Logic on Friday

Since this was a double session there were two quiz questions. The first session I asked does the sun go around the earth or does the earth go around the sun? I tried to explain the model interpretation of these theories. If you are curious see Stephen Hawking for how he explains that in The Grand Design. The second half the quiz question was send me a link to a youtube skit of your favorite comic and explain why you think it is funny.

Thursday classes

For the Introduction to Philosophy classes the quiz question is: give a true statement. Keep the Traditional Square of Opposition in mind when doing this and indicate which type of statement your true statement is. For History of Philosophy I the quiz question is: Are some people better than others? For class discussions we seem to be following along with the syllabi fairly well. Keep in mind that the more you read of the selections the more the discussions will interest you and bring up aspects to talk about.

Tuesday classes

Today for Introduction to Philosophy we moved into the Republic and started looking at the implications of Plato's theory of knowledge as it applies to Justice and the State. The quiz question is: do you think some people are better than others? For History of Philosophy I we discussed the Apology, the Oracle, interpretation theory applied to Greek Philosophy including interpretations of the Gospels (briefly). See Hyam Maccoby for an interpretation of Jesus as a revolutionary. I didn't mention this in class but HM also wrote Paul and the Invention of Christianity which also in a way came up. The question was poorly constructed but basically was name something the government does that is against your will. Do you resist - civil disobedience - or cooperate for the best interest of the community?

Thursday and Friday class notes

As usual the pace we set in class is slower than the syllabus, but we do have to keep up, so please keep reading the text according to the syllabus directions. If the pages do not match the edition of the text you have, you can go by the titles of the articles as well. For Introduction to Philosophy on Thursday the quiz question was Do you have a Soul, and how would you describe what you mean by Soul? For History of Philosophy I we went over the Euthyphro and the question I pose is a hypothetical where you imagine Jesus comes to your door, asks that you sell all you have, give the money to the poor, and then follow Him. Would you go or would you argue or ask questions? Is the pious pious because the Gods love it or do the Gods love the pious because it is so pious? For Friday in Logic I asked two questions from the same set of exercises: on page 102 question 6 and on page 104 question 14. Remember for quiz questions email me your responses. By the way, feel free to email me regarding other things, questions about your readings, or whatever.

Thursday and Friday classes

My Introduction to Philosophy classes on Thursday continued with the ancient Greeks and began looking at Plato. I always start with the Euthyphro as a lead in to the Apology and so can ask the quiz question: If Jesus came to your door and you recognized Him both as Jesus and God and He asked you to sell all that you have, give the money to the poor, and go follow Him, would you go with Him or would you argue with Him? Imagine this scenario as a hypothetical case where you know it is really God - no doubt. What would you imagine yourself doing? The movie I showed a bit of in regard to this was Brother Sun Sister Moon. For my History of Philosophy I class on Thursday we went into more detail on the pre-Socratics since we have twice as much time to cover them. Thales and the others were seeking the Arche. We continue to do that today and it seems Quarks are what we consider to be the basic building blocks of everything. For the quiz question I asked what you thought would be the best quiz question for the day? (I love this question. It often gives me better results than when I ask a specific question.) Today, Friday my Logic class met for the first time and we followed the syllabus pretty closely - as a result there were two quiz questions. The first was, what are the ten commandments. The second was why do comics use so many curse words (many of them see to) when they can be just as funny without doing that?

First day of classes

Today both of my Introduction to Philosophy classes met for the first time as well as my History of Philosophy I, and the semester is off to a start. All three classes spent most of the time reviewing the syllabi and the test and term paper requirements. The quiz question for all three classes was also the same - a memory test: What are the ten commandments? Notice I have my own notes from years when I compiled the results of the quiz here but I stopped adding to the statistics once it was clear that class after class was consistent. Today's results fit these averages as well. We will talk briefly about this next class. I think it makes an interesting point about the nature of our memory, and our ability to recall things. Two of the classes had to suffer through a rendition of Conan the Barbarian the Musical. Try to forget it if you can! But it makes an interesting point displaying what we might consider the primal nature of virtue - the heroes were those who could crush their enemies. What changed that led to moral progress? I also discussed the difficulties in language, meaning, and even the alphabet.(See my previous blog post for some links I used for that.) All of this is too brief for as interesting a topic as it is.

Comparing alphabets

There is no short way to describe ancient alphabets. I was going to put maybe four up on the board to make an interesting comparison but they link into one another forever. Still, here are a few alphabets of interest. One to be familiar with is Greek Another is Hebrew And Arabic But what about Babylonian? Or Hittite? Which might be Phoenician. Akkadian