Last Question

What did you learn from this class?

Blog Question 5

Do we gain knowledge through reason or do we gain it through experience?

No Test over Chapter 3 tomorrow (April 20th). It will now be on Thursday the 21st.

Term Paper Rules

Term Paper Rules

Points – This is worth 100 points

Due Date:  These are due The Wednesday of the senior’s last week of school.  Late papers will be docked.

Structure

-Minimum of four (4) pages of double-spaced 12 font content word processed or typed or whatever (not including the title page and the bibliography).

-Papers can be longer, but the content is what is significant.  I will not be throwing the papers down my stairs to see which ones travel the farthest and give them the best grades.  No papers should be longer than eight (8) pages long.  Work to write clearly and to-the-point. 

-I won’t be measuring with my ruler, but Indent about an inch on each side and at the top and bottom.  The first page can be about three inches (3”) down.  Use 12 font.  In other words If you hand me in something that has huge letters, and starts in the middle of each page – and if you draw lots of picture of trees and airplanes to use more space  -  I might get suspicious.

-Again - This would be double-spaced.     

Bibliography

-Bibliography of sources:  You need to have one of these

-In this you site your sources.  This might be books, articles, sections of books, magazines, interviews or artifacts.

-You can use the Internet to find your sources, but I want you to site them, from where they actually are.   Some sources “might” be exclusively from the internet such as some u-tube you found or something from a blog or whatever, but they need to be credible – and not something made up.  Just because someone said the sky is green, doesn’t mean it is.

Style

-This isn’t an English class, so I don’t really care what kind of style you use, but you need to be consistent nevertheless.  You need to show your sources, and site where you found them.  You can Google some styles (APA, Turabian), or you can just be consistent.

-Tables and Graphs:   You can have these if you want.  Tables have totals, graphs have conclusions.

-Quoting:  If you quote something someone else said, it needs to be in quotation marks and cited.  If you “paraphrase” something or say it in your own words, then you need to cite it as well.  You can’t change one “and” to a “but” in a fifty word quote and consider that a paraphrase.  A paraphrase is your own words about someone else’s work.

Other Rules

- I might use our computer program to check your paper if I think you may have copied it from someplace - so don't do that.  You can site sources and quote other works, but let this be your own paper.   

-Enjoy writing this.

Blog Question Four

Oh wow this is easy...... or is it?

Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?

On Line Assignment: Due Friday April 15th

-Create for me one valid factual example of each of the three deductive arguments below. 

-Create one create valid but un-factual argument for one of them.  You can twist one of your valid factual argument to make it un-factual, or you can create a completely different argument. 

-Create one invalid argument example for one of them. You can twist one of the valid arguments to make it invalid, or you can create a completely different argument.

So when you are done you will have five arguments.  Use Chapter Three to help you understand how to set up the arguments.  You can e-mail your examples to me at crozierdr@mflmarmac.k12.ia.us, or you can hand them in on paper on Friday:

The three arguments: 

1) Modus Ponens  

2) Modus Tollens

3) A Hypothetical Syllogism

Example for Modus Ponens:

Valid factual:  If I fall asleep before 9:15 P.M. in June, it will not be dark outside yet.  I fell asleep at 9:10, therefore it wasn't dark out yet.

Valid un-factual:  If I stay up past midnight during a weekday monsters will be hiding under the bed waiting for me.   I stayed up until 12:30 A.M. last Tuesday, so the monsters must have been waiting for me.  (I'm sure glad they didn't get me)

Invalid (could be factual or nonfactual) If I fall asleep before 9:15 in June, it will not be dark outside yet.  Therefore, since it was not dark outside yet on June 10th, I couldn't fall asleep.

Blog Question 3

Lets go a different direction for a while.  There is a theory in science called  "The  Technological Imperative".  In essence it holds that for individuals as well as for societies, if something can be done, it eventually will be done, because the power granted to people by technolgy is too seductive to be resisted.

There was a very disturbing school-law case a few months ago called the Harrington Spycam Case.  In some school someplace the eye-thing in the computers was on, and school personnel found out that they could watch student activites when the students were out-of-school without their knowledge, and some did.  Of course they ended up in a lot of trouble over this, but they did it. 

Leonardo Divinci actually had some plans to invent a submarine, but he didn't complete it becuase he argued that people would engage in war with each other at the bottom of the sea.

On the other hand, in 1969 I got to stand outside my house with my parents and watch the moon while a guy stepped on it. 

So is there such a thing as too much technology?  Is the technological  Imperative true?  Is it good?

Blog Question 2

You've heard it said "If its meant to be it will be".  Is that so?

Try to discuss this in terms of free will vs. determinism - and relate that to the four philosophical systems we have looked at in chapter two:  Stoicism, Existentialism, Hedonism, Buddhism.

Blog question

Comment on the following statement by Henry David Thoreau.  Thoreau was an American Transcendentalist.  By that, he basically lived alone in a house on a lake for a couple of years........

Here's the comment:   "We make ourselves rich by making our wants few."