| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Tom Trelogan |
Posted - Jun 25 2010 : 09:12:45 AM
The first draft of your essay is due on July 7 -- just a week from next Wednesday. It's to be an essay on a question of your own choosing, but your choice is subject to my approval.
As I say in the syllabus: "The only bottom-line restrictions I have are these: (1) your question must be of philosophical interest and must be connected with at least one of our three central questions, and (2) your essay must take the form of a carefully reasoned defense of an answer to your question coupled with a response to at least one question or objection you anticipate your readers might have."
So I'm ready to start hearing proposals for essay questions. Let's do this right here in the forum. First come, first served. You might want to wait a week or so till you've gotten a chance to take a look at the Symposium and we've kicked off our discussion of our third central question, but if you already know what question you'd like to write, run it by me right here, and I'll give you the go-ahead if your question looks good to me. |
| 20 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Tom Trelogan |
Posted - Jul 07 2010 : 12:29:27 PM
Your first draft is due at 5:00 p.m. today.
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| John Koban |
Posted - Jul 07 2010 : 11:33:03 AM
Is the paper due at 5, or at the end of the day? |
| Christine Gylling |
Posted - Jul 07 2010 : 11:12:45 AM
My thesis is that it can be taught with the drive of moral motivation. So I would argue that one must have conscious desire to pursue virtue in order to achieve it. The counter argument would be that being good at something is natural. You can't make someone good at something, if he or she doesn't naturally have the capacity to be good at it.
[Edited to enhance readability -TT] |
| Tom Trelogan |
Posted - Jul 07 2010 : 09:06:45 AM
Eliott, it seems to me that the real core of your question has very little to do in any direct way with logical consistency. Why not just ask "Which should come first: what your community requires of you or what reason requires of you?" The one of our main questions this connects with most closely is, I think, the second one, not the first one. Another way to put the question that would bring that connection out more clearly would this: Is it the reality of the philosopher -- the being of beings -- or the reality with which we are confronted in our everyday lives -- the factuality of the fact of public opinion -- that we ought to care about most? Yet another version of the question might be this: "Which must be sacrificed when one of the two must go: popularity or reason?" and that suggests connections with our third main question: "To whose tune should one dance? The people's tune or reason's tune?" or even: "Is it better to be the beloved of the people or a lover of wisdom and reason?"
Anyway, while the question may need a little bit of tweaking, it'd be a great question for your essay. |
| Eliott Dimond |
Posted - Jul 07 2010 : 08:06:25 AM
To know something it must be consistent but if your whole community is wrong about something, would it be better to be wrong and fit in or logically consistent and shunned? |
| Tom Trelogan |
Posted - Jul 07 2010 : 06:00:39 AM
Christine, I like that very much: "Is the conscious pursuit of virtue something that can be taught?" What this is actually most closely connected with is our third main question, I think. The connection has to do with the question whether the path to virtue is something people can be turned on to -- whether it's possible to kindle a conscious desire in folks to take that path. Any questions about strategy or anything? |
| Christine Gylling |
Posted - Jul 06 2010 : 11:08:27 PM
I see your point. I am thinking: "Is the conscious pursuit of virtue something that can be taught?" The essay would be on how Socrates sees virtue as related to happiness and saw the life of virtue as always in the person's best interest.
[Lightly edited to enhance readability -TT] |
| Katie Contreras |
Posted - Jul 06 2010 : 10:25:58 PM
OK, sounds good. Nope, I have no other questions. I understand what it is we are supposed to be doing now. Thanks. |
| Tom Trelogan |
Posted - Jul 06 2010 : 4:32:01 PM
John, I like the first one of those three questions a lot, and hereby approve it for your essay! It presupposes that beautiful things do turn one on, and since we're talking about the Symposium, it makes sense to presuppose that. (The other questions would make more sense if you were thinking about beauty in almost any of the modern senses of the term and you weren't thinking about ancient Greek philosophy.) Of course you're going to have to ask yourself what the term "kalos" must actually mean -- which might not at all be what we usually mean by "beautiful" -- for it to be the case that what is kalos has this effect. My own hunch is that it's best to think of the term as meaning "attractive." Attractive things do attract -- that's why we call them "attractive" -- and the question just what it is about the attractive that attracts us is actually very interesting and connects with really interesting dimensions of the central ideas of the Symposium.
Let me remind you of that very nice discussion of all this at the beginning of Collingwood's The Principles of Art. I think it might be well worth taking another look at in this context. He's interested there in trying to make it clear just what the Greek's conception of beauty amounted to, and I think he's pretty good on the subject. |
| John Koban |
Posted - Jul 06 2010 : 3:47:41 PM
Okay...how about this: "What is it about beautiful things that turns one on?"
Or...how about this: "Do beautiful things always turn one on?"
Or...: "Does a thing have to be beautiful to turn one on?"
Are any of these questions feasible for a paper topic, and if so, which question is clearest?
[Very lightly edited to enhance readability -TT] |
| Tom Trelogan |
Posted - Jul 06 2010 : 3:04:42 PM
Stephanie, how about this: "Why is it desirable that all the statements one wants to make at any particular time -- in the context, for example, of an attempt to give a definition in a Sokratic conversation -- be logically consistent with one another?" That would seem to capture what you want to write on, and I think it'd be a really nice question for your essay. There's a really closely related question you could consider alongside that one: "What's wrong with defining something in a way that's logically inconsistent with things one thinks are undeniably true?"
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| Tom Trelogan |
Posted - Jul 06 2010 : 2:56:40 PM
Christine, I've got the same reservations about your writing on realism that I've already expressed to John. The defensibility of philosophical realism doesn't actually have anything to do with any of our three main questions. The fact that the word "reality" shows up both the debate regarding realism and our discussion of what Sokrates calls "the realities" might make it see that there's a connection, but there is really isn't. The topic you propose would be an interesting one if we were readings, say, Descartes, but we're not. So I can't approve that topic.
The question "What is truth"? does relate to our first main question, the one about what logical consistency's got to do with knowledge. The relation is not tremendously direct, but it's there. After all, we saw that the connection that logical consistency has with knowledge has to do with truth: logical consistency is a necessary condition of truth, and truth is a necessary condition of knowledge. So truth is definitely relevant to that whole issue. But look: this is an enormously difficult question--one I think you'd be really hard put to do justice to in an essay of 800-1,600 pages. If you really want to do it, go ahead, but I'd advise that you take a look at this article on truth in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy to get a feel for just what you're getting yourself into. I really don't think I'd recommend your trying to write on this question.
The appeal of the "really big questions" in philosophy is undeniable, but you're not going to be writing a book or a doctoral dissertation. You're going to be writing a two- to four-page essay. |
| Christine Gylling |
Posted - Jul 06 2010 : 2:17:33 PM
To add to my topic regarding reality, I want to discuss human existence and the whole question of whether the reality we live in is real or merely a figment of our imagination. I also want to talk about how we determine what is real.
[Edited to enhance readability -TT] |
| Stephanie Miller |
Posted - Jul 06 2010 : 2:06:54 PM
Why is consistency, or lack there of, a deciding factor in proving a point? In a way, I would like to focus my paper on our discussion about "beauty being in the eye of the beholder". Not about whether that is true or not, but more so focus on the structure of the argument and how being inconsistent makes one's argument unreliable, that in no way can it be true unless it is supported by all consistent thoughts. Do you have any suggestions about how I can put that into better wording? And I hope this makes sense. |
| Christine Gylling |
Posted - Jul 06 2010 : 1:56:10 PM
I want to do an essay on reality, truth, and the the convergence of these in connection with realism. I want to explore how the mind processes mental images in the brain and what this has to do with the theory of reality and truth. I am curious about truth and the challenges we encounter when we try to determine the truth. Would this be a good topic, or should I just focus on what truth is and what philosophical truth is in particular? Thanks.
[Edited to enhance readability -TT] |
| Tom Trelogan |
Posted - Jul 06 2010 : 1:51:11 PM
So what's the question? Is it just this: "How does consistency affect knowledge?" If so, I think that's hopelessly vague. Do you really think that there's some particular way in which consistency affects knowledge?" And what does "affects" mean here anyway? Sorry, but I can't approve anything as vague as this. |
| Stephanie Miller |
Posted - Jul 06 2010 : 1:26:17 PM
Tom, I am sorry about the confusion, but I am looking to answer how consistency affects knowledge, and the importance of being consistent in an argument. |
| Jenna Stimac |
Posted - Jul 06 2010 : 1:03:53 PM
Not so far, I will get back to you if I think of any. |
| Tom Trelogan |
Posted - Jul 06 2010 : 06:44:06 AM
Katie, that's mighty ambitious, but it's a great question, provided you really stick to talking about eros only and don't muddy the waters by talking about love in any other sense of the word. Your question is: "What is eros?" "What is this thing eros that the characters in Plato's Symposium are talking about?"
What's "personal input"? I know what the word "input" means when we're talking about computers. Otherwise, I have no idea what it means. What I want is your answer to the question "What is eros -- the thing that the characters in Plato's Symposium are talking about?" And of course I want your reasons for thinking that your answer is correct. Since those reasons are going to have to include reasons for thinking that what you're talking about is in fact the same thing as what the characters in the Symposium are talking about, you can expect to be working with the text. Any other questions about what you have to do? |
| Tom Trelogan |
Posted - Jul 06 2010 : 06:34:18 AM
Sounds good, Jenna. I think you're all set to go. Any questions? |
