Blog #14 - How do we learn best?

This question pertains to learning and how we process the world around us.

Descartes felt that we needed to doubt everything (Radical Doubt) and start from scratch; the only thing that we can truly be certain of is that we have a mind. "I think, therefore, I am." He relies predominantly on reason as is mode of learning: does what I'm learning stand up to reason and logic? If not, toss it.

John Locke felt that as humans we were born with blank slates (tabula rasa) and that we learn through a combination of our senses and observation and experience and memory. Nothing is innate and that almost everything we learn is gained from the outside world. When you consistently observe sensory data, you begin to form memories and complex ideas from these experiences.

A philosopher who we'll study later next week is George Berkley who believed that the senses and observation were the primary learning tool. In some ways, for Berkley, the only things that exist are things that we perceive, and once we stop perceiving them, they stop existing. But since we see people and objects continually reappear in our world in a very similar and consistant state - carrying on as if they had their own life/existence without us perceiving them, there needs to be a way to explain that. As you could probably guess, the only being capable of doing all of that in his mind.

So, two questions now that I think about it:
1. How do you best learn? Why? Combination or one way best for you?

2. In which way do you think schools are lacking as they prepare kids for the world? With this question, I am looking for an analysis on where you think the emphasis is misplaced, not specifics on any teacher's methods or a slam session on Groves H.S.

Due Friday, 250 words minimum. Thanks.

Blog #13 - Galileo's Paradigm Shift - What would be our next one?

There have been three paradigm shifts within the past four hundred years or so that have altered man's image of itself forever. Galileo's refinement of the telescope and discovery of Jupiter's four moons (this discovery and others like it helped reinforce the new heliocentered universe but wait! I thought the Earth was unalterable from creation - no one said anything about moons around Jupiter), Darwin's concept of evolution (refuting the idea that man is NOT made in God's image), and Freud's psychological theories about our unconscious desires controlling us (who's really in control?).

What is a paradigm shift? - This is a term initially defined by Thomas Kuhn (Wikipedia) in 1962 to describe a realignment in the basic thinking or assumptions about a topic. For instance, when movies went from silent to talkies in 1927 with The Jazz Singer, that made a whole new kind of movie possible for future directors. Kuhn initially applied the term to science, but since then, it has been adapted to many different things since 1962.

By way of illustrating this, the way people conduct research nowadays is completely different than it was when I did my undergrad degree at MSU less than 20 years ago. Computers existed back then but mainly as word processors (like the fabulous Apple IIe pictured to the right); the internet also existed but not in its current incarnation. When I needed to do research on a topic, I went to the library and looked up stuff the old fashioned way: I found the info in a card catalog in a long wooden shelving unit that smelled of mildew. I wrote down a whole list of books / articles / etc. and then I went and found them on the shelves in the library; if they were there, I looked to see that the books / articles / etc. had something relevant in it about my topic. If not, it went back on the shelf. If so, it went in my backpack. When my backpack got too full, I stopped at the nearest study table and started either taking notes on the relevant info or made copies of said info (if I had enough $$). Sound like fun? Just writing that and remembering that whole process made me thankful for computers.

By the time my Master's thesis came along in 1996-97, I still did some of the searching in the Wayne State library. But, most of the grunt work (card catalog searches, humping up and down stairs, checking out book shelves) was done by ERIC, an educational search engine. I had also upgraded to a Windows 95 computer and could surf the net in its infancy. A paradigm shift had occurred in research - how it was conducted, how quickly and efficiently it could be done. But the evaluation still had to be done by a human.

My question is: what kind of FUTURE paradigm shift do you envision shaking up life as we know it? (cue R.E.M.'s "It's the End of the World As We Know It"). What kind of technological innovation could revolutionize our lives in the near future? What kind of scientific breakthrough or discovery could alter the course of our lives? Could an accident or a terrorist attack or unforeseen event forever change the world?

Take some time to think about what you think might change our lives like Darwin, Galileo and Freud had done.

Due Wednesday, January 21st. 250 words minimum (should take some deep thinking).

Blog #12 - Seven Deadly Sins

The concept of sin has been around for about 2,000 years, but even before the advent of Christianity, these concepts of greed, envy, lust, anger, sloth, pride/arrogance, and gluttony have been seen as vices or major flaws in society. The way that the Christian church divided up sin was that there were small sins that weren't so bad - ones that could be forgiven by confession to a priest (venial), and ones that would ruin your chances to get into Heaven (those were cardinal sins). As we'll discover after the presentation of the sins, each of them have their own destructive qualities.

Anger tends to be the most destructive vice that can lead to war, genocide, and racism. Yet, anger can also be channeled into fighting against evil.

Greed is purported to be the worst of them all, the root of all sin, b/c if you did not desire more than you needed or wanted, then there would be fewer problems. Yet, that desire to improve ourselves (and this dovetails nicely with envy and gluttony here b/c what are envy and gluttony but forms of greed) comes from the desire to better ourselves.

Pride can also be seen as the root of all sins b/c when you see yourself as more important than others, especially God (as Pope Gregory the Great put it), then you are putting yourself above others. You are supposed to be a humble servant of God, and pride destroys that relationship. However, pride can be an important part of a person's self-esteem; it can also be part of a country's nationalism (as long as it doesn't turn into xenophobia). What about the pride of doing a job well? This builds confidence in the worker.

So then there's lust. As we have seen lately with New York governor Eliot Spitzer and former Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards, lust has led people down the wrong path. I even hesitate to say that lust has led them, b/c those two guys got themselves in trouble. Love doesn't come from lust; I can tell you that from experience. My wife and I were friends first before we fell in love. Ours isn't universal, but it is an example of how love should come first. Lust, unfortunately, drives people to do insane things and I won't defend this with a flipside like I have the other vices.

10 years ago, lust dominated the headlines and cable news with the Clinton - Lewinsky saga and eventual impeachment in December 1998 and trial in February 1999. Fast forward to today, lust no longer dominates the headlines; it's greed and envy with news of the bailouts, economic scandals and political corruption as well as the looming depression.

Of these seven, which do you think can be the most personally destructive and why? Also, which of the seven is the most destructive for society and why?

Due Thursday, 1/8/09. 200 words minimum.

Blog #11 - Plato's Ideal Society - Impossible or Improbable? Neither?

We've spent a little more time on Plato's ideal society this semester than I have in past semesters; maybe b/c this time around the world seems to be crumbling around us with roiling stock markets and the Big 3 impending collapse. Where better to look than the past when the future looks so bleak, right? Well, maybe we can learn something.

Several criticisms were brought up of this ideal society:

1. Where would the innovation come from if everyone be content? Doesn't innovation come from competition and competition come from peoples' desire to be better?

2. Why do they need soldiers if everyone is content? Is it just for protection from other city-states? Or, did Plato ever intend for this city to exist? If that is the case, why are the soldiers really there?

3. What kind of guarantee is there that the philosophers will rule in everyone's best interests? Is there an impeachment process? Can the peasants overthrow the rulers?

4. In the interests of specialization, what if you get bored with your job? What if you don't want that job? What if that job that you do best is NOT something you love doing? To use an example from 4th hour, I might do math really well, but that doesn't mean I want to be an accountant.

5. Is there no social mobility? What if we don't like the class that we're born into?

This link http://www.philosophypages.com/hy/2g.htm gives a good, brief synopsis of the first four books of the Republic in which this society is described. I have countered many of these arguments in a devil's advocate style by appealing to one of Socrates' questions - courage, justice, virtue, wisdom, moderation, beauty.

The question before you is: Can Plato's society be fixed to make it more ideal to fit a 21st century American audience? Why or why not?

Things to ponder while answering this question: Is Plato's society so incompatible with American ideals and tastes and traditions that it cannot be fixed?  Can Plato's society work for people of another country? What would you have to fix in order for it to work in America? Could it work on a national or state level or could it only work on a small scale? If it only works on a small scale, what's the use?

**After reading a few of the responses, it seems to me that Americans are too individualistic to give up some of our freedoms or luxuries for the greater good of society.  This will be a topic - the greater good vs. the desires of the individual - as we go on through the semester.  

Due Friday, December 12. 200 words minimum.

Squashed Philosophers

Here's a pretty neat website called Squashed Philosophers - http://www.btinternet.com/~glynhughes/squashed/ - it has abridged versions of the greatest philosophers' best works. It includes many of the people we are going to study.

If you're looking for #10, scroll down farther.

Blog #10 - Questions of Socrates

Due Monday, December 8 - 200 words

We discussed four of Socrates' big questions about life Thursday and Friday:
- What is virtue? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue
- What is courage? http://www.wisdomquotes.com/cat_courage.html
- What is beauty? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty
- What is justice? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justice

What I would like for you to do is to pick one of these big questions and take a moment to consider where you see it lacking in American society.

If you choose virtue, where in American society is there a huge need for virtue? What about beauty? What part of American society could become more beautiful? In what sense? Who in American life could use a little (or a lot more justice)? Which Americans need to show more courage in our tough economic times? Why? (these are sample questions to get some ideas flowing - I figure that you can come up with something yourself).

Editor's Note - I don't want to influence this too much, so I'll refrain from including pictures or quotes or anything else. I've included links to Wikipedia or quotes on courage in case you're stuck on a topic. You DON'T have to pick the same topic that you personally discussed in class, but if you want to, that's fine.

Season 5 Lost trailer

Here it is: Season 5 of Lost coming Wedneday January 21st 2009 8 p.m.

Blog #9

Please pick on the following quotes to expand upon and explain what you think it means in a more profound sense to you - or in other words, how do you think this quote can apply to your life or your world?

Minimum of 150 words about the quote and how it applies to your life. Due Monday, Dec. 1st.

1. "Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on, it adds up". ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

2. "Men are probably nearer the central truth in their superstitions than in their science." ~Henry David Thoreau

3. "He who has seen present things has seen all, both everything which has taken place from all eternity and everything which will be for time without end; for all things are of one kin and of one form." ~Roman emperor, Marcus Aurelius

4. "One day, someone showed me a glass of water that was half full. And he said, 'Is it half full or half empty?' So I drank the water. No more problem." ~filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky, Jewish Ukranian immigrant born in Chile - wikipedia site.

5. "There is only one thing a philosopher can be relied upon to do, and that is to contradict other philosophers." William James, American Pragmatist philosopher & psychologist (1842 - 1910)

6. "Philosophers say a great deal about what is absolutely necessary for science, and it is always, so far as one can see, rather naive, and probably wrong." Richard Feynman American educator & physicist (1918 - 1988)

7. "We need men with moral courage to speak and write their real thoughts, and to stand by their convictions, even to the very death." Robert Ingersoll, American agnostic.

8. "History is fables agreed upon." Voltaire, French Enlightenment writer.


9. "Do you know the secret of the true scholar? In every man, there is something wherein I may learn of him; and in that I am his pupil." Ralph Waldo Emerson.


Quotes #1-4 came from the Quote Garden - http://www.quotegarden.com/philosophical.html
Quotes 5 and 6 came from the Quotations Page - www.quotationspage.com/subjects/philosophy/
Quotes 7 and 8 came from Said What? -http://www.saidwhat.co.uk/philosophers.php

Quote #9 came from The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant.

Fun philosophy stuff

I found these interesting philosophy t-shirts / posters / etc. at Cafe Press.com. There are over 42,000 designs and almost 1/2 million products that you can buy these designs on.

http://shop.cafepress.com/philosophy?sort=byDesignScore

There are some fun t-shirts there like "Plato's Cave Alumni" or "Philosoraptor" or a bumper sticker that said "Major in Philosophy: It's By Far the Most Interesting Path to Poverty".

Others were "Don't argue with me, I have a philosophy degree" and "I doubt, therefore, I might be..." "Team Schopenhauer / Nietchze / insert your favorite philosopher", and one of my favorites: "Sure, it works in practice, but does it work in theory?"

And no, I'm not a shill for this company.

Blog #8 - Can Evolution and Creation co-exist?

In the video that we saw on Friday, What About God?, we saw real people struggling with reconciling their beliefs with the physical evidence of evolution. These were college students who attended a religious college while studying anthropology. It would seem that evolution and creation are on a collision course, but to give the schools credit, they confront the controversy (paradox?) head-on.

I'm glad that we were able to watch the video b/c we got a few questions answered about the fundamental Christians' explanation for fossils and why some of the dinosaur-like reptiles survived (Noah's ark) and some didn't (drowned in the worldwide flood).

I also applaud Wheaton College's attempt to embrace science. Though some conservative Christians might think that Wheaton is becoming liberal (as evidenced from the 1961 The Sword of the Lord editorial about Dr. Hearn's comments about evolution being possible) to the concerned parents, Wheaton is training their students for the real world.

I thought Emi Hayashi was the most thoughtful with some of her questions: -if we have evolved, at what point in evolution did the upright primate obtain a soul? Did mankind commit their first sin around that time? Were there an Adam and an Eve that really existed - the first humans? Is that when God intervened and gave them souls? Or were they an isolated experiment who then blew up their lab?

In the end, she brought up a really great point: "there really can't be that many idiots out there in science" who are wrong about evolution when a religious person points out flaws in evolution, and there can't be that many cranks wrong with their theology when a scientist challenges their religion.

Due Monday, November 17th. 200 words. Can evolution and creation co-exist? Or, more broadly, can science and faith co-exist?

Resources:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/08/index.html -Science, Faith and Politics: video clips and text from some of the same people that we see in the video.

http://www.intelligentdesign.org/ - Explaining the science of Intelligent Design.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/students/index.html Evolution for Students: these websites are for all levels of kids so beware if you find one that is not up to your standards.

http://www.expelledexposed.com/ - National Center for Science Education's website that debunks Expelled, Ben Stein's documentary about Intelligent Design.

See for yourself:

Darwin article link and questions

Hey folks,
Here's a link to the Darwin article - http://www.newsweek.com/id/51528 and the questions in case ya lost the silly thing.

Please answer 7 of the 11 questions below. (Please include the bold questions as part of your seven).
1. Why do you think evolution’s opponents use the term “Darwinism” instead of evolution?
2. Why did Charles Darwin finally publish The Origin of Species in 1859?
3. Provide at least two possible reasons for Darwin’s intestinal distress and heart palpitations during this time period with explanations.
4. Why was Darwin’s evidence so important in proving his theory?
5. How did the glyptodont fossil help with Darwin’s theory?
6. What was Charles Darwin’s more radical achievement, according to the article?
7. How did Thomas Malthus fit into Charles Darwin’s ideas?
8. What was the great implication for mankind in Darwin’s new book, The Descent of Man, published in 1871?
9. How did Darwin describe his own religious beliefs?
10. When did he first start doubting?
11. The article quotes a believer as saying that “suffering is ‘ennobling, an agent of moral improvement.’” Darwin’s favorite daughter, 10-year old Annie, died from TB in 1851, led him into some very dark places. Do you agree or disagree with this argument about suffering? Why or why not? Feel free to use a personal example.

Due Thursday, November 13, 2008

Another neat article by Newsweek: How Lincoln and Darwin have influenced our thoughts: http://www.newsweek.com/id/143742?tid=relatedcl

Blog #7 - Evaluate the Leadership Seminar

Please share your thoughts about the leadership seminar from last Monday at Berkshire. We want to hear both one positive thing and one thing that could be improved for next time (at least one thing). Use your ideas that we shared Monday in class or come up w/ some new ones.

Thought I'd share a quote with you

This is attributed to Buddha. It sounds a lot like what we've been discussing lately.

Blog #6 - The Most Perplexing Questions Imaginable

We've tackled heaven and hell, good and evil, perception and reality. What awaits us after we die? Anything? Catholic Purgatory? Absolutely nothing? Is evil an objective or subjective term? Who defines what or who evil is?

I know that there are many questions still left out there unanswered. What the heck was Plato thinking with his Forms? Why did Socrates allow himself to be put to death? Where is the novel going to go now that we know it's really a novel?

What if the whole Lost series is really going on in Hurley's head? Could the island be purgatory and everyone be dead waiting while their sins are washed away? What if you had a chance to reinvent yourself, who would you become?

There are many more questions to be answered, places to go, people to meet and we can't possibly cover them all in 12 weeks. Obviously, I'm just showing you the path to help you begin your journey of self-discovery, you'll have to do the rest on your own.
These are just a few examples of some questions that you can ask for this blog entry. 200 words minimum. Due Thursday, October 30th.

P.S. I apologize for posting this so late - had to go grocery shopping, make dinner, get my wife's new laptop going, and then Mario Kart Tournament. I got 2nd. If you need another day to do the blog, that's fine. Cute picture of my dog, Izzy, below.

Post #5 - How do we know what we know?

This week and next, we'll be tackling the root of knowledge - how do we learn the knowledge that ends up in our head? When it's all said and done, how did our knowledge of the world get into our mind, stay there, and be able to be recalled?

Descartes believed that we learned info through reason alone. We had to be skeptical of many many things, as he felt that we should be (especially of the learning of the Middle Ages). To quote Sophie's World, "Descartes maintains that we cannot accept anything as being true unless we can clearly and distinctly perceive it... You could say that every single thought must be weighed and measured, rather in the way Galileo wanted everything to be measured and everything immeasurable to be made measurable." Through this perception - though flawed b/c we can't always trust our senses, we must use reason to figure out what we're perceiving. One of the things that we have built in (innate) in us is our sense of God, according to Descartes.

To sum up with a quote from Sophie's World, "a rationalist believes in reason as the primary source of knowledge, and he may also believe that man has certain innate ideas that exist in his mind prior to all experience. And the clearer such ideas may be, the more certain it is that they correspond to reality."

On the flipside is the empirical belief that we learn about the world through experience. By contrast, we start with a tabula rasa, a blank slate, or nothing in our minds, and the things that we learn is added there b/c we have experienced it. "An empiricist will derive all knowledge of the world from what the senses tell us...in the final analysis, all the material for our knowledge of the world comes to us through sensations. Knowledge that cannot be traced back to a simple sensation is therefore false knowledge and must consequently he rejected." These ideas began with Englishman John Locke and his work, Essay on Human Understanding.

In your own opinion, how do you think we learn? Is it through reason? Through experience? Both? Neither? Another way not mentioned here? Your comments (200 words).

Due Monday, 10/20/08.