Can you “reprogram” your preferences (desires and values) either directly through an act of willing or through indirect means?
Write a summary of Hinduism and please list any questions you may have about what you have learned about Hinduism
Summarize postcolonial thought- what is it and where did it develop?
Which one idea in this chapter has influenced your thinking the most? It is your own interpretation of why it influences you.
Old Testament Summary Project
For this assignment you will write an original essay summarizing the overarching story of the Old Testament and showing how it relates to the New Testament. The essay should highlight the main characters, significant events and significant concepts from each part of the Old Testament (Law, Prophets, Writings) with the goal of telling the story of God’s plan for his people and how that plan relates to the New Testament.
Use the book Arnold, Introduction to the Old Testament; you may also consult the optional Kelle, Telling the Old Testament Story. The essay should highlight the main characters and significant events and concepts from each part of the Old Testament (Law, Prophets, Writings) with the goal of telling the story of God’s plan for his people and how that plan relates to the New Testament. The assignment will be graded on accuracy, thoroughness and clarity in communication. Please document any Bible reference or quote from another book or secondary source.
The goal of this assignment is not to talk about everyone and everything that happens, but to be able to tell the BIG, overarching story of the Old Testament and to show how it leads into the New Testament.
When writing you ought to assume that the reader is intelligent, but ignorant of the subject matter, and it is your task to explain to this person what it is that you are presenting and for which you are arguing. Example: Imagine that you are writing for your intelligent, but ignorant grandmother who has asked you the following two questions: What did Aristotle mean by virtue ethics? Should we believe it? You would have to craft your response in a way that grandma would understand you. That means that you are obliged to explain all the technical terms that you introduce including illustrative examples.
You must structure your paper so that it has a clear introduction of the topic you are addressing (a thesis statement), a middle section in which you present the competing theories you are considering (development section), and a summary in which you state with arguments and supporting examples or evidence the conclusion with which you want the reader to agree.
The preceding means that you should avoid including anything that detracts or distracts from your thesis statement. You should exclude needless biographical information (e.g., Plato was a student of Socrates type information) or long-winded and irrelevant rhetorical verbiage (e.g., “Ethics for a long time has been an interesting and lively area of debate and disagreement, blah, blah, blah.”). You are NOT being either informative or “creative” if you waste your time and essay space with these. You are far better off telling the reader in the first paragraph or two what you are writing about and to what conclusion you intend to reach. For example, you are better off beginning your paper as follows: “In this paper I will argue that Plato’s ethical idealism is a better, more profound argument for understanding moral values and action than Aristotle’s virtue ethics” or the reverse. You would then state provisionally why you think this is the case and afterwards proceed to developing your argument.
Your development section should first present each of the competing philosophies in turn, deferring criticisms until the conclusion of the paper. Unless you honestly, accurately and completely present the essential elements of the philosophies you are considering, any critique you attempt to offer will fail or at least be incomplete. Remember that you are obliged to explain to the reader all the relevant technical terms. For example, if you are writing about virtue ethics, but fail to explain what a virtue is, then it will be rather difficult if not impossible either to understand the theory or your critique or support of it. Remember as well that examples by themselves explain nothing (we saw this in Plato’s Euthyphro!). An example, or a citation, should illustrate what you have already attempted to explain, not do the explaining for you!
In your conclusion you are to evaluate the theories you have presented and now wish to argue for or against. Here are some ways to evaluate an argument, depending on the evidence you wish to use to support your point of view:
The theory is logically valid or invalid – the premises of the argument are true or false or nonsensical; or, the conclusion of the theory follows or does not follow logically from its premises
The theory is logically valid, but the implications or consequences of applying the theory are or are not impractical, dangerous, or undependable.
The theory is logically valid but omits or cannot be applied to important areas of moral discourse (e.g., How would you apply Aristotle’s virtue ethics to determining the morality of assisted suicide? If it cannot be applied, then what use is it as a moral philosophy?)
One theory is more comprehensive than another; it can apply to, explain and serve as a better guide to understanding what morality really is or requires and provides more intelligible guidance to action in more areas of moral dispute than the other.
The theory is logically valid, but there is no evidence available to support its practical application as guidance to moral action.
To summarize, your paper should be organized as a steady, cogent presentation of theories moving from description to analysis and, finally, to evaluation. This is the essence of college level writing, expressive of critical thinking, and applicable not only to the practice of (moral) philosophy but also to most other disciplines whether in the humanities, the social sciences, or the natural sciences. If your essay dwells solely on description and then jumps to evaluation, in which you casually assert your opinion, then all you have done is presented a below college level book report! I generally expect college students to write at the college level, especially in on-line courses where instructors and students have little to no personal contact.
Examine closely, for example, how a Sartre or an Ayer or an Aristotle formulates and presents their arguments and how they craft their sentences and arguments. How do they begin? How do they develop their theories? What conclusions do they reach and how do they do it? What kinds of examples do they offer? Etc. There is nothing wrong with imitating, at least in part, how they do the work.
Using the resource as well as additional research as needed prepare a 5 slide Powerpoint on the social,educational,and economic impact of drug addiction. In the first slide define addiction. Next describe the social, educational, and economic impact of drug addiction. Specifically, discuss age, gender, and race as it relates to these areas.
For this week’s Journal, consider the following questions and capture your own brainstorming responses to them in a text Journal entry.
• Progress: When is it appropriate to use in-depth interviews?
• Problems: What are the features, problems, and pitfalls of interviewing?
• Plans:
o How will you organize your interview?
o How will you incorporate the concepts from your theory/model into your interview guide?
o What other resources or support will you need to develop a good data collection tool?
In Week 1, we watched a video in which Alain de Botton argued that religion serves many good functions in life, many of which may be able to exist apart from belief in the supernatural. For example, religion gives us a connection to something greater than ourselves, which generates community, promotes a sense of awe and wonder for the world, and motivates us to moral goodness. Botton challenges his fellow atheists to invent a secular replacement for religion that is able to accomplish these good things without requiring beliefs that conflict with modern science. In this week’s Required Multimedia, we watched a video in which Karen Armstrong went further, suggesting that even traditional religions can be practiced in a way that does not conflict with modern science, as long as the stories in those religions are treated as mythology instead of as literal history.
You will recall from Week 1 that mythological stories are those stories we accept whether or not they are true. One difference between religion and mythology is that most religious people believe their stories are actually true, whereas myth may or may not be true. If you are religious, you might be one of those who believes the stories in the Bible are literally true, even if they sometimes conflict with modern science. But not everyone is able to believe in religion literally. Yet if Armstrong and Botton are correct, then they are missing out on an important area of human life. Remember that religion is broader than just mythology; in Clifford Geertz’s terms religion is a whole “cultural system” that accomplishes all the things Botton describes.This journal explores the importance of religion for modern life. Imagine you are debating an atheist who believes we must base our lives only on what can be proven scientifically. (Perhaps you believe this yourself! If so, take up the contrary position for the sake of argument.) Write a two to three-paged debate-style “opening statement” in which you provide reasons to believe that science alone cannot provide everything that necessary for living a good human life, and argue instead that religion (including mythology, art, ritual, etc.) is necessary even for those who do not believe in anything supernatural (e.g., God, the afterlife, miracles, etc.). Even if you disagree with this idea, imagine the perspective of someone who agrees and try to make your argument as convincing as possible. Be sure to explain the difference between science and religion, as you understand it.
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