164 m.p.h.

The fun never stops with the 10 week quarter system. We can't just slow back down, or we might crash. We have to keep going 164 miles per hour.

I hope the exam wasn't too terrifying and that it helped you nail down some of your thoughts about Greek philosophy. I will return them to you on Monday.

Oh by the way, speaking of Greek philosophy... it's all wrong. So says Descartes, your new friend for the weekend. (Check out his Halloween costume. Lame! Oh wait, that's just what he usually wears. Nevermind.)

I thought it would be too mean to bring this stuff up before or after you were taking the midterm, but you need to read ALL of Descartes' Meditations this weekend. That means pgs. 47-103 of the turquoise Cress translation if you bought the standard bookstore copy. Not only do I think the six meditations can't be excerpted, but I think the whole thing doesn't make much sense without the preface and the synopsis. And you absolutely cannot miss the dedication... watch how weasely he is.

And of course, your working draft of paper #2 is due to the EEE dropbox Tuesday night at 9:00 p.m. Trick or treat, smell my feet, give me something good to read.

I promise you

That you will do better on the exam than this...

Class #13 Review and Reminders

-Monday would be a good day to ask any questions that arise about Essay #2
-We can also discuss the midterm if you guys want, or we can save that for Wednesday
-Ideas draft #2 due Monday 9am
-Post your dialogue homework if you didn't get a chance... but no more found money problems
-Office hours continue to be interesting... this afternoon Christine & Rosemary & I discussed what situations would ethically justify eating: tigers, dogs, monkeys, people

Have a nice weekend... and by nice I mean a weekend that actualizes your arete, of course!

Class #12 Review and Reminders

I hope that I-spy was as helpful to you guys as it was to me. Every now and then I have a good idea... and you asked excellent questions.

Mari asked another great question after class: which is more "important," a car or a tree? Perhaps the tree because it has an organic soul that seeks nutrition, perhaps the car because it has a very useful function and has been actualized by the souls of human craftsmen. But we have to leave aside the question of utility, because we're being teleologists and not utilitarians. Which is more wonderful, shall we say. Which is more substantial Aristotle might say. And there is a single test you can always apply in Aristotle, whether you're talking about ethics, politics, physics, metaphysics, logic, or whatever. The test is which thing is more self-sufficient? Which thing is more of a mover and less of a move-d. (Catholic Aristotleans would say, which is a creator and which is a created thing, though A. himself believes the universe has always existed and therefore wasn't "created.") Which is more actualized, and actualizing of other things? By this test it's the tree, since the tree can live and reproduce on its own whereas the car must be maintained, serviced, driven by people.

REMINDERS... write a dialogue on ontology, ethics, or both. At least two characters representing different philosophical positions. At least 15-20 lines of dialogue, but the more you do, the more you're preparing for your mid-term.

The major positions on ontology are:

-Plato (dualism shading into pure idealism)
-Aristotle (hylomorphism / teleology)
-Democritus (materialism... you could also use any modern scientist)
-Gorgias (nihilism / skepticism)
-I guess common sense or craft could be considered ontological theories, albeit ones with obvious defects

The major positions on ethics are:

-Kant (deontology, often via categorical imperative)
-Aristotle (individual teleology -> eudaemonianism / cultivation of virtue, often via golden mean)
-Epicurus (individual teleology -> hedonism)
-Mill (social teleology -> universal hedonism)
-Iannucci (164 miles per hour -ism???, via non-golden mean / golden non-mean... by the way, this is a very apt statement of the ethics of capitalism)
-I guess a conventional ethics, what Schwab called normative, is an ethical position, albeit a pre-philosophical one... following the letter of the law or following social custom)

IF YOU WANT A HEAD START... the ideas draft for paper 2 (due Monday at 11 a.m. to the EEE dropbox) will be answering the "four tasks" of this prompt in any way you find useful. We'll probably start task 1 in class on Friday. I may also add another not-essay component, like doing a Theophrastian character sketch of the courageous man (or alternately the cowardly man or the rash man.)

Oh, and the prompt recommends you read the Course Guide chapters 4, 6, and 10. Which would be quite helpful for you to read in general, so I highly recommend doing that sometime before Monday.

Class #11 Review & Reminders

Post your ethical analysis of the voting propositions in the reply. It's going to get rather complicated, but I think it will be a good demonstration of how Aristotle, Kant, Mill, and Epicurus would reason through some different concepts. And the added benefit is it might help you make sense of some of the more confusing aspects of the California ballot.

Oh, speaking of that... here's the complete Voter Information Guide

And here's the rest of the Armando Iannucci comedy sketch on the non-golden mean... is this a fifth ethical system?

Class #10 Review

Thank you for actualizing my teacherly potential today.

REVIEW:

I. Deontological ethics
-I should do the act that is right, regardless of situation or consequence.
-Example: Immanuel Kant
-Kant's Criterion: "Categorical Imperative"... would I want every other person to act in such a way?

II. Teleological ethics
-I should do whatever will produce the best consequence in this particular situation.

A. Social Teleology
-Example: John Stuart Mill
-Mill's Criterion: "Utilitarianism"... what will produce the most pleasure and the least pain for the greatest number of people?

B. Individual Teleology
-Example: Aristotle
-Aristotle's Criterion: "Eudaimonian(ism)"... what will develop my virtue to its greatest excellence and therefore make me happy?
-Conflicting Example: Epicurus
-Epicurus's Criterion: "Hedonism"... what will bring me the most pleasure and the least pain?

More
-Note how Mill and Epicurus agree that the end of ethics is pleasure, but disagree about whose pleasure... utilitarianism has been called a "universal hedonism"
-Note how Aristotle's premise that the cultivation of virtue/excellence is equivalent to happiness seems to require further proof. Do you think it can be proven?
-Can you think of any other combinations of these methods and criteria for making ethical choices? Can you think of any wholesale alternatives?


REMINDERS:
-Final Draft #1, Sunday 9 p.m. here
-Read Theophrastus sketches in Course Guide pgs. 4-5

Class #9 Review and Reminders

First, I want to emphasize something I've said before, which is... we'll rarely have time to truly finish discussions and activities in class although we will sure as hell start a lot of them. To finish something like today's thesis exercise, you need to continue with your partner after class, even if that just means exchanging emails. To finish the philosophical discussions we start, you need a regular partner from this class or one of the other (non-trailer) classes to talk through the ideas a couple of times a week.

REMINDERS:
-read Nichomachean Ethics (1.4, 1.5, 1.7, 1.8, 2.1, 2.5-2.7, 3.6-3.8)
-chart three virtue sliders for Obama & McCain w/ specific reference to tonight's debate
-do quotations exercise for Obama & the Hills
-post Turtle/Ghandi/Descartes exercises from Monday in reply to this post

Action Philosophers

OK, so the philosophy comic book is available online for only 99c an issue. Since we're now discussing ethics, how about we download it legally. (Not qua mere legality but qua virtue, because it is the best thing to do.)

Scroll to the bottom where it says "Digital Comics" and you can download them.

Recommended: Issue #1 (includes Plato), Issue #5 (includes Descartes), Issue #7 (includes Aristotle and the pre-Socratics)

Class #8 Review and Reminders

Excellent questions today. We will use that format more in the future, I think.

IMPORTANT REVISION TO PAPER PROMPT:

In talking with you each individually, I've decided that I really don't see the point of section 3 of the prompt as currently phrased. So we will approach it somewhat differently. We will call section 3 "rhetoric" rather than "organization." Your concern in section 1 is where E is coming from, your concern in section 2 is what E says, in section 4 you can draw any number of comparisons between what he says and what one of the other speakers says, but your concern in section 3 is how he says what he says. Organization is one such how, but there could be others. Does he, for instance, make jokes like Aristophanes and Alcibiades? Does he hop up and down on one foot? Does he favor particular types of arguments over others. Etc.

REMINDERS:

-bring an unmarked copy of your essay to class
-read Guide 29-35 and do Descartes exercise, Ghandi exercise, and Turtle exercise
-Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics for Friday (Book I, Chapters 4, 5, 7, 8, and 13; Book II, Chapters 1, 5, 6, and 7; Book III, Chapters 6, 7, 8)

Woof

This is today's quiz, in its ideal Platonic form. I rearranged/excerpted some of your answers.

Stupidocles:
"A 4-legged animal that barks." (Jie)
"A pet that barks and wags his tail." (Jessica)
"A dog is an animal that helps me hunt." (Monique)
"Everyone should own a dog." (Ivan)

Dogistotle:
"An animal created when a male and female dog mate." (Jeffrey)
"The result of breeding different types of wolves until we are eventually left with a trainable and obedient hybrid." (Stephanie)

Gorgias:
"A something." (Kate)
"A dog is your best friend! It scares cats and rats away from your house! You should get one!" (Wes)
"Would a child be happier with a dog? The answer is yes!" (Shae)

Xenocrates:
"A dog is not real, it comes from dogness" (Kiyomi)
"A dog is merely a copy of an ideal dog."
"Part of the idea of dogness." (Hannah)

Democritus:
"Fur, muscle, blood, etc."
"Something that is made of atomic matter." (Florence)
"Made up of matter like everything else in the world." (Leah)

Aristotle:
"An animal with four legs, two eyes, a nose, a mouth, and has fur. Can jump, run, eat, etc.
"A potentiality actualized by a soul." (Ariana)
"A living thing, which has a soul yet has no intellect or reason." (Jessica)
"Their noses have the cold and wet attribute." (Ivan)
"The soul of a dog cannot live without its body." (Rosemary)

More Aristotle

During the peripatetic phase of office hours, one of you (I think it was Kiyomi) was asking about how the soul/anima/psyche (English/Latin/Greek) was passed from an organism to its reproductive offspring. Aristotle thinks that a "seed," broadly conceived, contains the entire telos of an organism. An apple is potentially an entire apple tree, a sperm is potentially an entire human being, etc. This is consistent with the idea of soul/anima/psyche being a motivating purpose. The only difficulty comes when Aristotle speaks of the psyche being indivisible; how could it divide some small part of itself to actualize the seed and still itself be a whole? And how could the small part that provides the actuality of the seed then itself become a whole? Aristotle, being a good scientist, acknowledges that it does, and that reproduction is part of what psyches do. (You can see the seed of this idea, actually, in the Symposium... compare the bottom paragraph of pg. 171 of our Aristotle book.) A very simple version of the "reproduction" problem occurs with something like a cactus shoot, which is actually a part of an ensouled thing (a plant) that you cut off from the whole, but the whole goes on functioning and the part then becomes a whole (a plant). Again, this requires some elaboration on Aristotle's part. Read this passage from Parva Naturalia (Minor Essays on Nature) and see if you think he's being too tricky. I think what we should keep in mind is that the psyche isn't like a little speck that's somewhere inside an organism. It is the form and telos, the animating principle of all of its material. Using our biology, we might say that it's in every cell. So it makes sense that it would be somehow transferable if we can get around this part/whole problem. Indeed in De Anima II.5 (pg. 174) Aristotle even concludes that the ability to reproduce is what makes something psychic in the first place... if an apple tree's purpose is to be an apple tree, its purpose is to continue being an apple tree, and reproduction through seeds is part of its telos.

Qua

The best literal definition I've seen is "in the capacity of." It would also translate to "as." And I was wrong when I said it derives from "what" in Latin. It actually derives from "who." Here are some examples of its usage I found on the internets:

"It was qua poet that Byron resurrected the exploded and discarded immortal Christian soul by bodying it forth through the notion of soul conceived as poetic imagination."

"The President qua head of the party mediated the dispute."

"Their old standing friends, qua individuals and groups, have to unite and wage a worldwide campaign that should equal the protests that are being made against G8, WTO, IMF, and the World Bank."

"The self-perpetuating tendencies of educational institutions, qua institutions, should never go unchallenged when they perpetuate socially disputable functions."

Class #6 Review & Reminders

My wife is really sick, so I don't have much time to devote to the blog this afternoon. I hope between our class and Schwab's lecture you're a bit less intimidated by Aristotle. (Don't forget the forum Friday at 11:00 if you want to ask him a question.)

But... I encourage the groups who didn't have their question answered during class today to post it here, and I will reply later tonight or tomorrow morning.

And I definitely owe you guys a post about "qua."

REMINDERS
---------
-Read Course Guide 26-27
-Read On the Soul from start to finish
-Bring your Ideas Draft to class on Friday... we will be doing more writing exercises

Easy Writer exercises (answer key)

Click for link to .jpg file.

23.1 (quotations)

24.4 (ellipses)

Plato & Aristotle

OK, so one difference is that Shaquille O'Neal once called himself "The Big Aristotle." I'm not aware of any "Big Socrates" or "Big Plato." (Shaq was riffing on the fact that Aristotle was unusually tall for his time period. Which means he was probably, oh, 5'10.")

Anyway, post HW responses here.

Class #5 Review & Reminders

Feel free to ask further questions about the paper here or on the listserv. I wanted to share one useful idea that came out of office hours and two useful ideas that Schwab mentioned during today's staff meeting.

1. From office hours (by the way, come to office hours! if you wait 5 mins. after class I'll walk over with you and show you where it is)... anyhow, I was talking to a student in office hours today and I mentioned my "samurai theory of critique." What this means is that if you want to criticize the positions taken by a speaker like Eryximachus, you should start by constructing the best possible version of those positions, the strongest version of his argument, even if you have to be somewhat charitable and even inventive in doing so. The samurai part is, you win no honor by defeating a weak opponent, only by defeating a strong opponent. So make Eryximachus as strong as you can before you start to point out his limitations. Furthermore, if you read the prompt you see that the main point of the assignment is simply to construct his position in detail and that evaluating it doesn't even come until the very end for the most part.

2. Schwab A: Schwab wasn't sure if Socrates (or Plato) was as down on women as the other speakers. He wondered if the exclusion of women is part of the traditional ritual or culture of the symposium rather than part of the new philosophical view, or even if it is something particular to this group of men. He pointed out the important role of Diotima, and some things that Socrates said about women in other dialogues. I'm not sure I agree... it seems to me that Plato likes imaginary women more than real ones... but the point is it's an area for debate. I mean certainly in our own adoption of Socratic/Platonic ideas in class, we can just as well assume that any of the things said about men apply equally to women.

4. Schwab B... this one is more interesting: Schwab pointed out that each of the dialogues doesn't so much refute the previous one as preserve one or two useful elements of the previous one and then go forward with elaborating those. He contrasted the "integration" of previous ideas to the "negation" of previous ideas or the "competition" between ideas. In the same way, he said that to be a philosopher for Socrates was not to "negate" the pleasures of the body, but to "integrate" them along with the more important pleasures of the mind. This relates to one of my previous blog posts when I was talking about gooder and worser. Socrates still drinks wine... he just doesn't get as drunk as the other men because he is also focused on gooder mental pleasures instead of exclusively focused on worser physical pleasures. Likewise, I'm not sure he cockblocks Alcibiades because he isn't attracted to him but more that he is simply more interested at that moment in having a philosophical conversation. Physical pleasures aren't bad according to this theory, they're just not as good.

Speaking of mental pleasures, your homework:
--------------------------------------------
-be sure to put your ideas draft in the dropbox if you haven't already
-grammar exercises (recommended; I will post the answers later tonight)
-read Aristotle On the Soul 1.1, 1.4, 2.1-2.3, 3.4, 3.7 ( = pgs. 161-71, 194-96, 198-200)... warning... this is way harder than reading Plato
-read Sappho poems (Course Reader pg. 3)
-write a blog post in which you talk about one part of the Aristotle reading that seems to contradict with the theories of Plato/Socrates. Explain why you think it's a contradiction.

More on Ideas Draft (read prompt first before reading this)

I think I did a decent job explaining the 3-stage drafting process for Paper #1 (idea draft, working draft, final draft), but let me tell you a bit more about how it relates to the work you've done so far.

Section I = continue & then present your research from the Discovery Task

Section II-III = expanded version of the Eryximachus column in the grid handout

Section IV = other column(s) in the grid handout, our discussions on Platonism

We've gone "past" this paper in our class discussions now; today's discussion served mainly to get you ready for Schwab's last lecture on Plato and his lectures on Aristotle. You know all the background you need, so it's a question of getting all the bits of close analysis down in the idea draft, fusing them together into a coherent whole in the working draft, and revising/improving that in the final draft.

IMPORTANT: The main purpose of the idea draft is to remove the fear of the blank Word document that will greet you as you write your first college paper. You've already done some of the thinking in class and in your homework, and this will allow you to do most of the rest of it so you can focus in the next drafts on writing well. So DON'T WORRY ABOUT COMPLETE SENTENCES OR SOUNDING LIKE YOU'RE SUPER-SMART. Just write in a way that's comfortable and easy for you.

Class #4 Review & Reminders

I thought we had another productive dialectic today, and I'm sure it will make it easier to understand Schwab's lecture on Monday, and the rest of this year's Humanities Core. BUT, I need you to help me with something. Don't let me talk about the Symposium, or Trees vs. Treeness, or Platonism-in-general, etc. on Monday. Like actually raise your hand and tell me to stop! On Monday we need to talk about Paper #1, which means analyzing the Eryximachus speech.

SOME FURTHER EXPLANATION:

Since I can't talk about this Monday, I'll talk about it now. Christine, Ivan, Hannah and I had a nice little symposium in office hours today and they have helped me identify two major areas of confusion that arise from the weirdness of us having to think our way backwards into an ancient Greek mindset.

1) The ancient Greeks do not believe that sexual desire is bad or dirty. The main cultural source of that idea in the modern West is our religious traditions, specifically as they were developed during the middles ages in Europe. Actually, let me take things a step further. The Greeks do not believe ANYTHING is good or bad, in the sense that the good thing is holy and nice and the bad thing is wrong and dirty and evil. They believe that SOME THINGS ARE GOODER THAN OTHERS. Diotima's speech about the "staircase" of desiring the good is not a heterodox, anti-traditional idea. It's actually a pretty good expression of what all Greeks thought. (Well, except for the part about young men being better sex than women.) When Socrates was sentenced to death for corrupting the youth of Athens by making them question traditional religion and values, his defense was that all he was trying to do was SAVE the traditions from the sophists (rhetoricians) who were saying that there was no gooder or worser and that everything was equal. That anything you could convincingly argue for was true. (cf. marketing, "truthiness"). The jury didn't buy this defense, but, at least here, he could plausibly make that defense. The lesson of the Symposium is YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT (or screw, or think about.) There isn't such a thing as non-desire, because that would mean a human was a god. All humans desire, it's just a question of what. In the end they all desire "the good," but the smarter ones realize that the lower desires are only confused or worser ways of getting it. (So from now on in class let's say gooder and worser instead of good and bad. I'm being entirely serious.)

2) The Greeks are not aware of modern science! It's actually Aristotle who gets the whole ball rolling on that, but it's not until much, much later that a way of doing science as we would recognize it emerges. (We'll read Descartes later in the quarter; he's one of the earliest of the moderns.) The premise of Plato's philosophy is that the evidence of our senses is unreliable; think about how your ears and eyes can play tricks on you, or how every physical object in the world moves and changes. Since concepts are, like "gods," perfectly satisfied/stable/complete, then using our unreliable senses to describe changing objects like this tree or that tree is not a good way to find truth. A better way would be to use dialectic to generalize toward stable concepts like treeness. Towards categories, that is. Now Shae might say, that makes these categories human inventions, just like she said the gods were human inventions. No, it doesn't. Not if you're Plato. Those concepts, those objects of knowledge, those philosophical "gods" (treeness = the god of trees, you might say)... they are what you are trying to KNOW. You're not inventing them. They're real. You can't see them or touch them, yet they must be real because otherwise how could there be actual, physical trees? Actual, physical trees come from treeness. This tree dies, that tree gets cut down. But treeness endures, and without treeness there are no trees. (If treeness sounds dumb, think of a concept we still use, like gravity.) Plato will actually go on to say that the things you can see and touch are therefore NOT REAL. Or not fully real. They're real like xerox copies or real, or the circle I drew on the board is real. They're imperfect, and only perfect things are really real. Now the modern scientific objection is this... even if there were perfectly real abstractions, how could I possibly KNOW them except through my imperfect senses? Modern science says EVEN THOUGH our senses are imperfect and EVEN THOUGH the objects in the world are not concepts, not perfect circles, that this is the ONLY way to accumulate knowledge. By gathering as much imperfect data as possible and comparing it together. Better to look through a foggy window than try to look through a wall, says modern science. Plato thinks you can look through that wall, using your mind. (Come to office hours and ask me for the Long Explanation of Why Platonism is Wrong. This blog would explode if I tried to type that here.)

WEEKEND HOMEWORK:

-Familiarize yourself with the Paper #1 prompt and bring any questions about it.
-Do the Ideas Draft #1 assignment. Turn in one copy to the dropbox and print out a copy to bring to class on Monday (for your own reference during class). I also put the handout itself in the dropbox because I think someone missed class. (Dropbox->Trailerology->CourseFiles) More notes on this in my next post.
-Read Easy Writer 182-189 and do exercises 23.1-24.4 in the little workbook. This is not busywork; these are skills that relate directly to the Paper #1 assignment, specifically how to paraphrase and how to grammatically integrate quotations.
-Think about all of the wonderful times you had with the tree. Because you're going to miss it when it's not there on Monday.

Tips on Note-Taking during Lectures

From another Core instructor (Which reminds me, somebody asked today if I am the "instructor" for this course. Yes, I'm the "instructor.")

Notes on Notes:

1. Print the online lecture notes before going to the actual lecture.

2. Devise a system of shorthand for writing what the professor says, especially when this is not in the printed version of the lecture notes. Come up with a way to jot down the most important points, when the professor is speaking rapidly.

3. Underline or circle key phrases. Come up with a hierarchy that distinguishes major ideas from illustrating examples. For example, one could underline main ideas and put an X in the margin next to subordinating ideas.

3. Use a symbol representing confusion (sometimes students are reluctant to write a question mark in their notes) for reference when asking about the lecture during section.

4. Use a symbol representing "example" for later reference and elaboration. Coming up with one's own example from the course material works as a way to internalize the frequently difficult material presented.

5. Use a symbol representing "I disagree" for elaboration in section in the form of a possible debate over the material. Distinguish between a disagreement based on logic and a disagreement based on alternative sources of information.

If I may give an executive summary, have a pen in your hands at all times when you are reading or attending a lecture and USE it. Even if you start a doodle of Martin Schwab with his naughty bits on backwards maybe that will lead to an interesting thought? See that's me being a maker again.

Take note: helpful sites on taking notes... this and this.

EAP program

Sorry for sending this over e-mail first instead of on the blog. It is very hard to break myself of this habit.

EAP stands for study abroad. Uh, I'm not quite sure how that works with the letters and stuff, but just trust me, it stands for study abroad. I feel like studying abroad is so obviously great that I don't need to use rhetoric/marketing, but the one thing I will add is that as a college student it really works out for you because, since you have to pay tuition anyway, you're basically paying it to the study abroad program instead of your regular tuition. So it might not actually cost anything more. (Unless you go somewhere where the dollar has a weak exchange right now, like Europe. So yeah, go to Chile or Brazil or Turkey or Vietnam or something. Did I mention how great study abroad is?)

FWD:

Dear Humanities Core Course Students,

We usually don't send e-mail announcements that aren't directly related to Humanities Core Course activities, but we do make an exception for the Education Abroad Program because of the all the positive ways it enriches the undergraduate education experience. On Friday, October 3, from 11:00-11:50, the Education Abroad Program will hold a special forum in Bio Sci Lecture Hall III to inform you about opportunities to study abroad at UC. For more information on Education Abroad, please also visit the UCI Center for International Education.

Friday’s forum is open to all Humanities Core Course students, whether or not you are enrolled in a forum time.

Suzanne Bolding
Humanities Core Course Program

Class #3 Review (post SQs here)

That was some serious dialectic today! But I wonder whether we finished introducing everyone to the class? Poor Kate probably won't get introduced until finals week.

Reminders (and give me a reminder-reminder by email or reply post if I left something off).

-Re-read Symposium 45-77
-Read Guide 23-25
-Post your answer to ONE of Schwab's study questions in reply to this post. 2-4 complete sentences is a good guideline although some questions are more complex than others. Pick a hard one, we need more aporia. Try to stick to the section I gave to your row if you can because it will distribute the questions out more evenly.
-If you didn't submit Discovery Task #1, try the EEE dropbox again. Click on the assignment, then click on "assignment submission," then click on "upload."
-Fill out the grid handout I gave you to review Symposium 1-44. But be sure to add 3 more columns for Socrates, Sarah Palin, and Joe Biden (maybe on the back of the page). Of course this means you need to watch the Vice Presidential Debate, which will air on all the news channels at 18:00 PST on Thursday. (Obviously this is the kind of assignment that you can submit handwritten; submit in pencil or pen, unless you're Ariana, in which case it has to be written on the top of a chocolate cake with icing.)