That's a very large question, and my answer will depend on where you're coming from and where you want to take this discussion. You probably have your own intuitive conception of where, in some general terms, you'd like the world to go. 'Philosophy' is a largely artificial, arbitrary, and unhelpful schema, and you owe it no fealty. So my main goal was not to persuade you to adopt my own vision of a happier and more rational world. It was to motivate you to reframe what teaching a 'philosophy' class is in a way that makes you more likely to exploit this opportunity to move the world infinitesimally closer to your own vision for the world.

If I were teaching an Intro to Philosophy class, I might break it down as follows:

Part 1: Destroy students' complacence. Spend a few weeks methodically annihilating students' barriers, prejudices, thought-terminating clichés, and safety nets. Don't frame the discussion as 'philosophy.' Frame it as follows:

"OK, we're trying to understand the world, and get what we want out of life. And we can't just rely on authorities, common sense, or usual practice; those predictably fail. So we'll need to reason our way to understanding the world. But our reasoning itself seems infirm. When we debate, we hit walls. Our ignorance corrodes our predictions. We let language and concepts confuse us. We don't entertain enough possibilities, and we don't weight them fairly. Paradox, ambiguity, and arbitrariness seems to threaten our human projects at every turn. Is it really possible for us to patch our buggy brains to any significant extent?"

The answer is Yes. But the best way to reach that conclusion is to test how much our own capacities can improve in practice. And the best test will be for us to take a few of the most fundamental riddles humans have devised, and see whether we can resolve or dissolve them by introducing more rigor and creativity to our thinking.

Part 2: Incrementally build students' confidence back up. Spend about 3/5 of the course focusing very closely on one or two simple, readable, accessible, counter-intuitive analytic philosophy texts in epistemology/metaphysics (like Perry's or Berkeley's dialogues), teaching students that making progress in understanding and critically assessing good arguments requires rigor and patience, and, just as importantly, that they are capable of exercising the rigor and patience needed to make important progress on deep issues.

In other words, this part of the course is about trying very hard to impress students regarding the utility and value of carefully reasoning about very general questions — these issues are hard — without intimidating them into thinking they as individuals are 'non-philosophers' or 'non-intellectuals,' and without motivating them to despairingly or triumphantly regress to an 'oh it's all so mysterious' relativism. It's a precarious lesson to teach — making them skeptical enough, but not too skeptical! — but an indispensable one. And the best way to teach it is by concretely empowering them to think better, and letting them see the results for themselves. Acquaint students with a variety of tricks and techniques for analyzing and evaluating arguments, including deductive logic, Bayesian empiricism, semantics, and pragmatics.

Part 3: Make students put it all into practice. Coming up for air from these deep metaphysical and epistemological waters, spend the last 3-4 weeks talking about how to use these philosophical doctrines and techniques in daily life. I'm imagining something in between a CFAR course and a whirlwind tour of existentialism. This will engage and inspire students who are a bit more continental than analytic in temperament, while reiterating that the same very careful techniques of reasoning can be applied (a) to everyday life-decisions, and (b) to even more abstract and difficult riddles than might initially have seemed possible. Ideally, the pragmatism and humanism of this part of the course should also help finish disenchanting any remaining relativists, positivists, and hyper-skeptics in the class. (Or is it re-enchanting?)

How's that sound to you?