Introduction E9F5FC

Questions FFFFC0

• View
• Edit
• History
• Print

Handbook, Platonas?, EthicsCourse, ShortBook?, Readings

I taught a Philosophy class in Spring, 2018 at VGTU.

Philosophy game

Philosophy - Kulikauskas - Spring, 2018 Δ

Third class - working on their questions

• What is the key term to define?
• what happens when you play with the definition of that term?
• How can they leverage human experience?
• Thinking of a data question.

What would they ask God?

Liminal thinking: Pyramid of Belief

Trever Maber: Ladder of Inference

Books to acquire

• Philosophy in the Flesh - VU Bibliotekoje
• The Doodle Revolution
• The Act of Creation, Arthur Koestler
• kurtz rapid viz

Changes in Requirements

Extra Credit: All those who are passing the class will get a one grade increase if they create and play a game to learn the following about the History of Western Philosophy:

• Philosophers
• Geography
• Timeline
• Terms

Attach:HistoryOfWesternPhilosophy.png Δ

Thinkers and readings

Breaking up the problem solving process

Give short excerpts (1 to 8 pages) from each book....

• Dave Gray, Gamestorming, Chapter 1: What is a Game? (pages 1-14) but especially 9-11
• Dave Gray, Gamestorming, Chapter 2: 10 Essentials for Gamestorming (pages 15-26)
• Dave Gray, Gamestorming, Chapter 3: Core Gamestorming Skills:
  • Asking Questions (pages 27-32)
  • Creating Artifacts and Meaningful Space (pages 32-38)
  • Employing Visual Language (pages 39-48)
  • Improvisation (pages 49-52)
• Playing around: Natalie d'Arbeloff, Designing With Natural Forms, Introduction. Water. (pages 11-41)
• The Thinker's Toolkit
• Ways of attacking a problem: How to Solve It
• Visual thinking? The Doodle Revolution

Attach:PhilosophyClass.png Δ

First class

• Explain that we'll be learning to ask and investigate any question.
• Explain course requirements.
• Explain the group project for creative learning.
• Define: What is philosophy, technology, science, investigation?
• Consider sample questions.
• Explain the stages of the typical investigation. Relate them to the pyramid of belief.
• Note the importance of Whether, What, How, Why.
• Help them figure out their deepest value by considering their ethical system: What they should do and Why they should do it.
• Note how questions are related to deepest values: How can we apply our value: in general, in our own lives, more broadly? Why aren't we applying our value: Why doesn't it exist? Why aren't we living it? Why aren't we thinking about it?

Course outline

Ask students to watch the video about Liminal thinking and to think about their deepest value in life and their investigatory question.

Ways of knowing everything

• Pythagoras: numbers
• Socrates: not knowing, inquiry
• Plato: ideal forms
• Aristotle: categories
• Aquinas: disputation and divine Scripture - Five proofs of God's existence
• Spinoza:
• Descartes: Discourse on the Method: I think therefore I am...
• Leibnitz:
• Kant:
• Hegel:
• Husserl: self-reflection
• Heidegger: reengaging
• Alexander:
• Lakoff: Philosophy in the Flesh
• Gray: Liminal Thinking

Methods

• Plato: Sophist
• Scholastic method
• Dialectic

• Chapter 1 Philosophy (unsolved riddles), technology (solved riddles) and science (solutions). Philosophy as the pursuit of wisdom about life. Existentialism as our situation in life. Do we know ourselves: What is our deepest value in life? Are we growing further: What is a question that we will investigate? Will consider ways of figuring out. Start with Christopher Alexander's practical question: What makes a building alive? Phenomenology: Can we agree on what is "alive"? Go through Alexander's examples.
• Creativity in Math. The general example of how we figure things out. Overview of a system of the ways of figuring things out. Compare with Descartes' universal problem solving.
• Stephen Toulmin: Uses of Argument. Heidegger's world, Aristotle's techne, Plato's know-how. TRIZ. Other examples of the comprehensive system of figuring things out.
• Ethics: The Algebra of Copyright. Stating more broadly the whole system of ways of figuring things out.
• Conceptual revolutions: "The Astronomical Distance Ladder by Terrence Tao" (watch together).
• A future revolution? Automata. Stephen Wolfram.

Attach:Justice.png Δ

Attach:20170911-Values.png Δ

Attach:PhilosophyClassStudyNotes.png Δ

Organizing examples of what is unjust and what is just. Categories:

• People have to suffer without a reason.
• Lack of equality.
• Greed: You gain, they lose, you don't care.
• Not being helpful.
• Hurting people because they are good.
• Don't treat others with dignity.
• Treating others badly for fun.

Attach:PlatosRepublicOutline.png Δ

LIFE - meaning of life, death, capital punishment, failure, social status

• WHY: What is the point of living? What is the most important thing in life?
• HOW: What should be the goal for your life? If I fall then what should I do?
• WHAT: What does success actually mean? What is death and when is death just?
• WHETHER: Is it worse to fail at something or never attempt in the first place?

KNOWING consciousness, truth, integrity, authenticity

• WHY: Is living by the truth essential?
• WHAT: What is the requirement for having awareness? What is truth?

HAPPINESS happiness, eudaimonia, social status, philosophy of happiness

• HOW: What is the best way for a person to attain happiness? How to be happy and how to make other people happy?
• WHAT: What does it mean to live the good life?
• WHETHER: If money can't buy happiness, can you ever be truly happy with no money?

RIGHT & WRONG ethics, peer pressure, social justice, social equality

• HOW: How to be a good person? How does the majority affect us?
• WHAT: What is wrong and what is right? What is right and what is wrong?
• WHETHER: Is equality possible?

Attach:PhilosophyCourseOutline.png Δ

quotes, podcasts, videos, ted talks

Midterm: November 13, Final: December 11

• Facts of real life <=> Language of absolute truth (Give example of thinking in 4D).

Ask Why? you are asking your question.

Find a philosopher who wrote about your question.

Wisdom not interested in anything less. Problem of society - different than the wise man. Warning: Not listening to society but listening to the facts and abstracting from them.

• 1) State your question. Explain what it means. Explain your terms.
• 2) Explain why you chose this question.
• 3) Review typical answers people give to this question.
• 4) Review what one or more philosophers have said about this question.
• 5) Explain what data would be useful for investigating your question. Formulate your data question!
• 6) Group your examples.
• 7) Relate the groups. Think of them as giving different points of view.
• 8) Explain what insight that gives you.
• 1) State the question that you are investigating.
• 2) Explain why you chose this question.
• 3) What are some typical answers that people you know give to your question?
• 4) Discuss what one or more philosophers has said about your question.
• 5) Explain what data would be useful for investigating your question. Formulate your data question.
• 6) Give three interesting real life examples relevant for your investigation.
• 7) Explain how you grouped your examples and how you related the groups. What pattern or insight did you find?
• 8) In Plato's Republic, What is Socrates's question?
• 9) How does Socrates investigate his question?
• 10) What are some questions that other students are investigating?
• 11) What ideas do you have for investigating their questions?
• 5 Pass the class: Be able to state one's question.
• 6 Collect typical answers to one's question.
• 7 Research what one or more philosophers have stated.
• 8 Be able to collect real life examples.
• 9 Have ideas for investigating your question.
• 10 Make some progress, such as grouping your examples.

Final report

Introduction (one page)

• 1) State the question you are investigating. Explain what it means. Explain your terms.
• 2) Explain why you chose this question.

Literature (one page)

• 3) Review typical answers people give to this question.
• 4) Review what one or more philosophers have said about this question.

Methodology (one page)

• 5) Explain in detail how you investigated your question.
• 6) Explain what kind of data from real life you need to investigate your question.
• 7) Formulate your data question with which you collected your data.

Data (two or three pages)

• 8) List the real life examples that you are using. Number your examples. A good investigation should have 20 or 30 examples.

Analysis (one page text plus one table and/or diagram)

• 6) Discuss your examples. You can break your examples into features or factors, what makes them the different or the same.
• 7) Group your examples. You can refer to them by number. You can make a table to show what factors they have.
• 8) Relate your groups. Think of them as giving different points of view. Draw a structure of how you think they are related.

Conclusion (one page)

• 9) Explain what you have learned from your analysis.
• 10) Discuss how true you think your answer is. What aspects of your investigation are more certain, and which are more doubtful.
• 11) Discuss in what ways your conclusions support various thinkers or contradict them.
• 12) Discuss what might be practical applications of the knowledge you have gained for you and for others.
• 13) State what new questions arise from your investigation and your conclusion.

Final exam

• What is philosophy?
• What new questions did their investigation suggest?
• How did Socrates investigate his question, What is justice?
• Write about your favorite philosopher - their life and what you find interesting about their ideas and how they investigated a question.
• List all of the philosophers you know and one interesting sentence about them.
• Compare opinions and real life experiences.
• What are deep structures that you know.

Be able to have an opinion, let go of it, formulate a data question, collect real life examples, analyze the latter, draw a conclusion.

Why are each of these problems? Because we are stupid.

• Nullsome and onesome: God and the World. What point of view is key?
• Twosome: The problem of being. What is basic? The limits of our minds.
• Threesome: The problem of learning, growing, participating. The problem of cognition. How do we figure things out?
• Foursome: Philosophy. What is wisdom? Why.
• Fivesome:
• Sixsome: Good and evil.
• Sevensome: The problem of truth.

I. Filosofijos objektas, jos kilmė ir reikšmė:

• 1.Filosofijos objektas
• I. 2. Filosofijos kilmė
• I. 3. Filosofijos ir mokslo santykis
• I. 4. Filosofija ir kultūra.

II. Būties teorija:

• 1. Daiktų pradai
• II.2. Daiktai ir idėjos
• II.3. Metafizika: būties teorija
• II.4. Dievas ir pasaulis
• II.5. Būties problema šiuolaikinėje filosofijoje

III. Pažinimo problema:

• 1. Pažinimo šaltinis
• III. 2. Racionalizmo ir empirizmo ginčas
• II. 3. Apriorizmas
• III. 4 Apriorizmo negandos

IV. Tiesos problema:

• 1. Klasikinė tiesos samprata
• IV. 2. Akivaizdumo teorija
• IV. 2. Akivaizdumo teorija
• IV. 4. Pragmatinė tiesos samprata
• IV. 5. Tiesa ir tikimybė

Užsakytos filosofijos knygos

• Liminal Thinking
• Gamestorming
• How to Solve It, Polya
• Robert E. Horn, Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century
• Natalie d'Arbeloff
• The Thinker's Toolkit: 14 Powerful Techniques for Problem Solving, Morgan D. Jones
• The Doodle Revolution

Philosophy Midterm Report

Introduction

• 1) State the question you are investigating. Explain what it means. Explain your terms.
• 2) Explain why you chose this question.

Literature

• 3) Review typical answers people give to this question.
• 4) Review what one or more philosophers have said about this question.

Methodology

• 5) Explain how you investigated your question.
• 6) Explain what kind of data from real life you need to investigate your question.
• 7) Formulate your data question with which you collected your data.

Data

• 8) Give 20 real life examples that you are using as data. Number them.

Analysis

• 9) Discuss your examples. You can break your examples into features or factors, what makes them the different or the same.
• 10) Group your examples. You can refer to them by number. You can make a table to show what factors they have.
• 11) Relate your groups. Think of them as giving different points of view. Draw a structure of how you think they are related.

Conclusion

• 12) What are the main conclusions that you have found?
• 13) To what extent have you answered your question? What questions remain further?
• 14) How can you investigate further?