I Think I Forgot How To Think

I think it's time to slow down a little: let's go to college.  To be precise, please attend the Universities of Rochester and Oxford.  First, work through this logic tutorial on consistency and validity.  Once on the site, follow the Tutorials link, then select Tutorial One.  Continue until you finish Exercise 1.4.  Next, please tackle these logic puzzles.  Work patiently and with a pencil, reasoning out the consequences of each statement and, where appropriate, its speaker.  In your post, examine the ways your thinking changed or developed to accommodate this task.  What was most difficult?  How did you arrive at the answers?  Consider (in writing) how the skills the tutorial develops help you understand and tackle the puzzles and paradoxes.  If you get angry at logic, take a break and read this.  Finally, an ear worm inspired by our last class.  Please post by 8 am Tuesday.

There's a Hole in the Logic, Dear Liza...

To continue to hone your reasoning skills and simultaneously reexamine ways of knowing, please read your own post and the post below yours (last poster, read the first), searching out, identifying, and explaining any and every logical fallacy along the way.  Use and link to the guide at right (top link).  Please share your findings before classes start on Thursday.

More Than a Feeling

Greetings, Knowers.  As we begin to build our TOK vocabularies, we're developing a list (and understandings of that list) of ways of knowing.  To date, we've discussed Sense Perception, Language, Reason, Emotion, and Faith, along with the beginnings of an exploration of Intuition and what that might mean.  I respectfully submit that the list may be incomplete at this time.  I also want to share with you all Cynthia's astute observation that there seems to be a lot of overlap.  Yes!  It is often very difficult (perhaps at times impossible?) to draw clear distinctions between the ways we know certain things.  That said, for Tuesday morning at 8 am, I would like you each to identify two moments of knowledge (two things you know) and the ways of knowing employed for each.  Employ two different ways of knowing (one for each) and, as best you are able, identify one discreet way of knowing for each moment.  Identify what you know, the context of the knowledge, and how you know (the way of knowing).  Take a risk--try to use the way of knowing that confuses or confounds you most.  If you feel your brain begin to melt, don't worry: the nights are getting cooler.

I Do Not Think That Means What You Think It Means

Building on our discussion of Ludacris language, please spend a day or so listening.  Seek out a word or phrase or statement spoken near you, in which you identify an additional, unintended meaning.  Report the situation, the statement (you do not need to include names of those involved), the intended meaning(s), and the additional meaning you've identified.  Please post this before first period on Thursday.

What in the World?

Let's take a look around.  For 8 am on Tuesday 9/17, please look through the maps here.  Once you've worked your way through them, choose three and do some thinking and writing about the perspective that each presents, how it relates to you, and what insight it has to offer you.  What surprised you?  How did it change your thinking?  What did it reveal to you about your perspective that you perhaps hadn't considered?  Come to class prepared to discuss your and others' responses.