DAY 62 Seminar Prep

Here are the new groups:
Seminar 1 -  - Tuesday- Francis Bacon and the New Method
New Group: Ashley K, Nicole, Sara, Emily, Dana, Kaitlyn B., Kim, Taylor, Siobhan, Nirubaa


Seminar 2 - Wednesday and Karl Popper on Falsifiability
New Group: Justin, Carly, Kyle, Jake, Lorenzo, Ryan, Rachael, Chris, Nick, Jade, Cassie (11)




Seminar 3 -  Thursday- John Locke and the Essay on Human Understanding
New Group: Ashley S., Kandis, Kaitlyn T., Avery, August, Jaslynn, Rhiannon, Dani, Michelle, Liny, Chelsea

Notes on Locke's "Essay Concerning Human Understanding - we did background info on Thursday, today here are some notes on the primary source document . . . 

First paragraph - describes the idea of the "Tabula Rasa" - or blank slate.  Think of the mind as a blank sheet of paper . . .  EXPERIENCE.  School of thought . . .   Empiricism.

EMPIRICISM. Locke

IDEALISM. 

SKEPTICISM - Descartes

RATIONALISM - Aristotle

PRAGMATISM - 

"...sensible objects . . " agree & disagree.

Agree - eg of airplanes.

Disagree - e.g. of floating hot-dog before your eyes, bent pencil in a glass of water.

2nd parag. sensation is one source of ideas.  Locke gives a list of what our senses tell us - hot cold, colour, texture, taste, etc.   these help us understand things.

3rd paragraph. Operation of our minds . . another source. perception, thinking, doubting, believing, reasoning, willing, etc..  Because we are conscious of all these things, we understand different ideas. This is "reflection."   e.g. learning from mistakes, building on experiences, building upon previous understanding.

4th para.  ALL ideas are from either experience or reflection.

Experiences furnish the mind with perceptions, then reflecting upon these produces ideas.

Uses Children as an example:  children go from an empty mind to a full one by degrees as above.

5th paragraph -  different interactions, produce different results (thoughts) depending upon experience - Nature vs. Nurture argument.

Popper - 

Science - falsifiable.

Pseudo-science.  e.g. Astrology/Horroscopes - the way we can collect data is exactly the same as one would collect it in "true" science.  He also explains that we can see much truth in Marxism if we look around.  In each case you can collect lots of data and draw conclusions.

Problem is with how the data is collected.  The empirical method is absent, as if falsifiability.

Lists 7 criteria:  roughly defining the Modern Scientific Method.

He refutes the idea that observations alone, despite how much they might support an idea/theory/hypothesis, are enough to "prove" an idea to the point where the idea can be considered knowledge or fact.  Rather, he says, each bit of information/data/empirical evidence must have been collected in an attempt to refute, rather than support, the original premise to begin with.  See earlier notes on Astrology, Marxism, and consider the ideas we raised in class.