Science of the Mind HW


Date assigned 
Date Due Description of assignment
4/9/12 4//11/12 Email a complete rough draft of your article to Eric and Amir, reminder that a final draft is due on Tuesday April 17th!!!
3/23/12 3/27/12 Close Reading for your Chapter Presentation  Make sure to link your chapter to the Essential Questions of this class. 
 3/13/12 3/15/12  Jonah Lehrer lecture on How we Decide 
9/9/11 9/13/11 Types of Good in your email challenge Based on the Types of Good Videos
9/13/11 9/16/11
This I Believe Essay Challenge the guidelnies can be found here.
9/16/11 9/20/11
Why study the West Challenge that we began in class.  You will have ten minutes to confer with your group at the beginning of class. 
9/27/11 9/28/11 

Finish taking and computing the results of the personality type test, which will help us create effective groups.  Optional--submit feedback on the initial guidelines for the group project (put in my box tomorrow).  NOTE THAT BOTH THINGS SHOULD BE IN MY BOX TOMMOROW, EVEN THOUGH WE DON'T HAVE CLASS UNITL FRIDAY
NONE NONE  This is just a link to short power point from today about the pivotal nature of the rise of a written alphabetic language and of geography in shaping Ancient Greek contributions to the world such as the development of intellectual inquiry and self-government in a city state.  Here is another power point about progress as shown by decreasing violence, and adaptation as shown by different forms of slavery. 
 9/30/11 10/4/11  Short answer quiz on all the material we have so far considered.  Open note.  Use your notes and the power points above to prepare.  Topics covered: 1)Different Types of Good  2)Defining the west (origins of the term).  3)Three streams of the west--Greeks, Hebrews Romans 4) Several ideas on why we should study the west.  5)  The Pivotal Nature of the Rise of Alphabetic Writing 6) Pivotal nature of geography in shaping ancient Athens 7) Progress and adaptation in history 8) Thesis of decreasing violence based on expanding circle and non-zero sum games.  
more power points    Types of Good   and Greeks Romans and Hebrews 
 10/4/11  10/11/11 Allegory of the Cave Visual or short essay comparing Allegory of the Cave to the film the Matrix.  Here is the Allegory of the Cave video we watched.
 10/11/11 10/14/11  Do the Close Reading assignment for the Ancient Athens Democracy article you chose. Optional--feedback/comments on Draft Two of the Big Group Challenge.  Last chance for feedback.    
 10/14/11 Various due dates Big Project! Complete one close reading assignment (see link above)  for a source of 5-15 pages relevant to your task.   Here are the criteria for the big group challenge.  
Tips on Close reading  
  • Interact with the text by posing questions in the margins. 
  • Break up the reading into sections, and summarize the main idea of each section as you go along. 
  • Highlight as you read, and than summarize--then take notes on your own summary
  • Read the whole article once through without underlining/summarizing, and then reread closely using any of the above strategies.  
  • Main theme:  Repetition.  
 10/28/11  11/15/11 Complete a note taking and feedback form for each presentation including your own. Each form is due at the beginning of the class period following the given presentation. 

 

Big question: What is cultural evolution?  What is some evidence for it, and what are the major criticisms of it?   How are memes important to the idea?

Question for our purposes: A s we tell the story of Western history in play form, is it in fact a story dominated by and governed by cultural evolution, or not?  Use the links below to help you answer this question: 

Robert  Wright  on optimism, non zero games and cultural evolution  

Susan Blakcmere on memes

   

Daniel Dennet on dangerous memes   

Peter Singer review of “The Better Angels of our Nature”  (positive review—cultural evolution exists)

  

Negative Review of “The Angels of Our Better nature”

   

On Cultural Evolution 1  

On Cultural Evolution 2 
 11/18/11  11/29/11 Prompted in class writing to be completed in class on Tuesday 11/29/11.  Over the break, prepare by coming with an outline, combining our knowledge of Western history from your own research, the presentations and the Pivotal Events Class Activity from Friday, with the essay prompts.  
11/29/11 12/2/11 Please complete the self-evaluation/reflection sheet that I handed out at the end of the prompted in class writing.  I expect you to spend about 20 to 30 minutes on it.  Please be thoughtful and honest. 
12/2/11 12/5/11 Write a proposal for a script for our group ten minute play challenge.  Take into account these suggestions for things like narrative, characters and shape etc. Also take into account   Ideas that you and your classmates developed in your cultural evolution in class prompted writing.  Also, you might take into account other things on this list (which is more or less a brief summary, in bullet point form, of most topics from this class).