Wednesday
Class
Well, I attended my first epistemology class last night. I enjoyed it right off. The lecturer is energetic, and doesn't just read from prepared notes. He entertains tangential discussions. It kept my interest. The class is small in size, too: only nine people for the first session. This is good as it should provide lots of chance to participate.
For those who don't know, epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge and justified belief. Last night we basically just covered this definition, and the outline for the course. There was some initial discussion about what "belief" is (as distinct from, say, "desire"), what "justified belief" is (for example, I can be reasonably justified in believing that the picture on the wall that I saw a second ago is still there now, even though I've just turned away from it), and "knowledge". We didn't get too far into knowledge, because that's the point of the whole course. Our exercise for next week's class - which I won't be able to attend, unfortunately - is to write down ten things which we know to be true (and, optionally, ten things which we believe to be true).
By far the most interesting part of the first class was the introduction of the nine students. All but one are older (much older) than me. Here's the summary:
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For those who don't know, epistemology is the branch of philosophy that studies the nature of knowledge and justified belief. Last night we basically just covered this definition, and the outline for the course. There was some initial discussion about what "belief" is (as distinct from, say, "desire"), what "justified belief" is (for example, I can be reasonably justified in believing that the picture on the wall that I saw a second ago is still there now, even though I've just turned away from it), and "knowledge". We didn't get too far into knowledge, because that's the point of the whole course. Our exercise for next week's class - which I won't be able to attend, unfortunately - is to write down ten things which we know to be true (and, optionally, ten things which we believe to be true).
By far the most interesting part of the first class was the introduction of the nine students. All but one are older (much older) than me. Here's the summary:
- One fellow is a retired surgeon. He's taking this course - and several others - to, in his words, "ward off Alzheimer's". I liked this guy a lot. He lives along the Central Line tube too, so after class I rode back with him.
- Two of them are psychoanalysts. One is retired; the other is a woman who sat next to me and muttered an affirmitive "Mmmhm," every time the lecturer finished a sentence.
- Three of us are physicists or engineers or technology workers who simply have an interest in something very different. The other two are both retired.
- One fellow - the young guy - is a musician who's into eastern philosophies and religions, and is taking this course (which is analytical and based in the western tradition) because he thinks it'll provide some useful balance for him.
- One woman already has a degree in philosophy, and went to university at the same time as our instructor. Tragically, she suffered a stroke last year, and has lost significant parts of her knowledge. She's basically retraining her brain. It's a bit of a sad story, but she seemed quite chipper about it.
- One gentleman said that he's taking this course because he wants to understand why the traditional scientific opinion of sensory input is restricted to the five senses defined in Aristotle's time, because he thinks it's quite clear that we have a sixth sense: our ability to sense temperature.* Further, he's interested in the relation between this heat-sense neglect and global warming. That's certainly the oddest and most specific course goal I've ever heard.
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