Sunday Seminar  November 2005

 

“Welcome Back (and De-briefing!), Laurie and Betty, from your Big Trip to Europe!”

then …

Facts and Fallacies in GS

Problems that beginners and others have with learning GS. 

And some possible suggestions on how to overcome them.

Led by David Hewson

 

Avoiding the dangers of semantic adolescence"
as spelt out in an ETC article with the same name. 

One student described this period as: "How to loose friends and alienate people".

Lee described the adolescent stages as:

1. Recognising semantic errors in others.

2. Recognising semantic errors in your self.

3. Changing ones own habits to fix or reduce these errors.

 

Then we covered typical errors beginners make with GS like:

Abstracting means only leaving out details.  (They ignore adding in)

Maps have to be super precise I.e. they forget non-allness. 
Or thinking that all talk must be serious and ignoring small talk or chit chat.

They develop an anti-Aristotelian rather than non-Aristotelian attitude.

They don't treat GS as a tentative science. 
Or they see it as a panacea that can solve all problems.

They think that animals can't do any abstracting at all.

Using jargon others can't understand
or that they don't really understand themselves.

Developing a "wiser-than-thou" attitude.

That you only have to know and talk about the formulations
without applying them. 

Overall we covered about 21 problems that beginners have.

(Updated 25/11/2005)


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