Welcome to Appiah-inspired conversation!

Who are we?
We are a philosophy class of about 15 undergraduates and Prof. Cate Sherron at Thomas More College in northern Kentucky, just outside Cincinnati. A few of us are majoring (or minoring) in philosophy, but the rest of us study a variety of subjects from political science and creative writing to biology and business. We are studying the contemporary philosopher, Kwame Anthony Appiah.  We've read three of his books:  Cosmopolitanism: ethics in a world of strangers; The Honor Code: How moral revolutions happen; and Color Conscious: The political morality of race.  We are interested in having meaningful conversations with friends with whom we disagree and with strangers in order to find common ground on topics like honor, cosmopolitanism, race, identity, values, and social justice.  Thank you for participating in our discussion.  (FYI: we aren't going to save or use these responses for anything other than informing our own practice about starting conversations and helping us think more deeply about the issues we've read about over this semester.  After the term ends, the blog will be permanently deleted.)

Who is Appiah?
That's Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah.  He is a contemporary American philosopher who teaches at NYU.  He writes The Ethicist column for the New York Times.  Here is Krista Tippet's interview with him for the radio show, On Being:  http://www.onbeing.org/program/sidling-difference/175

Honor (Erick)

Honor. It’s something we hear yelled in movies, books, tv shows, and video games. But what does it really mean, and is it something that affects us outside of fiction?

Kwame Anthony Appiah wrote that “Having honor means being entitled to respect.”, and “An honor code [which Appiah defines as a shared set of norms] says how people of certain identities can gain the right to respect, how they can lose it, and how having and losing honor changes the way they should be treated.” (The Honor Code p. 175).

Of the prompts below, please respond to your choice of 1 or 2 below.

• Do you feel that honor still exists? What is entitled to your respect?
• Can you identify the honor codes at work within our world?
• Do you think honor codes affect you? How?
• Can we use honor to create a basis for a plan of action to address social issues, such as drug addiction or extreme poverty? Explain.
• Does honor keep us in honorable missions or does it create new problems in a globalizing world? Give an example and/or explain?
• Does Honor ever make us turn a blind eye to wrong doing? How?

Cosmopolitanism (Jared)

What does it mean to be  cosmopolitan? Appiah asserts that we are all different, but that doesn’t mean that we should let our differences separate us. Innately, as humans, we all share some common grounds or beliefs that can break down barriers to create conversation. 

 The conclusion is obvious enough: the points of the entry to cross-cultural conversations are things that are shared by those who are in the conversation. They do not need to be universal; all they need to be is what these particular people have in common. Once we have found enough to share, there is the further possibility that we will be able to enjoy discovering things we do not yet share. (Cosmopolitan p. 97) 

The key is set aside our differences and start conversations; Appiah calls it “sidling up,” when in conversation, you find points of commonality to discuss and deepen a conversation.

Of the prompts below, please respond to your choice of 1 or 2 below.

• What do you feel we can do as individuals to promote cosmopolitanism (set aside our differences and start conversation)?
• How do you know you enter into meaningful conversation instead of purposeless debates?
• Do you feel that you yourself interacting with different cultures and ethnicities has helped you understand the concepts of acceptance and toleration?
• As seen in past presidential elections and now the debates, both democrats and republicans, can you distinguish if America has done away with compromise? Is it a me against you attitude? Can this ever change?
• Though the two party system has been the United States way of political democracy, do you believe the differing attitudes is indicative of the divisiveness in today’s society?  
• How do you feel about political correctness in the world today? Is this attitude counterproductive to our pursuit of cosmopolitanism?
• How do you feel about the current attempts to pass “Religious Freedom Bills”, which will allow businesses and religious organizations the right to deny services to some based on sexual orientation and religious background? Do you feel this is unconstitutional?

Race (Nick)

Race is a very relevant issue in today’s society even if people tend to avoid direct conversation about the topic. Appiah seeks to start such conversation with an essay on race, in which he argues that race is defined socially and not biologically.   David B. Wilkins, summarizing Appiah's essay, wrote  ...there simply is no credible scientific evidence to support the idea that the current racial designations in the United States capture any meaningful physical, intellectual, or moral differences among human beings who fall into these categories. As a result, Appiah concludes, there are no “races” in the United States or elsewhere as that term has come to be understood; there are only social groups that have been constructed for purposes that cannot be defended on the scientific grounds on which the modern ideational meaning of race must inevitably rest. (Color Conscious p.8).

Of the prompts below, please respond to your choice of 1 or 2 below.

• Do you believe America's tolerance and acceptance of interracial dating may affect the world's view towards interracial dating and race in general?
• Do you feel America favors nations that are ethnically more like us over others? Do you feel this is a problem?
• As immigration has become a hot topic in the political debates, do you feel that nation’s perspective on race and cosmopolitanism (i.e., set aside our differences and start conversation) has shaped views on immigration?
• Do you feel people would feel more at ease if the immigrants were of the same color as themselves?
• Is the concept of “America as a Melting pot” outdated? Why or why not?
• What do you think it means to people of color to have a black U.S. president?
• After viewing some of the quotes and answering some of the questions, how might these ideas of conversation, identity, and honor change the way you think about race?

Identity (Keegan)

Who are you? And how do you know that? Identity might make you you, but where does it come from? Appiah wrote that “it is in dialogue that with other people's understandings of who I am that I develop a conception of my own identity” and “my identity is crucially constituted through concepts (and practices) made available to me by religion, society, school, and state, and mediated to varying degrees by the family...Dialogue shapes the identity I develop as I grow up: but the very material out of which I form it is provide, in part, by my society” (Color Conscious p.95). 


Of the prompts below, please respond to your choice of 1 or 2 below.

• Appiah defines a script for identity as "a narrative that people can use in shaping their life plans and telling their life stories" (Color Concious p.97) based of our "collective identities" (ie. female, black.) . Do you feel that your life has followed such a script, and why?
• Do you feel that from the way you look, the way you talk, or your background gives people a stereotype about you? How are you similar or differ from that stereotype? Ex… A city person who is afraid of the woods.

Making Conversation (Jeremy)

Kwame Anthony Appiah wrote that, “Conversations...begin with the sort of imaginative engagement you get when you read a novel or watch a movie or attend to a work of art that speaks from some place other than your own. So I'm using the word 'conversation' not only for literal talk but also as a metaphor for engagement with the experience and ideas of others...Conversation doesn't have to lead to consensus about anything, especially not values; it's enough that it helps people get used to one another.” (azqoutes.com)

Our class has understood conversation to be an extremely important aspect of everyday life: it opens doors to understanding individuals, cultures, and societies as a whole.Without conversations, we would be void of any real connection to anyone. To open dialogue means to open a door into new ways of thinking about things.

Of the prompts below, please respond to your choice of 1 or 2 below.

• As in the quote above you can see that conversation is important to Appiah. How might classes on conversation though our education system help prepare us to communicate with others more effectively?
• Do you feel that you learn, either positively or negatively, from conversations with others even if no agreement is made?
• Why do you believe people shy away from controversial topics?
• Is there anything we as individuals can do to avoid conflict when talking about controversial issues?
• What do you believe has caused the lack of dialogue between people with differing opinions?

Please introduce yourself!

Professor Appiah writes in Color Conscious:  “We make up selves from a tool kit of options made available by our culture and society….We do make choices, but we don’t determine the options among which we choose” (p. 96).  Please share something about your own identity, including significant choices you have made thus far in your life.