My essay is rubbish and I feel a bit down about it and I would like some moral support
And it actually counts for something (though, admittedly) hardly anything. And this isn't just me being self-effacing, it's really not very good and ususally I think my essays are AMAZING. and I feel really fuzzy headed and a bit down and arghghghfghghghghhg!
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My essay is also shit.
Only another 2000 words of this drivel to go!
...
http://www.shutupwomangetonmyhorse.com/
whats it on?
i've got an essay due in on friday about gods in Phedre.
it's on
the relationship between the very English-english style of Claude McKay's writing, his political agenda and the seeming tension between these and his status as a black, working-class homosexual in the 1920s. YEH!
:( I think I'd rather write an essay about Poseidon and Helios and Aphrodite
Phaedra's mum Pasiphae, is 'one of us'
Phaedra?
someone write me 3000 words about twin earth?
oh and while you're at it, 2000 words on private language?
k thanks bi.
Twin Earth thought experiments do not prove that the content of thoughts is broad
End of essay.
wikidddd
the title is "do twin earth scenarios show that externalism is true?" i think, yeah, pretty much.
No, they don't
That's the exact opposite of what I just said. They don't.
oh god.
really. fuck.
(imho)
Who wants externalism to be true though? It's so counterintuitive. Let's just dismiss it as fanciful nonsense.
ho hum.
i don't know, i suppose everything i'd read was leaning towards externalism. but you're right, there's so many epistemological problems with it. and like... no matter how smug he is, chomsky has some good arguments.
i was reading that dennett thing the other day about twin earth
i like him, it think.
Is it the content or style thats bugging you?
If you feel like you don't understand the topic as well as you might, don't worry, everyone knows you can often get the best marks when you're talking about a subject you're not too attached to... or don't really know that much about at all. Its proven.
If its badly written, surely you just need to print it off, scribble all over it, and make some adjustments? Maybe show it to someone else to get some ideas.
How much longer do you have on it? Can you afford to put it aside entirely for a day?
i'm going to worry about it tomorrow
it's the content that's bothering me. i'm just not finding much to say about it.
urgh. sounds un-fun
if you feel like you've not much to say, maybe this is the one where you just have to reiterate ideas from your books and not worry too hard about being original? or do some good fence sitting.
sorry for my probably not very good advice, good luck!
my condolences
but i'm not gonna lie, the essay i'm writing right now is pretty amazing
i wrote a pretty kick ass one last week about substance dualism
brought in some language based stuff we hadn't even covered yet. my genius better reflect in the mark. it probably wont, oddly.
i did that once.
in first year. i got 47%. never again.
oh dear.
i think my tutor is my pal so maybe he'll be kind to me. it was something about how that the mind thinks proves its existence is a tautology in a wittgenstein-ian sense and so adds nothing to the conceivability of distinct mind and body. does that make sense? kinda felt like I was grasping at straws. should'ave stuck to the literature but what i had to say about it didnt make up the word count.
you mean like a private language argument?
as in, the mind might think it exists, but as no other minds can have access to that information it's pretty much redundant? it might work. <3 private language, you should check out Susan Korsgaard and neo-Kantianism.
nah that wasnt really my line
it was that language can never describe the mind as anything other than a process of "thought" rather than something which posesses a property of thought, therefore the whole "i think therefore I am" thing is tautologous and adds nothing to the conceivability argument. the question was just "discuss conceivability arguments for substance dualism". I linked it a bit to dennet's ideas of functionality and ascribing consciousness.
actually this all seems a bit stupid in the cold light of day. it seemed fine when I was filling out the submission form at 3AM sometime last week. Fuck.
descartes?
god i hate descartes. i did a great one about moral subjectivism, except i think i might have got a bit too involved and spent way too much time trying to come up with a position that i ACTUALLY found plausible, instead of just picking an arbitrary side and sticking to it, so it all ended up a bit complicated and rambly. my current essay is about anarchists on the moon.
people are hard on descartes
perhaps not a great philosopher, but still mighty important. its pretty easy to dismiss his stupid ideas now, doesn't mean his less silly ones shouldn't be considered. But yeah he's a bit of a bore to right about.
Moral subjectivism? Externalism?
God, what is wrong with you people.
what?
i don't set the questions, maaaan
um.
i do.
I assumed you were arguing in favour of moral subjectivism
You're arguing in favour of it, right?
well that's where it all got a bit confusing
i started off planning to argue in favour of it but then thought about it more and realised the basic theory was pretty stupid but i still didn't really want to fully reject it and ended up thinking about it far too much and trying to come up with some sort of variation on the ideal observer theory which turned into a weird subjectivism-rationalism hybrid and ffs i'm not even planning on taking philosophy next year, i really shoulda just stuck to the basic arguments like the tutor seems to expect us to do at this stage
english lit, on the other hand, roolz
i can be really pretentious and rambly without worrying about whether it's actually plausible or not
You know, I'm reading about the ideal observer theory for the first time now
and it doesn't seem like a particularly subjectivist theory.
And I think what you're arguing for
is probably quite similar to what I argued in favour of in my dissertation.
depends on how you formulate it
it's basically just a device to avoid some of the basic objections (accounts for moral deliberation, fallibility, moral disagreement etc etc), but from what i've read of it the theory on its own is generally either too vague to be helpful or not subjectivist enough. which is why i tried to come up with a kind of variation that left place for both RATIONALISM because i am SUCH A DAMN GENIUS.
oh no, too early :(
after RATIONALISM it should say "and VALUE JUDGEMENTS within a framework of DEFINITIONAL MORALITY" and then go on to the damn genius bit. what position do you take on morality, zapsssssta?
That "morality" needs to be entirely redefined
to refer to a specific category of selfish acts rather than a completely different type of act, i.e. selfless ones; that "What is the right thing to do?" should really be "What would make a totally rational person happiest in the long run?", where a "totally rational person" is not a person with no emotional responses at all but a person whose emotional dispositions have been developed in an entirely rational way.
yeah, your "totally rational person" is pretty much
how i tried to define the ideal observer, but not totally sure about the first part. are you saying that morality IS based on selfishness or that it should be? cos the way people morality actually IS seems quite obviously to be based on a combination of selfish factors and selfless ones. goddamnit i need to stop talking about an essay i've already finished and write the one i actually have to do
Both, kind of
There's a tendency for people to say that "selfish morality" is a paradox; that if you deny the existence of selfless action, you're denying the existence of moral action. I'd deny the existence of selfless action but at the same time refute that I'm denying the existence of moral action.
If I refuse to kill a man simply because I think it's the "wrong" thing to do, I'm basically saying that I don't want to kill him because I don't want to feel guilty about it afterwards. So it's a selfish act. But that's not to say it's indistinguishable from, say, eating the last biscuit in the tin. Even without the notion of selflessness, there are plenty of ways to differentiate different types of act. And even without the notion of selflessness, there is still surely something that acts such as the refusal to kill and the refusal to steal - i.e. all the acts that we conventionally consider as moral - have in common with each other and nothing else. So why not continue to refer to them as moral? Intuitively, they're all very much of a kind, so even if we reject the notion of true selflessness, we can still maintain that there is such thing as a moral act.
sounds a bit too much like psychological egoism
and that's unrefutable, innit. anyway, isn't the whole idea kinda subjectivist? or like, emotivist. if what you're basically saying is that what 'moral' acts have in common is that we feel guilty about them (or we would if we were rational), then morality is just based on how we feel about things, which is pretty much Hume's version of subjectivism
But
an act is only moral if it's *rightly* motivated by guilt. So being vegetarian - never moral, irrespective of how guilty the prospect of eating an animal might make you feel. Objectively, you shouldn't feel guilty about it.
so what's the criteria for what we should be guilty about?
rationality? that works up to a point, but at some stage surely you have to accept that value judgements come into play
Nah, you don't
Just use utilitarianism.
Although that might not help
Basically, I think the motivation for every moral act can be considered in terms of universal desires, for example, the desire for everyone not to turn on you and kill you (masochists excepted), and in any given situation, the action which results in most of those desires being fulfilled is the same for each person.
...
I cant wait to get writing. Therapeutic angiogenesis in cardiovascular disorders is gonna be my bitch.
ive just finished up another essay
i still have 2 4,000 worders, a 3,000 worder, and a 1,500 worder. piece of cake, this. beats actually working for a living by a large margin
oh, and a presentation on the romanian revolution and Nicolae Ceau?escu
im going to bring a stereo and blare out the Down I Go song about him. I expect a perfect mark.
This thread reminds me a little of this scene from Good Will Hunting
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymsHLkB8u3s#t=1m56s
...
Im a bit embarrased to have posted in this thread
I was going to chuck all the platitudes under the sun at you, until I read this line: ''and ususally I think my essays are AMAZING.''
No ''champ''s from me
People who think their essays are interesting or amazing
NO, THEY'RE REALLY NOT. AT ALL. IN THE SLIGHTEST.
Unless you're writing them as part of a PhD, and ultimately, even then it's unlikely; or as an actual academic.
Okay?
what if the essay is about anime?
Then it doesn't even stand a chance
But I should think that much is quite obvious. Seriously though, students are so horribly egotistical it's unreal. Do you know how many people have written near that exact same essay but better? It's not like you can do any intense research at undergraduate level, so that isn't a criticism until students start acting like something that's going to be intensely boring to the person reading/marking it is anything more complementary than 'competent'.
People don't write essays to be interesting though do they?
of course they do
also, just because you don't necessarily break new ground/do intense research, doesn't mean you can't have an interesting or unusual view on existing research or opinions, or that you can't express existing opinions in an exciting, unusual or original way.
the impression many lecturers give is that they enjoy reading essays because it makes them think differently about their own research.
also, it's important to remember that good higher education should be a dialogue, not a diatribe, and that the student-tutor relationship is at its most successful when you find each other mutually enlightening.
"mutually enlightening"
...bless :-)
mutually enlightening?
Get real! Of course a lecturer is going to say shit like that they are after all guiding you and encouraging you to educate yourself. It's like anything else where people pretend to give a shit about your opinion but actually don't (see counsellors, lecturers, work colleagues, journalists). Any decent academic is going to be genuinely inspired by students work maybe 0.05% of the time, and to think you are in that group when really there is no way to tell is pretty egotistical. This isn't fucking dead poets society.
nah, but my dad is a lecturer, a typical one
jaded, working at a former polytechnic etc. my mum is also a lecturer. i've come into contact with enough lecturers in my life outside of academic situations to know that a decent per centage of them actually believe that. they're an idealistic type - they wouldn't be working in education otherwise.
Fair enough but how much of that do you think is due to either
flattering their egos or making them feel like they are doing alright at their job?
former-polytechnic lecturers don't have egos. you'll just have to believe me on that.
and i mean, to be fair, there is plenty of epic criticism of how rubbish lots of undergrads are, but with a very decent proportion of the lecturers I've met (and i've met plenty) there is a very genuine belief in what they are doing, and that dialogue is an integral part of that. my dad's always coming home with interesting stuff that a student has said that he'd never thought of or whatever. it's the way higher education works. sure there is plenty of regurgitation, but that isn't necessarily a barrier for inventive ideas. academia IN GENERAL from undergraduates right through to foucault or umberto eco or whatever, is about creative regurgitation and bouncing ideas off people. no man is an island, and academics work all their best ideas through their students. srsly.
We're not saying that no undergraduates are original,
we're saying that all undergraduates are idiots for always assuming that they are.
(I can't believe I'm agreeing with Bamnan here)
hate the sin, love the sinner
brother.
There's probably some truth in what you're saying
but you're such an unrelenting advocate of whatever it is you are advocating that I wouldn't trust you on all of it.
That said you must be correct about them being idealistic types, there's no other way you could keep enthusiasm for something you do day in day out and see every spectrum of style and opinion on otherwise.
^ see my post, up the thread.
pocketmouse in stupid assertion shock :D
i have read plenty of my peers essays, and they are often extremely interesting, and sometimes also amazing.
reading peoples opinions on cool stuff like philosophy or literature is always pretty cool, and if you don't think that, then that's prolly because you don't find academia very interesting - but just because that's yr personal preference doesn't follow that all essays are boring. yr a horror for expressing your frankly warped opinions as fact though, but please darling don't start going on about that.
in conclusion: peoples opinions are awesome, thus essays are awesome.
i'll just go unfreeze me some bread. i believe in the redemptive possibilities of luff, baby. xxxx
Essays aren't about people's opinions though
they are about how many other people's opinions you know.
to be fair, a good essay, whether it's written by an undergraduate or some famous academic
is more about drawing connections between peoples opinions and responding to them rather than repeating them. simple as.
yes even a child can put a square peg in a square hole
I'll post it again:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymsHLkB8u3s#t=1m56s
It's more the fact that so many undergraduates think that their opinions are unique and original, and definitive, when really, they're not.
no they aren't.
that is what shit essays are about.
I actually agree with her a little bit.
It's more the way that a lot of people discuss their undergraduate essays as if they're saying something original, rather than admitting that they are just parroting back what they've read up until that point.
It's very unusual to be able to contribute anything original to the sum of academia before the stage of a PhD, to be fair.
There's a difference between contributing something truly original
and not "parroting back". To say that most people "are just parroting back what they've read up until that point" is massively unfair; to say that they are nonetheless saying something which has been said before is for the most part going to be true - a lot of things have been said in the history of the world, after all - but if you admit defeat on that front and abandon all creative effort and pride in your work, you're academic experience will be significantly less fulfilling than it could be. Plus you'll get shit marks.
*your academic experience
There may well be other typos; consider all of them corrected as well.
Dunno I got some pretty good firsts from a pretty good university
for just parroting back what I had been told. The art of writing an essay or perhaps the science rather is about the structure not really the content.
You won't get shit marks at all,
and I'll repeat it again: I'm not saying that no undergraduates are original; I'm saying there are an awful lot of undergraduates who assume that they're saying something unique and insightful, and definitive, when that's clearly not the case.
I don't get how they can think that really?
Surely just a bit of common sense and just the method of studying would tell you that you get marked highly for understanding and describing the opinions of great thinkers in relation to each other, not forming one of your own. Why else would they force you to use a certain number of citations and so forth?
you were forced to use a certain number of citations?
?!?!?!?!!?
well not forced
but they'd penalise you if you didn't reach the recommended ammount, obviously you could go over. It wasn't particularly unjust and a totally understandable way of teaching people, but it just goes to illustrate that they're not particularly interested in people thinking for themselves at that level.
I cited one source on my dissertation
and... well, let's just say I did okay ;) ;) :)
Okay, well speaking from the perpesctive of a philosophy student
you won't get very far without a critical perspective and an attempt to say something original. As for your second point, I'm not saying that you're saying no undergraduates are original, but you are saying that they should assume they aren't. That's quite a depressing outlook to take, isn't it? That you're wasting your time, basically. Nothing you do at university has any inherent worth, it's simply a means to getting your degree. Is that the outlook you'd prefer? For everyone to think that way?
Well you have to choose happiness or truth don't you?
Which when one forces you to deny the other would you choose? So it's not really about which outlook you'd prefer is it? It's about what is the case.
The purpose of education isn't to make you feel how clever you are is it, it's because you believe that consuming this knowledge will benefit you in some way. Organised learning wouldn't work if it wasn't about conforming.
As for philosophy, fair enough try and say something original but any idiot can be critical of a theory, especially in philosophy where there are always as many arguments and counter-arguments as you can be bothered to apply. The point is surely to find whichever bit of truth puts you most at ease with your place in the world.
http://twitter.com/Zapsta/status/3351369267
Do you think that mental ability is entirely determined by the knowledge it contains? That attempts at understanding and analysing and critiquing and actually stretching it will all be in vain? That you'll be no better for it?
Not quite, there's a subtlety to my argument that I'm obviously not explaining well.
I am not saying that undergraduates should assume that they're not original; I'm saying that they shouldn't assume that they are. Too many of them do.
I can draw a venn diagram if you want.
I'd also suggest that however much of a critical perspective you bring to a topic, and however much you attempt to say something original, you are still being guided to your opinions by the lecturer who sets the essay title, the lecture topics, the reading lists and the marking scheme. Philosophy is no different to other subjects in that respect.
Why do you keep asking me if I want you to draw a Venn diagram?
Is it because you think I'm stupid?
It was you that did the Mae shi venn diagram wasn't it?
It was
but I don't think that makes you seem any less smarmy or patronising.
But do you understand my distinction?
I understand the theoretical one
I'm not sure there's a practical one. So you're saying that it's perfectly acceptable for everyone to assume that they have the *ability* to say something original, just not they've actually said it? That they should remain completely agnostic on the matter? I don't think that's possible, and I certainly think the natural inclination is to err in favour of assuming you've said something original until proved otherwise. And if you reject that inclination, I think you're going to rapidly end up thinking your initial assumption that you have the ability to say something original was false, even if it was in fact correct.
As for being guided in one's opinions, I'm not sure I see the relevance. I'm not saying you'll get very far without any grounding in the source material either, but tutors aren't after summaries.
this isn't true.
i mean, i'm studying classics and english. i recently finished my thesis. it was on a guy called apuleius. i said some original things. i know this is the case, because i have read pretty much everything that has been written about him in the past fifty years, and before that there was very little study on him.
in fact, i'd say i have some original thought in every essay i write (which are mostly 2k essays done in a few days). i don't think it is all original or spectacular or well thought through enough to be of academic standard, but i definitely have original thoughts.
i don't really think the difference is in the quality of thought, so much as that as an undergraduate you write 2k word essays in a few days, sit exams, maybe do a 5k essay and a 10k thesis. you simply don't have the opportunity to fully explore your ideas to the point where you can completely defend and justify them and can tease out all the nuances according to the complicating factors you find. you have the scope to do that in a 20k master's dissertation or and 80k dphil thesis. that, to me, is the biggest difference.
hnnngh.
I'll repeat it again, for about the fifth time.
It was the fact that a lot of (but not all!) undergraduates think that they are original, not whether or not they are original in the first place.
do they really though? most people i know don't think they're original.
and most people who do are fairly self depreciating about it. i dunno, maybe we have different experience of this.
and besides, i think there is probably more originality out there than you think there is. it is just that most of it probably isn't very well expressed. undergraduates thinking they're original is only a problem if they aren't.
Oh yes, a lot do, especially among those that have done well enough
to get into a good university.
But I suppose it's not just the idea of being original, but also the belief that their opinions are definitive (at least when talking to a layperson) that I find silly.
i haven't really found that to be the case.
i think as many of my peers are pretty negative about their work as are positive about it.
the layperson thing is silly though. but i'd hope anyone who studies a humanities picks up the complexity of literary judgement pretty quickly. i dunno.
I find (some) academia interesting
99% of undergraduate output is rarely academic and never interesting. People critique existing opinions in a way that every other does, or share their own opinions which are generally very ill-thought out and as such haven't been published already.
I like the way that I'm totally not academic because I don't think undergraduate work is really worth an awful lot as anything other than progression.
Couldn't have said it better myself.
Speaking of which, has anyone heard my opnions on the social and economic factors which have affected the status of women since 1914?
Inspite of, therefore, in conclusion,
women
I bet that cake features heavily.
essays with opinions are for faggots
deal in facts or get the fuck out my publication
no such thing as facts.
cheers.
pi = 3.14159265....
cheers
not really a fact though, is it?
it is dependent on observation and all observation is imperfect. moreover, i don't really think it works on an epistemological(terminology?) level in so much as it is a relationship which is dependent on abstract signifiers, like 'number', 'constant', 'pi', 'circle', 'area', 'radius'.
don't get me wrong, i think that there are some things which are 'as good as' facts. but i think it is generally best if we acknowledge that there isn't some simplistic line between 'fact' and 'opinion' and that actually the two exist as opposite ends of a sliding scale
All bachelors are unmarried
imo.
depends how we define 'bachelor' and 'unmarried' though,
doesn't it? can a divorcee be a bachelor? does a divorcee count as unmarried? what happens if people are separated?
Okay
Define all the terms to make it true. Insert the caveat "Given the following definitions". Repeat for all the terms contained within your caveat, and ad infinitum if necessary.
I think what you're saying is there can be no empirical knowledge, and that may be true, but it doesn't prohibit the existence of a priori knowledge, nor does it prohibit the existence of contingent truths which we simply have no way of knowing.
yeah, but doesn't it then start to reach the point where
your facts are contingent upon making certain assumptions, and hence ruins any universality of your statement. at that point i'd argue it stops being 'factual' in any practical sense, because it becomes no more connected to existence than saying 'assuming that something which is blue is furry, and assuming that things which are furry have eyes, and assuming that things which have eyes are red, all things which are blue are red'. language isn't something you can play about with and just pick and choose definitions. any word constantly carries all of its definitions with it, and trying to create facts by artificially eliminating some of them creates a very disingenuous version of truth.
It doesn't create a disingenuous version of truth
just perhaps one which isn't particularly useful.
i think it is disingenuous
to call something 'true' which is fundamentally based on arbitrary assumptions. it is somewhat dishonest.
i mean, to an extent, i'm not sure i agree that it isn't useful. i think that, to an extent, we have to make arbitrary assumptions. but i think we also have to recognise that we are making them and that it limits the value of what we say.
Like I said before
what I think you're saying is there can be no empirical knowledge. There is a sense in which we cannot rightfully say that things are true of the world, but we can still say that things are true of statements and the like. If all red things are round and all round things are furry, all red things are furry. Take that sentence as a whole and it's a fact. It is logically valid. Your example wasn't logically valid because it contained a paradox, therefore it wasn't factual. For what I said to not be a fact, you'd have to claim that, even in a world where all red things are round and all round things are furry, a red thing may not be furry, and that's absurd.
Can I play you at pool?
Why?
You can be reds and aim for the furry things,
and I'll pot the yellow balls.
Winner stays on.
Although
I don't feel entirely comfortable saying "Your example wasn't logically valid".
i just think that such a truth is a very meaningless version of truth.
you said my sentence contains a paradox, but it only contains a paradox when you say that something which is blue cannot be red. this is a fair point in the physical world (assuming that we take purple to be distinct from blue and red, and assuming that we say that a thing can only have one colour, which again i suppose shows all the assumptions we have to make here to make a functional statement), and it is a fair point when we use words as signifiers of physical things, but if that is our train of argument, then don't we fall into another difficulty, the one raised by, the idea of unmarried bachelors: these things only hold up in an abstract sense when we pick and choose the definitions of words.
that was a very extended way of basically agreeing with the first part of your post, that we can't say things are true of the world, but that we can say that things are true of statements. i suppose i agree, on reflection, that we can say statements are themselves true, but i'd also argue that this statement actually links in with the problem of words as signifiers; the truth we're dealing with here is very different to an empirical truth. i suppose one could argue that because of what we've said, we should only really use the word true to refer to this kind of truth (because it is the only kind possible), but then i also feel like it is a very counterintuitive version of 'truth', and one that i'm not really comfortable with. i suppose my difficulty is that as soon as we start to make statements beyond x=y, y=z, therefore x=z then we start to contaminate our 'abstract' statement, dependent on underlying assumptions, with the physical world where those assumptions don't necessarily hold true. i suppose it is this mixing i feel uncomfortable with.
i guess that we'll also leave aside the whole problem that any relationship also depends on underlying assumptions of logic, ideas of equality and difference which we can't necessarily claim are pure and innate.
A bachelor is a person who's *never* been married, by the way
I looked it up. So all bachelors are unmarried.
you think, therefore you are
you just solved a lot of problems in one fell swoop.
there isn't even any debate about people in vegetative states! they aren't!
they am
no, you am!
well i never thunk of it like that afore!
take your meaningless semantics (see what I did there?) and GTFO
i'll seman your tics in a minute kiddo
Amen, sweetcheeks.
okay, no-one is going to write an "amazing" essay here
it might be really perceptive or well-argued but i think a lot of subjects don't get interesting until post-graduate level in terms of ideas (from what i've seen of looking at taught masters')
but it'd be depressing to enter into a degree with the view that nothing you say is going to be interesting or valid or original. isn't that the point of engaging with new ideas - that they make you think thoughts you haven't had before (regardless of how many people before you have had them)?
apart from mine
no one was chatting about the shit i was at undergrad...i blazed trails
guys?
Wasn't your entire essay:
''Therefore, inspite of, In conclusion...cinema''
half of it
the other half was representations of youth in british cinema
find a book or article or esssay on it. you won't, you can't. i started that fire.
I know. I already read it.
It was well boring.
:D Only joshing, slugger
It was a good story. Really sad ending.
My favourite character was ''Adrian Snoots''
My favourite character was ''Adrian Snoots''
it was
it really was.
yours was good though. i prefer the Dandy, but still...y'know. good effort.
that snipe only works if you know that you do illustration
can i just say that he does illusatration...
it wasn't like i was saying i prefer reading the Dandy over an essay on crop rotation in the 14th century.
I do Geographical Science in Bristol, Mike
All this Dandy lark.....that's all you.
I dont think i've met one student yet who thinks that they're ideas are in any way unique
ESPECIALLY in philosophy. Most people i know, including myself, are happy to be bowed by the weight of hundreds of years of much greater thinkers.
However I think its pretty stupid to say that this thread or anyone discussing what they're studying at undergraduate level is fruitless. Even if a persons contention is that they have an individual point of view, after some discussion even with people who are also inclined to think that they are academic wizzkids its unlikely that anyone will come away with the same point of view. That's what tutorials are for. That's why it's interesting to talk about what you're doing. That's it.
I created a new painting technique
It's called ''Woking''...and involves ring roads, Borough councils and an energy policy.
Plus city commuters and a girl I once knew
i think at undergraduate level
the idea of 'trying to think originally' isn't so much about 'trying to say something that nobody else has ever said before' so much as about the process of how you arrive at the idea - it's about learning to think independently, which is kind of training towards thinking 'originally'. when i start a literature essay i usually have loads of my own 'original' ideas just from reading the book and thinking about it, and then when i look at the critical material i realise most of those ideas have already been covered quite thoroughly, but that doesn't really matter; i think it's still an exciting and valuable process to try to arrive at the ideas on your own rather than just 'learning' them. it might not be very interesting for anyone else, but that's not the point of education
I'm not arguing that undergraduate study, or essays
are pointless - especially not the process of it. My point has been that the essays, AS ESSAYS, independent of anything else, don't hold any significant worth - they're unlikely to be perceived as amazing or interesting to somebody who knows the topic. And to somebody who doesn't have much knowledge but is interested, the information and/or viewpoints will almost certainly be available in a better form.
uh yeah?
that's why undergraduate essays are not on undergraduate reading lists
Kind of agree here...
And I think we're also being very idealistic as to a key reason why the majority of undergraduate students at universities across the UK enter higher education - so as they can get a degree which will in the long run get them more money, so they can get bigger houses, better game consoles and buy food from Waitrose not Lidl's. (That's not supposed to be some radical critique of capitalism).
Are the majority of undergraduate students really that enthused about the subject of their essays and dissertations? I've got a 2:1 degree in Politics from a top 25 uni in the UK and I'm interested in the subject as a whole, but a lot of the essays I wrote were in fairly specific areas that don't really get mentioned in the general political discourse we have (Mexican democratisation, left-libertarianism as a coherent political theory) and 6 months after I wrote my dissertations on those subjects I could only relate to you the main points of those dissertations, and I'd struggle to come up off the top of my head with more than 1 or 2 titles of books I read in my research.
And I did quite a respected social science degree. In a far more practical degree, like Social Work or Accountancy, the vast majority of undergrad essays aren't going to be that important because the students of those subjects aren't going to be that bothered about the academic impact of their essays, they're a mere means to an end in getting them a qualification that enters them into a field.
To try and sum up I just think that the likes of Zapsta, Yes and Heliotrope's passion for their subjects is not going to be matched by the vast majority of undergraduates and the importance of the work of the vast majority of undergrads is almost meaningless.
I don't really find Law especially interesting
I maybe should have just pressed the ^This button.
Kind of agree here...
And I think we're also being very idealistic as to a key reason why the majority of undergraduate students at universities across the UK enter higher education - so as they can get a degree which will in the long run get them more money, so they can get bigger houses, better game consoles and buy food from Waitrose not Lidl's. (That's not supposed to be some radical critique of capitalism).
Are the majority of undergraduate students really that enthused about the subject of their essays and dissertations? I've got a 2:1 degree in Politics from a top 25 uni in the UK and I'm interested in the subject as a whole, but a lot of the essays I wrote were in fairly specific areas that don't really get mentioned in the general political discourse we have (Mexican democratisation, left-libertarianism as a coherent political theory) and 6 months after I wrote my dissertations on those subjects I could only relate to you the main points of those dissertations, and I'd struggle to come up off the top of my head with more than 1 or 2 titles of books I read in my research.
And I did quite a respected social science degree. In a far more practical degree, like Social Work or Accountancy, the vast majority of undergrad essays aren't going to be that important because the students of those subjects aren't going to be that bothered about the academic impact of their essays, they're a mere means to an end in getting them a qualification that enters them into a field.
To try and sum up I just think that the likes of Zapsta, Yes and Heliotrope's passion for their subjects is not going to be matched by the vast majority of undergraduates and the importance of the work of the vast majority of undergrads is almost meaningless.
This thread really needs dukebox to pop up
and ask someone if they want to open a soda bar.
this thread needs a forceful kick to the balls
http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j5/Thailmore/LinkTo/Dead_Mouse_Rape.jpg >>> this thread