Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer: 

INSTRUCTIONS: 
The response is focused on the following skills: providing examples, explaining key concepts, and explaining the motivation for an argument.

This is not testing your mastery of the material, but rather asking you engage with the reading.

PART ONE: Dretske begins his paper by discussing two sorts of meaning: “natural” meaning and “functional” meaning. Do the following:

(i)  Briefly (no more than three sentences) define each of these sorts of meaning in your own words (do not give Dretske’s technical formulation);

(ii)  Give two plausible examples: one of an object or property that naturally means something (and explain what it naturally means) and one of an object or property that functionally means something (and explain what it means). You do not need to explain why they mean these things.

PART TWO: In your own words, explain what Dretske is interested in, in this paper. Why is he so concerned to show that some meanings can be accounted for without adverting to other semantic notions? This answer should be around a paragraph in length.

Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer: 

Ethics - Euthanasia why it is morally okay

Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer: 

Are there universal moral principles that are right for all persons at all times?

Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer: 

Trait-Factor Theory
Holland’s Career Typology
Super’s Life Span Theory
Krumboltz’s Social Learning Theory
Constructivist Theory
Social Cognitive Career Theory

ANSWER THE QUESTIONS.

*What theory (or combination of theories) fits you best?
*Why did you choose this theory? How does it tell your story?
* Be sure to include concrete examples of how the theory(ies) can explain or support your career journey.
*What is the difference between a job and a career? and How is this distinction articulated in the two video clips?

Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer: 

Read the 3 attached articles and answer the corresponding questions in two paragraphs for each article:

Shakespeare in the Bush article:
Why did the author of "Shakespeare in the Bush," tell the Tiv people the story of "Hamlet"? What special difficulties did she have in doing so?

What does the article "Shakespeare in the Bush" illustrate about the culture and religion of the Tiv people?


Fighting for Our Lives article
As identified in "Fighting for Our Lives," what are the general characteristics of Western culture that are paramount today?

The author of "Fighting for Our Lives" states several times that she is not advocating the end to argument as a means of public discourse; what is she advocating instead?

As related in "Fighting for Our Lives," what happened to scientist Dr. Robert Gallo and how does that demonstrate the cost of the culture of critique?

How Language Shapes Thought article
The author described numerous ways that language shapes thought, and presented several cases that support her position. Many people and scholars have assumed that thought shapes language. The results of this study are sometimes surprising. 

Do you find her article and statement about language convincing? Which case or example (if any) struck you as most interesting?

Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer: 

2015 Chapel Hill shooting

Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer;

In Books II, III, and IV Socrates tries to find out what justice in an individual is by creating a just city. If you can find justice in the city, then the individual will be exactly the same thing only on a smaller scale. The just individual will correspond to the bigger version of justice in the city. So, Socrates goes on to say that the critical group in the city are the guardians of the city. The workers are important, but only because the city needs the work of this class to continue to exist. The guardians are the ones who protect the city. They must have a special education that makes them brave but not vicious (like a good watchdog). In Book II, Socrates talks about their education. In Books III and IV, he talks about how children are selected to be trained to be guardians, what their training will be like, and then he looks for justice in the whole city. He ends up saying it's every group doing what it should do: workers being moderate in their desire for wealth; guardians being brave and ready to defend the city; the top guardian ruling with a knowledge of what is best for every class. Then Socrates says, that's what a just individual is: his lower appetites are moderate; his spirited element makes him courageous; his mind makes him wise about his whole being so that he rules himself properly. That takes us to Book V, which is what you have to read for today. In Book V, Socrates's friends ask him to say more about a couple of things that he said about the guardians. He said that they will not have families like normal people but will have "wives in common." He also said that the top ruling guardian must be a philosopher. These are strange assertions, and Socrates is asked to explain why women and men will live together in common but not in separate families, and why the ruler has to be a philosopher. The question for today is: why are the guardians not permitted to have their own families or private property? What does Plato think is wrong with private property?

Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer;

Socrates is put on trial for impiety and he loses.  Is Socrates irreligious or impious?  Consider the Socratic view of religion as expressed in the Euthyphro.  Compare it to what he says about his mission in the Defence Speech (Apology).  What, then, is Socrates’ view of religion?  What is the view of Socrates’ accusers, and how do those views conflict with Socrates’own?  Are both of these religious views normal and reasonable?  Are Socrates’ views in any way a threat to the city?  Are they the basis for a religious charge?  If Socrates was not irreligious, how could the charge, especially interpreted by Meletus as atheism, have convinced the jurors?  Feel free to consider the Crito as well, and any secondary sources

Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer;

Does determinism rule out free will? In answering this question, begin by (1) clearly explaining what is meant by this question (this includes briefly explaining the relevant concepts such as determinism and/or being determined, free will, etc.). Then, (2) clearly explain the argument for hard determinism, and (3) explain one possible objection to this argument which we covered in class (for example, the objection (i) that free will does not require alternative possibilities, or the objection that (ii) humans are “special”, etc.).

Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer;

For Tuesday, read Book VI (from " And we have next to consider the of the philosophic nature, why so many are spoiled and so few escape spoiling ") to a little ways into Book VII (just until " Whereas the truth is that the State in which the rulers are most reluctant to govern is always the best and most quietly governed, and the State in which they are most eager, the worst.  ")

the link for Book VI is:
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html

There is a description at the beginning of Book VII of the Republic of people in a cave chained in place and looking only at shadows on the cave wall in front of them. They think that the shadows are real because they are made by puppets behind them that are being manipulated by people who are speaking and making it seem like the puppets are real. Plato explains the "allegory of the cave" by talking about levels of reality, physical things that the senses experience and intelligible things that the mind knows. But the cave seems to be about more than levels of reality. There is, for example, a man who escapes and goes up to the light. He returns to tell his fellow-prisoners about the world above, but they don't listen. It isn't necessary to tell this part of the story just to get an allegory about the levels of reality. What else is the "allegory of the cave" about? How else can we intrepret it? Who are the puppet handlers? Who are the prisoners? Who is the man who escapes and comes back? Put these answers together in a coherent essay.

Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer;

For Thursday, read the Myth of Er in the Republic (from "Well, said I, I will tell you a tale" to the end of the book); and the Gorgias myth (523-527, from ''Listen, then, as story-tellers say, to a very pretty tale'' to the end of the tale).

The link for the Republic:
http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/republic.html
The link for Gorgias myth:
http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/plato-dialogues-vol-2#lf0131-02_head_026

For today, we read a number of "myths" invented by Plato to describe what happens to the soul in the afterlife. We learned that Plato does not believe that justice should be chosen because of the rewards of the afterlife, or because of the fear of punishment in the afterlife. So why do you think that Plato has written these myths? There is no one perfect answer. Try to think of a reasonable explanation and offer evidence from one or more of the myths for today.

Questions and Topics We Can Help You To Answer 

After hearing in the first lecture on Aristotle about the "great chain of being" that goes from the lowest forms of matter up to humanity and then god in a rising hierarchy of importance, how would you say that Aristotle incorporates an idea of hierarchy in his conception of political life? How does Aristotle's conception of hierarchy in the universe get applied to his theory of the proper organization of the city?