Ben's Site

Attached is all of my comments of a peer’s essay, my 150-word note to the peer, and a rubric checklist done for both of my peers.

150 word note:

I think your paper makes some really reasonable points that you can make a super strong argument with. There are some things I can suggest which could help your paper build even more momentum and cohesion. One thing you can do which will really help you is to introduce your sources so that there is more context before you jump into the quotes. This allows the reader to understand the surrounding conversation. I also advise that you could focus on making your claims focus on what you are arguing in your paragraphs to give an overview and a strong statement. I really like the modes that you are using and the overall argument. The last thing I could suggest to you is that you could make the reader think with a reflective ending to your conclusion. It is already halfway there, but you could further develop your last statement with a question or statement that goes one step further.

My goals for my multimodal paper are to create a meaningful paper while engaging with my sources. I also want to make sure that each paragraph directly ties back to my thesis.

Steps:

• I will first need to re read my paper and make sure that every paragraph is arguing what I want to argue
• Re read sources to find relevancy to my paper’s specific thesis.
• Have others read the paper

My biggest challenge will be to connect one of my paragraphs directly to my thesis, because right now it is arguing a great point but it needs to connect more directly to keep the momentum. I will use my friends who will have fresh eyes to look at what my paper and see if there is a way to go around the challenge.

I plan to support that we use narrative as a way to store memories, learn things, stay competent, connect with people, etc.

• I have not completely decided what I will use yet, but I know I will incorporate music into the essay. I will specifically use a picture that is very colorful and catches the readers attention to keep them engaged. An example of a picture like this would be:

• I also plan to use lyrics in a way that magnifies the emphasized words to further engage the reader. I will connect this will memories of lyrics and how narrative helps us with this.
• I will also leave any source that I use as a link for the audience to further explore topics. This will make my paper more credible, showing that I am willing to openly present articles that could complicate or even refute my point.
• I may also use poetry as a way to show narrative and its effects.
• I think my overall focus will be connecting narrative with memory so that I have a specific route, I can also then connect to pictures that create nostalgia for my audience. This nostalgia would be a great example of using narrative to remember the past.

I think it’s very hard for Galen Strawson in “I Am Not a Story” to argue his point because of the consensus in the psychological world that narrative does explain who we are and it does shape who we are. Strawson argues that it’s more Important to be able to put the pieces together instead of using narrative as a crutch for understanding. I think if we use narrative to our advantage then we as a society will understand more. Knowledge is never ending so we could use narrative to continue knowledge in any desired subject. I think it is valid that some pie Iole are not able to remember things in order to retell them whatsoever, like Strawson. I feel this was about some things but I can remember others. I feel like it all has to do with memory. If Strawson had a good memory and could retell things, would he have written this piece or would he have conformed to the storytelling role that most people have? I think this is worth thinking about because it shows the connection between memory and narrative. I believe narrative helps us to remember but we also need a good memory to use narrative to our advantage. I don’t feel that my life story impedes me, rather I feel that it develops who I am in a positive way. I also think that it is interesting that Strawson constantly quotes others that are mostly refuting his claim. It seems as if he is almost arguing for it at times. I can relate to Strawson when he speaks about multiple selves. I think that it is necessary in life to have multiple selves to succeed. You can not act the same way with your fiends as with your coworkers or in an interview. It’s important to be situationally aware. I do not believe this affects narrative or that narrative has an effect on this because one can still stay true to all of their qualities and morals and values which is the foundation of narrative of ones life.

-“a person’s life story is not a Wikipedia biography of the facts and events of a life but rather the way a person integrates those facts and events internally”

Basically what Julie Beck in “Life’s Stories” is saying here is that a life story has more to do with how a person feels. It also has to do with how the events and facts in a person’s life may affect them. This leads to more than just a timeline, which we all know is more relatable. This made me relate to myself int he way that I know that life is nothing like a timeline. Things all happen at once at times and it doesn’t make logical sense chronologically. I then related to television shows and how they make life seem superficial in the way that they can make things happen in a chronological way which is very unrealistic. Life is more unpredictable than this. The unpredictability of life and how things can all happen at once makes me think about how life can be perceived, and this is exactly what Beck is getting at. The perception of traumatic or happy events in life seems to make or break a person’s personality. I agree with her whole-heartedly.

-When Beck speaks about narrative storytelling in the human brain, she says “the researchers I spoke with were all convinced that even if it’s not 100 percent universal to see life as a story, it’s at least extremely common”

I have to agree with this as well because even though I have never been able to tell stories very well, I have always tried my hardest to be able to tell stories as well as the other people around me. I feel like its a necessary skill to be able to remember things better and more correctly. People that do not relay information very well are probably not good at putting things into a story into their head, in my opinion.

-A person will need to “take the stories that surround them…then identify with them and borrow from them while fashioning their own self-conceptions”

I also agree with this as I relate to how I have done this before to be able to understand the world around me. Many things that I have learned have been from wise stories or narratives in books. All things that others have created that I will then have to use to better understand the things that these stories speak about.

Do you see any patterns?

I use the word “that” frequently throughout my paper, and I use the word this many times as well. One of the bigger things that I noticed, however, was that in several of my transitions, I related back to psychiatry. Although this was not the purpose of my paper, I think that I created a connotation for the reader between working and being a psychiatrist and the idea of balance.  

Do you rely on certain devices more than others?

I definitely use pointer words more than any of the other devices. I feel like this is necessary because if I were to say whatever “this” or “that” was every time, it would be unnecessary and very noticeable to the reader, where this is not.

Are there any passages that are hard to follow?

Not that I can see at this time. I feel like I only need to use pointer words, and I have already done so.

I chose to follow the thread here.

“Study and treatment of mental illness, emotional disturbance, and abnormal behavior” (“psychiatry”)- I want to go into pediatric psychiatry and I feel as though adding this into my paper is going to help me to incorporate my topic of balance into a personal experience. I have always been told by doctors that I know and have job shadowed, as well as other professionals with crazy schedules, that balance is the most important part of their lives. Therefore, this will become a key part of my life as I am an aspiring psychiatrist. Throughout my paper, I contemplate a balance of art and science and how this balance is needed. I will need this other sort of balance in my life too, and I think this will be an important piece to mention in my paper. 

“Regain [my] spiritual balance and find meaning in more than trying to technically manage every aspect of [my] being from womb to tomb”- again, this is important in every aspect of life, including art and science. I really enjoy this quote because at some point everybody gets caught up in the moment and worries about something that is out of their control or tries to make everything go just so, and this is not what is important, ever. No matter how old you are, you need spiritual and emotional balance to live a healthy life. 

I can see your paper going a long way. I like the idea of thinking out the pros and cons of both science and the arts and exploring their most significant parts. I would suggest making your thesis more clear and developed. Right now it is a little vague so I didn’t know where you were going with the paper until I was on the second to last paragraph. It is important to get right to your point. This same idea should be applied to your paragraphs too. Your claims seem to fall at the end of your paragraphs when it may be beneficial to get to your argument right when you start your paragraph. I want to mention that you are very good at introducing your sources. Another thing you may want to introduce before talking about it too much is STEM vs STEAM and what that really means. Your average reader may not know what these terms mean. I hope my advice helps. Attached are the pictures of your essay.

Good luck,

Ben

The idea of reductionism, breaking complex things into smaller things that explain them, is hurtful to understanding of the historic philosophical questions such as “who are we?” Some scientists may believe that the idea of reductionism is helpful to reach the destination of fully understanding a scientific phenomenon. According to Steven Pinker in “Science is Not Your Enemy,” the idea of reductionism is confused with the term intelligibility, though they explain the same process. Pinker believes that reductionism is considered a sin, but intelligibility “explain[s] a complex happening in terms of deeper principles,” which do not “discard its richness” (Pinker). This refutes the idea that reductionism or intelligibility is hurtful to the understanding of long searched for answers of these philosophical questions, although Jonah Lehrer in “The Future of Science… Is Art?” believes that this processes is exactly what is limiting our knowledge. A specific location where reductionism is hindering is when observing self consciousness. Lehrer states that “our self-consciousness seems to require a top-down approach,” due to how long we have been researching the brain with neuroscience and still have not progressed any further in understanding consciousness (Lehrer). A top-down approach would involve artistic or creative thinking instead of using a break down of scientific processes. This may be the answer to the question “who are we?” and “why are we here” which science has been searching for for centuries.

In order for science to progress, scientific claims and findings need to “nurture opportunities for the falsifications of its own beliefs” (Pinker). In Pinker’s essay “Science is Not Your Enemy,” he believes that science needs to constantly be proven wrong in order for us to understand the world. He believes that we need to integrate “skepticism, open debate, formal precision, and empirical tests” when trying to disprove scientific findings (Pinker). I believe that this is a valid claim because if everything we think about were believed as fact, there would be a lot more error in science than there already is. Although Pinker offers mostly scientific approaches to falsification of science, I believe that this is where art could be the most useful for debunking things that are not actually correct. Open debate is a good start to this, as it uses the human mind to look at both sides of a claim and try to break it apart. This could go a step further if we added creative ways to debate or debunk scientific studies. If humans are able to use their consciousness instead of scientific tests to falsify or qualify something, then we will be fast approaching the goal of breaking through scientific limitation.