garran | Semi-traditional

Here are the classes I'm planning to take this fall, plus helpful annotations. They have the interesting and convoluted property that none of them are on quite the same set of days (which unfortunately means that there are no days off this time, though Friday is but lightly loaded).

Monday Tuesday Thursday Friday

11:30 - 12:30: Philosophy 2202 - "Ethics"

Both the philosophy courses I'm taking this term are second year, which feels pretty daring because I've never taken a second year course before; but it's philosophy, which I sure do like. This one is by Dale, who also taught the first year course on ethics that was one of my first classes ever at Langara, so there is some continuity for you.

Monday Wednesday

12:30 - 2:30: English 1128 - "Short Prose Sls & Composition"

This class also evokes the past. Remember a long time ago when I took the Langara English Test and failed, or so I thought, because I didn't finish my essay, and the rules for the test said that this meant automatic disqualification? (I guess that was here.) Some time possibly measured in years later, I was poking through my information on the langara website and discovered there that I was recorded as having completed the test with a '5' (which is, for extra surrealism, the highest mark). So, yeah. Either the rules lied to me, or the examiners liked my essay so much that they wrote a computer simulation of me that finished it within the allotted time, and declared that good enough. In either case, nobody thought to mention it to me.

This is the beginning English course recommended for people who got that score, which I'm finally taking because I might transfer a university which would expect it of me, and because there are interesting English courses later on for which it's a prerequisite. I don't know what an 'Sl' is, but it probably involves writing essays, sigh.

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday

2:30 - 3:30: Japanese 1215

The second part of the first year Japanese course I began in the fall. I wanted to take this from Hayashi-sensei, who went to Japan with us, but alas, he isn't teaching it this term, so I'm back with Ms. Leduc (who isn't terrible; I just like Hayashi). If they tend to stagger the classes like I suspect they do, then he may never be teaching the one I need next, unless I wait a term fallow; that would be sad.

Tuesday Thursday

3:30 - 5:30: Philosophy 2225 - "Existentialism"

And here is the other of those second year courses, taught by Bernelle Strickling, the mysterious and reclusive* head of Langara's philosophy department. I am extraordinarily vague on what existentialism is (except I think it convinces people to drink themselves to death?), so I look forward to a great deal of education.

(* I've actually just never had her.)

So, that's four. (Pictorial representation.) I have fond hopes of not dropping any of them; we'll see how that goes.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I've always used the word "existentialism" to describe the thought experiement that goes, "What if none of this is real??" especially when people go so far as actually thinking that. Sort of like nihilism, but less angsty and more confused.

I like your mysterious, reclusive teacher's name.

And yay! Good for you with your English score! :DDDD It makes me happy when you get numbers that reflect how awesome you are at stuff.

(I was, as it turned out, actually wrong about my Existentialism teacher's name; it's 'Bonnelle'.)

-Andy H.

From dictionary.com:

Existentialism
n.
1) A philosophy that emphasizes the uniqueness and isolation of the individual experience in a hostile or indifferent universe, regards human existence as unexplainable, and stresses freedom of choice and responsibility for the consequences of one's acts.

2) A 20th-century philosophical movement; assumes that people are entirely free and thus responsible for what they make of themselves.

From Wikipedia:

Existentialism is a philosophical movement that is generally considered a study that pursues meaning in existence and seeks value for the existing individual. Existentialism, unlike other fields of philosophy, does not treat the individual as a concept, and values individual subjectivity over objectivity. As a result, questions regarding the meaning of life and subjective experience are seen as being of paramount importance, above all other scientific and philosophical pursuits. Existentialism often is associated with anxiety, dread, awareness of death, and freedom. Famous existentialists include Sartre, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and Camus.

Existentialism emphasizes action, freedom, and decision as fundamental to human existence and is fundamentally opposed to the rationalist tradition and to positivism. That is, it argues against definitions of human beings either as primarily rational, knowing beings who relate to reality primarily as an object of knowledge, or for whom action can or ought to be regulated by rational principles, or as beings who can be defined in terms of their behavior as it looks to or is studied by others. More generally it rejects all of the Western rationalist definitions of being in terms of a rational principle or essence or as the most general feature that all existing things share in common. Existentialism tends to view human beings as subjects in an indifferent, objective, often ambiguous, and "absurd" universe in which meaning is not provided by the natural order, but rather can be created, however provisionally and unstably, by human beings' actions and interpretations.

Although there are certain common tendencies among existentialist thinkers, there are major differences and disagreements among them, and not all of them even affiliate themselves with or accept the validity of the term "existentialism". In German, the phrase Existenzphilosophie (philosophy of existence) is also used.

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Oh, and for Masa.

Solipsism
n.
1) The theory that the self is the only thing that can be known and verified.
2) The theory or view that the self is the only reality.

The word solipsism (Latin: solus, alone + ipse, self) is used for two related yet distinct concepts:

1) An epistemological position that one's own perceptions are the only things that can be known with certainty. The nature of the external world — that is, the source of one's perceptions — therefore cannot be conclusively known; it may not even exist. This is also called external world skepticism.
2) A metaphysical belief that the universe is entirely the creation of one's own mind. Thus, in a sense, the belief that nothing 'exists' outside of one's own mind.

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On that note, I need a "pretentious blathering" avatar for moments like this.

Actual information! Thanks.

Though I do know what a solipsist is; I was saying existentialists didn't necessarily believe in themselves any more than anything else. Obviously I was wrong!

That will probably be a super-interesting class.

You can not believe in your 'self' in terms of persistant individual identity (as, for example, Theravada Buddhists do), but I don't think that it's logically possible not to acknowledge that something currently exists which is a thinking thing. The very act of questioning it requires thought, and so confirms it. Solipsism, which is the claim that only that thinking thing exists, seems to be about as minimalist as you can get.

It does indeed sound interesting, although the contrast between the ideas there and those in my Ethics class might make for a certain degree of mental whiplash...

-Garran

Wow. I'd never last with that courseload. Good luck to ye!

Really? Uh oh.

-Andy H.
(who after all this time still worries that he doesn't have much of an idea of what's normal or expected in college)

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