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Quick Write 1: Levels of Happiness.

Can human beings achieve a better happiness than animals?

More than 2,300 years ago, SOCRATES, speaking in the market place in Athens, asked his listeners: "Would you rather be a troubled person or a happy pig?" Would you rather be a guaranteed-happy pig, or a human being that might be unhappy? Explain your reasons. (Ethics, Happiness, Identity)

OR

http://www.phil.cmu.edu/Cavalier/80130/part1/sect4/BenandMill.htmlhttp://amandarmurphy.files.wordpress.com/2012/08/ms-f.jpg http://www.bamfield.eu/

Sean Waters 2014 www.introducingphilosophy.weebly.com

http://www.introducingphilosophy.weebly.com/

Quick Write 2: The Trolley Problem:

Would you sacrifice one life to save five others?

Pretend that you are walking along and you see a trolley car, careening out of control, about to kill five innocent people. You can’t stop the trolley, but you can flip a switch that will send the trolley on a different track where only one person will be killed.

Would you flip the switch to save the one person?

Does it matter who the person / five people are? (Ethics: Consequences)

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/06/the-google-trolley-problem.html



Quick Write 3: (Ethics: Virtue) Character and Friendship.

Are friends important? Why or why not?

Most people think that friends are really important. The Greek philosopher Aristotle, a student of Plato’s, thought friendship incredibly important to being human. Do you agree?

What does it mean to have good friends? How can you do it?

http://www.seattlewolf.com/Wht-Kind-Of-Friend-Are-You-/8578923?pid=309099



Quick Write 4: The Golden Mean.

How would you define balance? Is it important? :

(Ethics, Virtue, Eastern Philosophy)

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Balance_board_rope-brake_by_Frederic_G_Ludwig.Fig_1.PNGhttp://mind.pp.ua/



Quick Write 5: Ship of Theseus.

Pretend that an ancient ship – Ship A – pulls into harbor and is completely taken apart, piece by piece, and then painstakingly and perfectly put back together exactly as it was before to make Ship B. Is Ship A the same ship as Ship B?

SHIP A: SHIP B:

Part 2: Who are you? Does who you are change over time?

Remember your earliest memory. And now, imagine yourself when you’ve aged a few years or decades. Are you the same person you were when you were younger? Why or why not? Will you be the same person when you’re older? Why or why not?

http://philosophia.uncg.edu/node/218http://newphysicistphi.blogspot.com/2012/08/aging-activation-of-lethal-genes.html



Quick Write 6: Mind / Body.

Let’s begin by describing French Philosopher Rene Descartes’ presentation of the mind / body problem. You see, Descartes was convinced that the mind was absolutely separate from the body. He thought that the mind—weightless and formless—was a different kind of thing than the body, which has weight and form.

But Descartes had a problem with his theory that the mind and body were separate: the mind and body clearly interact. Just like a driver can control the movements of a car, so too, it seems, like our minds can control our bodies. Yet how can this be? How does the mind control the body if they are separate? What do you think?

Which is more important to who you are: your mind, or your body? Why?

http://expandorcontract.com/category/content/science-mind-body-connection/



Quick Write 7: Plato’s Cave.

Is the world we live in real?

Most students are aware of the movie The Matrix. What most people don’t know is that this is as a modern-day example of Plato’s famous Allegory of the Cave. Plato, a Greek philosopher alive more than two thousand years ago, had powerful ideas that still influence the way we see the world today. This picture is a representation of one of Plato’s ideas – that the world we experience with sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell and feeling isn’t the real world. Plato thought that we were like the prisoners in a dark cave, chained so that we only see shadows on the wall. At the back of the cave, away from the shadows, was a way for us to exit out into the real world of perfect perfectness.

Is the world we live in real? If you could have a dream that would reveal the way the real world is, would you? (Reality, Idealism, Plato)

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/platoscave.html



http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/platoscave.html

Quick Write 8: Nagel’s Bat:

Can we know what it is like to really be a bat?

Thomas Nagel, an American philosopher of mind, asks us to consider: “What is it Like to Be a Bat?” Nagel argues that our experience is always from our own perspective. In other words, because our experience is dependent on what it is like to be us, we can’t really know what it is like to be another creature.

What do you think? Could you know what it is like to be a bat? A bear? A dog? A Cat? (Knowledge, Mind, Self)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/furryscalyman/766649400/



Quick Write 9: Floating Man:

If someone could be kept alive for fifteen years without any having any sense of touch, sight, hearing, smell or taste, would they still have thoughts?

Where does our knowledge and experience come from? Could we even be conscious without sensory experience?

Imagine a person who was born without any senses of touch, sight, hearing, smell or taste, and was kept alive intravenously for fifteen years. The question is: Could this person without any senses have thoughts, memories, or experiences? (Knowledge and Sensation)



Quick Write 10: Transparent Eyeball:

Emerson, one of the great American Transcendentalist poets, claimed that the poet’s job is to be what he called a “transparent eyeball.” Emerson thought that certain people could experience nature as it truly is, without bias, prejudice or distortion. Really good poets, he thought, could put this clear experience of nature into clear poems that could communicate the poet’s pure experience. This idea raised suspicion among his peers, especially Edgar Allen Poe. This question is related to Nagel’s bat. Can we ever see nature as it actually is? Is it possible to be a “transparent eyeball” without distorting our perception of nature? (Nature and Self)

http://www.toequest.com/forum/logic-reasoning/4690-east-meets-west-logic.html



Quick Write 11: The Ring of Gyges:

Suppose an ordinary person found a ring that made them invisible. What do you think that person would do? Why would they do it? Would being invisible change whether or not their actions were right or wrong?

Suppose you found a ring that made you invisible. What would you do? Why would you do it? Would being invisible change whether or not your actions were right or wrong?



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