Making sense of it all

I'm grateful to various people who have explained the difficulties they are having in feeling in control of the ideas and arguments in the module ... as well as worried by them...

Several things have been suggested:

• A map of of the problems and responses discussed
• A study guide to each of the readings, or at least the more difficult ones. The more I have tried to work on this the more I find myself rewriting the lectures... The thing is, I thought of the lectures, for the most part, as guides to the reading in the first place. So - under review.
• A glossary of key terms

I'm working on these. The plan is to put up

• a synopsis (done)
• short-cut definitions of key terms presented in the first place as tool-tips to their occurrence in the text, where they will appear in bold. Hold your cursor over the emboldened word and you should see the definition come up. I will collect these into a glossary as well.
• Study guides where and when I can make progress with these.

Here is a word on how I see the interelations of the topics:

I start off basically seeing them as separate, generating as it were an independent exam-type question each.

But as you think about them, you will inevitably see connections. The thing to do is to work on each topic on its own - and very much as an 'advanced' stage, as and when you get a bit clear about any of them, work in connections.

I suppose there is one exception to this, and that is the way in which the representational theory of thinking crops up repeatedly in the later topics. You just have to keep remembering what this is!

For the exam, think of there being about a dozen topics and choose a subset of these to revise/consolidate.

There are to be 12 questions and you are asked to answer 3 of them, so there is huge choice. It is not policy to use the exam to force coverage. It is expected that you will specialize on the topics easiest to you. My advice would be to choose enough of these in case your three first choices don't come up, or don't come up in a way that is congenial to you.

After the Consolidation Session:

I've had another go at answering William's question about the difference between machine and teleological functionalism here.

My attempt in the lecture is here.

VP

Updated 29:04:03