PROFESSOR: So, welcome to

Philosophy and the Science of

Human Nature.
It's nice see so many
of you here today.
I hope to see more of you
here again on Thursday.
And my goal today is to try to
give you a sense of what kind
of course this is going to be
so that you can make an
informed decision about whether
this is a course that
you actually want to enroll
in for credit.
With that aim in mind, there are
three things I want to do
in today's lecture.
In the first part of the
lecture, I'm just going to
give you a very broad overview
of what kind of course this
is, and to say a few words about
what my goals are for
the course.
In the bulk of the lecture, what
I'm going to do is to run
through three examples of the
kinds of topics that we're
going to be addressing this
semester, so that you have a
sense of what kind of
material we're going
to be talking about.
And in the final section of
the course, I'll say a few
things about what it is that
makes this course distinctive,
and a few things about the
course's requirements.
So the course has this
perplexing cross-listed title.
It's called Philosophy and the
Science of Human Nature, and
it's listed both in Philosophy
and in Cognitive Science, and
it's a course for which you
can get credit in the
Psychology major.
So what kind of course
is this?
Well, in some ways, this is a
course like Directed Studies
Philosophy or Philosophy
125-126.
That is, we're going to be
reading works by Plato, by
Aristotle, by Epictetus, by
Boethius, by Hobbes, by Hume,
and by Mill--
all major philosophers
from the Western
philosophical tradition.
We're going to be reading them
roughly historically, with an
attempt to get at some of the
kinds of questions that one
would get at in a traditional
philosophy course.
In addition, you'll get some of
the material that you would
get in an ethics course.
So one of the topics that we'll
cover in Philosophy and
the Science of Human Nature
are the three main ethical
theories in the Western
philosophical tradition.
We'll talk about utilitarianism,
we'll talk
about deontology, and we'll talk
about virtue ethics, and
we'll talk about how those
relate to one another.
You'll also get some of the
materials that you would get
if you took an introduction to
political philosophy course.
We'll very briefly look at the
work of Thomas Hobbes on the
legitimacy of the state, and
then we'll read and think
about the debate between John
Rawls and Robert Nozick about
how much weight should be given
to the relative values
of equality on one hand and
liberty on the other.
So in that regard, this is,
in some ways, a standard
philosophy course in the moral
and political tradition.
It's not a course in
metaphysics; it's not a course
in epistemology; it's not a
course where we're going to be
talking about issues like free
will or the mind-body problem,
all of which could legitimately
fall under the
topic of philosophy
of human nature.
But what's distinctive about
this course is that in
addition to the contributions
that are made by the
philosophical side of the
equation, we're also going to
be drawing from a number
of other disciplines.
So one of the main themes of
the course will be to think
about how the questions raised
by the traditional
philosophers that I've mentioned
already are picked
up in the contemporary cognitive
science tradition.
In particular, how they're
picked up by what I see as one
of the main strands in
contemporary cognitive
science, the strand that looks
at the relation between human
beings as rational creatures,
capable of a certain kind of
calculated and reflective
understanding of themselves
and their place in the world,
and, on the other hand, human
beings as evolved animals who
are subject to forces that lie
beyond their rational control.
In light of that recognition
that human beings are capable
of being affected in multiple
ways, we'll look at a number
of writings from psychology.
So we'll read some Freud; we'll
have a discussion of
cognitive behavioral therapy;
we'll talk about
post-traumatic stress
disorder; we'll have
discussion of happiness, using
a wonderful book written by a
Yale alumnus, Jonathan Haidt.
We'll look at some work on
self-regulation, on love and
friendship, and we'll also
look at empirical work on
topics like moral reasoning
and punishment, and social
psychological work on situations
and attitudes.
So a lot of the material that
we'll address in this course
will come from psychology.
But some of it will also come
from the tradition of
political science.
So in the course of discussing
the legitimacy of the state,
we'll introduce ourselves
to the notion of
the prisoners' dilemma.
We'll talk about the tragedy
of the commons, and in the
closing section of the course,
we'll talk about the role of
rhetoric and argument in
political persuasion.
We'll also draw from the field
of behavioral economics.
One of the reading assignments
is to listen to Daniel
Kahneman's Nobel Prize speech,
accepting the Nobel Price on
behalf of himself and his
collaborator, Amos Tversky,
for the extraordinary
work they did
founding behavioral economics.
But we'll also look at some
additional work in the dual
processing tradition, and we
have some excerpts from Dan
Ariely's delightful
book, public book
on behavioral economics.
Finally, we'll even draw a
little bit from literature.
We're going to read a short
excerpt from the Iliad; we're
going to read a short story by
Ursula LeGuin; and in the
second to last lecture of the
course, we'll look at what
Plato has to say about the
role of literature and
artistic representation
in affecting human
self-understanding.
So what I'm going to try to do
in the course is to bring
together these eight fields in a
way that provides a coherent
story about what kind of things
human beings are, and
how we can learn about what kind
of things human beings
are from these various
perspectives.
In slogan form, the structure
of the course is dead guy on
Tuesday, cog sci on Thursday.
Except not all the philosophers
we're reading are dead.
And not all of them are guys.
And not all the other
fields are cog sci.
And in fact, most things are
going to be covered together
on Tuesday and Thursday.
And there are going
to be sections.
But other than that,
the slogan.

So that's an overview of the

kinds of disciplines that
contribute to the course.
Let me say a bit about the
specific topics that I hope to
address in the course
of the semester.
So the first overarching topic,
and I roughly organized
the syllabus under these three
topics, but in some way, each
of them will keep re-emerging
throughout the semester.
The first topic is the topic of
happiness and flourishing.
What does the ancient Western
philosophical tradition say
about what it takes for human
beings to thrive in a
meaningful sense, and how does
that connect to work that's
been done more recently in
various literary and
scientific traditions about what
it is that enables human
beings to flourish?
What is it about human nature
that can give us some clue
about what kind of thing
authentic happiness might be?
That's the first set of
questions that we'll address.
It turns out that the ancient
philosophers' answer to that
question is that human beings
thrive when their souls are
well-ordered, to use the
ancient metaphor.
When the parts of their souls
that might pull in different
directions are in a certain
kind of harmony; and the
ancient picture is that when
that happens, human beings
behave in a moral way.
And so the second part of the
course will look at both what
it feels like from the inside
to behave in ways that are
conventionally considered
moral, and from a higher
level, what it is that we mean
when we say that an act is
moral or immoral.
So as I mentioned, we'll look
at the three main Western
philosophical conceptions of
morality, and we'll also look
at some interesting
related questions.
Like, why is punishment
justified when it is?
And is the justification
for punishment
psychological or ethical?
And in the final unit of the
course, we'll move beyond the
individual into society as a
whole, and ask some questions
about what it is that makes
political structures
legitimate, and how it is that
state or civic institutions
ought to be organized
in order to allow
human beings to flourish.
So those are the three main
topics that we'll be
addressing, and as you can see,
on the syllabus that I've
handed out, there are
highlighted examples of a few
of those particular topics that
we're addressing on page
one of the syllabus, and a
much more detailed set of
questions on pages
three and four.
But in addition to being about
the content of these
questions, this is also a
course that's going to
encourage you to think about the
methodology of each of the
disciplines from which
we're drawing.
So it's my goal to introduce you
to a number of traditional
philosophical discussions of the
human being, but it's also
my goal to get you to think
about what these philosophical
discussions have in common, and
why it is that thinking
about things in the way that
philosophy thinks about things
can be valuable for answering
questions that we care about.
And we'll do something very
similar with respect to the
other disciplines.
We'll look at the literature
from psychology and behavioral
economics and political science
and literature, and
we'll ask: what is it about this
distinctive approach to
answering these questions
that provides us with a
complementary insight on the
issues that the philosophers
have raised?
And finally, I'm going to ask
you to think not only in the
context of this class, but in
the context of the other
classes you're taking about the
ways in which the material
to which you're being exposed
sheds light through multiple
disciplinary perspectives on
the set of questions that
we're concerned with.
So that's the opening segment
of the lecture.
That what I had called the
"overview and course topics"
section of the class.
And what I want to do now is to
give you three examples of
the kinds of topics that we'll
be addressing this semester.
So the first example I'm going
to give is actually drawn from
the readings that we'll
be doing for Thursday.
And it's a story from Plato's
Republic called the story of
the ring of Gyges.
I'll give you a little bit more
background on Thursday
about where this story fits in
the context of the book from
which it's drawn, but for now,
all you need to know is that
there's a character named
Glaucon who's actually one of
the brothers of Plato, the
author of this dialogue.
And Glaucon is in conversation
with the great ancient Greek
philosopher Socrates, and he's
trying to convince Socrates
that when people act morally,
the only reason they do it is
because they can't
get away with it.
So even if you've shopped only
for today, you'll have a
chance to hear some Plato.
So I'm going to read
aloud to you these
numbers on the right.
I'll explain to you next
class, they're called
Stephanus numbers.
They enable you, whichever
translation of Plato you're
using to find the
same passage.
And what I'm reading to you from
is from Stephanus pages
359 to 360.
So:
"There was once a shepherd named
Gyges in the service of
the ruler of Lydia.
There was a giant thunderstorm,
and an
earthquake broke open the ground
and created a chasm at
the place where he was
tending his sheep.
Seeing this, he was filled
with amazement and
went down into it.
And there he saw a hollow
bronze horse.
There were window-like openings
in it, and peeking
in, he saw a corpse wearing
nothing but a
gold ring on his finger.
So he took the ring and came
out of the chasm."
"He wore the ring at his usual
monthly meeting that reported
to the king on the state
of the flocks.
And as he was sitting among
the others, he happened to
turn the setting of the ring
towards himself, to the inside
of the hand.
And when he did this, he became
invisible to those
sitting near him, and
they went on talking
as if he had gone.
He wondered about this, and
fingering the ring, he turned
the setting outwards again,
and became visible.
So he experimented with the ring
to test whether it indeed
had this power, and it did.
If he turned the setting inward,
he became invisible,
and if he turned it outward,
he became visible again."
"When he realized this, he
arranged to become one of the
messengers sent to report
to the king.
And when he arrived there, he
seduced the king's wife, with
her help, attacked and killed
the king, and took over the
kingdom."
So that's the story of
the ring of Gyges.
Now why is it that Glaucon
tells that story?
Glaucon tells that story with
the expectation that you, upon
hearing this, will think that
you would act as Gyges did, if
you had the opportunity
to get away with crime
without being caught.
Glaucon's conclusion from this
story is that those who
practice justice, those who
act in conformity with the
moral code of their society,
do so because they lack the
power to do injustice.
They act in that way because
they fear the
punishment of society.
They don't act in that way
because it's in any way
valuable to them.
And the reading that we're
going to do for this
Thursday's class includes both
the text that surrounds the
story that I just told you.
So the setup wherein Glaucon
raises the challenge of which
this is supposed to be an
example, and the conversation
between Glaucon and Socrates
that follows the posing of the
challenge through this story.
And in addition, we're going
to read some empirical
psychological work on the
question of what people do
when they think they
are unobserved.
So we're going to ask the
question whether, as a matter
of fact, people would, and
whether, as a matter of fact,
people should behave
as Gyges did.
That's the first example of the
kind of topic we're going
to address in the course.
A second set of topics that
we'll address in the course
will take off from a particular
philosophical
example that has become quite
popular in contemporary
discussions of morality, but
which is actually traceable,
about 40 years old, to some
writings by Philippa Foot, and
the philosopher Judith
Thomson.
And the case, with which I
suspect some of you are
familiar, involves a trolley
which is hurtling down the
track in the direction of five
people, and if the trolley is
not turned, it will hit
this group of five.
Now, the question that
philosophers like to pose is
the following.
Suppose that there were a switch
which you could use
that would divert the trolley so
that instead of hitting the
five people, it would go down
a branch track and hit one.
When we have our course
clickers, we'll be able to do
this scientifically.
For now, I just want
a show of hands.
How many people think it is
either morally permitted or
morally required, that is,
either permitted or required,
not forbidden, to switch the
trolley in such a way that it
hits the one person, rather
than the five?
How many think it's either
permitted or required to
switch the trolley so that one
person dies rather than five?
[pause]
OK.
And how many of you think it's
morally forbidden to turn the
trolley so that it kills one
person rather than five?
How many of you think it's
morally forbidden, prohibited?
[pause]
OK.
So as I said, we don't have
the clickers, but a vast
majority of the class believes
that it's either permitted or
required to divert
the trolley.
Now, suppose we had a slightly
different situation.
Instead of the one person being
on the tracks, there is,
rather, a bridge that rests
over the trolley tracks.
And atop the bridge, a large
gentleman of ample girth such
that were you to dislodge him
from his present location
using the same switch that you
used in the last case, he
would be sufficiently weighty
to prevent the trolley from
hitting the five.
How many of you think it is
morally required or morally
permitted to push the fat man
off the bridge to prevent the
trolley from hitting the five?
[pause]
And how many of you think it
is morally prohibited?

Hands up again?
[pause]
All right.
We have a very, very different
spread this time.
Now suppose we end up at the
hospital, and the five who
were lying on the track when
the trolley didn't hit them
are terribly injured in such a
way that one needs a heart,
one needs a lung, one needs a
leg, one needs an arm, one
needs an eye.
And in walks a healthy gentlemen
with exactly the
organs required to
save the five.
How many of you think it is
morally required or morally
permitted to cut up the
one to save the five?
[pause]
I won't sit with you in the
hospital waiting room.
That was three hands.
How many of you think it
is morally prohibited?
[pause]
All right.
Suppose there is a bear
running towards you.
You're standing in line of
people, and there's a bear
running towards you.
How many of you think it's
morally permitted to move out
of the bear's way if the bear
is running towards you?
[pause]
OK.
Now when that happens, the
bear's going to eat the guy
who is right behind you.
OK.
Case number two.
Suppose there's a bear
running towards you.
How many of you think it's
morally permitted to reach
behind you, and take that guy
and put him in front of you to
shield you from the bear?
[pause]
Very different distribution
of hands.
OK.
What's going on here?
In the original switch case
where we turn the trolley, one
person's going to die if we turn
the trolley, and five are
going to live.
In the push the fat man case,
if we push the fat man, one
person's going to die, and five
people are going to live.
In the patient in the hospital
case, we bring him into the
hospital and cut him up.
One person's going to die, and
five people are going to live.
In the bear case, when you
duck, and he gets the guy
behind you, the guy behind
you dies, and you live.
In the bear case, where you take
the guy behind you, put
him in front of you, and use
him as a shield, the guy
behind you dies and you live.
So the second set of topics that
I want to let you know
we'll be talking about is the
following; What is it that
explains the differences in our
reactions to these cases?
Is there genuinely a morally
relevant difference between
diverting the trolley so that
it kills the one rather than
the five, and pushing the fat
man, so the trolley kills the
one rather than the five?
Or is the difference in our
reaction to those two cases
merely psychological?
Is there really a moral
difference between ducking in
such a way that a harm that was
heading towards you hit
somebody else instead, and
shields you, so that a harm
that is heading towards
you is visited upon
someone else instead?
What is it that explains the
differences in our reactions
in these cases?
What moral implications does
that have, and what
psychological implications
does that have?
So that's the second set of
examples that I want to give
you, a topic that we'll
be addressing.
Third set of examples.
I imagine some of you
are familiar with
the following situation.
You go to the library intending
sincerely to read
the Plato that has been assigned
to you for the next
lecture and you find yourself,
instead, answering e-mails.
Or you set for yourself a
dietary regimen, according to
which you will eat large
amounts of fruit and
vegetables, and instead you find
yourself tempted by cake.
Or you commit yourself to saving
up money for some sort
of long-term goal, and instead,
find yourself
distracted by the prospects of
March break in Jamaica with
your roommate, or an iPod touch,
or a new PlayStation 2
device that you can
use to distract
yourself from your reading.
So what is it about human beings
that we can form these
sorts of plans, and then
not act on them?
And what is it that we can do
to make ourselves stick to
commitments that we've made
in moments of reflection?
So the reading that I assigned
to you for today is a very,
very brief chapter from Dan
Ariely's popular book.
It's a chapter on
procrastination.
And in it, he describes a number
of strategies that we
can use to help ourselves
stick to long-term
commitments.
So, for example, one of the
things that people do if they
want to get themselves to read
is that they go to the
library, and they surround
themselves by other people who
are reading.
If you are in a social setting
where other people are
conforming to a standard that
you had set for yourself to
conform to, you may find
yourself conforming to that
standard, and not doing
that which you
will ultimately regret.
If you find yourself incredibly
tempted by food
that you have prohibited to
yourself, it may be helpful to
limit your access to it.
In the chapter that we read,
Dan Ariely describes an
example of what he called the
iced credit card solution,
where, if you have a tendency
to make impulse purchases on
the Internet, you take your
credit card, and you put it in
a glass of water, which you
put into the freezer.
And then, if you want to buy
something, you remove the
credit card from the freezer,
and if, when the water has
melted, you still want to
buy it, then go ahead.
So restricting our immediate
access to items that are
tempting is a way of getting
around the problem.
A third way of getting around
these sorts of problems
involves automatizing
the behavior
that you wish to encourage.
So if I set up a system on my
credit card where every time I
spend $10 an additional $10 goes
into my savings account,
it will turn out that rather
than spending my money on that
which I will buy, I will save
the money for that to which I
am committed.

So the philosophical and

psychological question that
this part of the course raises
is the following: What sort of
beings are there that are
capable, simultaneously, of
planning reflectively and of
not acting on the basis of
their plan?
It looks an awful lot like
exactly the sort of people
that we were getting information
about in our
previous two examples.
They're the kind of beings who
have a reflective self, which
is capable of reason and
commitment, and also aspects
of their selves that respond
non-reflectively to features
in the environment.
So given that, what sorts of
strategies are available to
help these kinds of beings stick
to their reflectively
endorsed plans?

The basic answer is that there

are two kinds of strategies.
One kind of strategy involves
increasing the relative
utility of the reflective
commitment, that is, making it
more salient to you in
whatever kind of way.
That reading and broccoli and
piggy banks are valuable.
And the other sort of strategy
involves reducing the appeal
of the temporarily tempting
strategy: reducing access to
e-mail, reducing access
to the food, making it
harder to take the trip.
So one of the things that
we'll talk about in the
context of the course, both in
small ways and in large ways,
is this fulcrum point of
procrastination as a way of
understanding a large number
of social structures: laws,
moral codes, punishments,
strategies for
self-regulation.
All of these are aspects of
society that play off of the
two fundamental strategies
just described.
They play off of how it is that
either we make certain
things that we reflectively
endorse more valuable, or how
we make certain things that
we wish not to pursue less
acceptable.
So that's the third example of
the kind of topic that we'll
be talking about
this semester.
So what I want to do in the
final few minutes of the
course is to say a little bit
about some distinctive
features of the class.
So the first thing, as some of
you may have noticed, is that
very inconspicuously, in the
back of our room, is a
videographer.
And the videographer in the
back of our room is here
because this class is being
videotaped for the Open Yale
Courses network.
That means that there is a
change that your voice will be
captured on audiotape.
And if that happens, we'll need
to obtain your permission
to reproduce your voice on the
iTunes University version of
this class.
But it's also your chance for
fame and fortune, dudes.

It's my hope that the fact that

this course is with Open
Yale Courses will be as
unobtrusive as possible, but
if any of you have any concerns
about it, please feel
free to be in touch.
The second, and I think more
important thing, that's
distinctive about this course,
is that this course is, in
some ways, about itself.
The pedagogical features of this
course are designed with
the fundamental insight
that underlies all of
the readings in mind.
What I am assuming is that on
reflection, all of you are
committed to reading, and
learning, and engaging with
the material.
And my goal is to make that
as easy and exciting and
interesting for you
as possible.
So as you've noticed from the
syllabus, those of you who
have had a chance to look at
it, there are almost weekly
assignments in this class.
But the weekly assignments are
designed to make you want to
engage with the material.
So, for example, the very first
assignment for this
course, which is described on
the back page of the blue
handout, asks you to think
about whether you want to
commit yourself, voluntarily, to
not having Internet access
during this class, and then to
explain your decision, making
reference to the work on
procrastination that we read
for this week.
Throughout the semester, my goal
will be to make exercises
that engage you in that way.
One of the exercises involves
writing a review of a short
story that we read from the
perspective of one of the two
philosophers that we've read.
One of the assignments involves
designing a week of a
future version of this course.
So though there are ten weekly
assignments, it's my hope that
engaging in those assignments
will keep you
connected to the course.
In fact, a number of the
readings on the syllabus that
appears before you were
suggestions made by students
who took the seminar
version of this
course in previous years.
In addition, as you saw from the
trolley cases, I'm going
to be asking you, in the context
of class, to think
about cases and examples.
And in doing that, it's been
found that making use of
clickers is enormously helpful
to keep students engaged.
So you'll notice that the second
part of next week's
assignment asks you, if you're
enrolled in the course for
credit, to pick up a clicker
at the Bass Library, and to
register its number on
the course website.
So once the course gets going,
starting in the middle of the
second week, we'll be making
use of clickers.
Finally, one of the things
that makes this course
distinctive is that I actually
spent last year, as the Yale
Daily News reports, as
a full-time student.
I had a grant from the Mellon
Foundation that allowed me to
take classes, and so I spent
most of last year sitting in
the back row of classrooms like
this one, listening to
lectures like this one.
Which is how I got the idea
about the turning off the
Internet thing.
Ahem.

But it also helped me realize

that the rhythm of the
semester is a complicated one.
So as you'll see, the second
sentence of the Yale Daily
News article notes, "Her
grades lately have been
sliding a little -- from an
'excellent' on the first two
assignments to only a
'checkmark' for completion on
the most recent two."
I promise I will not post your
grades in the Yale Daily News.
But I promise that I am, as a
result of that experience,
profoundly aware of the ways
in which structuring
assignments with enough advance
notice is crucial for
allowing students to succeed
in the class.
So I've tried to be incredibly
explicit on the syllabus.
And if you look at pages four
and five of the syllabus,
you'll see that there
are five kinds of
requirements for the course.
The first and perhaps the most
important requirement of the
course are the set of readings
that I have assigned you.
And these readings come in two
forms. Roughly half of them
come from the six books which I
have ordered on your behalf
from Labyrinth Books.
All of the books are low-priced
student editions.
All of them are easily available
in used form.
And together, even purchased
new at full price,
they add up to $80.
So some of the assignments come
either from the three
classical works that we'll be
reading, Plato, Aristotle, and
Epictetus, the two contemporary
works that we're
looking at, Jonathan Haidt's
Happiness Hypothesis, and a
book by Jonathan Shea called
Achilles in Vietnam, and
finally, I've asked you to
purchase a small $15
philosophy dictionary, which
is enormously useful for
looking up terms and concepts
with which you might be
unfamiliar.
I realize, however, that some
of you aren't going to have
decided whether you're
taking the
course before this Thursday.
And so even though half of
Thursday's reading comes from
this book, I have put up the
relevant pages on our
Classes*v2 server.
So you can do the reading for
Thursday, even if you haven't
purchased the book.
So roughly half the readings
come from those books.
Roughly half the readings come
from articles, and all of
those readings are available
on the *v2
server for next class.
But in addition to choosing
books that I think are
acceptable and interesting, I've
also made an effort to
provide you with reading guides
to the books in a way
that will orient you in them.
So if you look at the first
three pages of the blue
handout, you will see an example
of a reading guide,
and not just an example of
a reading guide, it's the
reading guide for the
reading on Thursday.
And you'll see that it
does three things.
The first thing that it does,
is it gives you a bit of
background about the author that
we're reading, and the
text from which we're
doing the reading.
The second thing that it does,
is that it highlights the
terms and concepts which I'm
hoping that you will get out
of the material.
Notions and terms that will
enable you to express thoughts
that you might have had, and the
vocabulary that will let
you be in conversation
with others.
And the final thing that the
reading guide has are a set of
questions to focus
your attention
as you do the reading.
There's no requirement
that you write
out answers to these.
You can use them to make notes
for yourselves, you can use
them in conversation with
your classmates.
But you will have, for every one
of the required readings,
this amount of guidance, and
for each of the recommended
and optional readings,
information about the author.
Second important thing
about the course
is lecture and sections.
I really like seeing all these
faces, and I really would love
to see them all semester long.
I promise to give you at least
one fun slide, and probably
more, per lecture.
So I really hope you'll come,
'cause when I post the slides,
you can't see the animation
of the nice shepherd.
So I will try to make lectures
as engaging as possible, and
likewise with sections.
We will make an effort to make
these settings where you can
genuinely engage with the
material and with one another.
It has been pointed out to me
that one of the section times
available is Thursdays from
10:30 to 11:20, which is, of
course, when the
lecture meets.
Obviously that's a typographical
error, and we'll
be adding additional section
times to make up for that.
Section registration happens
in the usual way.
There will, in addition, be ten
brief directed exercises.
I've already said a bit to you
about them, and there's
information on the syllabus
about what point values those
have in determining
your final grades.
There are two short essays.
There will be three assigned,
and you can choose which two
of those you like.
And finally, there will be a
final exam where, in keeping
with the theory of the course, I
will distribute every single
one of the questions that may
appear on the exam in advance.
I will encourage you to learn
that material in a focused and
structured way.
And the exam will consist of
a proper subset of those
questions which you have been
given to prepare in advance.
So that's an overview of what
I plan to do this semester,
first of what kind of course
this is, second, three
examples of topics that we're
going to address, third, some
of the things that are
distinctive about the course
and some of its requirements.
So what questions do you have?

Yeah?

STUDENT: [inaudible]
PROFESSOR: So the question is,
are the videos for the
lectures going to be posted?
And the answer is, the videos
for the lectures take time to
be edited and processed, so they
will be posted, but they
won't be posted during
the class.
I will post the slides after
each lecture, but as you saw
today, the slides don't give
you that much information.
Yes?
STUDENT: [inaudible]
PROFESSOR: No.
Everything in the course is done
electronically; so all
assignments for the course are
to be submitted on the
Classes*v2 server under
assignments.
And the deadline for the first
written exercise is actually
next Tuesday at 10 AM, but
because that's still during
shopping period, that exercise
will be accepted without
penalty until Friday.
But everything for the class,
in terms of submission and
return of exercises, will be
done online on our *v2 site.
Yeah?
STUDENT: When are sections
going to start?
PROFESSOR: When are sections
going to start?
Sections will begin the third
week of the semester.
Yeah?
STUDENT: [inaudible]
PROFESSOR: Yes.
So if you look at the sample
directed exercise which I gave
you, which is on the back
side of the blue sheet.
So the question is, it says that
directed exercises are 1%
to 7% each, will I tell
you how much a
directed exercise is worth?
Answer, yes.
So if you turn over the blue
sheet on the back, you'll see
that the directed exercise for
next week has two parts.
One, take out a clicker;
that's worth one point.
Two, tell me whether you're
going to turn off your
Internet and why.
Briefly.
So the directed exercise will
always say: here's the
question, here's the point
value for the question.

Anything else?
We're actually at
the end of time!
So you all have paced your
questions extraordinarily
well, and I look forward to
seeing you next class.