What do you think of this style of lecture?

[BadgerJelly]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YY4CTSQ8nY&list=PLD00D35CBC75941BD

Did you nod off? I find him hard to listen too. Seems to be dragging things out too long for no good reason.

note: to be fair, he does pick up the pace ... but was it only me nodding off?

[mitchellmckain]

I watched 6 minutes and I felt tendency to nod off, although I am very tired at the moment.

The biggest difficulty I see is that he is employing a very high level of abstraction -- so much in fact that I often wondered if I might apply what he was saying to his lecture itself. Such things are not easy to follow and have a tendency to vanish like smoke from the mind if it never gets tied it to anything concrete -- which it did not in the first 6 min.

[BadgerJelly]

I watched it all. I made comment after about 10-15 minutes. After that I think I added the "note" at about 25-20 mins.

It picked up pace, but compared to some of the lecturers I've been watching online he was pretty drawl. Anyway, was a worth it and will continue to watch all the lectures at a later date :)

I think the worst I've seen to date is Roger Penrose. Ironically I love the guy, but his lectures are not very "engaging." His books are much better though.

[Serpent]

About five minutes was enough.
You can't accuse him of being a theatrical performer.
"Ah's" and "um's" irritate the hell out me when someone else does it, but I'm pretty sure I do a fair bit of it myself when discoursing on a long, involved subject.
However, I do prefer a personal, conversational style to a hectoring or expository style of teaching; I find him more sympathetic than many lecturers. (They can't all be Walter Lewin!)
Theory of Literature is unlikely to hold my interest very long, no matter who's presenting -- theory, schmeory, just let me at the literature already!

[dandelion]

:(
I like it.

[BadgerJelly]

:(
I like it.

It is really good! Just have to wait for his passion to shine through at about the half-way mark. I just felt the beginning was needlessly drawn out.

I'll certainly be watching all of the lectures so if you wish to discuss them it may lead to some pretty interesting topics.

[dandelion]

:) happy to, I've watched a few times over the years and had to tear myself away just now.

[doogles]

I started off okay, found myself wanting to read the summary of what he was on about on the blackboard to the left, observed his body actions academically as he strolled back and forth gaining rapport with his audience, then came out a brief mind-wander (daydream) at 2 minutes 25 s.

I guess I have no talent for watching video lectures. Usually the aim is to make no more than 3 points, otherwise your audience receives too much information overload.

My preference is to simply see the 3 points written where I can see them, along with the original research sources on which the points are based, and then leave me to check for myself.

DEFINITELY NOT my cup of tea Badger.

[Serpent]

I'll certainly be watching all of the lectures so if you wish to discuss them it may lead to some pretty interesting topics.

Looks like a pretty heavy course. I doubt I've enough free time or available band-width to follow it through, even if I understood everything he's saying. Which I don't. Guess that's why I attended tech school instead of university: no head for the esoteric.

[dandelion]

I think it was just a matter of timing, it was a type of thought in a formative time I was taught, so familiar and appealing, and I guess since then ironically consigned to be also part of sceptical historical perspectives, and left me finding more monolithic tomes more difficult. (I’d mentioned lectures in the series before because I’d written about responses to Levi-Strauss and structuralism, and discussions later in the series express some better than I could). I like the amount of notions covered because it seems easier to relate them to each other together from that view. And since there are lots of notions, the ums help give more time to absorb!

[BadgerJelly]

dand -

You've watch ALL of those lectures?

[TheVat]

I've listened to a few lectures on very esoteric subjects where the "um" did give more time to absorb. Unfortunately, my brain was often just not absorbent and I had to go and seek a print source where I could stop and cogitate for a while over an arduous paragraph. It's why I'm a text person more than a video person. Just the mental process of decoding words on a page somehow gets my brain engaged and active in a way that video doesn't. In college, my favorite professors were the ones who would pause and ask us a question, rather than just drone on and on.

[dandelion]

Badger, there was this once :) -
'...just another suggestion, but you might prefer more secondary sources. I prefer videos for lots of reasons, such as I’m able to do other stuff while listening. You might like say this is from 2009, on the “Structure, Sign, Play,…”, paper I linked in my last post. I’ve listened to it all at some stage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Np72VPguqeI (In this lecture on Derrida and the origins of deconstruction, Professor Paul Fry explores two central Derridian works: "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences" and "Différance." Derrida's critique of structuralism and semiotics, particularly the work of Levi-Strauss and Saussure, is articulated. Deconstruction's central assertions that language is by nature arbitrary and that meaning is indeterminate are examined. Key concepts, such as the nature of the text, discourse, différance, and supplementarity are explored.) If interested in language, etc., there are also some pretty simple videos on poststructuralist communication and things like that which can give a rough idea and be a lot quicker than reading.
http://www.sciencechatforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=30709&start=0 '

And regarding what Biv's said, I'm sure don't absorb it as well as reading a paper, but it can at least allow some multitasking, especially if there are hours and hours of it!

[BadgerJelly]

dand -

I guess I just got sick of Derrida's drawl. I found his "introduction" to Husserl's "Origins" laughable.

Camille Paglia comments that most of his work only made sense in French and the translations are fairly redundant. I pretty much saw the fault with Heidegger and Derrida just took it a few steps further. I just hope that when I read Husserl's Logical Investigations I'll find something of use. If I am right in my thinking then Heidegger pretty much screwed philosophy over for the best part of the last 50 years in many ways (could also blame Nietzsche but then they'd be no Husserl or Jung without a Nietzsche!)

Regarding the whole Post Modernist movement I have a rather large suspicion that pretty much everyone has suffered in the wake of Nietzsche. He seems equivalent to the "punk rock" of philosophy :)

I still find it kind of strange that after around 6 years of reading and listening to all sorts of stuff I've only really found Jung and Husserl who really make a great deal of sense to me (even though I am not completely enamoured by everything they say.

Anyway, I'm rambling and just looking to forward to see if I find anything remotely like what I hoping for.

Biv -

I am the same, but it depends on the speaker. Some drone out and I just want them to get to the point, or at least say something I haven't heard several times already in the same way before. Subject matter is important too. I couldn't imagine listening to Kant and being able to take anything in! Imagine sitting down and listening to that!! I will never forget how much of a slog that was to get through and I remain thankful that my usually annoying stubbornness served its purpose. At one point I felt like I was reading the whole book from back to front I had to go back a revisit for definitions so much! haha! Certainly an experience.

[Serpent]

There is such a range of styles, not only in the presentation of material but also in its apprehension.
I'm a wordsmith, not a science geek, and physics can be very complicated.... and yet I 'get it' more readily than some ideas about philosophy and literature, simply because it can be illustrated with graphics; experiments, diagrams, graphs and models. Visual support works for me.
So, too, a printed text, or sketches and underlined words on a chalkboard, are easier for me to follow than speech alone. Of course, very few experts in highly intellectual fields are any good at performing on a stage. Maybe academics should have stand-ins trained in classical acting. For example, I greatly enjoy reading Lionel Tiger's writing, and yet, engaging a personality as he may be on screen, I can hardly understand what he's saying half the time, let alone follow a theme all the way through. Now, if he were played by Patrick Stewart...?

[BadgerJelly]

Dandelion -

I think early next year I'll be able to engage with you more about the subject matter of Derrida and Heidegger.

Just watching some of lectures now and I am becoming more and more convinced that they've passed over the important point of Husserl's work (or maybe it's just my view imposed on Husserl ... but I don't think so.) I think they've become fixated, or rather caught up, in interpreting with spoken/written language and forgotten all about interpretation as experience.

It's really tough to put these things into words because words are merely the façade of experience and that is not something, to my current knowledge, Husserl pointed out anywhere other than through some hints. Ironically I think Heidegger interpreted the words as words not as words directed at something evasive.

[dandelion]

Ok, and yes, the lectures are more about language and don’t really deal with Husserl so much, and actually it is more the following lecture after the one I’d linked that gives more of a better rough description than I could of the sort pattern of approach that is also used, but not in those lectures- elsewhere- applied with Husserl.

(I’m not a wordsmith, but visual, and just from videos generally I really appreciate diagrams etc., and also really appreciate them in text. In videos, also it helps me to hear where emphasis is placed, or when lecturers correct themselves they can give an idea of the extent of precision, these sorts of things- so it can give a more rounded view than reading an already finished, polished work. It is more like reading threads with written conversations and further elucidations, and seems more engaging, I think.)

[hyksos]

I pray that some day I will be able to lecture like Robert Sapolsky. I may get closer, but never obtain it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA

[BioWizard]

I pray that some day I will be able to lecture like Robert Sapolsky. I may get closer, but never obtain it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNnIGh9g6fA

Pretty good!

[BadgerJelly]

Sapolsky is one of my fav lecturers. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!

Also, the vid in this post is better if you put it on x2 speed.