Aristotle's Reply

As we talked about yesterday, Plato distrusted artists because they made imitations of imitations. However, he also distrusted poets (the main artists of his time). This was mainly because poets claimed that they were under the influence of “the muse" when they composed their works.



The muse was usually portrayed as a woman who brought inspiration to the artist. When the muse was doing her thing, the poets said that they were transported out of rationality, which led Plato to observe:

"... the poet is a light and winged and holy thing, and there is no invention in him until he has been inspired and is out of his senses, and then the mind is no longer in him.”

Being under the influence of the muse usually meant that the author wasn’t in the rational world, which really bugged Plato because above all, he revered rationality. In fact, most of his life was spent trying to convert his culture from founding its morality on stories about the gods to founding morality on abstract reason. One of the main reasons he did this was because Plato worried about what would happen if law-abiding people continually heard stories about people who were acting badly. He was afraid people would use those stories as an excuse to act badly themselves.

For example, Plato would probably condemn "The Odyssey" because, though Odysseus was a brave warrior, he was also sleeping around during his travels, despite the fact that his wife was going through a lot to keep the men away from her.

Thus, if poets can do anything good for society, it will be to tell stories that show people how to behave according to their social station and not rock the civic boat.



However Aristotle, one of Plato’s students, had a different idea. In his view, the poet wasn’t merely imitating the Forms. Nor was the poet telling people what had happened (like wars, political stuff, etc.). Rather the poets tell us what could be.

As Aristotle said, “Poetry, therefore, is a more philosophical and a higher thing than history; for poetry tends to express the universal; history, the particular.”

Thus, in Aristotle's view, poets were actually creating something closer to the Forms than mortal reality.

So what made for good poetry? Actually, it was tragedy that Aristotle focused on most. The purpose of a good tragedy, he said, was to bring the audience to a moment of catharsis.

Catharsis is a term in drama that refers to a sudden emotional breakdown or climax that constitutes overwhelming feelings of great sorrow, pity, laughter or any extreme change in emotion that results in the restoration, renewal and revitalization for living. In other words, a purgation.

Aristotle judged the worth of art on how well it could initiate catharsis in its audience.

We watched two short films (The Competition and More - both of which you can watch by clicking on the titles) to see which stimulated greater catharsis in us.



The Competition was essentially made up of face shots of people sitting on a windy hillside. This went on for about three minutes until we found out that they were in a crying contest and had to drop three tears on their paper to win.



More was a stop motion animation about an alien-looking person who creates a pair of glasses that makes the world look colorful and happy. However, at the end of the film, despite his success, he is not happy.

The votes fell overwhelmingly to More. The main reason it produced more catharsis in us, we said, was because there were significant changes in the character and his circumstances throughout the film. He started sad, became happy, but then went back to sadness.

Aristotle would agree with this assessment. Seeing a character go through change is a great way to induce catharsis in an audience.

The Competition stayed at essentially the same level the entire film. Though the people were ostensibly sad (a good prerequisite for tragedy), we saw no change and therefore felt no catharsis. We did, however, enjoy the twist at the end.

Plato's Aesthetic Philosophy

When you critique a work or art, whether it be a painting, some music, or a passage of writing, you must have criteria on which to base your critique.

We started our exploration of criteria by learning how Plato (a philosopher born in Greece around 423 B.C.E.) formulated his criteria for what makes good or bad art.

Plato had a worldview that he described by using the metaphor of a cave.

We are like people who have been strapped to chairs, unable to move. We are sitting inside a cave staring at the back wall. On the back wall we we see shadows, which we think are reality.



If we could free ourselves we would see that the shadows are actually cast by two-dimensional cutouts, and we would perceive these shapes as being reality and the shadows as only imitations. However, if we found our way of the cave, we would find the cutouts were themselves only imitations of real, three dimensional objects. We would find out that there are real tables, chairs, and cats, and that the shadows we had once thought were reality were actually only shadows of imitations.

It's kind of like in the "Holiday In Vince" episode of Rex the Runt when Rex, Wendy, and Bad Bob get into Vince's brain through his ear. Once there, they find Vince and get into his brain through his ear. At the end of the episode, Rex, Wendy and Bad Bob think they've returned to the real world, but are in fact, still inside Vince's brain. Therefore, everything they perceive has been filtered from outside reality through Vince's abnormal brain.

Plato believed that outside the realm of our perception (or outside Vince's head) there is, in actuality, a reality that our earth is only an imitation of, like the cutouts. Outside our perception exist the ideals of objects and living things which Plato called "Forms." They are the perfect, ideal abstractions that our earth and everything we perceive on it, are only imitations of. Therefore, art is the shadows of the cutouts. So Plato wasn't too impressed with artists or poets. After all, they only made imitations of imitations.

To show why Plato may have believed in the world of the Forms, we talked about chairs.


We agreed that this was a chair. We defined a chair as having four legs, a place for your rear, and a back.


So is this a chair? It only has three legs. We decided it was a chair anyway and expanded our definition of chair to include three legs.


But what about this one? It has 10 legs. Still, everyone was willing to call this a chair because it met our criteria of having a place for your bum and a back. So we expanded our definition again to include ten legs.


But what about this one? Suddenly we have a chair with no feet. We're we still willing to call it a chair? Most of us were. After all, someone was sitting in it. Thus, we expanded our definition of chair yet further. It could now have between zero and ten legs.

This piece of furniture has a place to rest your bum. We're OK with it having no legs, but, it has no back. However, many of us were still willing to call it chair, thus expanding our definition yet again so that now a chair can have between zero and ten legs and have no back.


Therefore, this is a chair. It has a place for your bum, four legs and no back. The class usually protested calling this a chair. They claimed it was a television.


So I gave up and presented you with this chair. It has between zero and ten legs, a place for your bum and a back.

Plato leads us down this infuriating road to prove a point. When we talk about a chair, we're not talking about an actual object so much as chair-ness. When we define something as a chair, we're talking about how it fits on a scale of chair-like attributes. So the first picture of a chair would score high on the chair-ness scale, while the "television" and the contortionist would score lower on the scale, though they still have attributes of a chair.

The reason we recognize chair-like qualities in all these things is because, out there in the land of Forms, floats the abstract idealization of a chair which is embedded in our minds as a kind of memory. So when we see something chairish, we can discern its chair-like qualities.

So, according to Plato, we are all metaphorically strapped to chairs watching the shadow play on the wall. We do not know that the shadows are two steps removed from reality. But when we see something that stimulates our memory of a Form strongly, we call that good art.

Good art, therefore, is that shadow which most closely resembles the Form outside the cave.

Have You Seen This Man?

Today we watched a film called "Have You Seen This Man?"

It was about an artist named Geoff Lupo who goes around New York City hanging up hand-drawn fliers that offer to sell mundane items like a cracker or a thumbtack for 15 cents.

The film showed people actually calling him and buying the stuff. It even showed and art collector who had started to collect Lupo's work and resell it on the streets, becoming a kind of itinerant museum curator.

Most of us weren't sure what to think about Lupo's work, because it seemed that people weren't so interested in collecting his fliers as they were actually going through the process of buying the items. This weirded us out because we are used to thinking of art as something drawn or painted that we hang up in an art gallery or in our home.

Though Lupo's drawings were good, it wasn't the drawings themselves that seemed to attract people. Rather it was the mystery and the novelty of the situation he had set up with the fliers. Lupo had created an interesting story that people wanted to enter, even though they knew it was absurd.

We decided that Lupo's art wasn't so much drawing as it was dramaturgy (the theory and practice of drama). In a way, Lupo was a performance artist who invited people through his fliers to be in a small, unscripted play with him.

So it was the idea behind the artwork that intrigued people.

Most of us decided that Lupo's artwork could be described as good art if we judged it on its ability to get people to participate in his little plays. Others of us held that Lupo was simply a nut.

Good Art / Bad Art

Today we discussed what makes for good or bad art.

At the beginning of class I put up a painting by Franz Klein and asked if it was art. Opinion was divided on the question.



Those who thought it was art reasoned that it's an interesting piece that invites different interpretations. Others thought it used shapes and contrast in interesting ways. A few said that the novelty of the piece was intriguing. Others said that, even thought they didn't like the painting, they were willing to call it art, simply because anything painted by a person could be seen as being art.

In other words, they give credence to the idea that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

Those who thought it wasn't art reasoned that it looked as if it hadn't taken much time at all to make, and that art required time. It also seemed lacking in detail and craft.

Next I put up Michaelangelo's painting of Plato and Aristotle and asked if it was better art than Klein's piece.



Most of the class felt it was because it represented reality better, obviously took a lot of time, and showed great craftsmanship. We created a spectrum of art that ranged from "snore" on the bottom to "changed my life forever" at the top. Most students put Michaelangelo much higher up on the spectrum than they put Klein.

So, though most students were unwilling to say one painting or the other was not art, they were willing to put different art pieces on a spectrum. Which means that we must have some criteria for what differentiates better art from worse art. And this idea goes against the idea that beauty is completely in the eye of the beholder.

In the coming term we're going to be exploring what we can do to find our criteria for judging literature and establish it reasonably.

Ch -ch-ch-ch-changes

Today we talked about times when we feel like we actually learned something in an English class. The results of the discussion were quite illuminating.

We found that most students remembered learning something when in a 1 on 1 situation with a teacher. We also found that putting things to songs was helpful for memorization (Who wants to compose the logos, ethos, pathos song for us?), that practice was often helpful, and that using symbols, such as the ones in Framing Your Thoughts can help solidify concepts.

For the rest of the class we talked about an essay written by some students that critiqued my teaching methods.

We could tell that the authors were angry with me, but that they had done a good job keeping their ethos level-headed, which was much to their credit. We also noted that they did some research (for example, talking with Juniors and Seniors about what they had encountered in Sophomore English).

We gathered from reading their concerns that, in order to accommodate the authors better we should implement a little more discipline into the classroom, review basic concepts from time to time and make sure our work would prepare us well to enter Junior English next year.

I'm grateful that these students took the time to make their concerns known to me and hope the class becomes a more inclusive place for them.

Mind Metaphors

Today we talked about metaphors for the mind and what they might mean to a teacher and a student.

The mind is a muscle to be exercised:



We interpreted this metaphor to mean that when the mind is exercised on a particular function repetitively, it becomes stronger (i.e. more able to perform that function with less effort). This is the reason, we thought, why math teachers have us do so many repetitions of mathematical exercises.

The mind is a cavern to be illuminated:



One way we interpreted this metaphor was that there is possibly much already in the mind, and that our job is to discover what is already in there. Plato, in fact, thought this was true. All learning, to him, was remembrance.

A teacher who teaches by the cavern metaphor might be the kind who "gives us a light" or an opportunity to explore the reaches of our minds.

The mind is a cup to be filled.



This metaphor made us imagine that our mind can be filled with information from an outside source. as a pitcher fills a cup. However, this metaphor also suggests that the mind can be completely filled until there is no room left

The cup metaphor also made us wonder why information leaves our brains. Does it evaporate? Are our cups actually sieves? Also, what happens when a teacher dispenses information and we don't receive it? Is it the teacher's fault (being the pitcher) or the student's (being the cup)?

We decided that a teacher who worked by the cup method would tend to lecture a lot or insist that a student receive all his/her learning from a book.

The mind is a garden to be cultivated.



In order for a garden to grow, we said, many elements must combine: sunlight, water, air, seeds, soil, rain, etc. We thought that this could represent the variety of subjects and approaches we need in order to create a proper learning environment.

However, a garden doesn't tend itself. It needs a caretaker actively cultivating the garden. We decided that this cultivator isn't the teacher, it's the student. The teacher can bring seeds, fertilizer, etc. to the garden gates, but the student must do the work to make them grown.

We noted that the garden type teacher might be the kind that uses all of the mind metaphors: providing opportunities (the light in the cavern), information (pouring water into the cup), and exercise.

Writing Your Presentation

I've been talking about your projects with Superintendent Hillstead, and he in turn has been talking with the school board. They are all interested in reading what you have written up, so I am putting together a packet of your material for them.

The board has requested that we take 10-15 minutes to present our findings to to them this Wednesday. They are planning to make a decision on the 4.5 day week issue next month, so now is the perfect time to make our influence known.



As Shakespeare puts it: "Brevity is the soul of wit." What he means is that the shorter and more cogent you can make your presentation, the better. Thus, we will be condensing our papers to their very essence. Three sentences to be exact. You will present these sentences orally to the school board during their Wednesday meeting.

I have three structures that you may use if you're feeling at a loss.

Structure 1: Straight Argument

1. Use the first sentence to make your thesis clear. For example: "We should institute the 4.5 day school week because students from Mountain View will start coming here."

2. Use the second sentence to provide evidence supporting your thesis. For example: "In a survey I conducted, 80 percent of Mountain View students surveyed said they would prefer the 4.5-day school week over a block schedule."

3. Use the third sentence to sweeten the deal. For example: "As you all know, the more students we have, the more money the school district receives."

Structure 2: Problem/Solution

1. Use the first sentence to describe a problem. For example: "For the past few years, more students have transfered out of Lyman into Mountain View than the other way around causing Lyman's school district to lose money."

2. Use the second sentence to set up evidence that will lead to a solution. For example: "In a survey I conducted, 80 percent of Mountain View students surveyed said they would prefer the 4.5-day school week over a block schedule."

3. Use the third sentence to propose the solution and its benefits. "From this survey, we can see that instituting the 4.5-day school week is likely to attract more students to the district, thus increasing the district's financial resources."

Structure 3: Analogy

1. Use the first sentence to set up your analogy. For example: "Instituting the 4.5-day school week would be like winning the lottery, all kinds of money will come into the district."

2. Use the second sentence to set up your evidence. For example: "A survey I conducted showed that, of the Mountain View students surveyed, 80 percent preferred the 4.5-day week over the block schedule."

3. Use the third sentence to bring the analogy and evidence together. For example: "It's likely that students will start moving into the Lyman school district for the 4.5-day school week, and as we all know, the more students we have, the more money the district receives."

This assignment should be finished by the end of class. When you feel you are finished, call me over to look at it. When I approve it, please email it to me.


The school board meeting is scheduled for this Wednesday at 8 p.m. in the basement of the District Office.

Putting it all together

We've done a number of exercises to get you ready to write your essay.

1. We've put together a proposal argument in all three forms
2. We've gathered some sources and
   
3. We've patched together a mini essay.

Now we need to put it all together.

Here's an easy way to do it.

1. Start with the categorical proposal argument. For example:

"The 4.5 day school will be good for Lyman High School and the district because it will save wear and tear on the carpets and reduce the chances of accidents and of the school being sued."

2. Describe the problem the 4.5 day week will solve and back up your assertions with evidence. For example:

"Right now there is a problem in Lyman High School. The carpets are wearing away faster than we are able to replace them [list examples of places in the school where wear and tear is especially bad]. Here is what the carpet looks like in the Social Studies wing of the building.



This lack of maintenance is leading to ugly halls and tripping hazards. [list some occasions where an accident was narrowly averted, or actually happened]. If Lyman High School is to avoid getting sued for negligence, it will need to take action. [list some case examples of when schools were sued for neglecting their physical facilities]."

3. Present the solution to the problem using a causal proposal argument. For example:

"A 4.5 day week will lead to a significant reduction in the wear and tear on the carpets, which will lead to a reduction in the chance of hallway accidents and thus reduce the chance of the school getting sued for negligence."

4. Present evidence to back up your claim. For example:

According to an article in the Nosehair Gazette the Nosehair High School reduced their carpet wear and tear by 50 percent by going to a 4.5 day week (citation here). A study done by Dr. Horace Q. McSpankenplatter showed that, statistically, the shorter the school week, the less the chance of the school being sued (citation here).

5. Conclude with a resemblance argument to get your point across with a poetic twist. For example:

"Instituting the 4.5 day week in Lyman High School is like maintaining your car. Sure, it costs a little in the short run, but your car will last much longer and you'll probably never get stuck in the middle of nowhere with a blown tire or a smoking engine. Isn't the fiscal stability and the safety of the students worth it?"

If you've been keeping up on the assignments thus far, you should already have a good start on this paper. As always, I am happy to help you.

Proposal Argument

Today we will cast your essay into the proposal argument forms. A proposal argument is essentially identifying a problem and then proposing a solution to it. In its simplest form, it looks like this:

We should do X because ...

And then you fill in the reason for X and your evidence supporting it.

Here's an example of a proposal argument.

We should get out of school early today because a 30-foot tall pygmy shrew is destroying the city.



1. You can present proposal arguments in three different forms. The first is called the categorical claim. It looks like this:

We should do X because X is a Y.

For example:

We should eat pygmy shrew for dinner tonight because eating it is a demonstration of community pride.

2. The second is called the causal claim (in other words, one thing causes the other). It looks like this.

We should do X because X will lead to good consequences.

For example:

We should eat pygmy shrew for dinner tonight because eating it will lead to a more sanitary neighborhood.

3. The final proposal argument is the resemblance claim (in other words, one thing is LIKE the other). It looks like this.

We should do X because X is like Y.

For example:

We should eat pygmy shrew for dinner tonight because smelling the rotting corpse of the 30-foot pygmy shrew the National Guard shot down is like living next to a sea of rancid diapers.

Your assignment for the day is to cast your argument into these three versions of the proposal argument: the categorical, the causal, and the resemblance versions.

When you are finished, please let me take a look at it. Then email it to me by copying the text and pasting it into the the email body.

I am happy to assist you at any time.

Thursday fun

All right, me lads and lassies. During the past two days we've put together two very important elements for our essays.

1. We've got ourselves a thesis

2. We've got ourselves a few supporting quotes and citations.

Now let's put them together into a mini essay.

This is how you do it.

1. Write an introduction. The introduction will:

a. Grab the reader's attention.
b. Tell the reader what your thesis is.

2. Write 2 body paragraphs supported by your evidence. A body paragraph will:

a. Quote the evidence
b. Cite the evidence.
c. Show why the evidence supports your thesis.

3. Write a concluding paragraph. This paragraph will sum up the information and reiterate the thesis statement.

Let me give you an example of how one of these mini-essays might look:

Hey. did you just fart? I can't believe you! Don't you know that farting will hasten the ice age?

It's true! According to a study performed at Stanford University, places with high incidence of farting are prone to be colder than places scoring low on the fart index. Don't you see? The more you fart, the colder it will get.

If you don't believe me, go to www.putacorkinit.com. It tracks the fart index of every capital city in the United States. Minneapolia, Minnesota and Pierre, North Dakota - the two coldest capital cities in America - also score highest on the fart index. Isn't the correlation obvious?

So remember, before you let one rip, consider the damage you will do.

Email me your mini essay by the end of the class.

More To Do

Today you will receive your thesis to argue. So your job for the hour is to start researching.

I would like you to come up with three quotes that support your argument.

"Put the relevant quote in quotation marks"

Then make the citation by writing:

1. The name of the web site

2. The name of the article.

3. The name of the author (it there is one)

4. The URL

Email me the three quotes and citations in the body of the email (not as an attachment) by the end of class.

To Do List

1. Google this: "4-day school week"

2. Read through at least 5 of the articles that come up.

3. Make a list of the concerns these articles bring up.

4. Make a list of the arguments in favor of the 4-day school week.

5. Make a list of the top three (3) concerns and the top three (3) favorable arguments you'd like to address in your essay.

6. Send the list you made for #5 to my email: carters@uinta6.k12.wy.us I will make assignments based on these lists. Hopefully you'll all get something you want to work with.

The Plan for the Term

You will put together one (1) paper, at least three (3) pages long arguing for the schedule of your choice.

The paper will address one (1) thesis.

The paper will be argumentative in structure.

The paper will incorporate original research done by you.

The paper will include at least one (1) graphic that clarifies the information you are
presenting.

Your thesis and research will be different than anyone else’s.

You will put together one (1) short speech (30 seconds long) based on your paper.

The speech will be argumentative in structure.

The speech will incorporate at least one visual element meant to clarify your information.

You will present the speech to the class.

You will present the speech to the school board during their January meeting.

The Results

Turns out that the block schedule wasn't as popular as everyone thought it was.

Taking a vote from each class, we came up with the following tallies:

Traditional Schedule: 4 votes

Block Schedule: 4 votes

4 1/2 Day Schedule: 23 votes

So it seems our job is to convince the board to institute the 4 1/2 day week.

Block vs 4 1/2 day

Today Mr. Limoges came in to discuss block scheduling since the school board has been considering implementing it in the school.

Mr. Limoges is against implementing block scheduling for two reasons:

1. He found that block schools tend to perform 4 percent lower on the PAWS test than traditional schools.

2. He found that a student would miss more class time with certain classes on a block schedule than he or she would on a traditional schedule (though the student would also tend to get to more of certain other classes).

The students said they liked the block schedule because they would have less homework since teachers would tend to instruct for 60 minutes and let the class do homework for the remaining 30 minutes.

In response, Mr. Limoges argued that the students would be losing 60 minutes of instruction time each week, which he thought was unacceptable.

The students responded that they would have more access to the teacher during the homework process, which would be of more benefit to them than the extra direct instruction.

Mr. Limoges didn't agree that this facilitated homework time was as educationally effective as direct instruction time. Thus, this is a point we have to gather data on if we want to convince Mr. Limoges.

The class also argued with Mr. Limoges' assertion that block schools had lower PAWS scores. Since block schedule schools tend to have a lower dropout rate, they would tend to keep students that didn't perform well in school. These students would tend to depress their average PAWS scores, whereas traditional schools could get rid of those low performing students and increase their average PAWS scores.

At the end Mr. Limoges proposed the 4 1/2 day school week. In this schedule the student would still take 8 slightly longer classes, but skip two of them each day. They would also get a 20 minutes study hall period. On Friday the students would go to all 8 classes (though they would be shortened) and then leave at 12:30.

A lot of people really liked the 4 1/2 day schedule.

World Poverty Part 2

Today we discussed the rest of Peter Singer's argument.

During World Poverty Part 1 we put together a list of concerns about Singer's argument. They were:

1. We don't think the money we donate will actually reach the needy.

2. Most people don't donate their money, why should we?

3. So I'm never supposed to have fun again?

Being a good arguer, Singer had already anticipated these concerns and addressed them in the second part of the essay.

1. (We don't think the money we donate will actually reach the needy.) The $200 estimate was made with the knowledge that there are sometimes dictators that hijack supply planes, administrative costs, embezzlement, etc. All of those eventualities were accounted for in the $200 estimate.

2. (Most people don't donate their money, why should we?) Basing your morality on other people's morality is fallacious. It's called following the crowd. You alone are responsible for your own morality.

3. (So I'm never supposed to have fun again?) Think about it this way. Every $200 you spend over your needs could have saved a child. What is more valuable, $200 or the life of a child. At the beginning of the argument you agreed with me that the life of a child is not only more valuable than $200 but more valuable than a million dollar car. Life is more important than stuff. Therefore, every time you spend money on a luxury, you have chosen to not save a child's life.

During the course of our discussions the main concern we voiced that Singer was unable to answer was: "Give me the hard numbers. Show me that my money will make it to the needy." Since Singer was writing for The New Yorker, he wasn't anticipating an audience that would want lots of numbers to go through. Had he been writing for a more academic publication he certainly would have included the numbers.

The most interesting thing about the discussion to me was that everyone in the room agreed that a life was more important than stuff (and that, by extension, a life was more important than $200), but that everyone fought against applying that principle in a practical way. No one was willing to forgo their X-box or their new prom dress to save a life.

New Reading Day By-laws

To help you all take better advantage of reading days, I am instituting the following by-laws:

1. One reading day = 10 points. This means that if you don't read during a reading day, the points you can get on your book report decreases by 10 points.

2. You must read the book you are going to report on during reading time.

3. People who do not want to read during reading day will write essays instead.

These new by-laws go into effect immediately and will apply to the next book report.

World Poverty Part 1

Tuesday we read and discussed a few pages of Peter Singer's essay "The Singer Solution to World Poverty," which you can read by clicking on the link.

In the essay he gives us the story of Dora,

"Dora is a retired schoolteacher who makes ends meet by sitting at the station writing letters for illiterate people. Suddenly she has an opportunity to pocket $1,000. All she has to do is persuade a homeless 9-year-old boy to follow her to an address she has been given. (She is told he will be adopted by wealthy foreigners.) She delivers the boy, gets the money, spends some of it on a television set and settles down to enjoy her new acquisition. Her neighbor spoils the fun, however, by telling her that the boy was too old to be adopted — he will be killed and his organs sold for transplantation."

"Should Dora go save the child?"he asks. To which we replied, "Of course." Then he continues, "Is there a moral difference between Dora buying a television at the cost of a child's life, and an American buying a television when he knows that the money he will spend on the television will save a child's life?"

Pretty much everyone in the class thought there was a huge difference. Encapsulated, most of us argued that we are not aiding the killing of children through our purchase the way Dora did.

Singer then gives us the parable of Bob and his Bugatti.

Bob is close to retirement. He has invested most of his savings in a very rare and valuable old car, a Bugatti, which he has not been able to insure. The Bugatti is his pride and joy. In addition to the pleasure he gets from driving and caring for his car, Bob knows that its rising market value means that he will always be able to sell it and live comfortably after retirement. One day when Bob is out for a drive, he parks the Bugatti near the end of a railway siding and goes for a walk up the track. As he does so, he sees that a runaway train, with no one aboard, is running down the railway track. Looking farther down the track, he sees the small figure of a child very likely to be killed by the runaway train. He can't stop the train and the child is too far away to warn of the danger, but he can throw a switch that will divert the train down the siding where his Bugatti is parked. Then nobody will be killed -- but the train will destroy his Bugatti. Thinking of his joy in owning the car and the financial security it represents, Bob decides not to throw the switch. The child is killed. For many years to come, Bob enjoys owning his Bugatti and the financial security it represents.

Pretty much the whole class thought Bob had done the wrong thing. Many of us said we would not be able to live with ourselves if we had committed such an act. "If you have the chance to save a child, you should," we argued.

And that's where Peter Singer gets us. He tells us that it takes only $200 to save a child's life in a third-world country and then gives us the phone numbers of two organizations that we can donate to.

If you still think that it was very wrong of Bob not to throw the switch that would have diverted the train and saved the child's life, then it is hard to see how you could deny that it is also very wrong not to send money to one of the organizations listed above.

Singer has essentially put us in the role of Bob. We are standing at the railroad switch whenever we have $200 above and beyond our needs. Every time we spend $200 on a commodity, we are letting a child die.

The reaction to Singer's idea was pretty unanimous. No one in class liked it. "What?" we were saying, "you mean that we can't buy books or a new CD or a computer game because to do so would mean that we're deliberately letting a kid die?" Most of us were unwilling to live under the weight of this moral onus.

We'll see how our discussion continues next week.

Weak Logos

Today we watched a clip from The Awful Truth where Michael Moore tries to get presidential candidates to jump in a mosh pit in order to get the show's endorsement. He goes from candidate to candidate without any luck until he meets up with Alan Keyes who does indeed body surf on the mosh pit.

We decided that Moore's thesis was that a person who was willing to dive into a mosh pit would make a good president.

Moore's ethos was right on for most of the classes. We tended to like Moore's "normal guy" ethos. He doesn't dress well, he's not too handsome, he's kinda big, but he doesn't seem to care. Many students said they identified with him more, and trusted him more because of this ethos. Other students were completely turned off by him, however.

Moore made good use of pathos as well, bringing in music from Rage Against the Machine to get our blood pumping, and structuring the show along good storytelling lines ending with the victory of getting Alan Keyes to jump into the pit. He also encouraged our disdain of all the candidates who were too stuck up to jump in.

It was Moore's logos that seemed to suffer. Though he presented a clear thesis, "a person who can jump into a mosh pit would make a good president," he didn't bring up any reasons why this is so.

Some students pointed out that the reasons were presented subtly. For example, they argued that a person who is willing to be a normal, fun loving person would be able to gain the trust and loyalty of Americans more easily than a stuffed shirt. They also argued that such a candidate would be able to work well with the nation's youth.

Three Puppets

Tuesday we made logos, ethos and pathos concrete in our minds by channeling them through puppets.

I started things by arguing that farting in public would lead to the next ice age. I established my ethos by putting on a puppet with a uniform and having him be Colonel Sanders, head of Homeland Security. He used his drill sergeant voice to bring us to attention and then told us that the study we were about to hear had been conducted over 30 years and had cost 50 million dollars.

This established a few things in the audience's mind. First, a guy as important at Colonel Sanders was standing behind this project. And second, that a lot of time, thought and money had gone into the findings. This is a good ethos, it makes us more willing to believe the actual argument.

Next I took out a doctor doll and used her to say that she had been studying weather patterns for 30 years and had found a definite link between public farting and the chilling of the atmosphere. She also said that public farting was the leading cause of the progress of the ice age, even more so than the flapping of butterfly wings.

This is good logos because the doctor gave actual reasons backed up by data.

Finally I brought out Bobby Sue Ellen McGee, a mother of 10 children who all wanted to go to Disneyland with all their sweet innocent little hearts. Bobby had been saving for this trip for years. But if the ice age comes too soon, they won't be able to go to Disneyland and the hearts of her children will be broken beyond repair. "For the sake of the children, stop farting in public," she plead.

This was good pathos because it was aimed at our emotions. No one wants to disappoint 10 little kids. Especially when their mother has scrimped for so many years to help them fulfill their dream of going to Disneyland.