I'm wary of blogging after watching The Social Network...

I did not expect to miss Teaching, Learning, and Knowing as much as I do. I also didn't expect to use so much of what we discussed as soon as spring semester began!  I am a TA for John Schroeder's Intro to Ethics class, and both the material we covered so intensively (i.e. Plato) and what we learned about teaching and learning are helping me immensely. Thank you, Matt Silliman. The class is over, but the learning never ceases...


I need advice from anyone who knows a thing or two about religion and philosophers in Ancient Greece. In a reflection, one of my students advocates that the story of the Ring of Gyges in Book II of Plato's Republic applies to the Greek gods. In short, he says that the gods can make themselves invisible, just like anyone who wears the Ring of Gyges, therefore they do not care about acting justly, and in fact often take the opportunity to act unjustly (ex. in the Greek myths, Zeus is several times depicted raping women). I like his interpretation, I'm just not sure what I should tell him. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Walk in Beauty ~ Lisa

Residual questions

I didn't get around to asking these questions in class today, but they relate to our discussion of the anti-Semite: can critical thinking help us reach people who don't value it? Presumably we want racists to replace prejudice with understanding and appreciation. Some people believe that this change has to come from within. But assuming that we can do something to further this goal, how do we communicate with people so set in their ways that they reject a rational analysis of their beliefs?


Mark Twain said "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness." I think this is part of the answer. What do you think?

(Aside: How funny, I just heard an ad on one of my online radio stations for studying abroad at NYU.)

Gone Fission

I would like to expand the argument I started to make last class that objective knowledge can neither be inherently dangerous nor safe. I think this topic came up in our discussion of whether or not a teacher should shield certain students from a specific piece of knowledge because of immoral implications. This issue fascinates me, but in this post I'd like to focus on the nature of objective knowledge itself.

I make the ontological assumption that there exists a universe external to myself. I consider objective knowledge to be truths about this universe that have passed public tests of validity. Nuclear fission is one example of objective knowledge. Objective knowledge helps us understand the universe in which we live. The process of gathering objective knowledge forms the basis of all branches of mathematics and hard science.

Properties of the universe, in and of themselves, can neither harm nor help anyone. Their existence is neither inherently good nor inherently bad. In order to begin categorizing these properties as good or bad, we have to learn of their existence. This objective knowledge is our understanding of the properties of the universe, and it is closely related to but distinctly separate from the properties themselves. (Our observation of the properties may change them, but that is an issue for another essay)

So now we are once removed from the properties themselves, in that we have objective knowledge about them. Imagine, then, a third layer: we project the value judgments required to determine something's goodness or badness onto objective knowledge. The distinction between helpful or harmful is not a characteristic of the objective knowledge, nor is it an aspect of the properties themselves.

Let's return to nuclear fission to illustrate this idea. Nuclear fission is a chemical process that occurs in man-made situations and the natural world, although the latter happens less frequently. This process is inherently neither harmful nor helpful. I argue that the knowledge gained from learning about spontaneous nuclear fission and conducting nuclear fission experiments is neither good nor bad. (It may be harder to argue that the experiments themselves are also benign because of the risks involved, immense financial cost, the waste material produced... there are probably additional reasons.)

Harm and help can only be determined when the knowledge of nuclear fission is applied to social interactions, whether within one society in particular or all of humanity. Knowledge of nuclear fission can be used to make nuclear weapons, which have controversial moral implications in Western society because they have the power to destroy life, and we value life. But this doesn't make nuclear fission dangerous knowledge.

That's all for now. Any thoughts?

Walk in Beauty ~ Lisa

Please excuse this slight detour from our class material...

In one of my classes today I wished that the professor* leading our discussion was a student in our Philosophy of Teaching, Learning, and Knowing class. He said some things about Plato that I didn't agree with. (I.e. he told us that Plato believed art and poetry are merely copies of copies, and thus they are far removed from Truth.) He brought this up simply in comparison to our discussion topic, so I didn't want to correct him because it would slow down the class discussion, which would be disrespectful to my fellow students. I also thought that I should respect his position as teacher by acknowledging that he may have had some purpose for simplifying Plato that I do not comprehend. I think that excessive nit-picking is disrespectful anyway. What he said about Plato wasn't heinously wrong, though I think he over-simplified. Regardless, I felt that his comparison between Plato and our discussion topic was legitimate, for our purposes, so I kept mum on the subject.... until now.

Should teacher-student relationships include the possibility of remonstration? And if they should, how and when should it be done?


Walk in Beauty ~ Lisa


*Author's Note: I avoided mentioning the name of the professor, class, and subject matter on purpose.

"Handing a student who challenges your expertise with an insightful question"

I love the webcomic "xkcd". This one is especially pertinent to the pedagogical aims of our class. Look below or check out the original at the following url: http://www.xkcd.com/803/

I wish that Socrates would respond to his students' questions more often with the "right" response, but usually he settles for the "wrong" one. But on the other side of the desk, I wish that Adimantus and Glaucon would challenge Socrates more often. They often force him to elaborate on certain issues, which hopefully helps them learn better. But I don't think they exhibit much of the critical thinking skills that Socrates (may have) wanted them to develop. Do Socrates' goals of keeping his students out of politics and teaching them to think critically conflict with one another? And what, if anything, is Socrates learning from his students if they accept everything he says at face value? If he tailors everything in the conversation to fit his goal of keeping his students out of politics, then Socrates is interrupting the natural flow of conversation and philosophical thought process. And how does Socrates know that keeping his students out of politics is what's best for Athens anyway? 

Re: "Experiential Learning"

In response to Michael’s post, “Experiential Learning” (Proper grammar for quoting blog post titles?) http://morepageswithmaps.blogspot.com/2010/09/experiential-learning.html#comments


The Objective Arts

I read a lot growing up because it was fun and easy for me. Reading was strongly encouraged in my house. My parents encouraged me to join humanities and communication arts magnet programs, which seriously strengthened my reading and writing capabilities. I think this has definitely improved my capability for abstract thought. Discussion-oriented classes engage me more than lecture-based classes, as long as the professor knows what he's doing. I can’t learn by just listening and taking notes, though I do appreciate the power of a great lecture.

Since middle school I've had trouble with the more analytical disciplines because actually doing math and science often bores me, and because I have the annoying tendency of only wanting to practice what I naturally excel at doing. However, I often enjoy learning about certain mathematical and scientific concepts (it’s actually doing math and science that bugs me).

Some disciplines, like physics and biology, interest me but require too much of something I don't like (math and memorization, respectively) for me to pursue them to the same degree that I pursue the humanities. However, sometimes I enjoy learning about them in the classroom, and especially via informal discussion and reading on my own time. I've often yearned to be disciplined enough to tackle the hard sciences so I would fully understand all the interesting stuff they can offer. Alas, you have to sit through a lot of boring crap before you're ready to know anything interesting ( I'd say this applies to the humanities as well).

Liberal arts classes may not be as subjective as you think. If you consider the philosophy toolkit version of subjective/objective (see page 5) then a claim can be objective even if it is not the only one of its kind, as long as there exists a public method for investigating its cogency. So just because a historical event or philosophical text has multiple interpretations doesn’t mean you can claim anything you want. You have to support any claim you make with verifiable truths. And in so-called “objective” disciplines, the upper levels of math and science can offer room for creativity and interpretation (ex. writing algebraic proofs). And often this open-endedness can be frustratingly ambiguous (so I’m told).

With that said, I do sympathize with your frustration regarding the liberal arts. When I took Philosophy 101 and Introduction to Hinduism one semester, I felt myself missing math for the first time ever. Though originally I wanted to be a Philosophy major, I’ve discovered that I enjoy cultural studies more on the whole, in part because they strike a nice balance between interpretation and fact that I can’t quite get from Philosophy.

Michael, I hope this ramble has been somewhat helpful to you.


Walk in Beauty ~ Lisa

Plato is to Devorak what I am to Qwerty

I am typing this on Sharon's Macbook (thank you Sharon!) and the keyboard is Devorak but we switched the software to Qwerty because I am way too impatient to hunt and peck. Just wanted to let y'all know.

Attention students taking the Philosophy of Teaching, Learning, and Knowing: you should be here with me eating Sharon's brownies and getting ready to watch Memento. Shame on you!

Kidding, of course. I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend so far.

Now that the preamble is over...

Whenever I listen to literary analysis of any book, I wonder what the author's real intentions were in writing it. While I think our class' interpretations of Plato's Republic are usually reasonable, I wish Plato could give us feedback on our ideas. I wonder if we can make true interpretations that weren't intended by the author. If we can, does that mean that Plato's ideas continue to develop long after his death? Not just last through the ages, but actually grow and adapt to modern minds and situations? Can literary ideas develop beyond an author's understanding and intention?

Don't get me wrong, I think interpreting literature is a noble and worthwhile pursuit. There are just some times when I feel like that guy in Annie Hall, when the screenwriter tells him that his interpretations were crap, he got everything wrong...


As always,

Walk in Beauty ~ Lisa