Friday, May 31, 2013

Prompt: EPISTEMOLOGY

Knowing about the past cannot help people to make important decisions today.

Write a response in which you discuss the extent to which you agree or disagree with the statement and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should consider ways in which the statement might or might not hold true and explain how these considerations shape your position.

I think that all my reading has been worthless in developing my analytic writing skills. 

It’s obviously false.  Inference is based on prior knowledge.  If we deny that inference is valuable tool, then ugh....


I feel the way I feel when writing philosophy papers: stumped, just completely stumped.  My mouth feels dry, I’m uncomfortable, I want to shift in my seat, I want to punch something, I feel hungry, I feel upset, my legs feel like they’re moving in all directions, I feel unable to concentrate, and yet there is nothing more that I would like to do than to write a response to this fucking prompt.  I would like to say to this prompt: fuck you, fuck off, you’re a waste of my fucking time and cognitive effort.  Clearly, knowledge of the past is helpful in certain situations.  Consider what would happen if I didn’t know that stores all close in Germany on Sunday at a very early time.  This is a historical fact.  It happened last week, before I was here, and it happened the week before, and the week before that.  If I don’t know anything of those prior happenings, then I might be tempted to go grab a pint of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream at the store at 8pm at night like I would if I were in the United States.  So, how fucking stupid is this prompt?  Do I really need to make my mind do dialectical leaps and somersaults to get to the conclusion that historical knowledge is worthy because it helps us in our present situations?  It’s almost crazy to even consider wasting any calories attempting an answer.  If I did answer, I would like some amount of bread to compensate for my lost calories.  Fuck.  I don’t know how the hell I tried for so long to write analytic essays, and I suffered as a result, because my body rejects them.  And the thing is, I tell myself that it’s hard work to write analytic essays, and it’s not something I can just do without practice, so I need to practice.  And so, I’m here trying to practice.  But, maybe the thing is that I’m not going to get good at writing analytic essays, and this is because I don’t have the sort of body for it, I don’t have the stomach for it.  What, then, do I have the stomach for?  If I don’t write essays, then what would I do for a living?  And would I be giving up, or would I be making a very wise decision?

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