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 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. Readings for Tuesday night