Narrator:"

Listen to part of a lecture in a philosophy class. Professor:

Welcome to Philosophy 102, "The Western Philosophical Tradition." I'd like to begin today, by introducing the concept of philosophy. We need to start with an understanding of what philosophy is, and what sorts of questions we ask in philosophy. There are a few important terms that we will cover today. These terms are, er, going to be important, important, throughout this course. First of all, what is philosophy?

 

Student:

Is it, uh, what people used to think? Professor:

People used to think? You mean before television? Well, "philosophy", we get the word from the Greek, which is, well, appropriate because we get the uh, foundations for Western philosophy from uh the Greeks. So the word "philosophy" actually comes from two words. The word philoas inPhiladelphia, "the city of brotherly love," or philo - philanthropic, love of mankind... the word philomeans love. OK. Sophia. Sophia, do you know what your name means?


Student [female]:

Wisdom.

 

Professor:

How appropriate. Sophia, as in "sophistry," means "wisdom." Thank you, Sophia. So a philosopher is a lover of wisdom. So does that mean you are all philosophers? I mean, you wouldn't be in my class, if you did not love wisdom, right? ...that, and to fulfill your western civilizations requirement.

 

Well, as we will see through this course, while philosophy has evolved over time, there are some basic questions that are common to all philosophers. There is also a common language to philosophy, terms and ways of approaching what is true. If you were to bring any of the great western philosophers back to life, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, St. Augustine, Hegel, Rousseau, Foucault, or any of the other western philosophers we will be looking at this term - they could have conversations about philosophy - they would understand each other's arguments. They would all speak each other's language. They would have said... They would said, they would have an easy time understanding the modern state of philosophy. In fact, they would have a much easier time of that than adjusting to other modern concepts. They would have a much more difficult time using, let's say, a microwave or the Internet. Well, I assume Michael Foucault knew how to use a microwave, but I think you get the point. Philosophy is a slow evolving discipline. A discipline that continues to ask the same sorts of questions. Questions like, "what is real," and "how do we know what we know," and "how we should treat one another." These questions do not change because they are just as important to us today as they were to the ancient Greeks.

 

There is a common lexicon, or language, a set of terms that we use in philosophy, in examining the feelings about these questions. So what are the key terms and concepts in philosophy, the love of wisdom? Well, in this language of love, there are five areas we will focus on. These are important - you might want to jot them down. The first is physics. As in your physics class, physics in philosophy deals with the theory of nature. It is the study of the material world of space and time. Philosophers ponder


the physics of the universe, when they ask what is real.

 

The second term I'd like you to note is metaphysics. Physics, as I said was the material world. Metaphysics, metameans "after". We call this metaphysics only because it came after physics in Aristotle's works. Metaphysics is the study of things beyond or above nature. There is a strong tradition in the West, in the philosophies we will focus on during this course, to believe in a deity or at least a, uh, world of ideas or spiritual essences, that is independent of our physical world. This area, the realm of pure ideas or spirits or god, is metaphysics. So physics and metaphysics cover everything: the material world, physics, and the spiritual world, metaphysics.

 

The next three terms, uh, I like you to remember are ontology, logic, and epistemology. These terms look at or describe the way we understand physics and metaphysics and how they react... interact, I should say. So, ontology... what is ontology? Onto, from the Greek ontos, means "being." Logy from logia means, uh, "writing about something or studying something." So ontology, the study of being, is part of metaphysics that looks at the nature of being, including categories of being. Logic comes from logosmeaning reason. Logic is a system, a system of rules, rules for understanding, understanding the truth about a philosophical argument. Finally, we have epistemology. Epimeans "over." Histasthai means "to stand," as in "to understand." So epistemology would literally translate to something like "the study of overstanding." Epistasthai meant something like "how is that we understand", "what we understand". So when we use the term "epistemology" we mean "how people can understand what they do," and "what kinds of things we can understand from this."

 

These five concepts - physics, that is, the material world; metaphysics, or the spiritual world; as well as how we understand what is being and how to categorize things, um, ontology as we said; logic, uh the system, right? for understanding argument; and um, epistemology, or how we know what we know. These five concepts... these five categories or questions form the basis for our discussion of western philosophy.


>       Narrator

Listen to part of an ecology class.

>       Professor:

Ok, um, understanding behavioral ecology is key to the overall study of ecology. Now, the best way to understand behavioral ecology is to examine a single well-defined 很明確behavior in detail. While, uh, many behaviors mightbe chosen, we will focus on foraging behavior. Now, for most animals, food comes in a wide variety of sizes. Some food might be large. Larger foods may contain more energy, but may be harder to capture and less abundant. In addition, there are other factors. Can you think of any?

>       Student:

Well, for one thing, some types of foods may be farther away .than others.

>       Professor:

Very good. Very good. So, some food might be farther away, some food might be harder to capture, and some food might have more energy. The point is foraging for these animals involves a trade-off 取捨between a food's energy content能量 and the cost of obtaining取得 it. The net energy - you can do your calories or Joulesgained by feeding on each size prey is simply the' energy content of the prey minus the energy costs of pursuing and handling it. According to optimal foraging theory, natural selection favors individuals whose foraging behavior is as energetically efficient as possible. In other words, animals tend to feed on prey that maximizes their net energy intake per unit of foraging time.


>      Student:

Do you really buy that, that an animal .can make those kinds of calculations? That sounds awfully complicated. Is a hungry animal really going to pull out a calculator and figure out which prey is going to give it the best net energy?

>      Professor:

Well, a number of studies have shown that foragers do prefer to go after prey that maximizes the energy return能量投資報酬率. Take shore crabs海邊螃蟹, for example. You know, they tend to feed primarily on intermediate-sized mussels / muscle / 貽貝which provide the greatest energetic return; larger mussels provide more energy, but also take considerably more energy to crack open.

 

This optimal foraging approach makes, um, really two assumptions. First, natural selection will only favor behavior that maximizes energy acquisition獲得最大能量 if increased energy reserves lead to increases in reproductive success. In some cases, this is true. For example, um, in both Columbian ground squirrels and captive... captive zebra finches斑胸草雀, there is a direct relationship between net energy intake and, um, the number of offspring they have. Similarly, the reproductive success of many spiders, like the Orbweaving spiders 長園蜘蛛- you remember, uh, our old friend the Orbweaving spider from chapter two - is related to how much food they can capture. That should ring a bell.

 

That said, uh, animals have other needs beside energy acquisition, and sometimes these needs come into conflict. One obvious alternative, for, uh, energy expenditure, is avoiding predators: oftentimes the behavior that, uh, maximizes energy intake is not the one that minimizes predation risk. Consequently, the behavior that maximizes, um, uh, fitness often may reflect a trade-off between obtaining the most energy at the leastrisk of being eaten. Not surprisingly, many studies have shown that a wide variety of animal species alter their foraging behavior when, uh, predators are present. Still another alternative, for energy expenditure, need is finding


mates, right? Males of many species, for example, will greatly reduce their feeding rate in order to enhance their ability to attract and defend females. You know, for mating and breeding purposes. Ok?

 

Now, the second assumption of optimal foraging theory is that it has resulted from natural selection. As we have seen, natural selection can lead to evolutionary change onlywhen differences among individuals have a genetic basis來自基因遺傳. Few studies have investigated whether differences among individuals in their ability to maximize energy intake is the result of genetic differences, but there are some exceptions. For example, um, one study found that female zebra finches that were particularly successful in maximizing net energy intake tended to have offspring that were similarly successful. Because birds were removed from their mothers before they left the nest, this similarity likely reflected a genetic basis for foraging behavior, rather than, uh, being a result of young birds learning to forage from their mothers.

 

Differences among individuals個體之間 in foraging behavior may also be a function of age. For instance, inexperienced yellow-eyed juncos燈心草雀 - the juncos is a small North American bird - inexperienced yellow-eyed juncos have.not learned how to handle large prey items efficiently. As a result, the energetic costs of eating such prey are higher than the benefits; that's why they tend to focus on smaller prey. So, only when the birds are older and more experienced do they learn to easily dispatch these prey, which are then included in the diet也才能成為他們的實務. And that does not gibe with不嘲笑/ 相符 what we would expect to see with the optimal foraging theory.

arrow
arrow
    全站熱搜

    bairdben 發表在 痞客邦 留言(0) 人氣()