plato
i've always felt that reading platonic dialogues stimulates my logical mind like few other forms of writing do. unfortunately after years of working in IT and becoming one who only skims documentation, due to its poor quality, time considerations, and the need to only extract out very specific information, i have to make a really concerted effort to follow the arguments set forth in plato's works. that said, i think i followed the arguments put down in this 73 page book, which i'll try to now describe.
protagoras is a famous sophist in athens who takes on students for pay, in order to teach them "virtue". socrates brings a potential student to protagoras, and questions whether virtue can be taught. the two identify five components of virtue (temperance, justice, holiness, wisdom, and courage) but debate whether they are separate parts which together form virtue or whether each is equal to the other, and to virtue itself.
protagoras makes the unfortunate statement that the ignorant can be courageous, and socrates pounces. courage and cowardice are opposites. only the courageous are confident in their knowledge of danger, while the coward has a false confidence ("base confidence") in their understanding of danger, which originates from ignorance. therefore the ignorant displays cowardice, and not courage.
socrates builds the argument in a more subtle and elaborate way than this of course, in order to trap protagoras into renouncing his original assertion, and succeeds.
in my reading of the dialogue, the arguments are not convincing as to make me believe the claim set forth. the five components of virtue are not truly and rigorously defined and the lack of differentiation allows socrates to make this "equality" or "equivalency" claim on them to support his argument. in this way, much of the argument just seems like word-play built into a drawn-out logical chain. while i am saying this as a criticism, it still must have been novel for the time plato sets this down, and these same principles are employed in philosophy today, only in a more rigorous/mathematical way, in my very rudimentary understanding of analytic philosophy.
miscellaneous points that i found fascinating for roughly 400 BC: (1) the good for a person is pleasure either now or later, and the bad for a person is pain either now or later. this line of argument spans a few pages and almost sounds like the basis for the Utilitarianism of bentham and mill in the 1800s. (2) "But the art of measurement would do away with the effect of appearances, and, showing the truth..." plato explicitly states that experiences must be somehow recorded in a quantifiable and therefore objective manner, which today is fundamental to the process of defining repeatable experiments in science. (3) manure is recognized as a good fertilizer when "laid about the roots of a tree". (4) olive oil is recognized as good for human hair and the human body. though relevant and admitted today, perhaps this was merely product placement for greek exports to the rest of the mediterraean...
Tuesday, June 9, 2015
Sunday, April 19, 2015
jean piaget, para principiantes
adriana serulnicov and rodrigo suarez
I must have purchased this book in the latter half of 2002, during a period of time when I taught English in Latinamerica, but was almost more interested in subjects on the periphery of education, like instructional theory. Since after that time, I immediately delved into computer science, those interests largely fell away. Most likely this book sat on my shelves for almost thirteen years, and there is no evidence that I ever attempted to read it.
Why does this book exist on my shelf? While teaching in Mississippi, I faintly recall studying or reading about his four "stages of cognitive development", which, as this book mentions, are sometimes used by educators to assess their students' level of intellectual development, and thereby determine appropriate activities for stimulating those students' development.
While his stages of cognitive development represent his most widely-known and widely-applied ideas in the field of "genetic psychology" that he is credited for creating, I won't delve into taxonomy, but rather point out a few observations that seemed relevant to me at this time in my life.
Philosophy/epistemology: epistemology is the study of knowledge, how it is obtained, and how true it is. Broadly speaking, there is rationalism, which holds that truth and knowledge can be arrived at seemly through logical thought, in the mind, and there is empiricism, which holds that knowledge can only be gained through experiences with the world external to the mind. The divergence can be traced as far back as to Plato and Aristotle, respectively. For Piaget, in studying children as the learn about the world, knowledge comes from both; experiences in the world, and the mental activities which process those experiences. He calls this Constructivism, as the child constructs his/her own version of knowledge of the world. Personally, this explanation of knowledge makes the Rationalism vs. Empiricism debate seem ridiculous. If you want to how knowledge originates, obviously you should watch how a child develops knowledge.
Conservation: Much of the source for Piaget's theories come from interviews with children. "Piaget on Piaget" is an excellent short film from 1977 that captures many of these and post-interview explanations. One topic for these interviews is the concept of Conservation. Given a certain quantity of clay, water, sticks, etc, when the material is reshaped or divided up, younger children often recognize the new form as either more or less in quantity. The answers the children give to why they believe the quantity is different provides an insight into the child's thought processes, and can determine to which stage of intellectual development the child belongs. Numerous interviews showed to Piaget that children follow surprisingly similar paths of development.
Intelligence: Piaget defines intelligence as the capacity to adapt to new situations. I like this idea and the opposite which would say that someone unwilling to change or unwilling to try to understand the situation of a person dissimilar to him/her is not pursuing intelligence. I would not say that this person is not intelligent, just that he/she perhaps embraces ignorance a little too readily.
Errors: To Piaget, when a child makes what to an adult would seem to be a logical error, the child is making a valid determination of truth based on the knowledge that the child has developed up until that time in his/her life. In other words, he/she has not erred. One example dialog from the book:
- ma, i want peaches
- there are no peaches, they ripen in the summer, and it is winter
- what is this?
- peaches in syrup
- great! summer is here!
- ???
...
- (ma took peaches out of a can... it is not summer...)
- in summer there are peaches and ma buys them at the fruit stand. in winter i can eat the ones from a can.
In this type of interaction, the child modifies his knowledge, and comes away with a more comprehensive theory.
As far as practical applications, Piaget inspired the "Active School" movement, which I am not familiar with, but would guess encourages small group activities, and discourages excessive reliance on mechanical and repetitive teaching and learning. In my 2.5 years of teaching, I was definitely moving away from rote memorization techniques to methods more popular in the educational community such as requiring a more active role on the part of the student, including group activities, and I tend to now think that Piaget had a part in this movement.
Outside of education, I think that a parent of a small child could use some of these insights in order to encourage the intellectual development of their child. In brief: keep the child stimulated.
I must have purchased this book in the latter half of 2002, during a period of time when I taught English in Latinamerica, but was almost more interested in subjects on the periphery of education, like instructional theory. Since after that time, I immediately delved into computer science, those interests largely fell away. Most likely this book sat on my shelves for almost thirteen years, and there is no evidence that I ever attempted to read it.
Why does this book exist on my shelf? While teaching in Mississippi, I faintly recall studying or reading about his four "stages of cognitive development", which, as this book mentions, are sometimes used by educators to assess their students' level of intellectual development, and thereby determine appropriate activities for stimulating those students' development.
While his stages of cognitive development represent his most widely-known and widely-applied ideas in the field of "genetic psychology" that he is credited for creating, I won't delve into taxonomy, but rather point out a few observations that seemed relevant to me at this time in my life.
Philosophy/epistemology: epistemology is the study of knowledge, how it is obtained, and how true it is. Broadly speaking, there is rationalism, which holds that truth and knowledge can be arrived at seemly through logical thought, in the mind, and there is empiricism, which holds that knowledge can only be gained through experiences with the world external to the mind. The divergence can be traced as far back as to Plato and Aristotle, respectively. For Piaget, in studying children as the learn about the world, knowledge comes from both; experiences in the world, and the mental activities which process those experiences. He calls this Constructivism, as the child constructs his/her own version of knowledge of the world. Personally, this explanation of knowledge makes the Rationalism vs. Empiricism debate seem ridiculous. If you want to how knowledge originates, obviously you should watch how a child develops knowledge.
Conservation: Much of the source for Piaget's theories come from interviews with children. "Piaget on Piaget" is an excellent short film from 1977 that captures many of these and post-interview explanations. One topic for these interviews is the concept of Conservation. Given a certain quantity of clay, water, sticks, etc, when the material is reshaped or divided up, younger children often recognize the new form as either more or less in quantity. The answers the children give to why they believe the quantity is different provides an insight into the child's thought processes, and can determine to which stage of intellectual development the child belongs. Numerous interviews showed to Piaget that children follow surprisingly similar paths of development.
Intelligence: Piaget defines intelligence as the capacity to adapt to new situations. I like this idea and the opposite which would say that someone unwilling to change or unwilling to try to understand the situation of a person dissimilar to him/her is not pursuing intelligence. I would not say that this person is not intelligent, just that he/she perhaps embraces ignorance a little too readily.
Errors: To Piaget, when a child makes what to an adult would seem to be a logical error, the child is making a valid determination of truth based on the knowledge that the child has developed up until that time in his/her life. In other words, he/she has not erred. One example dialog from the book:
- ma, i want peaches
- there are no peaches, they ripen in the summer, and it is winter
- what is this?
- peaches in syrup
- great! summer is here!
- ???
...
- (ma took peaches out of a can... it is not summer...)
- in summer there are peaches and ma buys them at the fruit stand. in winter i can eat the ones from a can.
In this type of interaction, the child modifies his knowledge, and comes away with a more comprehensive theory.
As far as practical applications, Piaget inspired the "Active School" movement, which I am not familiar with, but would guess encourages small group activities, and discourages excessive reliance on mechanical and repetitive teaching and learning. In my 2.5 years of teaching, I was definitely moving away from rote memorization techniques to methods more popular in the educational community such as requiring a more active role on the part of the student, including group activities, and I tend to now think that Piaget had a part in this movement.
Outside of education, I think that a parent of a small child could use some of these insights in order to encourage the intellectual development of their child. In brief: keep the child stimulated.
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