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Teaching Background
Today people need to creatively respond to the extraordinary, daunting challenges of our turbulent, dangerous times. A creative exploration of relevant ideas, tailored to your needs, can be of help in developing your responses to these challenges.
All the themes and topics listed in this page have been subjects which I have taught in my university courses or explored in my research. I taught a wide range of graduate and undergraduate courses, in Business Schools as well as Arts Faculties. I never felt that teaching or research should be constricted by the rigid constraints of an arbitrarily defined discipline or narrow specialization. On the contrary, the borders separating disciplines are all too often walls designed primarily to protect an academic guild's monopoly of its special knowledge.
I take a different view. Crossing disciplinary boundaries should be as common, and as easy, as crossing the street. Mixing disciplines is, and should be, the norm; for that is often the only way we can identify and solve the hard problems we face in our complex high tech society, not to forget the uncertainties of the global village. Today no borders are permanent. No wall is without some opening. At least not if we are dealing with living societies and environments. Life means connections and changes. Skins and cell walls are permeable, so as to let food, information and a lot more in. Organisms are constantly required to respond to their environments and to strive to attain their goals, if they are to survive. Intelligence means taking the means at hand, recognizing the opportunities presented around us, and choosing the smartest, best, course of action. Just like cooking. Intelligent thinking can make the best pasta sauce or stew from uses what's in the fridge.
If you find this approach to life and its problems appealing, then the teaching services listed below (and other services presented in my web site) might very well be of interest to you.
Teaching Services & Mini-Courses
A well-designed Mini Course can refresh your mind, and open up the creative spores. It can help you clarify your ideas, improve your communications skills, identify and question unspoken assumptions, and improve one's understanding of values, commerce, knowledge, the media, government and other important issues.
To meet clients' needs I would be happy to design a Mini Course of several days or a week's duration, on these or related topics. Such courses can involve role playing, creative arts exercises, writing, reading (especially classic writers), and lectures.
The themes and approaches you might take, the course level, workload, etc., are open for discussion. Contact me to talk about your interests. Perhaps a course, workshop, or talk can be designed that meets your needs. I would be happy to work with organizations, groups or individuals to develop a variety of teaching services / mini courses tailored to meet your needs and interests. Rates are available on request.
Courses can be offered in a wide range of areas:
- Practical ethics: e.g., subjects like integrity, trust, reciprocity, communication, negotiation, core moral values performance and practice (see the Moral Intelligence web page).
- Improving Writing, Presentation, & Communications Skills
- Business, Media, Political & Professional Ethics
- Technologies, Innovation, & Change
- Science & High Tech Society
- The Communications Age
- Intellectual Property
- The Knowledge Economy & Open Markets
- Entrepreneurship & Innovation
- Media Ethics and Democracy
- Business & Government; Lobbying & Ethics
- Politics, Ideologies, & Issues Management
- Social values and Post-Modern Obscurantism
- Political Correctness & Democracy
- Federalism, Culture, and 21st Century Politics
- Canadian Social Thinkers
Academic Courses Taught
I have offered Graduate Courses on: Technology and Values, Communication and Crisis in the Global Village, Imagining the Future, The Crisis of Humanism, Ethics in Organization and Business Ethics.
I have offered undergraduate courses on the above topics, Communications and Values, Media Ethics, Professional Ethics, and Ancient, Modern and 20th century philosophy, Moral Theory, Social and Political Philosophy, Philosophy of History, Philosophy of Education, Business and Government, Theory of Knowledge, Ontology, Continental Philosophy, Pragmatism, and Existentialism.
It is surprising how general, seemingly remote ideas, affect our routine thinking and our everyday conduct. Sometimes they contribute to confusion and misunderstanding.
I'm not a fan of the party line. I never accepted the dogmas of conventional schools of philosophy, whether Anal-ytic, Existential, Thomist, Classical, PostModern, or Positivist. I have a strong distaste for words ending in 'ism.'
In historically unique times like ours following the old mental ruts won't do. Everything changes, interacts, adapts, and grows. Or, as Heraclitus liked to say, Everything flows. At its best, I think, the study of philosophy can take a variety of forms:
- Practical & Empirical approaches in Philosophy
- Knowledge & Values are Friends; or, morally, one should prefer Intelligence to Stupidity.
- Is choosing freely more important than choosing correctly? Or, Is Free will compatible with Ethics?
- Belief in the Soul may be bad for you.
- Why are so many philosophers intellectual snobs who disdain to study sex, food, money, markets, fun, dirt, disease, poverty, everyday life, and the realities of power?
- Is Philosophical theory a substitute for Religion? E.g, in Plato, Descartes, Kant, Kierkegaard?
- Is 'the mind' a myth? Is the brain a 'wet' computer?
- Shouldn't Critical Social Theory Be Constructive too.
- Is Evil Relative? Like Good?
- High Grading the Great Philosophers (Contemporary, Modern, Renaissance, Oriental and Greek): or How to find the intellectual Diamond hidden in the information muck.
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For more information please contact me at the address below.
Vincent Di Norcia
294 Cundles Rd West
Barrie, Ontario, Canada L4N 7C9
Phone: (705) 725-1280
"Everything Flows." -Heraclitus
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