This is a course about living and dying well. We speak of living and dying well because living and dying are ongoing and contemporaneous in each of us, and we've evidence that acknowledging both is essential to doing either well. We choose this metric because we've evidence that it's shared by most, perhaps all people and that it encompasses most, perhaps all human concerns.

Humans live and die well by discerning and realizing value, by knowing what we want and getting it. Because we are evolving organisms in a dynamic environment, what we value—ends and means of our lives—also changes. We live in an era of unprecedentedly rapid, large, and novel alterations—many, perhaps most, results of human action—to selves, to human society, to other parts of nature, to artifact fashioned from nature, and to information accumulated by humans. Today more than ever before we live and die well by cultivating proficiency in bringing to awareness, questioning, and evolving to be more accurate information about value, especially ideas about how we can know and realize value.

This course is an opportunity to bring information from many disciplines to bear upon three central questions of our lives: "What do I want?" "How can I get it?" and most importantly, "How do I know?" We frequently ask the first two questions about everything from big choices like career and marriage to little ones like what we'll eat for lunch today. We typically pose the third far less often. Perils of this behavior are obvious. If we rely upon flawed means of knowing, what we think we know is more likely error.

 

In this course we explore history, philosophy, ecology, economics, sociology, linguistics, psychology, and more to learn how we may apply science, by which we mean behaviors by which we predict with success greater than we can achieve by chance, to discern value more accurately and to realize it more fully.

 

 

We then present a case for valuescience, and apply it to achieve more accurate understanding of: (1) evolution of cosmos, Earth, and life, and how these are context for our own and other people's lives; (2) human history, present condition, and prospects, and (3) what we want and how to get it. We pay particular attention to cognitive and cultural impediments to valuescience, and to strategies for overcoming these, and we offer opportunity to practice doing so.

 

If you are engaged, or want to engage in such inquiry and practice, we welcome your partnership in valuescience.

We aim for each participant to learn to write and speak cogently about each of the following topics, evidencing some familiarity with historical and contemporary trends and events as described in published works of others, and demonstrating independent thought grounded at least to some degree in personal practice:

:(1) State a valuescience thesis, beginning with definitions of “value” and “science” to emphasize their nexus, prediction, and concluding with an argument based upon evidence and reason that science is sole demonstrated means to more accurately discern and more fully realize value.

:(2) Outline key elements of world-view common today with reference to their historical roots, methods by which they are promulgated and reinforced, interests served by their persistence, conflicts with science, and consequences for human well-being.

:(3) Describe how emergent consilience of natural science, social science, and humanities can be basis for constructing a more accurate world-view, for shedding illusion about value and contributing to others' doing so, and for thereby improving our and their lives.

:(4) Outline key elements of a consilient science-based world-view, describe how you have altered your own world-view to incorporate more of it as a result of participating in this class, and give examples of how you have relied upon it, how you can rely more heavily upon it, and how you can contribute to others' relying more heavily upon it to live and die well.

 

*'''Time:''' T/Th, 10:30-11:50

*'''Students with Documented Disabilities:''' Students who may need an academic accommodation based on the impact of a disability must initiate the request with the Office of Accessible Education (OAE). Professional staff will evaluate the request with required documentation, recommend reasonable accommodations, and prepare an Accommodation Letter for faculty dated in the current quarter in which the request is being made. Contact the OAE as soon as possible since timely notice is needed to coordinate accommodations. The OAE is located at 563 Salvatierra Walk. Phone: (650) 723-1066, URL: [http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/oae http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/oae]

*'''Instructor:''' [[David Schrom]] (dschrom@ {stanford})

*'''Teaching Team Members:''' [[Robin Bayer]] (robin@ {ecomagic.org}), ([[Nick Enge]] (nickenge@ {stanford}), [[Hilary Hug]] (hilary@ {ecomagic.org}), [[Andrew Nepomuceno]] (andrew.nepo@ {gmail}), [[Toan Tran]] (dtoan@ {alumni.stanford})

Please use your People Page to tell us about yourself and why you're taking the class, and to post writing, lab reports, and anything else you want to share. Only teaching team members and students enrolled with you in current quarter can see your people pages (as long as <nowiki>[[Category:Autumn16]]</nowiki> is on the bottom of your page. In addition, you may submit writing anonymously (with your name known only by teaching team members). Click here to find your page: [[People]]. Please let Andrew know if you have any questions or concerns about the site.

== Questions and Resources ==

This quarter, autumn 2016, we plan to structure class meetings explicitly around preparation for quizzes and final exam. You will have opportunity to review quiz questions with teaching team members and fellow students prior to taking quizzes, and you will receive comment on quizzes after you take them. Quiz and final questions are identical. If you learn to respond to quiz questions successfully, you will be prepared for final. You can find these questions here: [[Final Exam Questions]].  

We've included below a course outline from spring 2016 to give you an idea of resources—texts, videos, podcasts, or other media—we'll be referencing in autumn 2016. Specific assignments for autumn 2016 class meetings will be posted at least one week in advance on [[Next Class]]. Resources are available online. You can access materials assigned for this course without purchasing anything.

We've collected and in some cases annotated additional materials to facilitate your exploring more fully ideas you encounter in core resources and class meetings. In past quarters, many course participants have found at least some of these worthwhile, and many have introduced us to items new to us that we now offer you. We welcome suggestions for improving and augmenting this collection.

This course is very much a work in progress. We revise it between quarters, and we alter it during quarters we teach as we became more familiar with current enrollees' backgrounds and interests. You can rely upon [[Next Class]] page entries updated throughout the quarter to reflect all changes to date. We welcome suggestions for improvement.

While valuescientists confront a number of challenges, some of which to date have proven intractable (e.g., finding a biophysical value metric), our most common and most limiting impediment to honing valuescience practice is that most of us identify self with ideas incompatible with a scientific approach to value. Shedding these is doubly difficult because they are in substantial part a result of intense and incessant indoctrination to which we've become so desensitized as to take it for granted if we are aware of it at all.  

Learning together in an atmosphere of mutual support and trust we are better able to set aside long and closely held ideas and consider different ones. Teaching team and students in this course can create sangha, a community of valuescience practice. If you've prepared thoughts and questions about a day's questions and resources, you're better able to learn and to further others' learning. You are welcome to prepare with others. We aim to afford each student ample opportunity to contribute.

We provide opportunity to demonstrate and clarify learning with weekly or semi-weekly (twice weekly) written quizzes. Quiz questions are taken directly from the final exam to assist you in preparing for the final. We encourage students to use teaching team comments on quizzes to improve understanding and to write a better final.  

Quizzes can comprise up to one-third of your grade (25% if you're enrolled in lab). Each quiz is equally weighted. Only quizzes submitted on or before time and date due count towards your grade. If you submit fewer than all quizzes we weight your final exam more heavily in your grade. (e.g., zero quizzes, final weighted an additional 33% [25% for lab enrollees]; half of quizzes, final weighted an additional 17% [12.5% for lab enrollees]).

Students working independently or in teams of 2-4 research and create educational media to communicate key valuescience ideas. A project is opportunity to share something you learned with an audience you think will appreciate and benefit from it. We publish projects with attribution on an open course website. A project comprises 25% of your grade (20% if you're enrolled in lab).

More detail about project purpose, criteria, and grading can be found here: [[Valuescience Final Project]]

[https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxngE8UAOIeBcU5DUFBTalg5dnc/edit Sample Video]

Each student completes a written, closed-book final exam on Wednesday, December 14th, 12:15pm-3:15pm. We make available on or before first day of class a list of questions from which final exam questions will be drawn. [[Final Exam Questions]]

We can make knowledge more complete with action. By including a lab component in this course we provide opportunity to experiment with personal change in partnership with others. We use "experiment" to denote consciously chosen behavior that we carefully observe, record, and analyze. Please design experiment(s) to be completed, including recording and analysis, in three hours per week, Stanford's benchmark for one academic unit of credit. Plan to engage in experimental behavior, to journal your practice, and to note differences in other aspects of life that you perceive to be possibly related to practice. For example, you might:

Choose a lab about which you can be wholehearted. Feel free to mix and match - you may choose to adopt one practice for ten weeks, or you may choose one for two weeks, another for two weeks, or different ones on different days of the week, etc.. Author a life you want with experiment(s) you deem well-suited to you. Please consider what keystone habit (see excerpt from "The Power of Habit" in class 1 resources, below) you might address in lab. For more ideas, see [[Shake Up Your Life]].

Each instructional team member is engaged in her or his lab. We've more than a century of practice among us. We're glad to share this experience. You may also find one or more partners among other course participants.

 

 

 

 

=== Participants Enrolled for 3 Units ===

 

 

*25-60% Final exam