Ok, the cram sessions have begun this week.
I have an exam in two days (friday).  The questions were already given
to us (a whole batch of them, but only 2 or 3 will be on the actual
exam).  I've researched most of them, but not thoroughly (due to
the limited amount of time).  How about helping me out?
Please answer this question (as thoroughly as you wish).

Both Stoicism and Scholasticism evolved out of the conditions of
B0100000027fed4

s of each utilizing the following
as suggestive of the areas to be included in your discussion:

STOICISM:making specific reference to Cicero, Epictetus, and Aurelius:
1.  What were the conditions and times that helped produce Stoicism?
2.  Give an analysis of the characteristics and purposes of Stoicism
with reference to the men listed above.
3.  Make an examination of natural law, especially the basic 
assumptions behind this philosophy.
4. Evaluate Stoicism relative to its affects on the (a) individual
and (b) on the State.

SCHOLASTICISM:making specific reference to Augustine, Abelard, and/or
Aquinas:
1.  What were the conditions and times which created the need
for Scholasticism?
2.  What roles did Abelard and Aristotle play in the development of
Scholasticism?
3.  How did St. Augustine influence later Scholastic development
and thought?
4.  Evaluate Scholasticism as to whether it met the challenges
of the time and whether or ont it realized its goal via the
application of scholastic methods.


Ok, that's the question.  Perhaps there are some philosophy buffs 
out there who can help me.

39 responses total.

Why don't you draft your essays and we'll all critique them? Even if nobody
responds, you'll have had good practice for tomorrow.

Which class did you say this was for?

to give you any information on these questions would be academically
dishonest. you're being examined on your preparedness, not ours.

Hmmm...depends on the conditions imposed by the instructor.  But
offhand, I don't see why asking people for information should be
out-of-bounds if digging around in the library is not.  A bbs
is an interactive book.  (But this is drift.  Sorry Sung, I don't
have any enlightment to offer on these topics.)

I don't think there would be anything wrong with bouncing ideas off of
Grex folk, either, as long as you cite any information you acquire here.
I'm writing a paper right now that happens to have a lot to do with the
major area of research of an old professor of mine at MSU, and we had
an interesting argument about it on the phone that helped a lot.  Is that
unethical?  People in academia do it all the time.  You should know that,
keats.  So what's the difference if you discuss it on a bbs, and not with
your colleagues?

But I don't have any information on the original topic, either.  Perhaps
it will become a moot point.  :-(

"bouncing ideas" off of us is not the same as soliciting ideas, and dis-
cussing ideas for something you're writing doesn't have any of the same
academic obligations as taking an examination under conditions of honesty.
i'm sure you know that, griz. we've been asked to provide ideas for mater-
ials he didn't have time to cover, in other words, to fill in the gaps.
it's not ethical for us to assist him with the examination process. 

 In other words, keats feels uncomfortable in allowing others to use his great
intellect without giving him great credit.

no, in other words, the point of an examination is for the student to show
one's own great intellect and the product of that student's work for
the term. but i thank you for your generous estimate of me, tim. coming 
from a mind as perspicuous as your own, i cannot tell you how i value
it.

I forgot about this post until after the test (just remembered about
20 minutes ago), but seeing as there were no posted answers, along 
withwith the fact that this question (along with about 15 other such 
questions) was not on the test.

I believe that Grex is just another source from which I can gather
information.  If I had thought this was any form of dishonesty,
I would not have posted it to something as public as this system.
I realize that this would be dishonest if it were for a pre-written
examination or research paper.  But the examination was to be taken
in the room without notes and just from the knowledge.  Who's business
is it as to how I learned the material?

"Fill in the gaps" is exactly what I wanted some users to do.
Next time the need arises, I'll post my essay (I realize that
no one wants to write an entire paper), and let the
gaps get filled in.

 One's intellect isn't simply an innate characteristic.  
 
  You assume he was simply looking for answers to test questions. I think he
was looking for various points of views, which may or may not reformulate his
own point of view.
 
  We are a product of our environment, frame of reference, and curiousity.
Intelligent people are those who have and use various references & research
methods.
 
  I'm glad to say that I don't think many people utilize the 'keats philospophy
of 'intellect isolationism.'
 
 I'm also glad that homes disregarded keats' crankiness.  Keats wanted to give
a long, detailed philosophical answer to the question, but he didn't. This
made him feel uncomfortable, as he believes that he is the person that people
here would turn to for deep philosophical ramblings.  He defends his lack of
providing his 'expertise' by launching into a tirade stating that he will not
bless us with his treatise simply on the grounds that he thinks homes ought to
find out on his own, instead of relying on keat's great wisdom.

Not necessarily.  I believe that keats, like me, teaches at the
college level, is no doubt aware, like me, of various instances
of bald-faced plagiarism by students, and is therefore, like me,
somewhat sensitive on this issue.

that's exactly correct, john, thanks. tim, the only statement in your
comments with which i agree is that "intellect isn't simply an innate
characteristic"--at least, certainly not in your case. 

Homes seemed pretty unprepared at a time fairly short before exams.
I would be interested in his sharing his grade with us as well.

I still maintain that it would have been okay for him to gain knowledge
from us as long as whomever he quoted or used information from were cited
in the bibliography.  I have done that before.

griz, look again. it's not an essay, it's an examination. he posted exami-
nation questions and asked us to answer the ones he didn't study so that
if they were on the exam, he'd know something. 

craig--good point.

        Since exam questions tend to be a combination of testing on the
subject material, and testing on whether the student paying attention in
class, I doubt if anything anyone here offered in the way of assistance
would have been of much help.  (Which isn't why I didn't offer my
thoughts.  Nor was I compelled by a vision of academic integrity.  In
fact, I just didn't know anything about the subject.)

It might have been wise of homes to post some sort of explanation at the
start clarifying the exact conditions of his examanation, although, one
presumes if the instructor had not meant for homes to take his test
"open book", they wouldn't have given him a take home exam.  #12 makes a
peculiar contrast with another response entered by the same author
elsewhere, concerning the 'spite-net' item.  I'm too lazy to go back &
read #0, so I'm actually not quite sure if I missed something, but it
seems to me, homes may have been posting 'examination' questions from
past exams, already given, and presumably part of the 'public record',
rather than giving us actual examination questions on his actual exam.
In which case, this is something he could have done anytime during the
semester, and is preumably little different than his going up to his TA
or whatever, and asking for help on this 'theoretical question' -- ie,
perfectly good study habits.  Since what he got instead was a blend of
insults and examination ethics, I think he can safely conclude nobody
here has the faintest idea what his question meant.

Re #17, last sentence:  Nah.  If somebody were to post a C
question in the Jellyware conference of the form "Please help me
out with this programming assignment for my class", and I were to
refuse on grounds of academic honesty, it would NOT be a safe
assumption that I didn't have a clue what the problem was about.

It's stated in #0 that the class was given a list of possible exam
questions but not told which ones would actually be on the exam.
I agree that since we don't know the conditions imposed on the
class, the moral picture is a little cloudy.  One has to give Sung
credit for being up-front about his reason for posting the
question, though.  However, if the test questions were intended to
have you do your own analysis and synthesis based on lecture and
reference material, then asking someone else to do the analysis
and synthesis for you short-circuits the learning experience that
the instructor intended you to have.

your laziness shows all over, marcus. not only are you justly subject
to the corrections made by remmers, but as well, you obviously failed to
read (or to pay attention to) my response to tnt defining what i feel is
a distinction between jibes (openly offered with the responsibility taken
by the speaker and anonymous). was there something accurate you had to
contribute?

I did not get the impression that Homes had a "take home" exam, especially
since he later commented that those questions ended up not being on the
exam.  It was more a matter of needing study help, I thought.

This response has been erased.

Mr. Keats is an educator? Dear me.

(not sure how to take that...is that an insult?)

re #remmers: (I can never remember response numbers):  No, I agree, you
could probably answer any C question which would be posted on an exam (-:.
However, THIS question was probably beyond the ability of anyone here to
answer in an academically useful manner.

er, wrong. it's not really relevant to the issue of this item, but if you
insist on knowing, i've done advanced work on scholasticism (like, graduate-
level) and am perfectly comfortable with stoicism, though i claim no 
special knowledge of it. the only person that the questions seemed import-
antly beyond answering were this item's author, ironically enough.

(although why the question turned up on the history conference does kind
of elude me...don't we have a conference here anywhere where this would
have fit better?)

("enigma" or "classified"...)

Classified, heh.

I fear keats missed most of the years of discussion on M-net regarding
"abuse" and its definition, as well as numerious examples and near
misses.  Had he kept up with the discussion there, I'm confident he
would not have missed the subtle "objective/subjective" distinction I
made in my response, which was pointed squarely at his "definition".  We
need look no further than response #23 to find an excellent example of
problems with his definition.  Are we supposed to flagellate poor Ruth
with wet noodles now?

i think the fact that you misread responses from #0 onward and had to
be corrected on basic facts about this discussion speaks to who missed
something, marcus. and i doubt that anything you said years ago on 
m-net, yesterday on grex, or any time now or in the future about ethics,
rhetoric, or the nature of abuse will ever be cited authoritatively any-
where except by you in your own egocentric self-applause. you can't make
subtle distinctions when you've missed basic ones, and you've missed 
plenty of those.

is that square enough for you to comprehend? 

<sigh>

i'm sorry, i know that was at a minimum vicious and more plainly, rude be-
cause it was blunter and meaner than it needed to be. but marcus had simply
demonstrated the mote/beam concept once too many times for my taste and i
snarled. if marcus had devoted more attention to what had been said on this
item while he was "contributing" to it instead of not reading, misreading,
or trying to refer the relevancies of this conversation to irrelevant 
others, i may have been able to salvage my manners. i apologize for the
nastiness of that comment, truly--but i wish instead of saying things like
"i was too lazy to read #0, but here's my opinion of it, anyway," or
ignoring several nice pushes by persons other than myself towards a more
careful attention to what had been said, that he'd turn his energies
towards preparing his response with a sufficient act of considering the
dialogue in the first place. i don't believe for a second that as many
as half of the people in this or any conversation will necessarily agree
with what i say--but it gets tiresome if objections are founded on mere
ill-preparedness. rushing in and giving opinions like, "all these people
jumped all over you because they were too stupid to answer the question
and were trying to hide that" [not a quote, i know] is not constructive.
i feel that if i unfairly berated, it was the way i did it that was unfair,
not the substance of my criticism. again, sorry.

Dan, have a soda.

<burp>. hey, the bubbles got up my nose...so that's why i don't like soda.
well, i feel better anyway. thanks.

This response has been erased.

If it weren't obviously dead, I would suggest that the FW change the heading
to something more appropriate.  I'd have enjoyed hearing something on the
original questions (all right, after the exam had passed).  (A long time ago
I might have had a go at stoicism, & still remember enough to sit back & take
potshots at someone more knowledgeable or braver.  I'm afraid the particular
individual philosophers are pretty dim to me.)

For that matter, let me come out foursquare in favor of the claim that
history of philosophy is history as well as philosophy (in contrast to the
opinions in #26).  By training & inclination I tend to approach it as
philosophy, & the historical viewpoint is thus quite helpful to me.

[Technical point:  FW's can't change headers.]

(now--cfadm, that's another story...)

Augustine = bad
Thomas Aquinas = good
Stoicism = bad

Once agian , orwell simplifies the discussion for the newcomers

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