On Note-taking.

Every time I take a course or read a book, I notice that I take excessive notes. I underline, highlight, write nearly as much as the book itself. And every single time I think about how obsessive my behavior is, but I can hardly change it. The entire point of taking notes is to highlight what's important: what may be on a test, what you'd like to remember for the future, anything that might be useful. So why do I highlight so much? I have two theories, and they both mostly revolve around memory.

First is what would amount to test anxiety. I'm afraid that if I leave anything at all out, I'll miss the important bit and fail the whole class or miss the point of the whole book. Of course, I don't think that's actually true but on some level, the odds are in its favor. I feel like I'm not going to remember my thoughts by the time I get to the next chapter and then what if I want to make an argument based on the whole book?

Secondly, I am an autodidact and I want to remember everything, so I figure the muscle memory of writing it down will help my recall. Or if not, the topic will be close at hand in a handy notebook, or my thoughts on a piece will have been recorded. Many people have this desire -- to be a walking encyclopedia, to retain everything you read and be able to speak intelligently on any topic you study. I just want to learn the material thoroughly and not forget it when I pick up something else.

 So what to do when you have a book full of underlines, a notebook full of notes? How is that any easier than having a blank book? Well, in the case of the notebook -- something is better than nothing, although it will still be quite the challenge to find what's necessary. However, the second one closes a notebook, it often ends up sitting on the shelf for years in its exact state. As for texts, sifting through one riddled with underlines is much the same as sifting through a brand new book with no markers of importance at all.

Solutions:
I thought it wouldn't be fair to myself to withhold from trying to come up with a solution.

For the first problem, instead of taking "notes," I ought to write brief summaries every now and then. At the end of each chapter if possible, or every few paragraphs. Whenever I feel I have a grasp on the material. That way I have a better idea of what might be important and I can turn the material over in my head, which will help me learn it better as well.

Secondly, I need to start reading closer and deeper the first time around. I need to meditate on the text, turn it around in my head and think about it from every possible point of view. Question it, read between the lines. Look at the syntax and diction. Form an opinion on different aspects of the text. I'm getting better at doing this, but it takes a lot of time and practice.


Maybe if I keep talking about it, it will start to come together. I hope so. Copying entire lectures and reading assignments is really harmful to my learning because I don't really digest the words that I copy -- I read superficially as I copy and that's no bueno.

Anyone else have similar problems?

Thoughts on Wilfrid Sellars

This post was inspired by the reading I've done for an online course called Ideas of the 20th Century, available at http://www.edx.org. The readings for this course included a selection from "Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man" by Wilfrid Sellars, and I've been thinking a lot about his writings. Some of the text that inspired these thoughts is below the entry, but not all of it. It's enough to give a general idea. I very well may have interpreted his writing wrong, so feel free to correct/argue with  me if you'd like.

Sellars states in his essay that each man is different in each situation. A man is different at a doctor's appointment than he is at work, than he is with his family. There are many different versions of this man, each with its own set of values and norms and his point of view shifts depending upon where he is. I like this idea of multiplicity, and I like his description of community which is in the text below. A person belongs to different communities, and his norms and intentions derive from all of these communities. The community that he feels most a part of is the community that will have most influence on his decisions and standards. The path of your rationality is determined by the community's standards and how yours work within theirs, as well. It's a giant web, your associations always having an influence.

I would assume you tend to gravitate toward similar communities and so the standards of each rarely conflict. If they do, you'd have to find a compromise or choose which is closer to your own set of morals.

Anywho, this isn't very deep and it's not a real analysis of the text but it got me thinking. Back to class.

"An individual may belong to many communities, some of which overlap, some of which are arranged like Chinese boxes. The most embracing community to which he belongs consists of those with whom he can enter into meaningful discourse. The scope of the embracing community is the scope of 'we' in its most embracing non-metaphorical use. 'We', in this fundamental sense (in which it is equivalent to the French 'on' or English 'one') is no less basic than the other 'persons' in which verbs are conjugated. Thus, to recognize a featherless biped or dolphin or Martian as a person is to think of oneself and it as belonging to a community.

Now, the fundamental principles of a community, which define what is 'correct' or 'incorrect', 'right' or 'wrong', 'done' or 'not done', are the most general common intentions of that community with respect to the behaviour of members of the group. It follows that to recognize a featherless biped or dolphin or Martian as a person requires that one think thoughts of the form, 'We (one) shall do (or abstain from doing) actions of kind A in circumstances of kind C'. To think thoughts of this kind is not to classify or explain, but to rehearse an intentions.

Thus the conceptual framework of persons is the framework in which we think of one another as sharing the community intentions which provide the ambience of principles and standards (above all, those which make meaningful discourse and rationality itself possible) within which we live our own individual lives. A person can almost be defined as a being that has intentions.Thus the conceptual framework of persons is not something that needs to be reconciled with the scientific image, but rather something to be joined to it. Thus, to complete the scientific image we need to enrich it not with more ways of saying what is the case, but with the language of community and individual intentions, so that by construing the actions we intend to do and the circumstances in which we intend to do them in scientific terms, we directly relate the world as conceived by scientific theory to our purposes, and make it our world and no longer an alien appendage to the world in which we do our living. We can, of course, as matters now stand, realize this direct incorporation of the scientific image into our way of life only in imagination. But to do so is, if only in imagination, to transcend the dualism of the manifest and scientific images of man-ofthe- world. "