Course Description
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.
As researchers in diverse disciplines, including history, philosophy, ecology, economics, sociology, linguistics, biology, psychology, and more synthesize an emergent valuescience, we're acquiring an increasingly reliable method for knowing value and for knowing how to realize value. With this course we participate in this venture by studying its development to date, by extending that development with our own inquiries, by applying findings to evolve what we think, feel, say, and do to live and die well, and by communicating to others what we’ve learned so that they, too, may benefit.
We touch upon many topics, surveying data and concepts important to living and dying well though yet to become widely known. Each of us can nurture these seeds as we deem advantageous. Though we explore possibilities of universal human values, even values universal to life, we aim to be descriptive rather than normative, and to avoid even appearance of advocating any value or set of values beyond those implicit in valuescience. Our intention is to end the course asking more questions more persistently, and practicing valuescience more consciously, competently, and consistently.
If you are engaged or want to engage in inquiry and practice we outline here, we welcome your partnership in valuescience.
For a more detailed course description please see: Course Description.
What is the course about? Why is it relevant, interesting, or significant? What questions will your course answer? What is the main argument of your course? Where does it sit in a curricular context?
