Well I wouldn't mind this thread becoming a topic about how to study them.

So is close deletion kind of like fill in the blanks? I can't help but think the questions would just be about dates or names or something. Maybe philosophy is not a memory intensive activity since it primarily deals with abstraction rather than specialized knowledge. I don't doubt I could study the history of philosophy though.

I don't think its a bad idea at all. Sure when you are learning philosophy you have to do a lot more than memorise facts. As you say a lot is about understanding. Nevertheless, it is probably inevitable that you will gradually lose your understanding of a subject, especially if you don't think about it for a long time. Although I haven't studied philosophy before, I did major in mathematics, and most maths courses are pretty much all down to understanding and applying, with practically no fact memorisation required. Even the most complex theorems can usually be derived from a few basic axioms.

However now that I'm doing research I'm depressed about how much I have forgotten from my studies. I've forgotten theorems, proofs and methods that I spent huge amounts of time learning. Someone might ask me about a theorem and I'll be like "Oh yeah that theorem sounds familiar", but I'll have no understanding of what it is or how to use it, despite the fact that at one point I understood it fully. However if I'm forced to revise the stuff (e.g. if I'm tutoring) I find that it is much easier to understand and far more readily accessible for use in discussions for a much longer period of time. This type of revision is basically what SRS is all about, recalling something in your mind as you are forgetting it so it gets embedded in longer term memory.

I think the same thing applies to philosophy. Aside from straight facts, all those logical arguments, and thought processes you use to understand a difficult concept will quickly be forgotten if you don't revise them. I think that using an SRS with some stimulating (but short) questions would be a nice systematic way to keep all those concepts fresh in your mind for the long term. I suggest you give it a try. I'm going try and SRS some maths and see how I go

I think it's kind of a bad idea, but not because I don't think you could learn a lot of things using an SRS.  Rather, I don't think you should be learning the things that you could learn.

I don't really want to argue it fully, mostly because I'm tired, but I think that philosophy is very deeply routed in the traditions, customs, and ways of thinking of a few countries in Europe.  It's sort of come to have it's own traditions, often holding onto very old ideas that really aren't well defined or useful (for example, after Kant everyone was using the terms 'a priori,' and 'necessary' all willy-nilly until Kripke went, "Hey guys, WTF, those are not the same thing."  And even after he did so, I still wonder how useful they actually are).

There's nothing that philosophy needs more than a departure from some of its long-lasting but silly traditions.  I just feel like SRSing would reinforce those traditions in your head.

Great idea! Can't think of a better way to discipline input and hard-wire concepts and definitions in the brain for longer term retention. Also (the SRS) builds a kind of 'memory nexus' or repository that you can always return to or build on.

Your SRS execution will depend hugely on what you're studying and how you're graded - is it logic, ethics, epistemology, history of philosophy, philosophy of history... - is it for an exam or a thesis etc.

Brainstorming, here's how I would do it (someone mentioned Kripke and Kant, but I haven't included refs cos I don't have time to look them up):

Q: How does Kant define an a priori proposition
A: A proposition whose justification does not rely upon experience

Q: How does Kant define an a posteriori proposition
A: A proposition whose justification relies upon experience

Q: Give one examples of a priori propositions in Kant
A: "All bachelors are unmarried"; "7 + 5 = 12."
Extra:
- the justification of these propositions does not depend upon experience (Kant)

Q: How does Kant justify that "All bachelors are unmarried" is an analytic proposition? (CPR A7/B12)
A: The proposition "All bachelors are unmarried" can be known to be true without consulting experience.
Extra:
- examine the subject concept ("bachelors") and see if the predicate concept "unmarried" is contained in it.
- "unmarried" is part of the definition of "bachelor," and so is contained within it.

Q: Give two examples in Kant of synthetic a priori knowledge in mathematical propositions (CPR B15-17)
A: "7 + 5 = 12"; "The shortest distance between two points is a straight line."

Q: Why is "7 + 5 = 12" a synthetic a priori proposition according to Kant?
A: The concept "12" is not contained within the concept "5," or the concept "7," or the concept "+."

Q: Define a posteriori necessities (Kripke)
A: Facts that are necessarily true, though they can be known only through empirical investigation.

Q: Give a simple account of a posteriori necessities (Kripke)
A: Identity claims where two names refer to the same object

Q: Give 3 examples of a posteriori necessities (ref Kripke)
A: “Hesperus is Phosphorus”; “Cicero is Tully”; “Water is H2O”

Q: Why does Kripke state that 'Water is H2O" is an a posteriori necessity?
A: Water and H2O are the same thing, they are identical in every possible world, and truths of identity are logically necessary. But this statement is a posteriori (since it is known only through empirical investigation).

Q: What is identity materialism in the philosophy of mind (ref Kripke)
A: The view that every mental fact is identical with some physical fact

Q: Give an example of identity materialism in the philosophy of mind (ref Kripke)
A: Pain is C-fibers firing

Q: What is Kripke's argument against identity materialism in the philosophy of mind
A: The only way to defend identity materialism is as an 'a posteriori necessary identity' (eg 'pain is C-fibers firing) but such an identity could not be necessary, given the possibility of pain that has nothing to do with C-fibers firing.

Q: Outline at least 2 significant ideas to Kripke's theory of reference
A: (1) proper names are direct references, which don't consist of contained definitions.
(2) one can single out a single thing by a description, but this description is not equivalent with a proper name of this thing.
(3) proper names are directly referential, and not disguised descriptions.
(4) a formal modal logic proof of the necessity of identity.
(5) the concept of a rigid designator.
(6) the idea of a posteriori identity.

Q: Outline Kripke’s main propositions in Naming and Necessity concerning proper names
A: The meaning of a name simply is the object it refers to; a name’s referent is determined by a causal link between some sort of “baptism” and the utterance of the name.

Q: Define Wittgenstein's Rule Following Paradox
A: “no course of action could be determined by a rule, because every course of action can be made out to accord with the rule” (PI §201)

Q: Outline Kripke's mathematical example of Wittgenstein's Rule Following Paradox
A: A general rule or algorithm will contain terms that are susceptible to different and incompatible interpretations.
Extra:
- Suppose you have never added numbers greater than 50 before.
- You are asked to perform the computation '68 + 57'.
- Skeptic: there is no fact about your past usage of the addition function that determines '125' as the right answer.

Q: State how Wittgenstein outlines the Rule Following Paradox
A: "any interpretation still hangs in the air along with what it interprets, and cannot give it any support. Interpretations by themselves do not determine meaning" (PI 198a).

Q: State how Wittgenstein overcomes the Rule Following Paradox
A: We can understand the difference between “obeying” and “going against” the rule in actual cases, that is, without the aid of philosophy.

Q: How does Wittgenstein propose we distinguish between the use or misuse of a rule in actual cases?
A: Obeying a rule is a public practice (PI §202).

* Please could you report back on how you go with this

IceCream wrote:

However, what I can't do, is link those theories to particular philosophers, especially in areas i didn't study intensely. If someone said to me, for example, what do you think of Aristotle's theory of "x", i'd be like, well, what was the theory? Then i could discuss it..

I think I am like this, and if I end up in graduate school, the academic world will say my scholarship lacks rigour. If you look at modern academic papers for instance, they are padded with a long history of all the ideas examining the topic first, and then a small part which contains some substance is a polemic replying to those ideas. There's very little focus in academia today on this issue itself: "What is the issue in reality? What is it's explanation?" is good enough for a full paper to me. At least that's what I believe--but I'll have to develop my knowledge of biography and history to thrive in this situation.

One of my friends at another university is preparing to go to graduate school in philosophy and I think in his undergraduate degree he hasn't had to do any thinking. He can recite agreements and objections by many philosophers about Nietzsche's work, but I don't think he has an idea of his own. His papers are more like "What is Heidegger's response to Nietzsche's XYZ?" not "Is Heidegger correct in his response to Nietzsche?" More horribly, his primary focus is not on reality itself, but simply on replies to Nietzsche. If he engages in something close to philosophy it asks, "Is this response to Nietzsche by Heidegger logically coherent? Not, "Is this even an issue in reality at all? What if Nietzsche had X all wrong in the first place?" Anyway, this is commonplace and is especially good for getting into graduate school because knowing biography and history like this allows you to be a "Nietzsche-scholar" or something along those lines.

That is my complaint, but I'm gonna do it anyway.

ruiner wrote:

SRS is great for studying just about anything, it just depends on how you represent the information and how you study it. That old 'retention' vs. 'processing' model is obsolete.

How so?

Dixon wrote:

IceCream wrote:

However, what I can't do, is link those theories to particular philosophers, especially in areas i didn't study intensely. If someone said to me, for example, what do you think of Aristotle's theory of "x", i'd be like, well, what was the theory? Then i could discuss it..

I think I am like this, and if I end up in graduate school, the academic world will say my scholarship lacks rigour. If you look at modern academic papers for instance, they are padded with a long history of all the ideas examining the topic first, and then a small part which contains some substance is a polemic replying to those ideas. There's very little focus in academia today on this issue itself: "What is the issue in reality? What is it's explanation?" is good enough for a full paper to me. At least that's what I believe--but I'll have to develop my knowledge of biography and history to thrive in this situation.

The problem with this is that if you don't know the previous theories at all, you can end up retreading ground that other people have already covered, or saying something that is easily refuted by a previous writer.  Aristotle starts many of his works with reviews and critique of what previous thinkers had said about the topic he's about to discuss.  (The actual amount of scholarship review depends on the paper; it's certainly not true that all academic papers are nothing but examination of past ideas.  My MA Thesis was criticized in my defense for not adequately explaining why my topic was important to the field as a whole.)

(Now, there does tend to be a certain level of artificiality in this because sometimes you do have to quote scholars just because they're famous and you have to prove that you read their works, even if they're not totally relevant to what you're doing.  But that forms a very small part of your writing.)

One of my friends at another university is preparing to go to graduate school in philosophy and I think in his undergraduate degree he hasn't had to do any thinking. He can recite agreements and objections by many philosophers about Nietzsche's work, but I don't think he has an idea of his own. His papers are more like "What is Heidegger's response to Nietzsche's XYZ?" not "Is Heidegger correct in his response to Nietzsche?" More horribly, his primary focus is not on reality itself, but simply on replies to Nietzsche. If he engages in something close to philosophy it asks, "Is this response to Nietzsche by Heidegger logically coherent? Not, "Is this even an issue in reality at all? What if Nietzsche had X all wrong in the first place?" Anyway, this is commonplace and is especially good for getting into graduate school because knowing biography and history like this allows you to be a "Nietzsche-scholar" or something along those lines.

Well, undergraduate is a little different than upper levels.  You could never write an MA thesis or dissertation that did nothing but list what Heidegger's views on Nietzsche are.  You would be expected to say how the views improve our understanding of Nietzsche's writings and thus how they improve our understanding of the issues he's writing about in the first place.

Last edited by yudantaiteki (2009 October 20, 3:22 pm)

im going to be a troll and ask what is even the point of studying philosophy?

IceCream wrote:

hahahah i hate how often you teach me english!!

You corrected my spelling three times in a row on irc when I was trying to type "subtleties"!

On a serious note, I don't think the current space repetition system is sophisticated enough to be able to handle complicated tasks.

I think that philosophy requires higher level thinking and that you must develop a strong circuit in your brain through examining known ideas and notions. In order for an SRS to be effective, its algorithm should be able to calculate a near-optimal period of time during which you engage in intro- and extrospection with the piece of information on a card and improve your philosophical level. Without a reliable measure of intellectual and philosophical development in a user's mind, any SRS wouldn't be very useful because it can't tell how long it will take you to digest information on each card. Besides, if you're talking about grad school (or higher level) philosophy, I think anyone who forgets important things in his expertise should leave the school. I don't know how difficult to obtain Ph.D. in the field in question, but I guess it requires as much work and commitment as other disciplines.

You may argue that an SRS is useful for simple memorization so anyone can take advantage of the software for anything including philosophy learning. If learning philosophy you're talking about is simply getting good grades at university or something, then I guess you can use an SRS as a powerful supplemental tool. But if it's something more than memorizing facts, it doesn't seem to work very well, at least for highly intellectual activities.

As is the case with language learning, an SRS is just a tool not to forget what you have seen, heard or learned. It doesn't teach you anything, I think.

Last edited by magamo (2009 October 20, 6:07 pm)

What kind of intellectual pursuit are you talking about? Oh, and is it too much to ask for a link to the thread where you explained your theory? You might be surprised, but not everyone reads every single post of yours.

I see... I thought you meant "You're wrong. I know it works from experience, have theories, and won't give you any details. Oh, by the way, I don't think you can find my posts about that for yourself. I can't either. And this is not trolling at all. Because my post is worthwhile. I said no to another post, right?"

There are no 2 opinions the same on this forum. We've even managed to start a philosophical debate on SRS.

To SRS or not to SRS?

Actually, tbh i'm thinking of not using it for sentences but just doing large quantities of reading instead. I'll use it for my KanKen power leveling project (how cool does that sound?) and to do my 2kyuu grammar study but I'm kinda sick of Anki. It's great but sometimes it's like a ball and chain.