Answer the mandatory question for PART A and your choice of one of the three
available questions for PART B. Each answer should be about 500-550 words, and
each should include at least two brief direct quotations from the reading for that topic –
preferably NOT quotations that were cited in the Powerpoint presentations or lectures.
Each essay should be written in full sentences and paragraphs with no internal
subheadings (no paragraph should be longer than ½ a page, double-spaced). Both
essays should be included in one document of no more than 1100 words.
PART A (mandatory – everyone must answer – minimum 500 words)
Explain Gregory Bateson’s theory of natural systems as abstracting systems, with
‘conscious purpose’ as a kind of extreme and potentially dangerous extension of the
abstracting process.
PART B (choose one out of three – minimum 500 words)
1. How is six-week-old Joey’s experience different from ours, and where do we find
the roots of the ability to sense Structure and to Differentiate in the midst of the
Weatherscape?
NOTE: The Structural-Differential proposes a semantically (i.e. both sensorily and conceptually)
reliable map of the differences between what we say – the label levels –and what we sense –
the object level – and also between both of those levels and W.I.G.O. – whatever is going on at
the Event Level. Korzybski, though he did advise children should be taught with the structural
differential from the age of kindergarten, was surely not so foolish as to believe an infant would
be born with the ability to appreciate that scientific sense of order.
For this topic, you need to explain Daniel Stern’s concept of the Weatherscape as representing
a fundamentally different sense of order from the one modelled on the Structural-Differential.
We might say that six-week old Joey does not have an object level, but that she IS her object
level (and in some sense, almost ‘is’ closer to the Event than we). And yet she (or he, as in
Stern’s text) is beginning to develop the epistemological sense we all naturally develop when we
learn language.
2. How, according to science, is an echolocating Cetacean’s experience different from
our perceptual-linguistic experience? What do ‘analog’ and ‘digital’ mean for us, and
how are they related differently for Cetaceans?
3. Explain how the political and social world that produced the CBC in the 1920s
demonstrates a uniquely explicit relation between ‘blue-pill’ and ‘red-pill’ ideas – and
also the potential of a ‘no-pill’ decolonial epistemology – in Canada
!!!! Please note that you are REQUIRED TO SUPPORT YOUR IDEAS WITH DIRECT QUOTATIONS. Good paraphrasing (including detailed descriptions of the diagrams) is important too, but there must be at least three direct quotations from the text-based reading for the assignment. Page references must be provided in brackets or by a citation method of your choice (check with us if you have questions).
No title page is necessary, but you must include a WORD COUNT at the end.
Please click to download a pdf downloadof additional advice on essay structure and citation methods.
Evaluation
For an essay all four of the Criteria of Evaluation downloadare in play, including Coherence. When providing feedback, your assessor may or may not feel that using a colour-code to indicate which criterion is most applicable is helpful.
Remember, as the Criteria of Evaluation document says, that Coherence is roughly same as Relevance or Focus. Each essay question is asking you to provide an answer to a question. An essay is not a story that just suggests or implies an answer or meaning. An essay must give an explicit answer, whose aspects or sub-topics are explored systematically. To the extent this characterizes your essay, your essay is Coherent.
For purposes of Coherence it is, as we often learn in high school, good to summarize your overall point, in a way that includes everything that is to come in a general way, at the beginning. This is your thesis or premise. Sustaining a coherent thesis or premise is very important. An essay that lacks a coherent overall premise will rarely score better than 70% (B-).
Your essay needs to develop its premise by demonstrating that it is Accurate to the text in question (all essay questions refer to texts of some kind; they are NOT asking you to say ‘what is going on’ in a general-research fashion). It needs to include Detail, including sufficient direct quotations from the course readings (and you must include page numbers in brackets – but no formal citations or WORKS CITED are necessary).
All essays depend exclusively on the course readings and there should be no outside references.
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