So we received a crash course on the basics of philosophy. There was an initial period of just learning some of the core terms of this discussion, and they are listed here:
1)Ontology – a statement on being, a statement upon the world. It’s the things that are out there in a world we define, and all of the elements and relationships we can create through this world
2)Epistemology – a statement on knowledge and how we know the things we know. There were two different kinds of these we discussed, and will be elaborated on below
3)Ethics – actions, or just (meaning right or correct) action, or simply the good life (going to the old school Greeks)
4)Aesthetics – statements (or the study of, an inter-subjectivity (from Jeff)) about art and beauty and how one can make justifiable claims about art
5)Metaphysics – an entity which encompasses the previous four terms and attempts to explain and comprehend more than what mere physics can tell us
Before moving on to the different epistemologies covered in class, there were also a couple of other interesting sidenotes which may help us to remember these and put them into perspective:
*The Law and Order series uses ethical binds to move its stories along
*The waves of HCI, (look at a previous EXD post if you missed out on these) are essentially epistemological shifts in the HCI community (i.e. we have changed we what we ought to know about what we are doing)
Rationalism
So here are the basic aspects of Rationalism which were covered:
*Descartes was one of these people
*The senses tell us about the world
*The world is static and our knowledge is disconnected from this
*There is the mind-body dualism:
This states that people are made up of 2 halves: body and mind (soul). The mind is disembodied from the soul. When a person is about to do something, there is a linear path (or sequence) of separate activities leading to execution:
have an idea -> form an intention -> the body acts on this intention
*There is also the correspondence theory of truth
This says there is truth when the mental representation one has of something maps to something in the physical world.
mind -> world (a textual Jeff diagram)
*Emotion is separate from cognition
*Try fitting Nielsen’s heuristics on these – you’ll find rationalist thinking all over the place here.
Pragmatism
This is a counter (for lack of a better term) set of thinking principles. So here are the principles we covered:
*Embodied cognition
The brain is in the body, is nourished by air, gets information from the senses we have, and emotion is part of reasoning
*There is a relationship between belief and action
This is like the guy at the photocopies who doesn’t read the manual and just hits on buttons til he gets the copier to do what he wants it to do. We have a belief about something, and will act on that belief and get feedback about this belief from the world
*Truth is not transcendentally absolute
Absolute truth is irrelevant, since humans never work with absolutes at any one time, and we do what is considered good enough to get stuff done. In other words, the practice of something matters more than perfect understanding of something. After all, that’s pragmatic – takes way too long to fully understand something.
The Beginnings of Dewey
So the same guy who most of us know as the guy who made the decimal system to index all the books in the library was also the same guy who wrote a ton about experience (the large concept, explained in a little bit below and also on the next post). So here’s what we got to:
*Dewey is a pragmatist
*Experience is not the same as “an experience”
*Experience is characterized by being fluid, constant, and is always happening. Experience is happening right now, as even I am writing and you are reading this.
*An Experience is something which is interpreted, and has happened once the experience has ended. There is a wholeness to an experience, and an experience corresponds to an event, which has discrete beginning, middle, and end parts
More on this topic soon!
The Random Moment
So I am going to say there were some things covered that I didn’t get, and I am trying to get clarity on from Tuesday. First was the stick in the water. After sitting here for a while thinking about it and trying to find a picture that represents this, I found it and now understand the point. Our senses tell us the stick is bent 
(image from noc.soton.ac.uk), even though it is not.
If you’re into solipsism and want to know more about it, try here, from the Internet Encyclopedia on Philosophy.
Also I don’t know the premise behind the saying something along the lines of a baby and the bathwater, but I hope somebody could tell me. The only thing I found was a play on Wikipedia. Beats me.
Job Links
There was also a small crash course on the sites out there to help us in our job searches, as we will all be doing this activity for this semester and beyond. Listed below are some of the links mentioned, which all open in a new window: