I look forward to working with you this year. I’ll use this blog to ask your ideas, put some of your work, and post things of interest to the class. I’ve put links to the history website and to my personal teaching blog as well at the top of this blog so you can always look at both.
It is important for you to understand the difference between this blog and the class’ website. The website is where all of the information about the course is. This blog is where you sometimes will tell me and sometimes I’ll tell you what I think about that information and content. I won’t put readings that are on the website on this blog. I won’t list assignments on this blog.
This blog is for us to show our thinking.
Q- What is Plato trying to tell us in the allegory?
A- My interpretation of what Plato is telling us is that sometimes the only way to believe something is to experience it. I also think that he’s getting at the idea of how social dominance is relative to surroundings and knowledge. For example in the cave the people who could interpret the shadows were dominant, but they later found out that that was all fake and the previous power was meaningless.
Q- Deep question- how do we know things are true? What is true and how do you know it?
A- We can’t really know for certain the absolute truth. We believe some things are true because they are all we know and have no reason to question them. I could tell someone about my life and think everything I said was true, only to find out later that this was the matrix. That was a stretch, i don’t think I’m in the matrix but you get the point. Truth Is relative of current knowledge.