We apply scientific methods and principles to learn how to live and die well. We speak of living ''and'' dying because these are ongoing in each of us, and we've evidence that acknowledging them as contemporaneous is essential to success in either. We address living and dying well because we perceive other human concerns to be subordinate and derivative. We approach it scientifically because we observe few people explicitly applying science to questions of value, and we consider science sole demonstrated means to lay this necessary foundation for other action to further individual and collective human well-being.

People live and die well by discerning and realizing value—by knowing and getting what we want, and by wanting what we get. Each of us does these less than perfectly: we sometimes get what we think we want and feel less satisfaction than we anticipated, do what we think sufficient and fall short, or fail to accept and embrace what is.

If we stop to reflect upon such disappointments we realize that current approaches to value are flawed. Again and again we think we know, only to discover that we're mistaken. Though we work to learn from experience, we rarely delve deeply enough to question underlying ideas about how we know. When we do, we're often quick to respond with long-held, well-practiced justifications that we’ve yet to critically examine, and that may be poorly able to withstand careful scrutiny.

We live in an era of unprecedentedly rapid, large, and novel changes—many of which we’ve instigated and continue to drive. Today more than ever before humans live and die well by cultivating proficiency in bringing to awareness, questioning, and evolving to be more adaptive ideas about value, especially those pertaining to how we can know it, and know how to realize it. Only to the degree that we rely upon sound means for knowing what we want and how to get it can ideas about these things be basis for living and dying well.

 

 

 

 

For a more detailed course description please see: [[Course Description]].

1. Construct an ecological framework for understanding self and surrounds, and use this framework to explain the evolutionary import of human culture, and to describe how culture is embodied and communicated, and how we can evolve individual and collective cultural information to be more adaptive. For more detail on Objective 1 please see: [[Objective 1]].

2. Evolve an inclusive, consilient, science-based world-view which includes a method for discerning and realizing value—for living and dying well—and a set of ideas about value generated by this method. For more detail on Objective 2 please see: [[Objective 2]].

3. Practice valuescience to live and die well, and communicate to others how they can do this.

 

 

*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:Spring17]]</nowiki> is on the bottom of your page. In addition, you may submit 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, spring 2017, we plan to structure class meetings around preparation for quizzes and final exam, and execution of project. 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 with resources—texts, videos, podcasts, and other media—we'll be referencing in spring 2017. Specific assignments for class meetings will be posted at least one week in advance on [[Next Class]]. Resources are available online. You can access materials for this course without purchasing anything.

We've collected and in some cases annotated 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 both process and outcomes for granted if we are aware of them 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, community of 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 media to communicate a valuescience argument. A project is opportunity to share valuescience with an audience you think will appreciate and benefit from it. We publish projects with attribution on an open course website. A project comprises 33% of your grade (25% 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] <br>

[https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8dQDga7c8qYNldaTjlKQkdXTlU Sample Brochure]

Each student completes a written, closed-book final exam. 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]]

A final exam comprises a minimum of 33% of your grade (25% if you're enrolled in lab) and a maximum of 67% (60% if you're enrolled in lab). With some exam questions you will receive full credit only if you respond with very specific words. With other questions you can earn full credit by evidencing that you've learned ideas well enough to explain them clearly and persuasively.

*Alter idiolect to affect feeling, thought, and perception (e.g., use negative words less often)

*Do some combination of the above.

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]].

 

 

 

 

 

=== Participants Enrolled for 3 Units ===

 

 

*25-60% Final exam