Fall 2012 Happiness Class Professor's Blog

Return to Happiness

August 31, 2012

Followup on 1st week of classes:

Occasionally during the semester, I will email you some comments on our class and sometimes add things that we didn't get to in class. These are also on the wiki.

Apologies to the am class for all the technological problems. I must admit, I found that quite distracting. The IT folks are getting everything squared away though. It seems like a few things went wrong at once. We'll have a practice clicker quiz on Tuesday and then start keeping track on Thursday.

We've only talked about content once so far, but you already have three conceptions of happiness to think about. You might want to compare these to what you take to be contemporary US cultural models of happiness, however you can define that (using media, regional culture, etc.).

While our class effort on Thursday was mostly to get clear about the reading, and while that will be true of some of the early classes, I'll also be introducing more material through lecture on philosophical methods next week and the week after. Our ultimate goal (final end?) is to build philosophical theories and viewpoints. To do that we have to not only understand the resources in the course schedule list, but also how to evaluate them and use them selectively in the theories we build. That's going to take a few classes to unfold, but I wanted to remind you that understanding the readings is preparatory to actually doing philosophy. I'll remind you of some of the tools philosophers have for building theories, and maybe suggest some you didn't know about. Simple things like the ones we've already mentioned -- make and evaluating lists, and making distinctions -- are tools, but other tools are bigger and maybe more central, like trying to organize claims into arguments, or offering explanations. Anyway, we'll get to all of that. One of the great things about philosophical tools is that you can carry most of them around in your head.

Have a great weekend. Ask some people you meet what they think happiness is! That's research now.

Alfino