Learning
- Posted by Andrew Bailey on Sunday, November 19, 2006 at 1:02 AM
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2 Comments |
Excuse some navel-gazing, if you will. I have, since I was a sophomore, posted papers to the web, and some have thus survived various data losses along the way. Just for kicks, I read through a couple of the early ones tonight.
I think I’ve learned a thing or two since then. I had no idea what supervenience was (and mentioned it anyways), I clearly didn’t understand the difference between implication and entailment, and I regularly attempted to make use of formulas in first order logic without binding variables or minding my parentheses. All of these are, shall we say, sophomoric mistakes. I was attempting to write like a professional philosopher without sufficient background knowledge and training, learning by trial and error. Or just error.
Another sort of mistake amuses me in particular, though, and this is the rhetorical overkill. For example, I wrote that “Young argues that aesthetic value is a species of extrinsic value, and, as such, is not objective, but instead is viewer-dependent. I use “argue” in the loosest sense of the term, since, as we shall see, Young commits the most basic of errors.” I wonder now how my professors ever took me seriously in the seminar room when I read sentences like this in front of the class. Then again, perhaps they never did, seeing that I took (take?) me seriously enough for the lot of us.
All in all, a fun diversion from writing my end-of-semester papers. It could be a mortifying one too, but it seem like long enough ago to distance myself from the person who wrote all that nonsense. In the end, I like learning, even when I have to make stupid mistakes along the way.
2 Comments:
at 12:23 AM said... I liked it when you read your papers. I suppose I was even more sophomoric than you were, because I thought your rhetoric was witty and clever.
I miss philosophy classes now. They were so well-defined and logical--I feel like all the education classes I've had to attend lately are turning my mind to mush. I wonder if they'll ever get good.
I'm considering starting a master's in the phil of ed next year.
David at 6:48 PM said... You give me hope, Andrew - haha. Very encouraging to hear how you're growing as a philosopher.
