Week 4: Epistemology and Morris the Moose
From Teaching Children Philosophy, a Project of Thomas Wartenberg
Teaching Morris the Moose
Officially, the area of philosophy that Morris covers is epistemology or the theory of knowledge. However, it also involves the same sort of logical problem we discussed last week in relation to The Important Book, the fallacy of affirming the consequent. I’ve tried to discuss all of this in some detail in the chapter in Big Ideas on the book. Make sure to read it.
Epistemology is concerned with justifying (or critiquing) our claims to have knowledge. Morris’s claim that the cow (and deer) is a moose is an example of a knowledge claim. We readers believe that Morris is mistaken. One epistemological question is how we justify our belief about Morris. It would seem that Morris has simply misapplied the concept “moose.” The interesting thing is that he has reasons to support his view. He also is able to respond to each thing that the cow uses to show Morris that he is wrong about her. It is instructive to try to figure out exactly where Morris goes wrong and how he is able to “handle” the cow’s criticisms.
Morris thinks that the cow is a moose because it seems to meet his criteria for being a moose: having four legs, a tail, and a thing on your head. The problem is similar to the one we discussed about a spoon being something you eat with. Those three criteria are necessary for something to be a moose (i.e. nothing could be a moose without having them), but they are not sufficient for something being a moose (i.e. there are many things, like a cow and a deer, that satisfy those criteria but are not moose.) Morris mistakes necessary for sufficient conditions. This is the explanation for his “moosetake.” He has really made a logical blunder.
But Morris’s persistence in his belief in the face of the cow’s criticisms exposes some interesting features of knowledge. First, when the cow says it moos, Morris simply rejects that as an objection because he can moo as well. Morris has here rejected the cow’s claim that mooing is a distinctive feature of cows by asserting that he, a moose, has the same ability. When the cow then says that he gives milk to people, Morris is nonplussed, responding that he is simply a cow who gives milk to people. Morris has here maintained his belief in the face of counter-evidence by altering (or, at least, further determining) his concept of moose, so that there are both moose that give milk to people and those that don’t. (Recall that he began by telling the cow that he was a funny looking moose. He’s now retracted that.) Finally, to the cow’s claim that she must be a cow because her parents were cows, Morris rejects the claim, stating that since she’s a moose, her parents must be too. In this case, Morris accepts the cow’s claim that lineage determines one’s species, but rejects the claim that the cow’s parents were cows.
What’s interesting about these three defenses that Morris mounts is that they illustrate different responses we can make to evidence that appears to contradict our beliefs. We can deny that the evidence holds in the way it is offered, we can adjust our concepts, and we can reject inferences used to undermine our views. All of these bear on the nature of our knowledge.
MLK Session
Last year, we had trouble teaching this book. The children had a hard time discussing what Morris’ mistake was. Although I think this is still a good place to start the discussion (see below), you might try something else. One of the remarkable features of this book is that the animals engage in something very like a philosophical discussion. That is, Morris proposes a theory – Anything with four legs, a tail, and things on its head is a moose – and the other animals dispute it in various different ways that resemble how we want the children to discuss philosophical ideas.
So maybe the best place to begin your discussion is by asking the children whether the discussion the animals have reminds them of their philosophy discussions. The idea would be for them to say that the other animals disagree with Morris. But more than this, they might notice that Morris gives reasons for what he thinks and the other animals present counter-arguments and even counter-examples. In having this discussion, you need to let the children come up with their own ideas, although you can keep asking them to come up with other ideas.
An alternative place to begin is with the final, humorous line in the book: “I made a MOOSEtake.” I’m assuming that the kids will find it at least somewhat funny. So why not begin by asking them what exactly Morris’ mistake was? Obvious answer: He thought that the cow was a moose. You could then ask the children why did Morris think such a silly thing? What you’d be trying to get them to do was to list the three features that Morris cites to justify his belief.
You should follow this up by asking the children why Morris is not convinced by what the cow says. The chart will help them remember what the cow says and how Morris responds. But you are here trying to get them to discuss exactly what goes on in these interchanges.
New themes about knowledge emerge when you ask them what finally convinced Morris that he was wrong about the cow. The answer is, of course, that he saw his reflection and that of the other animals including the cow. But then the question is why he trusts what he sees when he didn’t trust what the cow said. You can ask the children if they always trust what they see over what they think. (Problematic example: Do they think that the sun rises even though they see it doing so?) You can also ask them whether they think that two things that look different therefore must be different types of things (like Morris and the cow). You can move this to a question about race: Do white people look different than black or Hispanic or Asian people? Does this mean that they are different? When is a difference that you see really a difference in what things are?
Morris is a rich story. You can have a lot of fun discussing the nature of knowledge with the children. Just be sure you know where you are going.
