Using AI to Foster Appreciation for Unfamiliar Perspectives

Assessment scenario: In this introductory Philosophy course, students explore a variety of perspectives they may find unfamiliar or disagree with. Discussing unfamiliar and divergent viewpoints in class can place the burden of explanation on some classmates while others may be hesitant to ask questions. Learn how AI chatbots are helping the instructor remove obstacles to learning about, critically evaluating, and appreciating unfamiliar perspectives.

Instructor: Steven Brown

Department: Philosophy

Course: PHILOS 1100: Introduction to Philosophy

Contact: brown.2703@osu.edu

Problem
_{^{Build students' capacity to understand and appreciate unfamiliar perspectives}} 

I hope that my students come away from my course with an ability to step back from their own assumptions when necessary and seek to understand how others might think differently. These skills are foundational to thoughtful local and global citizenship and contribute to more compassionate, effective and joyful lives.

As John Stuart Mill observed in On Liberty, “He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that.” Building the capacity to understand how others think has traditionally meant two things in philosophy courses: reading works that present perspectives students often misunderstand, and discussing those perspectives with people who sincerely hold them and can articulate and defend them well.

But learning from one another can sometimes place uneven demands on students. Those who have backgrounds, experiences or perspectives that are unfamiliar and not often explored in academia may find themselves repeatedly explaining their viewpoints to classmates—a responsibility that can become exhausting. Meanwhile, classmates who genuinely want to understand may hesitate to ask questions for fear of saying the wrong thing or unintentionally causing offense. I wanted to give students a way to ask those questions freely and work through their uncertainties without making their classmates responsible for guiding them through every unfamiliar idea.

Change
_{^{Use AI chatbots to explore unfamiliar perspectives and opposing positions}}

I have experimented with three ways of using chatbots to help students understand and appreciate unfamiliar perspectives while reducing the burden of explanation placed on classmates.

• First, I have used chatbots to create Socratic dialogues between people who approach a complex issue differently. The first time I tried this, I pulled up a chatbot in front of the class during a major international crisis and asked it to generate a conversation between two fictitious characters—both well-informed and sincere—on opposing sides of a deeply entrenched historical conflict. The aim was to move beyond competing slogans and explore why someone might find each position compelling. A useful prompt would ask the characters to explain their reasoning, question one another’s assumptions, and respond thoughtfully to each other’s objections. Neither character should be there simply to lose the argument, but neither should the dialogue imply that every claim is equally well supported.
   
• Second, I have asked students to use chatbots on their own to explore positions they currently disagree with, including philosophical views and proposed public policies. Instead of watching two characters exchange ideas, students can bring their own questions and objections to a simulated conversation with a thoughtful defender of another view. Follow-up questions could explore the values behind the position, the assumptions it depends on, or how its supporters respond to a difficult objection. The goal is not necessarily to change students’ minds, but to help them understand a view well enough to evaluate it fairly.
   
• Third, I have students find primary sources written by people with underrepresented perspectives and upload those texts into a chatbot so they can ask questions grounded in a particular author’s work. Rather than providing a fixed bank of readings, I teach students to ask the chatbot to help them identify academically rigorous sources relevant to the perspective they want to understand. This allows them to follow their own questions without requiring me to anticipate every direction their curiosity might take or assemble a separate reading list for each one. Finding appropriate sources is itself part of the learning opportunity. The chatbot’s recommendations should be treated as starting points, not guarantees: students still need to locate the actual texts, check authorship and publication details, and distinguish a primary source that expresses an author’s own perspective from someone else’s summary of it. Asking for rigorous sources begins that process; it does not replace their judgment or the guidance I can provide when they are uncertain.

Across all three approaches, my aim is to remove as many obstacles as possible to learning about underrepresented perspectives. I want students to have room to ask an awkward question, admit what they do not understand, and explore unfamiliar ideas without fear of saying the wrong thing. When those perspectives are represented in the classroom, these exercises can help students better understand their classmates without placing the entire burden of explanation on them. Rather than replacing human conversation, the hope is to prepare students for more thoughtful and fruitful exchanges, both in class and beyond.

When that diversity is not present in the classroom, these methods can offer a starting point for understanding people whose experiences and perspectives students might otherwise have little opportunity to encounter. Those people may be absent from our classrooms and social circles, but our political and economic choices can still affect their lives. Helping students take those perspectives seriously is part of preparing them to be wiser, more empathetic local and global citizens—people who consider how their choices affect not only those they know, but also those they may never meet.

Next Steps
_{^{Leverage AI to prep for class discussion and integrate reflection}}

My next step is to connect these activities more directly to in-class discussion, making the chatbot conversation preparation for a human exchange rather than the endpoint of the assignment. Students could come to class ready to share a perspective they now understand better, a question they are still working through, and a passage from their reading that helped shape their understanding. In small groups, they could then explore those questions together, drawing on both their preparation and what their classmates bring to the conversation.

I would also like to assess more deliberately what students are learning through this process. Many students have reported in evaluations and classroom discussions that these exercises help them explore alternative perspectives without fear of saying the wrong thing, but my evidence so far is anecdotal. Brief reflections before and after the activities could help me look beyond students’ confidence to the substance of their understanding. What can they now explain that they could not explain before? What did the in-person discussion add, complicate, or correct? What questions remain? The goal would be to assess whether students can understand and engage with a perspective more accurately and thoughtfully, not whether they have come to agree with it.

Resources
_{^{Further explore this assessment scenario}}

• Example Assignment Prompts
• Sample Chat Transcript