Day: October 10, 2007

Going to have to re-examine Socrates…

Figuratively speaking, of course, since he’s dead and all…

Man, Descartes so far is a serious disappointment. He seems to have an almost Dickensian tendency to verbal puffery (though thankfully the Descartes “Meditations” are much smaller than the big sack of tedium that was “David Copperfield”). It’s like he’s developed an unwholesome lust for his own thoughts and can’t keep his metaphysical hands off of them.

You’d think a guy clever enough to come up with “The Cogito™” could do better.

When I heard Descartes described years ago, I’d heard he started with “I think, therefore I am” and then from there proved the existence of The Supreme Being somehow. While I didn’t expect an unquestionable Proof, I did at least expect to see some spectacular theological philosophy taking place.

Instead, I (metaphorically, of course) show up at Descartes’ intellectual feast expecting some unique and exotic fare, only to see Descartes rummage around in his kitchen to come up with an old, freezer-burnt old package of leftover AquinasAnselm (oops), which he spottily defrosts in the consumer-grade-microwave of his argument. Bah. Not even worthy of dirtying my mental spork on. (There, do I sound arrogant enough to be an old-school philosopher myself yet?)

In other news: Celebration time! I’ve advanced all the way from 1st loser to 3rd loser! WOOHOO! It’s a bit of a jump to get up to the next tier (blogs getting an average of around 50-100 votes/day) but I can make it…

Calling on the entire internet to study for a Philosophy exam…

I’ll probably do two posts today, but only because this one is a preview and an attempt to gather opinions…

I find writing helps me think, and we’ve got a Philosophy exam day after tomorrow. We’ve got a “study sheet” with eight concepts and fourteen potential essay questions that might come up on the exam. Is anyone reading this particularly interested in any of these (some of these have been addressed in earlier posts, but here’s the whole list)?

Concepts: “valid argument”, “sound argument”, “a priori knowledge”, “a posteriori knowledge”, “epistemology”, “metaphysics”, “doctrine of recollection”, “Objective reality/formal reality”

Essay topics (in short):

  • Describing the “Socratic Method” and contrasting it with the sophist method.
  • Discuss some of the Socratic philosophical positions that might call into question the view that what is right for a person is whatever that person believes is right.
  • Discuss Socrates’ claims that evil harms the evildoer and that “the unexamined life is not worth living”, and whether or not he’s justified in these claims
  • Critically discuss Socrates’ claim (at his trial) that he could not have been knowingly and willingly corrupting the youth
  • Discuss Socrates’ arguments in the “Apology” that death is not something to be feared
  • Discuss the “Learner’s Paradox” in the “Meno” (roughly – is it possible to “learn” something without being “taught”, and if so, how can this be?)
  • What was the point of the “slave boy” portion of the “Meno” (Socrates’ attempts to demonstrate that someone who doesn’t understand Geometry can come to have knowledge of geometry without being taught.)
  • Discuss Meno’s definition of “virtue” and Socrates’ objection to it
  • Discuss the distinction (in the “Meno”) between “true knowledge” and “opinion”, and how it relates to the question of whether virtue can be taught
  • From “Euthyphro”, discuss the issues around whether or not whether something is “pious” because The Gods love it, or if The Gods love it because it is “pious”.
  • State clearly and describe Descartes’ three levels of doubt
  • Discuss Descartes’ contention in the first Meditation that he cannot know if he is not dreaming
  • Discuss The Cogito (“I think, therefore I am” and why Descrates couldn’t instead say (for example) “I walk, therefore I am”
  • Discuss: “I hear a noise, I feel heat. These things are false since I am asleep. Yet I certainly do seem to see, hear, and feel warmth. This cannot be false.” (A quote from our translation of Descartes’…)

That’s what we’ve been given to work with. What are the odds that any of that is interesting to any of you? If so, please comment (no login required, and go ahead and put a fake email address in the comment form if it bothers you – as long as it doesn’t appear to be spam I’ll post it.). Come on, you’ll be doing me a favor, and you’ll automatically sound like a genius because we’re discussing philosophy.

Followup post later today…