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Aaron Mund
Apprentice
37 Posts |
 Posted - Jun 15 2010 : 3:31:54 PM
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| Where is the midterm? It isn't it the midterm area where is says it will be. Also what will the midterm consist of? Will it be like the quizzes with multiple choice questions, or is there an essay? Is it timed? What should we study or do prior to taking the test? |
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1374 Posts |
Posted - Jun 16 2010 : 06:51:32 AM
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Aaron, thanks for the heads up! Honestly, I've been having so much fun doing philosophy in this class that I plumb forgot about the midterm. Sorry about that! I'll get it up in the next day or two, and it'll be available till Friday, June 25. In other words: we'll arrange a week's extension.
It'll be an objective test (multiple choice questions and the like--no essay), and it will be timed. It'll be an hour test. What you should study is what we've been doing in the first half of the course: review the readings up through the ''Meno'', review our discussions in the class forum, review the lectures and our discussion of those, and review what we've been doing in the Thinking Room. There will be questions not only about the readings, but also about things like logical consistency and inconsistency, the goodness and badness of arguments, and so on.
Again, thanks! |
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Aaron Mund
Apprentice
37 Posts |
Posted - Jun 16 2010 : 8:11:40 PM
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| Sounds good. I just didn't want to miss it. |
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Andrew Koziuk
Apprentice
34 Posts |
Posted - Jun 20 2010 : 6:21:00 PM
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Tom, I had a couple questions about the upcoming midterm week. - Are we still required to do all of our normal posts?
- What is the quiz this week, quiz 6, over since there is no reading or lecture online yet?
Thanks for answering these.
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1374 Posts |
Posted - Jun 20 2010 : 10:36:54 PM
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| Andrew, the answer to your first question is yes: you are still required to do all your normal posts. The answer to your second question is that I may have to set the deadline for Quiz 6 back a bit. The lecture won't be up till tomorrow (Monday), and it might not be up till rather late tomorrow. My apologies for that. I know I also don't yet have the assignments for Week VI up yet in the "Assignments" folder on Blackboard, but the reading for Week VI is in the syllabus: It's Book I of Plato's Republic and then the parts of Books VI and VII of the Republic that run from p. 358 to p. 374 in Rouse. |
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1374 Posts |
Posted - Jun 21 2010 : 9:26:26 PM
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Progress report: - The lecture on the Republic is now available in the Reading Room on the wiki.
- The quiz for this week won't be due till 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, June 24.
- Also, the "Assignments" folder on Blackboard has now been updated and the grades for this last week have now been posted.
- Oh, one more thing: don't forget that you have to finish the midterm by 5:00 p.m. this Friday, June 25.
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Cassie Vrooman
Apprentice
32 Posts |
Posted - Jun 25 2010 : 12:53:11 AM
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| Tom, concerning the essay that is due soon, the syllabus states that we will be writing on a question of our choosing subject to your approval. Do we need to e-mail you our question for approval? |
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1374 Posts |
Posted - Jun 25 2010 : 09:03:10 AM
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| Let's do it right here. That way, you can all have a sense of each other's topics right away. I'll start a new thread. |
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Andrew Koziuk
Apprentice
34 Posts |
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Andrew Koziuk
Apprentice
34 Posts |
Posted - Jul 06 2010 : 6:57:27 PM
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| Tom, I found that the rough draft is due by 5:00 p.m. so do not worry about that question. However, I have come across another, is it okay to be writing this essay in the first person? |
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1374 Posts |
Posted - Jul 06 2010 : 8:59:34 PM
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Andrew, information about how to handle quotations is included in the template you'll find in the space where you're to post your essays in the Writing Room. The style requirements I want you to follow are the MLA Style requirements, and as I say in the template, you can learn about the details of those requirements at the Purdue OWL. See the link in the wiki's menubar.
Comments on other students' rough drafts are very much in order, and you can start making those whenever the spirit moves you. I'm not requiring you to make any comments on each other's essays till next week though; you've got plenty to do already this week just coming up with a first draft!
You may indeed write in the first person. Philosophers often do.
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Richard Mikel
Apprentice
32 Posts |
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Richard Mikel
Apprentice
32 Posts |
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1374 Posts |
Posted - Jul 07 2010 : 1:59:50 PM
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Richard, here are my answers to your first two questions:
#Make your first draft as polished as you can. I will do a thorough critique of it, and the fewer criticism I have to make the better, from both my point of view and yours. Why should I waste my time and yours telling you how to fix things you could fix yourself?
#Your citations of Rouse's translation should take the first form: (Rouse 250). I've been citing my references to the text using both the precise Stephanus numbers (which I get from another translation since Rouse's editors' practice of putting a range of Stephanus numbers in the right-hand header instead of putting the numbers in the margins makes it impossible to be sure just where one is in the text) and the Rouse pagination, thus: (416c, Rouse 250) so that they'll be useful to anyone who isn't using the Rouse translation as well as to those who are. If you follow my advice and got with (a), then make sure that your entry in your list of works cited looks like this:
Rouse, W.H.D., trans. Great Dialogues of Plato. New York: Signet Classics, 2008. Print.
The reason is that the author's or translator's or editor's name appearing in the parenthetical documentation should be the name under which the work is listed in the list of works cited.
In this case, Richard, I don't think you're overthinking anything at all.
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Regarding the passage from the Theaetetus, the big question is what translation you want to use. If you use the one I quoted, you can describe it in the body of your paper as coming from the Theaetetus and then cite its location parenthetically I did on your Journal's discussion page: (189e-190a). The translation I used is the Harold N. Fowler translation at the Perseus Project, so add an entry to your list of works cited that reads like this:
Plato. Theaetetus Trans. Harold N. Fowler. Perseus Project. n.d. Web. 7 July 2010. <[[http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/]]>. |
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Joseph Haag
Moderator
172 Posts |
Posted - Jul 07 2010 : 2:07:32 PM
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| As Tom said, Richard, it really is best to make your first draft as polished as it can be. From my experience, it is usually not good to put out a severely fragmentary first draft (for example, a single paragraph). If you do well on your first draft you can use it as your final draft as well. |
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Aaron Mund
Apprentice
37 Posts |
Posted - Jul 08 2010 : 10:35:45 AM
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| There are no quizzes listed on the syllabus for the rest of the term. Are there going to be quizzes? Are they going to be on the particular part of Symposium being discussed in the lectures? |
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Eliott Dimond
Fledgling
19 Posts |
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1374 Posts |
Posted - Jul 08 2010 : 2:56:40 PM
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Eliott, thanks for clueing me in. I didn't have you two pegged as folks so shy that you'd hide your essays under a bushel template! |
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Richard Mikel
Apprentice
32 Posts |
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Tom Trelogan
Forum Admin
1374 Posts |
Posted - Jul 27 2010 : 07:19:26 AM
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Here are the answers: - No new Plato reading next week; no new lecture; no quiz. Otherwise, everything will be as usual (i.e., you'll have to do your regular 12 postings) except that the final draft of your essay is due no later than 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, August 4, and there'll be a final exam available at 10:00 a.m. on Sunday, August 1 that you'll have to complete by 5:00 p.m. on Friday, August 6, and
- The final draft of the essay must be completed and posted by 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, August 4. Late submissions will be penalized at the rate of 10% (a letter grade) for each calendar day the final draft is late.
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Questions and Thoughts About the Course
