2009 Fall Proseminar Professor Blog

I'll send these out as emails too, but here's my blog for the course:

1st Meeting: September 1st, 2009

It was great to finally meet you all the other day. Naturally, we had to spend a lot of time on introductory matters. We'll get down to the philosophy from here on out. Here are a couple of follow up items from class:

1. Packets are ready at 10am. Pick up yours at Rebman 203, during business hours today and Friday.

2. Browsing Exercise: I would like you to use some of the reference sources we mentioned(Routledge Encyclopedia (through Foley), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Wikipedia) to spend time browsing. Give it about 2 hours if you can. You might start with two or three terms or concept from Tuesday night that you have heard of but don't know much about. Then explore links from reference sources. Keep track of what your browse and a few details that stood out from your reading. Feel free to look at lots of things briefly or a few things in more depth. Then write up a two page log of where you've been and what stood out for you.

3. "Interests and Preferences" emails due Friday. At Tuesday's class, we mentioned A LOT of things that you all might be interested in knowing or exploring about philosophy. Send me an email (put "Pro-seminar: my interests" in the subject line) in which you identify particular topics or issues in philosophy that you would like to work on during the seminar. Your emails will help me fill in the course schedule. They will also help you identify individual projects that you might work on and bring back to the seminar in some form, such as a presentation.

4. 1st Reconstruction due Tuesday night. The course schedule shows that your readings include pieces from Dennett and Nagel. Choose one of the readings and then summarize the main arguments, starting with the broadest claim that you think the author is supporting. We'll use the term "reconstruction" to refer to a logical summary of the rationales (arguments and explanations) in a piece or reflective speech or writing. Complete your reconstruction in no more than 1 and 1/2 pages.

That's about it. Have a great Labor Day weekend. Please come to class with ideas and comments on the readings!

Alfino

2nd Meeting: September 8th, 2009

Class:

Good meeting last night. Thanks. I think we made a good start on both our practice of discussion and writing. We're not trying to adopt a single model for discussion, but I do want you to consider the value of really getting a good sympathetic reading of the text in place prior to critical evaluation. One of the strengths of your discussion last night was that you really seemed to be listening to each other, and the group did a pretty good job of "self-correcting" -- a couple of times someone suggested a different focus or emphasis in the reading and it seemed like lots of people were following and weighing in non-verbally. Sometimes it takes longer to get that going. We need to work on isolating specific arguments more quickly (first criterion of good reconstruction!) and of course, we have a lot of cool philosophical methods and tricks of the trade to learn.

Many of you wrote good summaries and I'll try to have those commented for you by Thursday. Now that we've introduced a somewhat struture understanding of what a "reconstruction" is, let's try to practice that. Please write your reconstruction next week (1 page) on the Singer chapter, remembering that, as with the Dennett reading, you're only getting the first chapter of a book. There will be lots of rationales in it, but many of them will require more of the book to fill in. Just note in your reconstruction when you're getting the whole argument and when you're not.

I'm also working on the next few weeks of readings. You may need to pick up some xeroxing on Thursday of this week, but I'll let you know.

Don't forget, office hours are M-Th 9-11. Drop by, especially if you have questions about your grading scheme. (I've added a new assignment that allows you to earn up to 10% of your informal grade by posting significant information to the course wiki. For example, next week it would be great for someone to do a page on Singer which explains his basic positions and notes some of the controversial positions he has taken. You can do some of this with cut and paste from other online sources or by adding links, but you could also write a little text with your take on things. The Assignment is called "wiki posts".)

Alfino