another challenge and opportunity in this area that promises to have a major impact on the college's entire educational and research enterprise. Here we present a blueprint for the systematic and coordinated implementation of a major computer workstation and software development initiative intended to meet this challenge and opportunity. Experience has taught us that an initiative of this magnitude and import requires considerable thought and careful planning if it is to have a positive, integrated impact within the context of the college's technological, educational, and research environment. Our purpose is to provide information, anticipate problems and the resources needed to address them, and to outline the college's strategy for solving these problems and achieving the goals of this initiative.

The Role of Design in Liberal/Professional Education

Preston K. Covey — Wed, 05 Dec 2012 10:48:17 PST

Introduction - John P. Crecine [incomplete]

Teaching Design at CMU: From the Carnegie Plan to the Present - W. Andrew Achenbaum- 1

The Science of Design - Herbert A. Simon -23

Defining Design Across the Arts & Sciences - Thomas A. Schwartz - 47

Academic Writing: Designing for the Community - David Kaufer - 65

Problem-Solving in Writing: Can We Teach 'Design' as a Cognitive Process? - Linda Flower - 89

Design Invisible, Designed Visible – Akram Midani - 105

Why Teach Design? - Stefani Ledewitz - 113

The Design Process in Music Composition - Marilyn Thomas - 137

Reflections on the Experience of Design - J. M. Ballay - 161

On Engineering Design - Sarosh Talukdar & Art Westerberg - 169

Hierarchical Design Strategies in 3-Dimensional Chemistry - Jonathan S. Lindsey - 181

Design and Implementation of Computer Systems - Alfred Z. Spector - 197

Structure and Design - Wilfried Sieg & Preston K. Covey [incomplete]

Formal Logic and Philosophic Analysis

Preston K. Covey — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 13:56:12 PST

In his article “On Teaching Logic,” Peter Geach reminds us of a distinction that will prove convenient in the present context, despite the ambiguity on both sides of the distinction.

Gun Control

Preston K. Covey — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 13:56:09 PST

Gun control assumes myriad guises among over 20,000 current laws, the en d less array of proposed legislation at all levels of government, evolving case law. administrative policies, consumer-product safety regulations, and novel liability and litigation stratagems. The topic embraces a wide variety of arguable means and social ends and, therefore, entails a fair maze of issues. Any instant case of gun control policy serves, in effect, as a rabbit hole leading to an underlying warren of issues: questions of fact, questions of value, and questions of how to try the facts and weigh the values at stake. Consequently, gun control is a matter which few can count themselves for or against simpliciter, notwithstanding the hard and fast battle lines drawn by partisans on either side of the nominal issue. Indeed, the controversy over gun control has been called a 'culture war,' because it evokes impassioned conflict amongst people's deepest sensibilities and convictions about how best to secure human life and limb, individual liberty, social order, or an appropriate balance. So construed, the very controversy over gun control in the United States has few riv a ls as a potential threat to that very social order or as a challenge to our collective ability to give both the factual disputes and the competing values at stake a fair hearing and trial.

Infrastructure for a New Discipline of Educational Computing

Preston K. Covey — Tue, 04 Dec 2012 13:56:07 PST

The purpose of the Benedum grant was to allow Carnegie Mellon to develop the infrastructure needed to bring discipline and leadership to the growing area of educational computing. As computer technology advances at a rapid rate and its promise for improving education both tantalizes and confounds us, it becomes imperative that dedicated centers be created to track and tame the technology, centers of knowledge for realizing the promise and avoiding the pitfalls of advancing technology, development centers for implementing the most promising applications of the technology for education.