Indian Institute of Advanced Study

Indian Institute of Advanced Study, (IIAS) Shimla organized a "Winter School in Philosophy" from 30 December 2008 to 10 January 2009 in collaboration with Indian Institute of Technology, (IIT) Guwahati. The aim of this School is to introduce philosophy to the young teachers and research scholars of colleges and universities in clear and cogent terms, through effective and innovative methods. Resource persons from various universities addressed these participants on different areas of philosophy with the aim of conceptual clarifications of diverse philosophical issues and trying some innovative methods in teaching philosophy. The programme was also aimed at the inculcation of the concept of thinking critically and independently into the minds of the participants. The inaugural session of the Winter School was presided over by Professor A. Srinivasan, Dean of Administration, IIT, Guwahati. Professor Archana Barua, Head of the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT Guwahati welcomed the guests and outlined the objective of the programme. Delivering the concept note, Dr. V. Prabhu explained the need and necessity of the Winter School. He recollected his experiences of introducing philosophy to his students and said how difficult it is to introduce philosophy as a subject as the nature of discourse is quite different from other disciplines. He was referring to a thematic introduction of the subject on its core areas like epistemology, metaphysics and axiology for a better grasp of the subject. He was suggesting that perhaps introducing philosophy in the thematic way could be a better way of introducing the subject to the students than a merely historical one. He was further saying that the students' interests in the philosophical problems could be kindled by making the learner understand the basis of the philosophical questions posed by the thinkers. He also outlined the expected outcome of the School that it should make the participants to conceptualize the philosophical issues, which will also help the participants to understand the rationale behind the philosophical questions, which the participants in turn could teach to their students. The School will also focus on learning methods how to conceptualize the philosophical issues. This was followed by the Chief Guest's address, which appreciated the concept of organizing "Winter School in Philosophy". Speeking on the occasion Professor A. Srinivasan said that a component of philosophy was required for all streams of knowledge, be it science or engineering, as that will make them to gain critical insights.

The inaugural session was followed by regular academic sessions. The objective of the School is to aid teachers and young research scholars in the classroom introduction of philosophy. The resource persons with expertise in different areas of philosophy were from the institutions of higher learning such as University of Hyderabad, Jadavpur University, North Bengal University, Rabindra Bharathi University, Viswa Bharathi University and like. The target audience was a group of twenty-three students/participants from across the country, consisting of younger college/university teachers and researchers. The sessions were interactive, which provided not only the theoretical and conceptual inputs but also gave pedagogical guidance to the participants during teaching-learning process.

The resource person for the first session was Professor Amita Chatterjee (Jadavpur University). In the initial phase of her class, she was addressing few pedagogical problems. She observed that philosophy could not be taught through lectures; therefore, teaching of philosophy should not be information based on purely historical, rather one can learn philosophy by doing philosophy. She summarized that the role of teacher is changed from packager of knowledge to the facilitator of learning. In the subsequent lectures, she was trying to make the participants understand the different schools of thought like physicalism, materialism, vitalism, naturalism, spiritualism, etc. by giving different work sheets through power point presentations and making them get clarity with the different schools of thought. In the later part of her lectures, she was discussing about the primary and secondary qualities with interactions from participants through analysis of arguments and examples.

Dr. Proyash Sarkar (Jadavpur University) delved deep in Indian epistemology, particularly Nyaya school of thought. His concern was how to approach traditional schools of thought with respect to epistemology. He was concentrating more on how one can adopt a methodology in philosophical research particularly with respect to traditional knowledge, i.e, Nyaya philosophy. His attempt was to position Nyaya epistemology in the present day concerns of western epistemology and try to get responses from Nyaya's position with respect to epistemological questions. He also gave a comparative account of other traditions of Indian epistemology like Mimamsakas, and Buddhists related to the theory of knowledge.

Dr. Saurav Pran Goswami (Guwahati University) spoke on logic. He traveled through the historical development of logic from traditional logic to modern symbolic logic. There was healthy discussion when he was elaborating some of the language utterances in symbols.

Professor Amitabha Das Gupta (University of Hyderabad) discussed western epistemology. He was focusing particularly on western epistemology as practiced in analytical tradition. He was talking about knowledge and justification. Knowledge, he said, was an outcome of the process of justification. And thus epistemology is nothing but justification. Knowledge is often associated with the conception that it is a 'justified true belief'. He started from that and was discussing further as how Gettier was trying to disprove that position that knowledge cannot be justified true belief alone. He further went on to address various philosophers' reaction to Gettier problem and was discussing Nozick and Goldman in this context.

Professor Asha Mukhrjee (Viswa-Bharathi) delivered lectures on ethics and semantic logic. In her initial lectures she discussed the subject matter of ethics and talked about it as a philosophical study of morality and right conduct. She was also detailing about the three different levels of ethical discussion - meta-ethics, normative ethics and applied ethics. While discussing about the normative ethics, she gave varied ethical theories like deontological, consequential theories of ethics. She gave instances of moral dilemmas and asked the participants to come out with their solutions for the given moral dilemmas. In that way, she ensured that the classes proceed in an interactive manner. In the next phase of her lectures, she was discussing about semantic logic and was lecturing the participants about the truth-tree method of finding out the validity of an argument. This was followed by class exercises, which are to be carried out by the participants. Dr. V. Prabhu (IIT Guwahati) delivered lectures on the way to impart philosophical issues to the students. He was primarily focusing on the tools that are available and helpful in conceptualizing philosophical issues. He was trying to explore how with the usage of Information Technology one can effectively teach philosophy to the learners. He discussed one of the aspects of using conceptualizing tools in teaching and that is Argument Mapping. He said that one of the important aspect of philosophy is critical thinking and critical thinking is all about giving justifications for one's claims. In that context, he was giving participants to work out few samples, asking them to arguments involved and identify premises and conclusions of those arguments. He mentioned that philosophy texts are pregnant with very highly complicated arguments and one can use the Argument Mapping tool to effectively map the philosopher's arguments and that will help one to easily understand their arguments and can make the learner to come up with his/her own arguments in the later stage. After a good number of exercises done by the participants, he showed some of the Argument mapping samples done by some recent thinkers. In the next phase of his lectures, he was talking about applied ethics and in that context; he was delivering lectures on using creative problem solving in ethics. He recollected that how generally when one talks of ethics it is associated with dilemmas and how can one think of going beyond these dilemmas and try to give some solutions for the ethical problems that one face. This idea was furthered by discussing various examples related to ethical problems and followed by exercises in his lectures.

Professor Archana Barua (IIT Guwahati) was gave lectures on phenomenology. The lectures were designed to create interest among participants in some basic themes of phenomenology centering round the teachings of Husserl and Heidegger primarily. It evoked interest among participants especially to compare and contrast some basic themes of Husserlian phenomenology like Epohé, Reduction, Transcendental Subjectivity etc. with the familiar concepts from Indian philosophy like Maya, Atman, Brahman etc. and the lectures finally culminated in some basic terms introduced by Martin Heidegger, the terms like Da-sein, Being-with, being in the world etc. Some handouts and study materials were also distributed to the participants.

Professor Shyam Kishore Singh (Manipur University) spoke on the relationship between language and metaphysics. He traced the origin of metaphysics from Aristotlean times and showed that how the concept was dealt by modern philosophers like Descartes, Leibnitz, Locke, etc. Professor Nirmalya Narain Chakrabory (Rabindra Bharathi University) delivered lectures on contemporary issues in metaphysics. He initially started his lectures with Aristotle's ideas and his division of first philosophy into three related subjects or "sciences". From there he was picking up some current trends in metaphysics. The discussion was focused on the important metaphysical issue of 'is - to be'. He traced the different sense with which Aristotle used the word 'is' and then he followed that with Russell's analysis of 'there is' as applicable to particulars and in that context he was discussing about Russell's use of contextual definition, universal and existential quantifier. He also discussed the problem of universal and particular from Plato's times and to Wittgenstein's notion of family resemblances. He was talking about 'Chinese Box Absurdity" problem with One over Many arguments in this context.

Professor Gautham Biswas (Assam University) delivered lectures on Hermenutics. He said that the origin of the term hermeneutics could be traced back to the period of Aristotle. Aristotle actually used the word perihermeneus. By this term, he meant logic of statement. By 6th century, hermeneutics had emerged as a separate discipline. The etymological meaning of hermeneutics is interpreting or concerned with interpretation. Hermes was a messenger of gods and knew the languages of the both god and men. Hermeneutics thus can be defined as how to transpose or interpret the ideas of one to the ideas of the other. For better understanding of the discipline, he divided hermeneutics into three branches - hermeneutic theories, philosophy of hermeneutics and critical hermeneutics. He also gave the background of the hermeneutic circle as visualized by Hans George Gadamer for projective interpretation. He also explained the concept of regressive enquiry as proposed by Edmund Husserl.

Professor Raghunath Ghosh (North Bengal University) lectured on Indian metaphysics. He observed that in Indian system there was no clear - cut distinguishing line between metaphysics and epistemology. He said that the theory of perception and theory of language is guided by metaphysics in Indian system. Indian epistemology is called Pramana Shastras. He was engaged in the discussion of the Indian school Nyaya's position of proving the existence of God and was reviewing the Nyaya school's argument and testing the tenability of them. He was in his further lectures talking about the philosophical issue of 'Relation' with respect to Dharmakirti as against Buddhist school of thought. The participants could get a glimpse of the philosophical tussle that ancient Indian traditions carried out.

In the second week of the winter school, along with the regular classes from the resource persons and their academic sessions, there were presentations on different topics of philosophy by the participants. Participants were divided into seven groups and each group comprising of 3 to 4 participants. Some of the topics of group presentations were Gandhian philosophy and non-violence, doing philosophy differently, mapping of Kantian epistemology, different methods of teaching philosophy, Phenomenology of Music, Hermeneutics, etc.

There was also a feedback and discussion session at the end of the lectures where the participants gave their observations and suggestions. Feedback was given by some of the participants that include Patitapaban Das, Anuj Kalita, Dr. Alpana Talukdar, Sutapa, Shahid Rasool and P. Arunahcalam. They were generally of the nature of congratulating or thanks giving for the coordinators and the organizing institutes. Some suggestions are also given at the time of feedback that includes extending the course duration; inclusion of more areas of philosophy, a schedule that gives some half hour for games and physical exercises. The coordinators replied them that their suggestions will be given due consideration in the course of conducting any future events similar to the present programme.

'Winter School in philosophy' concluded on 10 Januray 2009. During the valedictory function of the Winter School Professor Archana Barua summed-up the happenings of the two-week long programme. Expressing her gratitude to the IIAS Shimla in general and to the Director of the IIAS in particular for conceiving the idea of organizing a 'Winter School in Philosophy' specially for the benefit of the teachers and researchers in North East India in particular that is otherwise not much exposed to innovative methods of classroom teaching in a difficult and an abstract subject like philosophy. She recalled the contributions made by the Philosopher President Dr. S. Radhakrishnan and many others for whom fruit of wisdom, even of philosophical wisdom, must reach mankind at large, more so at a time when there is need for meaningful dialogue between technology and philosophy. Looking forward to many more interactions between IIAS Shimla and IIT Guwahati, Dr Barua thanked the resource persons and the participants for making this interaction possible.

Professor Archana Barua's talk was followed by feedback from couple of participants - Ms. Megha Sharma and V.L.Tanpuia. V.L.Tanpuia, on behalf of the participants, said that they were convinced that the school was a huge success as regards to its aims and objectives. The participants not only added new concepts and dimensions to their knowledge but also learnt how to make philosophy teaching more interesting and effective. Megha Sharma thanked the organizers for this programme and she was also mentioning that other philosophical issues like philosophy of religion, philosophy of mind and like could have been covered in this School. Professor Gautham Barua, Director, IIT Guwahati said that he as acomputer science engineer may not have much to speak on philosophy, however he was recollecting his college days in IIT Bombay, where he took few courses in philosophy and said that how it was helpful in the course of his career. Professor Peter Ronald deSouza, Director, IIAS mentioned that in US for computer related research, they take philosophy students as they recognize the need of asking relevant questions, which philosophers are adept in doing. Philosophers' role is very much needed as they open up the possibilities of our thinking. In connection to the feedback given by some participants, he was mentioning that the Winter School is not conceived to cover all the aspects of philosophy as there are so many branches within it; rather, it has to be taken as a platform where like-minded people deliberate on some of the themes. These thematic discussions will help the participants to go in-depth on a particular aspect rather than covering all the issues, he added He also briefed about the IIAS and expressed his wish to have more similar programmes in future. The valedictory function concluded with the vote of thanks delivered by Ms.Teajasha Kalita, research scholar, Department of HSS, IIT Guwahati. The "Winter School in Philosophy" is a maiden attempt in trying to impart quality education for the young teachers and research scholars who are primarily from the North Eastern region, though there were participants from all over the country. The participants were given the reading materials in hard/soft copies along with a compact disc of all the lectures, which were recorded. It has been a quite fruitful exercise and it is expected that the knowledge gained by the participants be made to use while they teach their students in their respective colleges. The coordinators have asked the participants to give their feedback after implementing whatever they have discussed in the Winter School programme so that any similar programme could be done in a better way. The aim of this Winter School is to help the teachers and research scholars to equip themselves with more conceptual based introductions to philosophy and its issues, so that they can deliver what they have learnt and make the students to get interested and inspired by the various philosophical discussions, which will enable them to come up with a well completed course in philosophy. And this Winter School is the first step in realizing that dream.