Welcome to Mr. Roland M. Allen's faculty page. This page is dedicated to my class, Introduction to Philosophy and Ethics. Please follow the link to St. Margaret's College Counseling homepage for college counseling information and resources.
"Nothing in this world is more dangerous
than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."
- Martin Luther King
Final Project - Juniors Position Statement
This is your final assignment. It will count for 20% of your grade in this class.
Instructions:
Write your position on these topics:
Take a clear and definitive position and be prepared to defend your position.
Please use this website as at:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4538138
Presentations will begin on Monday, May 15.
Friday, April 28:
" Service is the rent we pay to be living. It is the very purpose of life and not something you do in your spare time."
- Marian Wright EdelmanPresident and Founder, Children's Defense Fund
Tuesday, April 18:
Los Angeles Mayor celebrates Good Friday and Easter on Skid Row.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Just about the last thing Richard Ramirez expected when he ducked in out of the rain for an early Easter dinner and a new pair of shoes was to have his feet washed by Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.
Thursday, April 13
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely re-arranging their prejudices.
- William James American Pragmatist philosopher & psychologist (1842 - 1910)
Tuesday, April 11:
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something."
- Plato
Monday, April 10:
A neurosis is a secret that you don't know you are keeping.
- Kenneth Tynan
Kenneth Tynan was chiefly known as a journalist, finding fame with his work as a theatre critic with the Evening Standard, Observer, and The New Yorker. He died in 1988.
Class Date: Friday, April 7, 2006:
"To study music, we must learn the rules. To create music, we must forget them."
~ Nadia Boulanger
Philosophy Project Presentation:
Friday April 7
Alex
Shunsuke & Bobby
Monday April 10
Zan
Sydney
Costa and Parker
Tuesday April 11
David & Julian
Hannah & Irene
Thursday April 13
Cairisti & Tessa
Tues After Easter
Patrick & Nicho
Thursday After Easter
Jill & Emily
Class Date: Thursday, April 6, 2006:
If fifty million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
- Anatole France (1844 - 1924)
Writer, critic, one of the major figures of French literature in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1921. France's skepticism appears already in his early works, but later the hostility toward bourgeois values led him to support French Communist Party.
Answer the following six questions. Your answers are and will remain private. You will not share them with me or with the class. Save the document in your folder in a place that you can locate it.
You will refer to your answers in a later class assignment.
Six Questions:
1) Think back: (A distant event is better than a recent event for this exercise.) Locate one event in your life when you did something that was wrong, dishonest or hurtful to someone else and you tried to avoid thinking about it. Why did you try to avoid it?
2) Going back to that same event: What would it taken for you to have done things differently?
3) Going further: At any time after the event in #1 take place, or in relation to something else, did you feel Guilt? Shame? Confusion? Fear? If so, how did you address these feelings? (Corollary question: Did you try to work out in your mind ways to defend yourself and not look too badly in front on other people if they found out about what you had done?)
4) Have ever had awaken from a dream in which you knew that there was a message for you to learn from? If so: write about the dream and the lesson.
5) Think of one time in your life that you’ve wanted to own up to a poor choice. Did you? If so, what happened? If not, do you still think about this event?
6) Why are these important questions?
Class Dates: March 16 and 17:
Opening Meditation:
Title card, Gattaca:
"Consider God's handiwork; who can straighten what He hath made crooked?"
- Ecclesiastes 7:13
Mr. Allen will be in Washington, DC.
Class: Watch the movie Gattaca.
Here are questions that you can use for class discussion: Philosophical Films: Gattaca
Class Date: Friday, March 10, 2006:
"The question that was asked long ago, is asked now, and is always a matter of difficulty (is) What is being?"
- Aristotle
"All men by nature desire to know."
- Aristotle
Class Date: March 9, 2006:
What is Being?
- Aristotle
Plato: The Forms
Plato believed that there were two worlds:
1) The world that we see everyday.
2) The “real world.”
Q: Why do you think that Plato came up with this idea?
Aristotle:
Q: Let’s talk about this last statement: Why would Aristotle – or anyone say,
Everything we know comes from what we can see and experience so we should get to know this world.
Notable:
Aristotle mapped out the basic fields of enquiry and named them:
Aristotle systematized logic.
All Ps are Q
Some Ps are Q
No Ps are Q
Some Ps are not Q
"A is B or A is not B "
WHAT IS BEING?
Discussion:
A contractor brings a stack of bricks, some lumber and nails, and some sheetrock, plumbing, electrical lines and dumps them on the lot you’ve purchased for your new home.
Is this a house?
Class Date: Tuesday, March 7:
The truth is cruel, but it can be loved, and it makes free those who have loved it.
- George Santayana
Philosopher, poet, literary and cultural critic, George Santayana is a principal figure in Classical American Philosophy. Santayana was born in Spain in 1863. He died in Rome in 1952.
His naturalism and emphasis on creative imagination were harbingers of important intellectual turns on both sides of the Atlantic. He was a naturalist before naturalism grew popular; he appreciated multiple perfections before multiculturalism became an issue; he thought of philosophy as literature before it became a theme in American and European scholarly circles; and he managed to naturalize Platonism, update Aristotle, fight off idealisms, and provide a striking and sensitive account of the spiritual life without being a religious believer. His Hispanic heritage, shaded by his sense of being an outsider in America, captures many qualities of American life missed by insiders, and presents views equal to Tocqueville in quality and importance. Beyond philosophy, only Emerson may match his literary production. As a public figure, he appeared on the front cover of Time (3 February 1936), and his autobiography (Persons and Places, 1944) and only novel (The Last Puritan, 1936) were the best-selling books in the United States as Book-of-the-Month Club selections. The novel was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, and Edmund Wilson ranked Persons and Places among the few first-rate autobiographies, comparing it favorably to Yeats's memoirs, The Education of Henry Adams, and Proust's Remembrance of Things Past. Remarkably, Santayana achieved this stature in American thought without being an American citizen. He proudly retained his Spanish citizenship throughout his life. Yet, as he readily admitted, it is as an American that his philosophical and literary corpuses are to be judged. Using contemporary classifications, Santayana is the first and foremost Hispanic-American philosopher.
"Let no on enter here who is ignorant of mathematics."
- Plato
Question: What's distinct about Plato?
Question: Why do you think that Plato wrote his dialogues this way?
Early dialogues are concerned with the problems of moral and political philosophy and are dismissive of the philosophical problems of the natural world.
One of the early beliefs to which Plato is most committed is in the identification of virtue with knowledge.
Discuss "virtue".
Plato and Virtue:
Main Entry: vir·tue Pronunciation: 'v&r-(")chü
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English virtu, from Old French, from Latin virtut-,
virtus strength, manliness, virtue, from vir man -- more at
VIRILE
1 a : conformity to a standard of right
: MORALITY b :
a particular moral excellence
2 plural : an order of angels -- see
CELESTIAL HIERARCHY
3 : a beneficial quality or power of a thing
4 : manly strength or courage :
VALOR
5 : a commendable quality or trait :
MERIT
6 : a capacity to act :
POTENCY
7 : chastity especially in a woman
Virtue: Greek arete - moral excellence - a character trait valued as being good.
"Habitual excellence."
Discuss: The Cave
Plato's notion of "Forms"
The sun ... not only furnishes to visibles the power of visibility but it also provides for their generation and growth and nurture though it is not itself generation. ... In like manner, then ... the objects of knowledge not only receive from the presence of the good their being known, but their very existence and essence is derived to them from it, though the good itself is not essence but still transcends essence in dignity and surpassing power.
Class Date: Monday, March 6:
I believe, but cannot prove...that reality exists over and above human and social constructions of that reality. Science as a method, and naturalism as a philosophy, together form the best tool we have for understanding that reality. Because science is cumulative—that is, it builds on itself in a progressive fashion—we can strive to achieve an ever-greater understanding of reality. Our knowledge of nature remains provisional because we can never know if we have final Truth. Because science is a human activity and nature is complex and dynamic, fuzzy logic and fractional probabilities best describe both nature and the estimations of our approximation toward understanding that nature.
- Michael Chermer
MICHAEL SHERMER is the Founding Publisher of Skeptic magazine, the Director of the Skeptics Society, a monthly columnist for Scientific American, the host of the Skeptics Lecture Series at Caltech, and the co-host and producer of the 13-hour Fox Family television series, Exploring the Unknown.
Shermer is the author of How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science, Why People Believe Weird Things, Teach Your Child Science, and The Borderlands of Science : Where Sense Meets Nonsense. He is the co-author of Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened and Why Do They Say It?; Teach Your Child Math and Mathemagics; and In Darwin's Shadow: The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace: A Biographical Study on the Psychology of History; and Science Friction.
Class Date: Friday, March 3:
Opening Meditation:
Ultimate confidence in the goodness of life cannot rest upon confidence in the goodness of man. If that is where it rests, it is an optimism which will suffer ultimate disillusionment. Romanticism will be transmuted into cynicism, as it has always been in the world's history. The faith of a Christian is something quite different from this optimism. It is trust in God, in a good God who created a good world, though the world is not now good; in a good God, powerful and good enough finally to destroy the evil that men do and redeem them of their sins. This kind of faith is not optimism. It does not, in fact, arise until optimism breaks down and men cease to trust in themselves that they are righteous.
- Reinhold Niebuhr
Protestant theologian, born in Wright City, Missouri, USA. The son of a clergyman and brother of theologian Helmut Richard Niebuhr, he was educated at Elmhurst College (Illinois), Eden Theological Seminary (Missouri), and the Yale Divinity School. Initially a theological liberal and an active Socialist, his experience as pastor of working-class Bethel Evangelical Church in Detroit (1915–28) gradually turned his thinking in a rightward direction, towards what he called Christian realism. He questioned the adequacy of the Christian ‘gospel of love’ in a world of conflict, criminality, and totalitarianism; given human nature, the stern doctrines of sin and repentance were essential. By the end of World War 2 he had entirely shed his earlier Socialism, and he roundly condemned totalitarian Communism. Professor of Christian ethics (1928–60) and dean (1950–60) at Union Theological Seminary, he wrote Moral Man and Immoral Society (1932), Faith and History (1949), Structures of Nations and Empires (1959), and many other books. In his later years he was America's best-known serious theologian, who managed to combine his somber, almost existential philosophy with a concern for contemporary political and social issues.
Class Notes:
Plato, the most creative and influential of Socrates' disciples, wrote dialogues, in which he frequently used the figure of Socrates to espouse his own (Plato's) full-fledged philosophy. In "The Republic," Plato sums up his views in an image of ignorant humanity, trapped in the depths and not even aware of its own limited perspective. The rare individual escapes the limitations of that cave and, through a long, tortuous intellectual journey, discovers a higher realm, a true reality, with a final, almost mystical awareness of Goodness as the origin of everything that exists. Such a person is then the best equipped to govern in society, having a knowledge of what is ultimately most worthwhile in life and not just a knowledge of techniques; but that person will frequently be misunderstood by those ordinary folks back in the cave who haven't shared in the intellectual insight. If he were living today, Plato might replace his rather awkward cave metaphor with a movie theater, with the projector replacing the fire, the film replacing the objects which cast shadows, the shadows on the cave wall with the projected movie on the screen, and the echo with the loudspeakers behind the screen. The essential point is that the prisoners in the cave are not seeing reality, but only a shadowy representation of it. The importance of the allegory lies in Plato's belief that there are invisible truths lying under the apparent surface of things which only the most enlightened can grasp. Used to the world of illusion in the cave, the prisoners at first resist enlightenment, as students resist education. But those who can achieve enlightenment deserve to be the leaders and rulers of all the rest. At the end of the passage, Plato expresses another of his favorite ideas: that education is not a process of putting knowledge into empty minds, but of making people realize that which they already know. This notion that truth is somehow embedded in our minds was also powerfully influential for many centuries.
I. Read - Plato: The Republic Book VII: The Myth of the Cave
II. Please read the notes as well.
Discuss in small groups:
1) Judging by this passage, why do you think many people in the democracy of Athens might have been antagonistic to Plato's ideas?
2) What does the sun symbolize in the allegory?
According to Plato, there are 4 different levels of Being and 4 corresponding levels of Knowing. The progress of the soul is the ascent from lower to higher levels of Knowing, so that the soul also rises from lower to higher levels of Being. Plato describes these levels of Being and Knowing in his image of the Divided Line, shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Plato's image of the Divided Line.
In the Myth of the Cave, Plato describes the progress of the soul as an educational journey: the soul is initially a prisoner trapped at the lowest level of Knowing and Being -- the hellish world of sheer illusion; the soul-prisoner is then freed, and begins the long ascent up the steep and rugged road out of the cave. This ascent is not easy: it is painful and the soul is filled with dread. But eventually, the soul emerges into the daylight of the heavenly intelligible world.
Figure 2. The Soul imprisoned in the Cave.
Please have cogent thoughts to present to the entire class on Monday.
Be kind to Ms. Rudolph!
Class Date: Friday, February 24:
Reference for test:
Class Date: Wednesday, February 22:
Opening Meditation:
From Maximus I learned self-government, and not to be led aside by anything; and cheerfulness in all circumstances, as well as in illness; and a just admixture in the moral character of sweetness and dignity, and to do what was set before me without complaining. I observed that everybody believed that he thought as he spoke, and that in all that he did he never had any bad intention; and he never showed amazement and surprise, and was never in a hurry, and never put off doing a thing, nor was perplexed nor dejected, nor did he ever laugh to disguise his vexation, nor, on the other hand, was he ever passionate or suspicious. He was accustomed to do acts of beneficence, and was ready to forgive, and was free from all falsehood; and he presented the appearance of a man who could not be diverted from right rather than of a man who had been improved. I observed, too, that no man could ever think that he was despised by Maximus, or ever venture to think himself a better man. He had also the art of being humorous in an agreeable way.
1) Costa, Sydney and David will present their philosophical questions.
2) Think: Metaphysical
3) Consider this announcement for an upcoming lecture in New Orleans:
Monday,
February 20, 2006, at 7 p.m.
Nunemaker Auditorium
Monroe Hall third floor
Loyola University New Orleans
Dr. Alexei Marcoux, an assistant professor of business ethics in the graduate
school of business at Loyola University Chicago, will give a presentation on
ethics and scandals in the accounting field from a slightly different point of
view. Philosophically-inclined novelist Ayn Rand championed two things of vital
importance: philosophy and capitalism. She argued that one holding a rational
philosophy must embrace capitalism as the only economic system consistent with
human existence. Marcoux argues that philosophy is inescapable--even and
especially for those engaged in the eminently practical pursuits of preparing
and auditing financial statements.
The questions Marcoux raises about accounting and recent scandals span
metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. How we answer them will tell us something
about what we can reasonably expect of those who prepare and audit financial
statements.
Question:
How do metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics affect good accounting practices?
4) In Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, the hero, Jean Valjean, is an ex-convict, living illegally under an assumed name and wanted for a robbery he committed many years ago. Although he will be returned to the galleys -- probably for life -- if he is caught, he is a good man who does not deserve to be punished. He has established himself in a town, becoming mayor and a public benefactor. One day, Jean learns that another man, a vagabond, has been arrested for a minor crime and identified as Jean Valjean. Jean is first tempted to remain quiet, reasoning to himself that since he had nothing to do with the false identification of this hapless vagabond, he has no obligation to save him. Perhaps this man's false identification, Jean reflects, is "an act of Providence meant to save me." Upon reflection, however, Jean judges such reasoning "monstrous and hypocritical." He now feels certain that it is his duty to reveal his identity, regardless of the disastrous personal consequences. His resolve is disturbed, however, as he reflects on the irreparable harm his return to the galleys will mean to so many people who depend upon him for their livelihood -- especially troubling in the case of a helpless woman and her small child to whom he feels a special obligation. He now reproaches himself for being too selfish, for thinking only of his own conscience and not of others. The right thing to do, he now claims to himself, is to remain quiet, to continue making money and using it to help others. The vagabond, he comforts himself, is not a worthy person, anyway. Still unconvinced and tormented by the need to decide, Jean goes to the trial and confesses. Did he do the right thing?
5) Is this "art"?
http://terresdefemmes.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/guernica.jpg
(PAUSE - Please do not scroll down.)
"There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality." - Picasso
Guernica
Picasso was moved to paint the huge mural Guernica shortly after German planes,
acting on orders from Spain's authoritarian leader Francisco Franco, bombarded
the Basque town of Guernica on April 26, 1937, during the Spanish civil war.
Completed in less than two months, Guernica was hung in the Spanish Pavilion of
the Paris International Exposition of 1937. The painting does not portray the
event; rather, Picasso expressed his outrage by employing such imagery as the
bull, the dying horse, a fallen warrior, a mother and dead child, a woman
trapped in a burning building, another rushing into the scene, and a figure
leaning from a window and holding out a lamp. Despite the complexity of its
symbolism, and the impossibility of definitive interpretation, Guernica makes an
overwhelming impact in its portrayal of the horrors of war.
6) Class Survey
Class Date: Thursday, February 9, 2006:
Opening Meditation:
The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is
no cure for curiosity.
- Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)
American writer and poet.
A conversation with the Pre-Socratics. The Miletus School.
Begin with Ms. Brunswick: Is the path you take going up the mountain the same path when you come down the mountain?
Fern Canyon, Palm Springs, CA
South of Half Moon Bay, California
Class Date: Tuesday, February 7, 2006:
Opening Meditation:
The society which scorns excellence in plumbing because plumbing is a humble activity, and tolerates shoddiness in philosophy because philosophy is an exalted activity, will have neither good plumbing nor good philosophy. Neither its pipes nor its theories will hold water.
- John Gardner
John W. Gardner was a longtime activist who promoted the common good and improved the lives of millions of Americans by helping to implement the sweeping social reforms of the 1960s. As Lyndon Johnson’s Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, Gardner played a major role in civil rights enforcement and education reform, and he was instrumental in creating Medicare and establishing the public television network.
Gardner received his B.A. and M.A. in psychology from Stanford University, where he returned as a trustee and as a professor. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He authored several books on leadership and self renewal, and wrote extensively on public service. He headed the Carnegie Corporation and the Urban Coalition, and went on to found Common Cause and co-found the Independent Sector. In 1964, Gardner received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civil honor.
Any Rand Philosophy: Who Needs It?
By the time they are old enough to understand these questions, men believe that they know the answers. Where am I? Say, in New York City. How do I know it? It's self-evident. What should I do? Here, they are not too sure--but the usual answer is: whatever everybody does. The only trouble seems to be that they are not very active, not very confident, not very happy--and they experience, at times, a causeless fear and an undefined guilt, which they cannot explain or get rid of.
Philosophy would not tell you, for instance, whether you are in New York City or in Zanzibar (though it would give you the means to find out). But here is what it would tell you: Are you in a universe which is ruled by natural laws and, therefore, is stable, firm, absolute--and knowable? Or are you in an incomprehensible chaos, a realm of inexplicable miracles, an unpredictable, unknowable flux, which your mind is impotent to grasp? Are the things you see around you real--or are they only an illusion? Do they exist independent of any observer--or are they created by the observer? Are they the object or the subject of man's consciousness? Are they what they are--or can they be changed by a mere act of your consciousness, such as a wish?
Note philosophical term: Metaphysics: a theory of being in itself, of the essence of things, of the fundamental principles of existence and reality.
(Note: Being Qua Being = Being as being... Being in the capacity of being...)
Note philosophical term: Epistemology: the theory of knowledge; how do we know.
Just as the astronaut in my story did not know what he should do, because he refused to know where he was and how to discover it, so you cannot know what you should do until you know the nature of the universe you deal with, the nature of your means of cognition--and your own nature. Before you come to ethics, you must answer the questions posed by metaphysics and epistemology: Is man a rational being, able to deal with reality--or is he a helplessly blind misfit, a chip buffeted by the universal flux? Are achievement and enjoyment possible to man on earth--or is he doomed to failure and disaster? Depending on the answers, you can proceed to consider the questions posed by ethics: What is good or evil for man--and why? Should man's primary concern be a quest for joy--or an escape from suffering? Should man hold self-fulfillment--or self-destruction--as the goal of his life? Should man pursue his values--or should he place the interests of others above his own? Should man seek happiness--or self-sacrifice?
Note philosophical term: Esthetics: the theory of beauty.
Class Date: Monday, February 6, 2006:
Opening Meditation:
The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day. Never lose a holy curiosity.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
Einstein was a theoretical physicist who is widely regarded as one of the greatest minds of the 20th century.
Einstein himself was deeply concerned with the social impact of scientific discoveries. His reverence for all creation, his belief in an "ultimate principle" (or "unified field theory") and the grandeur, beauty, and sublimity of the universe (the primary source of inspiration in science), his awe for the scheme that is manifested in the material universe—all of these show through in his work and philosophy.
Einstein was born in Germany of Jewish parents.
Continue conversation on Dietrich Bonhoeffer.
Written exercise:
Think of one activity in your past that required you to make a personal sacrifice. Please write a reflection on that activity. (NOTE: All class reflections will be kept confidential.)
Class Date: Friday, February 3, 2006:
Opening Meditation:
When a man really gives up trying to
make something out of himself -- a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman,
a righteous or unrighteous man, ... when in the fullness of tasks, questions,
success or ill-hap, experiences and perplexities, a man throws himself into the
arms of God... then he wakes with Christ in Gethsemane. That is faith, and it is
thus that he becomes a man and Christian.
- Dietrich Bonhoeffer
1906-1945
Theologian, Spiritual Writer, Author of Fiction and Poetry, Central figure in
the Protestant church struggle against Nazism. The German theologian Dietrich
Bonhoeffer wrestled with religious principles in the thick of political and
personal crisis. A pacifist who became a Nazi resister, he was executed for his
part in a plot to assassinate Adolph Hitler.
National Public Radio: Speaking of Faith
Ethics and the Will of God, The Legacy of Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Class Date: Thursday, February 2, 2006:
Opening Meditation:
Western European civilization has witnessed a sort of atomizing process, in which the individual is more and more set free from his natural setting in family and neighborhood, and becomes a sort of replaceable unit in the social machine, His nearest neighbors may not even know his name. He is free to move from place to place, from job to job, from acquaintance to acquaintance, and -- if he has attained a high degree of emancipation -- from wife to wife. He is in every context a more and more anonymous and replaceable part, the perfect incarnation of the rationalist conception of man*. Wherever western civilization has spread in the past one hundred years, it has carried this atomizing process with it. Its characteristic product in Calcutta, Shanghai, or Johannesburg, is the modern city into which myriads of human beings, loosened from their old ties in village or tribe or caste, like grains of sand fretted by water from an ancient block of sandstone, are ceaselessly churned around in the whirlpool of the city -- anonymous, identical, replaceable units. In such a situation, it is natural that men should long for some sort of real community, for men cannot be human without it.
- Newbigin, (James Edward) Lesslie
James Edward Lesslie Newbigin, missionary and minister of the church: born Newcastle upon Tyne 8th December 1909; ordained 1936; Bishop in Madura and Ramnad, Church of South India 1947-59; Bishop in Madras 1965-74; CBE 1974; Lecturer in Theology, Selly Oak Colleges, Birmingham 1974-79; minister, United Reformed Church, Winson Green 1980-88; died London 30th January 1998.
*(Very brief side note on the mediation: What is rationalism?
Rationalism asserts that truth can best be discovered by reason and factual analysis, rather than faith, dogma or religious teaching.)
Some details:
How Much is It Worth?
** All classes in the Religion and Philosophy Department have the same grading scale and percentages of value for each class component. This structure, shown below, will be used to determine each quarter grade. A students’ semester grade will be determined by combining the two quarter grades valued at 40% each with a final exam valued at 20%.
a) Participation (10%)—This includes active and appropriate involvement in class discussion, as well as behavior.
b) Quizzes, Tests, and Projects (60%)—Regular quizzes will be given; approximately one every two weeks.
c) Journals/Homework (30%)—Journals include free responses to readings and questions, and reflection and synthesis of materials. Homework may involve vocabulary, worksheets, content questions, and review.
Today's Class Discussion:
The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion.
- G. K. Chesterton
Class discussion on assignment: A working definition of Philosophy, Theology, Religion. How are they different?
Discuss this project:
Work in groups: Reflect on and discuss this Francis Bacon quote:
A little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion.
Discuss pro and con arguments.
What did you learn about having a discussion with peers with different points of view?
Introduce Ayn Rand article: Philosophy: Who Needs It?
Class Date: Tuesday, January 31, 2006
Ayn Rand Philosophy: Who Needs It?
