Day Six: Baudrillard and The Good Place

-

 

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.

Isa’s Minecraft skin: a white polar bar with a purple bow tie on its neck and a crown on its headJuan’s Minecraft skin: a giant camera lens on a head with a body in a business suit                                          

       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 eventually the empire grew from the map. This short story leads directly into Baudrillard’s readings. He goes

through the four stages of simulation in regards to this map. The first stage is the reflection of basic reality, then

masks and perverts a basic reality, it makes the absence of a basic reality, and finally, it is a simulacrum, it bears

no relation to reality. 


In the afternoon we watched four episodes of “The Good Place.” “The Good Place” is a TV show about the

philosophical and ethical implcations of the afterlife. Some of the episodes focus on the conflict of whether or not

the four main characters are in the “good place” or the “bad place” as the try to live in a simulation that tortures

them. During the second season, the shows looks at ethics through the experiment of the trolley scenario.    

The experiment places you in a trolley and on one track there are five people, and on the other track, there's

only one. You have the option to turn the trolley to only kill one person or to stay on the same track and kill

five peoplpe. Most people would choose to only kill the one person rather than the five, but then you are asked

what you would do if you knew the one person, and more situations like that. Another closely connected example

the episode shows shifts to a medical situation--you are a doctor and you have to choose to save five people who

need a transplant by killing one healthy person to use their organs. Would you harvest the organs from the healthy

person to save five people? We only had a short conversation about this show considering it was at the very end

of the day, but we had a very fruitful discussion about the morals of the trolley and how emotions would affect this

experiment.

Eleanor, Chidi, and Michael (three main characters from The Good Place) look out a trolley during the simulation of "the trolley problem"
Eleanor, Chidi, and Michael (three main characters from The Good Place) look out a trolley during the simulation of "the trolley problem"







Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day One: Introductions, Philosophy, and "The Allegory of the Cave"

-
Image
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
Read more

Day Eight: Ethics Presentations, Final Minecraft Responses, and The Social Dilemma

-
Image
by Baker Croyle  On Thursday morning, we began with finishing the work that we had not previously completed for our presentations on the trolley problem, Nihilism and existentialism, and Immanuel Kant's moral code and ethics. After that, we presented and then moved into a fruitful seminar based off what we had just learned while listening to our classmates. We discussed Kant's moral responsibilities and whether it is better to lie or tell the truth, as well as nihilism and existential crises.  Gif of Michael from  The Good Place  slowly falling into Chidi's lap, implying his rupture into an existential crisis (text reads "Prolonged wailing")   We then took a break and returned to the classroom where we worked on our individual Minecraft responses that were based on our choice of four questions dealing with  The Good Place , the trolley problem, Immanuel Kant, nihilism, and other big philosophical questions. Image of a teenager looking at his screen with various vi
Read more

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

-
Image
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
Read more