Day Seven: The Trolley Problem, Kantian Ethics, and Existentialism

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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 Deontological Ethics. And group 3 looked at Nihilism and Existentialism. We watched videos, read articles, and read primary texts about our topics. Each group then began preparing a 10 min presentation about what we learned. 

A person checking off boxes on a list tilted "Ethics Code"



After we worked on our presentations, we got to go back into Minecraft. We each started working on responses to one of these questions. 
  • How does Kant’s philosophy on ethics as portrayed in The Good Place relate to simulated environments? 
  • What does Michael mean when he says, "They aren't real people, but their pain is real”?" What does this say about how humanity and reality are constructed? 
  • According to Baudrillard, what order of the simulacra are the “worlds” in The Good Place? Rely on at least three distinct scenes or episodes to think through this. 
  • Thinking through “the trolley problem,” ethics/virtue philosophy, and/or nihilism/existentialism, what is the meaning of life? 
I chose to answer the last question, and I started to make a glass house where I am going to try to put examples of some of the meanings of life. 

Alexander's response so far

  





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