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.
Monday, October 6, 2008
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.
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.
Friday, October 3, 2008
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.
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.
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.
Wednesday, October 1, 2008
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.
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
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.)
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.)
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