Philosophy Colloquium Series
Winter 2026
MEETING TIME: 3:00 PM-4:30 PM
MEETING LOCATION: MAK-B-1-138
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Winter 2026
Date: March 27, 2026
More information and the rest of the Winter 2026 lineup is below.
If you have any questions, please contact Alycia LaGuardia-LoBianco ([email protected])
April 3
Learning Management Systems Are The Enemy of Information Literacy:
Teaching Critical Thinking Skills In The Digital Age
Quinn Harr (GVSU Philosophy)
TALK DESCRIPTION
Distrust of experts, information overload, overreliance on social media, shortened attention spans: these are the conditions facing many students today. To meet these conditions, we need to transition from a content-delivery to a skills-development model of the classroom. However, learning management systems do not fit this model well. First, they perpetuate the idea that all knowledge can be mediated through screen-based technologies, moving the source of insight from the activity of the (distractible) mind to the content on our (distracting) machines. Second, they provide instant access to content via hyperlinks and embedded files, mirroring the fast-paced information environment of social media and the open web, and reducing opportunities for students to practice, in slow and sustained ways, critical analysis of information sources and creative integration of their contents. Third, once the semester has ended, they restrict access to the knowledge they allegedly provide, not simply putting it behind a paywall but blocking students from it altogether. Fourth, they reinforce the tendency to view classroom knowledge as a one-and-done affair, as opposed to a foundation for continued reflection and synthesis, through features like quantitative measures of course completion and predictive grade calculators. For these and other reasons, I suggest that educators need to seriously consider transitioning away from learning management systems if we are to meet this critical moment. And I provide some practical ideas, drawn from my own evolving classroom practices, for how we might begin to do so.
April 17
How Practical Might Reflection Be?
Itai Marom (GVSU Philosophy)
TALK DESCRIPTION
The capacity for practical reflection is generally considered to be a distinctive feature of human rational agency. While other animals might be capable of acting for reasons, it is a distinctive feature of human agency that we can turn our attention to our own motivations, subjecting what we thus take there to be reason for us to do to rational scrutiny. The capacity for practical reflection is commonly characterized metaphorically as the capacity to “step back” from our actions, intentions, and desires, stopping or distancing ourselves from them, and evaluating whether they are rational (good, right, worthwhile, supported by reasons, etc.) to do or to have. The use of this metaphor, I argue, represents an overly contemplative conception of our capacity for practical reflection. It depicts the reflecting agent as a detached observer meditating on the way things are *independently* of them. The resulting picture is of practical thought as something we do in between actions and by which we determine what those actions *should* be. But what is distinctive of practical thought is precisely the *dependence* of the object of thought on our thinking of it—of what is done on our reasons for doing it. It is thought manifested *in* action. What the contemplative conception thus seems to exclude is the possibility that practical reflection might constitute a more thoroughly practical affair, which is to say, something we do, and sometimes can only do, *through* action. The aim of this talk is to develop the latter possibility. Noting some key structural differences between practical and theoretical thought, I present a conception of practical reflection in which action figures not only as the object at which it is directed but as the medium in which it takes place. It is, I will argue, sometimes only by acting that we can subject our understanding of our practical lives to rational evaluation. The position we occupy with respect to the objects of reflection is, in those cases, not one of contemplative detachment, but of active attachment. It is not, as it were, a position we come to inhabit by “stepping back” from the relevant aspects of our practical lives but by “stepping in” to them.