Dear SEP Families,
The students in Session 3 were great. They seemed to “get” a lot of the ideas well enough to make some insightful comments. Some of them seemed to struggle with having their views challenged, such that they didn’t seem to know what to do when someone disagreed with them. They did well with the philosophical definitions of various concepts, and they were pretty easy to guide down lines of reasoning.
We had some interesting disagreement about what should count as cheating. Some students thought that cheating can occur only when one breaks the rules of a game (in a certain way). Others thought that one could cheat even when one doesn’t (strictly speaking) break a rule. Some students also had different views about whether something about a sport is lost when we introduce pay for the athletes. Since we’re about to start the Olympics, this might be a fruitful topic for further thinking.
The students in Session 3 were great. They seemed to “get” a lot of the ideas well enough to make some insightful comments. Some of them seemed to struggle with having their views challenged, such that they didn’t seem to know what to do when someone disagreed with them. They did well with the philosophical definitions of various concepts, and they were pretty easy to guide down lines of reasoning.
We had some interesting disagreement about what should count as cheating. Some students thought that cheating can occur only when one breaks the rules of a game (in a certain way). Others thought that one could cheat even when one doesn’t (strictly speaking) break a rule. Some students also had different views about whether something about a sport is lost when we introduce pay for the athletes. Since we’re about to start the Olympics, this might be a fruitful topic for further thinking.
Resources for Continued Learning
Books
Websites
Activities
Note: Items marked with an * are more difficult philosophically.
Thank you for being a part of SEP 2016 Session 3!
- Lewis, The Blind Side
- George Will, Men at Work
- Matthew Crawford, The World Beyond Your Head*
- Malcom Gladwell, Blink
- Gladwell, Outliers
- Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper*
Websites
- FiveThirtyEight.com, especially the Sports section
- FanGraphs.com, Baseball Propsectus.com, and similar “advanced stats” sites for other sports
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (plato.stanford.edu)*
Activities
- Play a sport
- Learn to keep score in a sport
- Learn a game
- Participate in debate in school
Note: Items marked with an * are more difficult philosophically.
Thank you for being a part of SEP 2016 Session 3!
