What courses did you have this semester?

[Agathon]

But he doesn't think that it can form any part of a worthwhile life, since it is a form of μίμησις, and thus an imitation of the real.

The Sophists are not OK. Have you not read the Sophist.

[Fake Boris]

It all depends on how you view it...

I suppose given your specialty, you might have read stuff from R. Bodeus (he was my professor).

In his lectures, he defended the idea that all definitions of the Sophist trace back to one root: it's still a techne, even though it would be tempting to see the comparison with a fisherman as pure mockery. Assuming it isn't, it places the sophist along with other technicians, not below them. The reason why (Plato?) seems to vehemently oppose them is not because of what sophistry is, but rather for what it claims to be.

Past the traditional critique that sophists are just playing with illusions, there appears to be in his dialogues a recognition of what would be a science of manipulating appearances (and not only an appearance of science).

From what I can remember, there is a very short passage in the Statesman where it's said that rhetoric is a science that can be useful to the philosopher king, who is the one who'll know how to use it properly.

I know this detracts from earlier Plato, where he explicitly dismisses rhetoric as a non-science, but my prejudices incite me to take more seriously what he said in his later works. This is why I said this: sophists are okay, however their boasting isn't.

I know there are thousands of way to read Plato, but the one I was taught sounds reasonable...

[Agathon]

The Sophist is pretty clear that the sophists are liars. The Protagoras actually has a more sympathetic view of them IMHO.

[Fake Boris]

But don't you think there's a difference between liar as in "willingly telling lies" and as in "not talking in conformity with the eidos"? One is a moral statement, the other is only a question of knowledge-level (using the hierarchy we know).

[Agathon]

The Division of Kinds in the Sophist makes it clear that the sophist tells falsehoods – there isn't any other way to read it.

[Immortal Wombat]

Why do Agathon's hyphens appear as – ?

[Fake Boris]

He uses a retarded OS on a retarded computer.

[Agathon]

Willingly tells falsehoods.

IM – it's because I use Unicode, which everyone should.

[Immortal Wombat]

Ah yes. Silly Firefox.

[DaShi]

Originally posted by Drogue

Depends what classes they are. Here every subject has 3-4 exams (prelims or mods) in the first year and 8 in the 3rd year (finals). But then we wouldn't have a course in algebra, or differential equations, we'd have one in maths of which those would be a part of it.

Well, I had double majors and minors as well as electives, which stacked them on. The worst semesters were when I had three or more labs a week in addition to classes.

And now I'm doing a job completely different than my degree.

[Jules]

My days of taking classes are nearly over.
This year all I had to do was my major field courses.
The rest of the credits were dissertation research.

International Finance
Open Economy Macroeconomics

[Drogue]

Originally posted by DaShi
Well, I had double majors and minors as well as electives, which stacked them on. The worst semesters were when I had three or more labs a week in addition to classes.

Yes, and we have science courses that have 5 labs per week, every week. Lectures 9-12, labs 2-5 and a report to do a couple of times a week. The number of classes here bears no relation to the amount of work done, as some classes have hideous amounts of work and some don't. A typical class would be around 12 essays every 16 weeks, with a typical student taking three classes.

It's just a different system, though I'm only sure about Oxford and Cambridge, not the rest of the UK. We don't have all classes giving a set number of credits, we don't get to choose what options we take in the first year, and in subsequent years you're given a set of options and you have to choose a certain number from.

The point of this was just to answer that your comment about everyone looks lazy because they're taking fewer than 6 classes doesn't really apply to here, since the number of classes is set, and the workload can still be huge, because our classes aren't done in the same credits way it is in the US.

[DaShi]

Nah, they're still lazy.