W2010 Assessment

Week 1: Reading and Discussion

Read the passage from Josef Pieper, “The Philosophical Act,” in Leisure the Basis of Culture pp 108-115 thoroughly (preferably several times!), and answer the following questions:

1. Were you struck by part of the reading, so that you learned something new? What particularly struck you? Were you left with a question about the reading?
2. Some textual detail:

• What is the difference between a stone and a plant, as regards their existing in the world? (109-10)
• What is meant by the “inside” and “outside” of a plant? (109)
• What is “seeing” in Pieper’s understanding? (111)

3. Give examples of “surroundings,” “environment,” “world” (these concepts all differ from one another). Try to find a definition/description of each of these. (112-113)
4. The passage draws a contrast between an animal like a jackdaw, and a human being.

• What is the central point about the life of the jackdaw, as shown in the example of the grasshopper?
• How does the human being differ from the jackdaw, given that humans also see from a limited point of view (a particular place in space etc)? Note that Uexküll thinks that they do not really differ.

Study Guide

Welcome to Week 1!

Make sure you can access Blackboard. When you arrive at the W2010 site, check the Course Outline and the Assessments folders on the sidebar to get a sense of the scope and tasks of the course unit. If you have questions or comments, contact me at j.owens@ctc.ac.nz

Recordings of lectures will normally be posted on Blackboard on after they are delivered. A written version will be posted on Wednesday afternoons.

Tasks for the first week are as follows:

• Work your way carefully through the Lecture for Week 1.
• Try to answer the Discussion Questions about the passage from Josef Pieper’s “The Philosophical Act,” pp 108-115. We will discuss the passage in the third hour of Week 1.
• Do the online Test on the Pieper reading.

Further reading is available.

• Ayala is a working biologist. In the short text on Blackboard, he is trying to account for the uniqueness of the human. Notice that for all his interest in wider philosophical issues, Ayala has naturalist tendencies, so that there are some tensions in his account.
• Hofstadter and Dennett take a basic naturalist approach. They manage however to bring out the strangeness of the phenomenon of awareness, and the challenge it seems to present for a naturalist account.
• Lewis Miracles (Chapts 1 & 2) has a vivid account of an extreme naturalist approach.
• Midgley offers a good roundup of different approaches to the human. The first three pages of her piece give the main themes we are dealing with this week.