To: Students in Philosophy 303 – Principles of Inquiry: Ways of Knowing, Summer 2002

From: Tom Atchison

 

Welcome!

 

This letter will tell you what you need to do to get started with your independent study.  I am not enclosing a complete syllabus.  To receive a syllabus send an email to tomatchison@bigfoot.com, and I will send you course materials by return email.  (Put Phil 303 in the subject line of your email.) 

 

Meanwhile you can, if you want, get started on the first assignment.  It is:

 

  1. Rent the film The Matrix from your favorite video store.  Watch about the first half of it (at least), through the part where Morpheus explains and demonstrates the how the Matrix works.  Think about what it would take to convince you that you were living in the Matrix or some such virtual reality device.  Think about how you know (or whether you do really know) that you are not living in a virtual reality fed to you by someone else.
  2. Read the first two of Rene Descartes’ Meditations on First Philosophy.  These are available online in several versions.  My favorite version for beginning students is one prepared by Jonathan Bennett.  Professor Bennett has modernized Descartes’ language, simplified the sentence structure, and inserted a number of helpful comments. The URL is http://www-hl.syr.edu/phil/Bennett/Bennett_Descartes.htm. 
  3. A very helpful guide to the Meditations, written by Rae Langton of the University of Edinburgh, is available at http://www.arts.ed.ac.uk/philosophy/study_html/vade_mecum/sections/section5/descart1.htm.  I’d strongly recommend reading at least the first part of this for background on Descartes and his social context.
  4. I am enclosing study questions for Descartes’ first two meditations.  Write out answers to questions #1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 13, 16, and 17 and send them to me by email.

 

 

Some other things you might like to know:

 

  1. There will be a web site for this course soon.  Unfortunately, I am in the process of changing ISP’s, and it will be a few more days before my new service is up and running.    So far, my old web site is still up at http://www.users.qwest.net/~ac15/.  There are links on the site to the Descartes materials and to many other things connected with the theory of knowledge.  The versions of this course on this site are not much like this independent study version, however. 
  2. There will also be an email list and a requirement to participate in an online discussion.  Interaction is essential to learning philosophy, so we will need to create a virtual classroom.
  3. Three books have been ordered and should be at the bookstore.  (O’Hear, Introduction to the Philosophy of Science; Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions; and Fay, Contemporary Philosophy of Social Science.)  The other course readings (quite a lot) will be made available on line (as in the assignment above).  This course will be very inconvenient for students who do not have good Internet access and the facilities to read online materials or to print them out.
  4. The reading and writing assignments for this course require a fairly high degree of literacy.  I have not taught this course in this format before, so I don’t know for sure how it will work out, but I strongly suspect that students whose English is not very good, or whose reading and writing skills are shaky, would be better off taking a classroom version instead of an independent study.  I will try to be helpful with electronic feedback, but I’m afraid it will not be an adequate substitute for face-to--face communication for students who need a lot of help.