23 Feb What is James main thesis in this text? Explain James’ concept of live and dead hypothesis. Can James’ arguments help us to understand something about political disagreement in our times? If
philosophy test / quiz prep and need an explanation and answer to help me learn.
Module 2: Feb 6 Feb 19
THIS MODULE’S TASK ASSIGNMENTS
TASK 1: Read William James’ “The Will to Believe” (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2hj38p6x8lPWm9PVW9WdkJPanM/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-JAHGkGVPQeIQDPt94ksvQgLinks to an external site.) and Descartes’ Meditations I and II, (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B2hj38p6x8lPVTl4OG4xbEtCZ2s/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-luKdT4eXi6h3goDEYVXKhALinks to an external site.)
TASK 2: Post responses to the two following questions in two different posts:
What is James main thesis in this text? Explain James’ concept of live and dead hypothesis. Can James’ arguments help us to understand something about political disagreement in our times? If so, how?
and
How does Descartes answer the question, is knowledge possible?
This is a nice essay on William James in the popular publication, Aeon: tinyurl.com/35onhwn
Links to an external site.
What follows is some supplementary material on Descartes. This link leads to a discussion of the impact of Descartes’ thought on brain science and psychology by Georges Canguillhem (who was Michel Foucault’s dissertation advisor): https://tinyurl.com/y5mmclb8Links to an external site.
And this link leads to an interesting essay entitled, “How the Dualism of Descartes Ruined Our Mental Health.” This is quite accessible, for those of you who are looking for something a bit easier to understand. https://tinyurl.com/y55j8w2uLinks to an external site.
Make sure your first post is by the mid point of the module and that your follow up posts are made by the final Sunday at 11:30pm! Remember, in order to receive full credit for the discussion, you must not only post to these, but respond to 2 other student’s postings with intelligent criticism or commentary. Ideally, this will stimulate interesting discussions. Those students who are not only the most active in the discussion, but also offer the best responses, will obviously receive the most discussion points.
Requirements: 500
