The philosophy department's practical orientation leads us pay special attention to a distinct set of skills. We believe that well trained philosophy students should be capable of exemplifying the following set skills in their life. As we see it, there are three three broad categories of philosophic skills:

Critical/Creative skills:

• critical reading and listening skills: hearing and understanding the arguments and positions of others.
• argument analysis and evaluation, both of others' arguments and one's own.
• effective problem-solving: clear problem-presentation, creative side-stepping of usual problems and blocks, imagination.
• unsettling the problems: critical awareness of their contexts & embeddedness, and the confidence/imagination to look beyond.

• making reflective choices, taking responsibility, acting with integrity and care.
• awareness of and appreciation for traditional reflection on ethical questions.
• sensitivity to others and to the conditions for dialogue and connection: reciprocity and imaginative sympathy.
• a feeling for the conditions and possibilities of community life and collaborative action.
• a feeling for the possibilities of human life within the more-than-human world.

• the ability to suspend current views so as to enter sympathetically into other modes of thinking and dwelling.
• knowledge of what some of those modes are: awareness of traditional reflections on philosophical questions.
• "vivid inhabitation" of other modes of thinking and dwelling; the ability to give a sympathetic account from within.
• the ability to offer constructive criticism, both from and of other perspectives.
• the ability to return to our own time and place with new resources for dealing with issues today.