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 Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 3:01 pm
We have talked a lot about boundaries and your personal assessment of the boundaries between humanities, science, and social science in your lives. This essay should develop a coherent arguement that covers the criteria you use to set boundaries between humanties, science, and social science in 1) personal terms and by 2) taking account of professional ethics in your relationship to the world. Many issues have findings from all three areas, so your reasons for choosing arguements are critical. In other words, how should these issues find a place with others, presumably of different values, in public life. To do this you will have to use and cite from the reading we have had, including the arguements of Armstrong, Marsalis, and any others on myth, the definition and boundaries of science, including some focus on scientific issues in the folllowing articles: Devolution, What Makes People Gay? and Is God an Accident? You will also have to understand and apply professionalism and ethics from the perspective of C. W. Mills' On Intellectual Craftmanship. The first paragraph should develop an arguement about how you set boundaries personally and in the world, i.e., ethically. The remainder should elaborate how your proceedures work in myth, science, and social science. --------- In a way, this sounds like it's going to be a lot like the essay I wrote last semester. Found here.Anyone want to help? [/lamepleaforhelp] First thing is first. I have to read this. gonk Next, this.
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Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 3:16 pm
You should write an essay that does nothing except to promote "Why Not".
I know it's a bad idea, but I'm just throwing it out there.
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Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 3:16 pm
i suck at essays so the best help i can give is not helping sweatdrop
the last one i can remember doing was the one on the SAT and i think i got a 2-out-of-whatever on that…
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Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 3:18 pm
Askeptykal You should write an essay that does nothing except to promote "Why Not". I know it's a bad idea, but I'm just throwing it out there. It would be more fun.
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Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 3:20 pm
i pity you and at the same time i don't. i have my own paper to write
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Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 3:24 pm
zentlair Askeptykal You should write an essay that does nothing except to promote "Why Not". I know it's a bad idea, but I'm just throwing it out there. It would be more fun.
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Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 3:26 pm
NOTES OMG.On Intellectual CraftmanshipMills "Scholarship is a choice of how to live as well as a choice of career; whether aware of it or not, the intellectual worker forms his or her own self in working toward the perfection of a craft; to realise personal potentialities, and any opportunities that come his or her way, such a person constructs a character which has as its core the qualities of the good workman. Mills To say that you can "have experience", means, for one thing, that your past plays into and affects your present, and that it defines your capacity for future experience. Mills You do not really have to study a topic you are working on; for as I have said, once you are into it, it is everywhere. You are sensible to its themes; you see and hear them everywhere in your experience, especially, it always seems to me, in apparently unrelated areas. Mills Since one can be trained only in what is already known, training sometimes incapacitates one from learning new ways; it makes one rebel against what is bound to be at first loose and even sloppy. But youmust cling to such vague images and notions, if they are yours, and you must work them out. For it is in such forms that original ideas, if any, almost always first appear. Mills To write is to raise a claim for the attention of readers. √ DevolutionOrr proponents of intelligent design do not believe that the universe was created in six days, that Earth is ten thousand years old, or that the fossil record was deposited during Noah’s flood. (Indeed, they shun the label “creationism” altogether.) Orr The movement’s main positive claim is that there are things in the world, most notably life, that cannot be accounted for by known natural causes and show features that, in any other context, we would attribute to intelligence. Living organisms are too complex to be explained by any natural—or, more precisely, by any mindless—process. Instead, the design inherent in organisms can be accounted for only by invoking a designer, and one who is very, very smart. Orr Scientists, he argued, must face up to the fact that “many biochemical systems cannot be built by natural selection working on mutations.” In the end, Behe concluded that irreducibly complex cells arise the same way as irreducibly complex mousetraps—someone designs them. Orr Behe speculated that the designer might have assembled the first cell, essentially solving the problem of irreducible complexity, after which evolution might well have proceeded by more or less conventional means. Orr According to Dembski, a complex object must be the result of intelligence if it was the product neither of chance nor of necessity. Orr In the end, he argues, the N.F.L. theorems and the displacement problem mean that there’s only one plausible source for the design we find in organisms: intelligence. Orr Species of fish and crustaceans that have moved into the total darkness of caves, where eyes are both unnecessary and costly, often have degenerate eyes, or eyes that begin to form only to be covered by skin—crazy contraptions that no intelligent agent would design. Orr Intelligent design has come this far by faith. Bloom Like many secular people, I am comfortable with religion as a source of spirituality, transcendence, tolerance and love, charity and goodworks. √ Bloom The best way to accord diginity and respect to both science and religion is to recognize that they apply to "non-overlapping magisteria"; science gets the realm of facts, religion the realm of values. √ Bloom They argue that this is beacuse the United States has a rigorously free religious market, in which churches actively vie for parishioners and constantly improve their product, whereas European churches are more often under state control and, like many government monopolies, have become inefficient. Bloom We have adopted religion as an opiate, to soothe the pain of existance. The opiate theory is ultimately an unsatisfying explanation for the existance of religion. Bloom One version of this theory (God as Accident) begins with the notion that a distinction between the physical and psychological is fundamental to human thought. √ Bloom Dawkins goes on to suggest that anyone before Darwin who did not believe in God was simply not paying attention. Bloom Creationism- and belief in God- is bred in the bone. Bloom But the universal themes of religion are not learned. They emerge as accidental by-products of our mental systems. They are part of human nature. √ The Value of ScienceFeynman Scientific knowledge is an enabling power to do either good or bad- but it does not carry instructions on how to use it. √ Feynman Another value of science is the fun called intellectual enjoyment which some people get from reading and learning and thinking about it, and which others get from working in it. Feynman We have been led to imagine all sorts of things infinitely more marvelous than the imaginings of poets and dreamers of the past. It shows that the imagination of nature is far, far greater than the imagination of man. Feynman Out of the cradle onto the dry land... here it is standing... atoms with conciousness... matter with curiousity. Feynman When we read about this in the newspaper, it says, "The scientist says that this discovery may have importance in the cure of cancer." The paper is only interested in the use of the idea, not the idea itself. √ Feynman When a scientist doesn't know the answer to a problem, he is ignorant. When he has a hunch as to what the result is, he is uncertain. And when he is pretty darn sure of what the result is going to be, he is in some doubt. Feynman What then is the meaning of it all? What can we say to dispel the mystery of existance? If we take everything into account, not only what the ancients knew, but all of what we know today that they didn't know, then I think that we must frankly admit that we do not know. Feynman Even then it was clear to socially-minded people that the openness of the possibilities was an opportunity, and that doubt and discussion were essential to progress into the unknown. Armstrong Another peculiar characteristic of the human mind is its ability to have ideas and experiences that we cannot explain rationally. We have an imagination, a faculty that enables us to think of something that is not imediately present, and that, when we first conceive it, has no objective existance. The imagination is the faculty that produces religion and mythology. √ Armstrong The myths gave explicit shape and form to a reality that people sensed intuitively. They told them how the gods behaved, not out of idle curiousity or because these tales were entertaining, but to enable men and women to imitate these powerful beings and experience divinity themselves. Armstrong From the very earliest times, we have experienced our world as profoundly mysterious; it holds us in an attitude of awe and wonder, which is the essense of worship. Armstrong [Logos] is the mental activity we use when we want to make things happen in the external world: when we organize our society or develop technology. Where myth looks back to the imaginary world of the sacred archetype or to a lost paradise, logos forges ahead, constantly trying to discover something new, to refine old insights, create startling inventions, and achieve a greater control over the environment. In the pre-modern world, most peope realized that myth and reason were complementary; each had its separate sphere, each its particular area of competence, and human beings needed both these modes of thought. √ Armstrong Western modernity was the child of logos. Armstrong Instead of looking back to the past and conserving what had been achieved, as had been the habit of of the premodern civilizations, Western people began to look forward. The long process of modernization, involved a series of profound changes: industrialism, the transformation of agriculture, politcial and social revolutions to reorganize society to meet the new conditions, and an intellectual 'enlightenment' that denigrated myth as useless, false and outmoded. Armstrong There is a moving and even heroic asceticism in the current rejection of myth. Armstrong Human beings are more than their material circumstances and that all have sacred numinous value.
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Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 3:47 pm
So...is this a research paper, or opinion piece? I'm not quite sure I understand lol.
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Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 6:06 pm
Kabol Schezar So...is this a research paper, or opinion piece? I'm not quite sure I understand lol. Kind of both. We were assigned readings earlier to help up to this point, but we are still supposed to vocalize our opinions while using what we read. confused It's a harder thing to do if you disagree with many of the writings, because you have to use them to refute them, rather than use them to support you.
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Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 6:17 pm
Sounds like my philosophy in feminism course that I am taking.
Basically all my papers are like that. I find it troubling sometimes because I have discovered the class to be much more...hostile toward men than I had originally hoped (a very very VERY flawed logic I realize now).
From what I can tell, feminism is the last thing our society needs. We need social, economic, and political equality, not the usurpation of our entire system. Yes, drastic changes need to occur, but sometimes it downright advocates the overthrowing of "the male institution" and replacing it with...what? Women primarily defining said institutions? So we replace one discrimination with another. Right... neutral
*cough* Anyways, I'm done for now.
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Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 7:11 pm
Kabol Schezar Sounds like my philosophy in feminism course that I am taking. Basically all my papers are like that. I find it troubling sometimes because I have discovered the class to be much more...hostile toward men than I had originally hoped (a very very VERY flawed logic I realize now). From what I can tell, feminism is the last thing our society needs. We need social, economic, and political equality, not the usurpation of our entire system. Yes, drastic changes need to occur, but sometimes it downright advocates the overthrowing of "the male institution" and replacing it with...what? Women primarily defining said institutions? So we replace one discrimination with another. Right... neutral *cough* Anyways, I'm done for now. They overstep their boundries, 'tis true. They needed to some 100 years ago when their voices weren't there, but now that they are heard, they shouldn't still be shouting. They should be talking politely. Besides, good men can listen quite well, especially if you are being reasonable. There's no reason to yell and shout and bang war drums when you could have a comfortable conversation over a nice dinner prepared by husband and wife. whee
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Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 7:12 pm
Kabol Schezar Sounds like my philosophy in feminism course that I am taking. Basically all my papers are like that. I find it troubling sometimes because I have discovered the class to be much more...hostile toward men than I had originally hoped (a very very VERY flawed logic I realize now). From what I can tell, feminism is the last thing our society needs. We need social, economic, and political equality, not the usurpation of our entire system. Yes, drastic changes need to occur, but sometimes it downright advocates the overthrowing of "the male institution" and replacing it with...what? Women primarily defining said institutions? So we replace one discrimination with another. Right... neutral *cough* Anyways, I'm done for now.
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Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2007 8:10 pm
Kabol Schezar Sounds like my philosophy in feminism course that I am taking. Basically all my papers are like that. I find it troubling sometimes because I have discovered the class to be much more...hostile toward men than I had originally hoped (a very very VERY flawed logic I realize now). From what I can tell, feminism is the last thing our society needs. We need social, economic, and political equality, not the usurpation of our entire system. Yes, drastic changes need to occur, but sometimes it downright advocates the overthrowing of "the male institution" and replacing it with...what? Women primarily defining said institutions? So we replace one discrimination with another. Right... neutral *cough* Anyways, I'm done for now. i'll admit to being a bit of a feminist but i think that people need to work towards equity and quit shouting about it
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Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2007 8:32 am
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Posted: Wed Apr 25, 2007 9:18 am
Hmm...I'm not really much into philosophy, so I would be of little help.
The boundary between humanities/science is a little blurred for me since I am majoring in both a science and a humanities degree, and the field I intend to go into is considered a mixture of the two.
@Kabol: I would sooner shoot myself than take a Feminine Studies class. I hear they are incredibly anti-male in those classes (I would either wise drop out, unwisely keep stay in and shut up, or asininely stay in and argue).
I tend to view female rights the same way I view minority rights: everybody should be equal. Not give them the chance to do what we did to them for so many millennia.
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