I do not consider myself a person who regularly gives a great deal of thought to the subjects touched upon during this week’s theme nor philosophy in general. It was therefore quite daunting to start reading Plato and Kant, Theaetetus and the preface to Critique of Pure Reason were not the easiest of text to get through either.
When I started reading I had a quite hard time wrapping my head around the material, especially Kant, and I read through the text more than once. I also participate in several discussions with other students taking this course; we discussed our own take on the texts and our own opinions on the question “What is knowledge?”. I also used the internet quite heavily during my readings do find out more about the concepts mentioned. I continued doing so even after the blogpost had been posted, I believe I had not quite digested the texts so to speak when I wrote my blog post before the theme started.
During the seminar we discussed the texts, similar to what I had done before the start of the theme. It was interesting to once again discuss the two texts, this time with different people. The group of four people I discussed with could most probably have discussed for longer than the allotted time during the seminar! Hearing different opinions as well as things others hade given thought to about the texts that I had not was very rewarding. Our group discussed for example objectivity and subjectivity to great lengths, a priori and a posteriori knowledge, when we start gaining knowledge and wether some knowledge is innate and how to try being subjective when trying to gain scientific knowledge. I felt like a good contributing factor in these discussions.
During this theme I actually feel like I have not only learnt about concepts as such, but also to some extent what it is to have a philosophical discussion. Sometimes it was frustrating to not actually find the “answer” to the issue discussed but instead simply gain knowledge from the discussion itself. For me this was a new way of learning! Reading philosophical texts is also something new to me that this theme has taught me. KTH is often about reading texts to learn about facts, but this reading was different to that. Besides this I also learnt about concepts, such as a priori and a posteriori, which I found very interesting. They made me think about knowledge in a whole new light as they made it clear that there are different kinds of knowledge.
Overall I think these theme has been a challenge, but one which has been rewarding.
Hello Josefine! I can relate to what you are saying in your reflection about these texts being daunting to read since I myself don´t have much experience from reading these kinds of texts either. I like how you show how your understanding of philosophical thinking developed during the week and it is an interesting reflection to read. It would be interesting to hear some examples of what your group discussed during the seminar and what you thought was the most interesting part of the theme.
SvaraRaderaIt sounds like this theme was a great learning journey. It is not really in our nature as engineering students to consider these answerless questions. I too had lots of trouble understanding Kant at first, even though I happen to have heard of and discussed some of these questions before. This theme resulting in a new way of learning however shows that touching on philosophical discussion works and is relevant in our program. I believe just having had these exercises of going behind the words and behind our conceptions of reality, will help us be more creative and more open-minded when considering different possibilities and solutions and when communicating with different people.
SvaraRaderaI totally agree with you that the texts came as a mild chock compared to what we have read before (I also hade to read the Kant texts more times than I'd like to admit in order to understand what even is). But it's a good practice, and after this we will be able to read anything! I also liked your point of finding no answer to the questions, which definitely don't go well together with the ordinary civilian engineer-practice, but maybe it's something that we also have to consider later in our professional lives. Nice reflection!
SvaraRaderaWow, i could say...you post is absolutely different with other posts i read, i mean you gave your post in a simply way but with all truth and i like it. I also have big trouble for this course, i means difficult to understand what the authors really want to explain espically for students like me who use english as the second language, it really spent me a hard time to understand it. But, it worth! Espically in the seminar we talked and discussed with different students also read different student's post, that give me a new understanding for what i learnt in the course. The meaning of this course now emerge in my mind, we will use a different view and more opening-mind to treat our rest life. Thank you so much for you post~!
SvaraRaderaHey!
SvaraRaderaIt seems that I was not alone with having difficulties with these new concepts and ideas that we were faced with..! I'm glad to read that you feel that you have had a progress with the theme and that you got some new thoughts and insights out of it. I can also relate, as the others have mentioned, that it was hard to grasp the meaning of the texts and that it was a challenge to read articles that have several answers to the posed problems and contains a whole new level of 'depth'. Until next time it would be interesting to read about what you thought before the seminar and how you thoughts did or didn't change during the seminar!
Good job with writing a well written reflection!
Your final paragraph especially resonates with me, seeing as it was similar to what I felt when taught about the distinction between a debate and a dialectic. The goal of obtaining knowledge isn't always about finding the one objective answer to objectively answerable questions, but instead about finding depth in further discussions or elaboration about subject matter that at first hand seems self-explanatory.
SvaraRaderaAlso, on an unrelated note, way to go on the blog address. You had me giggle.
Great summary and I also think that it can be difficult to understand the different concepts at times.
SvaraRaderaI agree with you that it is a whole new way of approaching a question, to sit and discuss it without really having a clear answer in the end. In the seminar I attended we entered the topic of “is a table actually a table?” And that discussion ended with “it is, because the majority can accept the concept of the object being a table. But some might not agree on that concept and perceive the object as something else”.
To add to the comment on getting to know what you thought before and after the seminar:
Seeing that you mention different concepts that you have discussed I think that it would be interesting to read what you learned about the concepts from those discussions :).
You blog posts about the theme keep very high standard! You say that you had trouble understanding the text especially Kant´s and you are ot alone. But yet you managed to give great answers in your first blog post. Like you i thought that the seminar was a great way to work with the questions and learning from each other.
SvaraRaderaAnd like you say, it can be frustrating not being able to get one answer but it is something that might be useful to learn for the future where nothing is black or white.