Michael Titelbaum keeps encountering the same fortune cookie—and it re-emphasizes a point he’s been making for years in his day job.
“What it says is, ‘The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next,’” says Titelbaum, the chair of the UW-Madison philosophy department. “One thing that people really don't understand about philosophy is that it encompasses all sorts of different subject matters. In the 19th century, the people who now call themselves psychologists used to call themselves philosophers. In the 18th century, the people who now call themselves mathematicians and physicists used to call themselves philosophers.”
And in the 21st century, the faculty and graduate students who teach philosophy at UW are working to make their discipline about much more than just the study of ancient and modern thinkers. Put it this way: It’s more than just soldiering through Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason.
“Philosophy is a subject that’s incredibly relevant to people’s lives,” says Titelbaum. “If you've taken a philosophy course, or you've read philosophy, it's going to give you new ways to think about topics and new ways to conceive of what you're doing in your life.”
In recent years, that work has taken many different shapes. Graduate students in the philosophy department work with local partners to bring philosophy directly into the community and schools (see sidebar, below). And several faculty members offer advice on critical issues facing scientists and policy makers.
Robert Streiffer, a professor of philosophy who splits his appointment with the UW School of Medicine and Public Health's Department of Medical History and Bioethics, is one of those faculty members. Late last year, as part of the department’s annual Philosophers at Work public lecture series, Streiffer talked about the philosophical and ethical issues surrounding clinical trials involving CRISPR, a technique for human gene editing that takes place on campus as part of research activity at the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery. Attempting to alter the human genome raised questions about human equality and access to medical treatment. And that’s just for starters.
“You might have questions about the fact that these trials are even taking place,” says Streiffer. “Or that we are implicitly, as a society, allowing, endorsing or in some cases funding these kinds of trials. What does that say about our attitudes about humanity and human nature?”
The department already teaches ethics classes to hundreds of students each year in the UW’s School of Business and School of Nursing. Recently, Titelbaum and Alan Rubel, a professor with UW’s Information School, proposed a cluster hire that would pair philosophy faculty with instructors in the new School of Computer, Data & Information Sciences, focusing on ethical issues surrounding big data. In other words, UW philosophy instructors could be teaching tomorrow’s tech CEOs the finer points of ethics and responsibility, getting them to think critically about issues surrounding data collection and the ways in which computer algorithms can unintentionally promote bias.
“As technology takes over more of our lives, we need to be thinking about issues like this,” he says.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the department had planned to take part in what’s recently become an international trend—they had planned to host an Evening of Philosophy at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, giving members of the public a chance to have brief, 30-minute conversations with philosophy professors on a host of issues, including the nature of happiness, justice in the healthcare system and climate change.
While the event has been indefinitely delayed, Titelbaum is hoping it will be the opening gambit in a conversation that goes on for years.
“We don't just want to be thinking about these things in the abstract,” he says. ” We want to talk to the people who are making decisions and trying to bring a more philosophical perspective to some of the big picture issues we have to work through.”