Philosophy, World Constructions, and Online Gaming - J-Term 2022

by Alexander McGill On Wednesday morning, we watched three more episodes of The Good Place . In one episode, Michael discovers that he can die and starts to have a crisis over how meaningless life is to him as Eleanor and Chidi try to help him. In the second episode, the the main characters try to save the souls of some of their friends and family on Earth to prove that people can  change. In the third episode, the main characters finally get into "the good place," and they figure out that because everything is perfect and lasts forever, the few people there are miserable. They figure out how to give people purpose and  make it possible to peacefully "die" there so that things can have meaning again.   A poster for The Good Place After that we split into three different groups to focus on one specific philosophy of ethics from some of the  The Good Place episodes we have watched.  Group 1 took a deeper look at the trolley problem. Group 2 looked at Immanuel Kant and

  by Isa Pedersen Today we focused primarily on Baudrillard's theory about the simulacra and reality, and the four stages of reality and simulation. Before we started with Baudrillard, we showed each other the Minecraft skins we had created yesterday, and how our designs tied into the philosophical ideas we had previously discussed (Plato, Harway, and Lacan). Many chose to focus on Haraway's cyborg theory for their skins for various reasons.                                                        Juan’s Minecraft skin: a giant camera                                          Isa’s Minecraft skin: a white polar bar with a      lens on a head with a body in a business suit           purple bow tie on its neck and a crown on its head                    After addressing our Minecraft skins, we read the short story by Borges called “On Exactitude in Science.” This story talks about a cartographer who made this amazing map that was so precise that it covered all of his territory, and

by Nate Savarese Day Four was a very eventful day in the classroom. The focus of today was identity and learning about the great philosopher Jacques Lacan. We started the day by watching a couple videos to introduce us to Lacan and his theories about the self. One of his main ideas was "the mirror stage," which is the moment that a baby sees themselves in the mirror for the first time and is able to associate with the image in the mirror as a unique being in the world.      The mirror stage: a toddler looking at themself in a mirror.  After writing some questions on Padlet, we started a self-recognition activity. We all compiled 8 images that we thought made up who we are. This helps us be able to recognize what makes us who we are. Then we made some edits taking away and adding things, such as words that describe us. Most people ended up with images of foods and sports and places around the world that were special to them. This is a picture of Nate's identity slide. It i

by Rachel Baker Today’s topic was cyborg theory and feminism. They may sound unrelated--we thought the same thing--but the writings of Donna Haraway suggest a much different perspective. Haraway believes that the discussion and discourse around cyborgs and future technology can be used as a feminist tool. She presents it herself in a way to introduce a new vision for a diverse, labelless society, free of harmful social constructs and obsessive categorization.  Haraway claims that we are all, in a way, “cyborgs,” with how our modern technological society has already blurred the lines of “natural” and “cultural,” as well as “human” and “technology.” She also draws global connections from her "human=cyborg" theory, construing that the same conclusion can be drawn for other topics such as man vs woman; natural vs artificial--rationalizing that the disintegration of the binaries is the solution to both current and future societal disputes.  In order to better understand her theory

by Juan Reyes Day 2 of the course delved into the topic of Plato's Cave Allegory in a more modern context. We began the day by discussing the ideas and concepts in the critically acclaimed movie The Matrix  and sought to see how those concepts could be related to ideas and theories in the subject of philosophy as a whole. Following this, we sat down in the science lab to watch the aforementioned movie. The Matrix  depicts a dystopian future in which humanity is unknowingly trapped inside a simulated reality, the Matrix, which intelligent machines have created to distract humans while using their bodies as an energy source. Prediscussion regarding philosophical contexts The Matrix Movie Poster   The second half of the day was spent in the world of Minecraft, beginning to craft our responses to Plato's Allegory of the Cave and The Matrix , as it relates to the subject of philosophy. Although we weren't able to completely finish our projects, we still got to get familiar with

Adrian draws the prisoners and puppeteers in "The Allegory of the Cave." by Adrian Perez Today was a very eventful first day! We started off our day by getting acquainted with one another. For some students, it was the first time meeting our wonderful computer science teacher Mr. Bernardino. Everyone knew Dr. Cobos. After that, we tried logging into our Minecraft accounts, which was very difficult for some. It took us a long while to be able to fully log into our accounts due to working with the school's IT department, students needing to re-download apps, trying the old trick of restarting laptops, and more. In the end, we all were able to log into our accounts, join the private server, and had some fun together in our world.  For the rest of the day, we talked about what we thought philosophy was, watched a video that gave an overview, and started to think about some big questions we have about life, reality, truth, and ethics. One thing that was very interesting and s