Here's a rough transcript of the Panel of fictional characters we had in class on Wednesday.

First, we went through forum postings from the previous week:

    merlin: Imagining yourself doing activities actually changes the brain. For instance playing the piano. People who imagined themselves playing, but didn't actually know how, their brains appeared the same as those who were actually being instructed.

    watson/vgaffney: Close reading is still a very important skills in the humanities. Particularly english and philosophy. The complexity of the writing requires it.

When I walked into class on Tuesday, I was confused about Dennett’s analogy of the Library of Babel and its relevance to evolution and our lives. However, after discussing it further in class and talking about the blog postings, I came to the similar realization of some of my other classmates. I think that the belief that all ideas could be present in the library does lead to a sense of possibility and opportunity. I don’t think the idea that every single possible option of combination of thoughts or ideas is present in the library can be plausible. I believe it is our responsibility to combine these in a unique way, thus adding to the vast expanse of the library.

 Wednesday February 28th

*Aybala50 made a great recreation of the 2-axes graph we made in lecture. I will not include one in my notes, hers is an excellent representation.

Anne:

Today's panel is composed of Historical figures. 

Wednesday's panel will be composed of Imaginary figures.

Primary question: whether or not gender science and technology look any different in the context of imagination.

Papers:

Think about the life in the context of one of the authors we've just read. 

reminder that we have 4 deadlines for these papers, we only have to do 3 of them

This Monty Python sketch depicting Philosophers playing soccer is a nice demonstration of Dennett's contention that "... Philosophers have been content to ignore the practical problems of real-time decision making..." (p. 496) It's a favorite of mine. Enjoy!  http://www.spike.com/video-clips/cs1vwr/monty-python-the-16-ton-megaset-philosophers-soccer