Philosophy, Week 1. Thursday, 2-4pm

[brambless.livejournal.com]

The philosophy classroom is comfortably appointed, with large, soft armchairs arranged in a circle, each with a wooden insert on one arm to lean on while taking notes.

"Welcome to 'The Philosophers'. The idea of this course is to explore the theories of history's greatest thinkers, and to make meaning of them by attempting to apply them to ourselves. In this environment, the difference between theory and reality takes on a whole new twist, and we'll be exploring things like the implications that precognition and time travel have for free will as the course goes on. Course credit will be gained primarily through class discussion, supplemented by a number of small assessments.

Today, however, we're going to start with possibly the most famous of philosophical statements: Cogito ergo sum. I think, therefore I am.

Rene Descartes, posed this question: what if the world around us is an illusion? What if it was all created by an evil demon (his words)? For a more modern parallel, which some of you might be familiar with, I cite to you The Matrix. The premise of this film, for those of you who have not seen it, is that we are all plugged into a machine, which feeds sensation directly into the brain, causing us to see, smell, taste, touch and hear. It is only when a being becomes unplugged from this machine that they realise everything about their life is a lie.

Descartes sought to identify what could be unequivocably known. He decided that he could not trust the things his senses told him, because he had no way of guaranteeing whether they were being tricked by a superior external force. He could not be sure whether any of his life experiences had happened, or whether he was brought into existence the moment before, complete with a lifetime's worth of memories. What he could be sure of was that he existed. The mere act of questioning his existence meant that there was someone to do the questioning. I think, therefore I exist.

Today's task is to identify what you can prove about yourself, and about the world we live in. Do I exist? Do you? How do you know? Are we all just fictional characters?

I turn these questions over to you for discussion."

Comments

[shane-mcc.livejournal.com]

As the students file in, they'll see Shane sitting in a chair much like the ones in the circle, though her chair is positioned outside of the circle, out of the way.

She's here to sit in on Tara's Philosophy class today and fully intends to be on her best behavior, though she has a very warm and friendly smile for the students she recognizes from town.

[notstakedyet.livejournal.com]

[ooc: *slips Tara copy of Six Characters in Search of an Author* ;)]

[dorky-broots.livejournal.com]

Broots coughs and tries to disappear into his seat as he talks. "Well, I've seen the Matrix, all three of them, many, many, times and I think that it's a possibility. How do we know that we exist? All we have is our minds and our memories. But all of that can be faked."

[actingltcrumpet.livejournal.com]

Archie shakes his head, completely unfamiliar with The Matrix. He is, however, familiar with the Descartes quotation; he's heard more than one drunken sailor declaim it in an utterly ridiculous situation.

"To be perfectly honest, at this moment I don't feel that I can prove that any of us exists, or this world at all, for that matter. And considering that I never existed except for two paragraphs in the original source material, and most of my storyline is cobbled together from two dozen nameless characters, I don't want to think about it."

[shane-mcc.livejournal.com]

Shane worries on her bottom lip for a moment. "I'm not really sure there's a way I can prove that I exist, either. I mean, I could say it's because I'm sitting in this chair, but if I shouldn't trust what my body's telling me I'm feeling, then how do I know? I mean, one of my friends was having bad hallucinations and she thought all the walls were closing in on her. She felt that, right? In her mind, she thought it was real... but she was actually just sitting on the sidewalk, scared out of her mind."

She drums her fingertips on the desk for a moment. "It could be the same thing here, maybe. Just because we think something's real... doesn't mean it is, but ... I don't know. If that's how it works, then who's to say even just thinking it proves that I exist? I could be somebody else's hallucination."

[sensethevisions]

Phoebe is listening to the discussion going on around her and taking notes.

"I think it's hard to prove the esistence of a single person or idea because things are always changing. Even scientists have had to do many re-writes of what proof they thought they had."