Fall Saturday SAVY, Week 2, In the Mind’s Eye: Truth vs Perception (5th-6th)
Hello families! The theme of Saturday was ‘twisting our perceptions’. We started out discussing things we empirically can know with our senses a la Aristotle before jumping into a famous philosophical thought experiment that essentially boils down to: How do we know we aren’t “brains in a vat?” We talked about it extensively in our circle discussion (just like in college) and then worked on a few projects to help us begin to better understand the differences between the subjective and objective. We learned about how Descartes might answer: Cogito, ergo sum – ask your burgeoning philosopher what this means. Later, we learned about the ways people communicate and persuade others to see from their perspective using rhetoric and the rhetorical triangle of logos, ethos, and pathos – again, thank you, Aristotle! Toward the end of the day, we read our first version of the allegory of the cave from Plato’s Republic, which we will pick up next week in an interpretive project. Make sure to ask your young philosopher what their take-home squishy ball means in the context of the day’s class. I am sure they will have many different ideas and perspectives to share about it!