Picking up unit 3/4 Philosophy

[Special At Specialist]

What do you think about picking up unit 3/4 philosophy?
I haven't done units 1 or 2 but I've been interested in philosophy for a while. Will I be disadvantaged without having done year 11 philosophy, or is year 11 completely separate from year 12?

[Ghost!]

To a certain extent yes I think you would be exposed to a certain amount of disadvantage. Although Units 1 and 2 aren't strong related to Units 3 and 4 they do explore similar philosophical concepts and the general idea of what philosophy is. Given that it's VCE Philosophy however this disadvantage certainly wouldn't strongly hinder your chances of success, and since VCE Philosophy was by far my favourite subject I'd strong recommend you take it.

[Menang]

Do it!

I picked up Philosophy 3/4 on impulse without any previous experience and it ended up being my favorite subject.

The first text you read might be challenging, but you'll be in the same boat since afaik, units 1&2 philosophy doesn't include much reading of philosophy texts anyway.

I struggled in first term but it was definitely way worth it.

[Special At Specialist]

That's just what I wanted to hear

If I want to get a 40+ study score, what should I do in the summer holidays? Should I read the whole textbook? Should I start writing practice essays in philosophy style?

I've read a bit about Socrates (cave), Plato, Descartes (meditations) and Nietzsche, but I only read them out of interest. I haven't seriously studied them. Is there anything else that I should read?

[WhoTookMyUsername]

is there a textbook for philosophy :O

[Special At Specialist]

I don't know. I am doing it via distance ed so I don't even have a booklist for it.
If there is one, then hopefully it gets sent pretty soon.
If there isn't, then what do you use all year?
I thought all humanities subjects would have a textbook...

[Lasercookie]

I don't know. I am doing it via distance ed so I don't even have a booklist for it.
If there is one, then hopefully it gets sent pretty soon.

It's been on the DECV website for quite a while now: http://www.distance.vic.edu.au/enrol/enrforms.htm
As an aside, you should click through and read through everything on that website as soon as possible, might come across interesting stuff you should be aware of.

http://www.distance.vic.edu.au/enrol/pdf/2012_DECV_booklist_year_12.

The books they list for philosophy are:
Need for Roots  [Weil S]
Nicomachean Ethics  [ARISTOTLE (Trans. ROSS, D.)]
Gorgias (Oxford World Classic)  [PLATO (Trans. WATERFIELD, R.)]

They also put below it this note:  Please note that  other editions are NOT acceptable

[Ghost!]

is there a textbook for philosophy :O

Depends on what you mean by textbook. We have nine set texts, which are kind of like textbooks I guess... but I guess they aren't really. We also had a textbook-ish book which was a general context on every philosopher ever, including most of those we study, but since we never really used I'd still say nope we didn't really have a textbook.

[Menang]

We didn't have a textbook, but we did make a personalised class readings book which was really fun. I've grown quite attached to mine (it's highly annotated and it has our class photos, the study design etc).

Lots of philosophy teachers would probably use different things so best to ask the philosophy faculty at your school, I think.

[tullfrog]

Things you should do:
Read all the set texts.
Make summaries of all the set texts.
Read broadly about the issues discussed and come up with your own viewpoint.

[Incommensura]

Things you should do:
Read all the set texts.
Make summaries of all the set texts.
Read broadly about the issues discussed and come up with your own viewpoint.

This is pretty much right, but I'd add a few things.

Reading the texts in Philo is not really like reading your English texts over the holidays. I know when I was reading Emma for Lit I was only partially paying attention (it was summer) which was fine because you just needed to have an idea of what was going on so you weren't going completely from scratch when we got to it in class.
Reading the texts for Philo is useless if you're skimming or not concentrating completely. If you don't understand a paragraph (which will happen), read it again two or three times (after 3 cut your losses and come back to it when you get to it in the course).

I actually think that's more valuable than making summaries, which I didn't do until term 3 holidays and only because I'd forgotten a lot of stuff from terms 1 and 2. The risk with making summaries in Philosophy is that for a lot of the texts a sequential summary of it will not obviously give you the argument which is the main thing you need to take out of the texts for this subject. Hume, for example, one of the Unit 4 Science and Knowledge philosophers, makes the same point in about three different ways across the course of the set text - just summarising would be pretty useless.

I'd suggest instead just getting to the end of the text and thinking to yourself (or writing if you want evidence of your own productivity) two things - "what is this philosopher's main point?" and "how did they reach that conclusion?" (or "what is their argument for that point?").  If you can answer the first question and have a decent go at the second then you're pretty well-placed at this stage.

[MonsieurHulot]

I'm picking up 3&4 Philosophy next year, without having done 1&2.
What work should I do over the holidays to catch up, apart from reading my texts? VAPS (Victorian Association of Philosophy in Schools) offers a textbook for Units 1&2 (http://vaps.vic.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/Brochure-Philosophy-A-Student-Text-for-VCE-Units-1-2.pdf), would you recommend that I buy this and work through it? Thanks.

(Sorry if posting in this old thread isn't kosher, but it was on the front page and the content's relevant.)

[Mech]

VAPS lectures are good. Do not know about their textbooks. Read the texts on the reading list. Chances are, however, you will only read excerpts from them. I suggest you read the whole thing to get yourself accustomed with the text. Do not expect to understand it all, but get the gist of the contents.

Voila, you are done.

[Aurelian]

I suggest you read the whole thing to get yourself accustomed with the text.

I wouldn't really bother at all with reading the whole texts - that would be quite a bit over the top, in my opinion, especially considering that there are 9 of them, some of which are quite lengthy.

Don't bother with the VAPS textbook at all; it wont really be relevant content-wise to your 3/4 studies. The best preparation you can do is to get the text excerpts you'll be studying in unit 3, and read through them. If you want to be a little more rigorous, get your teacher or a tutor to set you some questions for you to complete for correction. I'd advise not to really do much reading of actual texts for unit 4, since you'll just overload yourself with information; if you want a little bit of light stuff to do for unit 4, feel free to PM me.

Other than text-reading, brush up on your basic logic, since this is the toolkit for any philosopher. Also try to do a little bit of self-reflection on what you think it is to live a good life, since this is the central question of unit 3 (seriously, I'd really recommend doing this; it will help you down the track).

[Mech]

I suggest you read the whole thing to get yourself accustomed with the text.

I wouldn't really bother at all with reading the whole texts - that would be quite a bit over the top, in my opinion, especially considering that there are 9 of them, some of which are quite lengthy.

I would read them all because I feel that it contextualises the ideas you are going to hone in upon. But, then again, I do philosophy for the sake of philosophy and not really just for the academic side of things. If you are deeply passionate about getting a strong foundation in philosophy, give the texts a read in their entirety (I remember a debate on radio about the nature of philosophy being taught within academic institutions and I am still of the opinion that the best philosophical education is one that considers history, background of the author and the whole text). Vignettes or fragments of a philosophical position can be very confusing if you do not know where it is leading to; it also, generally, means that people have misconceptions about philosophical positions (for instance, people reading sections of Hume and then thinking Hume is against causality or does not endorse causal realism in any form re: other subjects). However, if this is just an academic exercise to regurgitate the content, without a deeper understanding than just reading the excerpts, it is fine. You will be fine by VCE standards.

Get familiar with the text, see where the philosopher is going or the gist of things (which I believe is what I said in my OP). The excerpt selections sometimes do not do justice to the content and arguments of the philosopher; you may as well just pick up an anthology or read summaries online and throw the original texts away (which I am almost certain most philosophy students in high school do).