Specific Unit 1 Expectations (2013 Ontario Curriculum Grades 11 and 12 Social Sciences and Humanities, p.338-340)

A1.  Exploring: explore topics related to philosophy, and formulate questions to guide their research; 

A2.  Investigating: create research plans, and locate and select information relevant to their chosen topics, using appropriate philosophical research and inquiry methods; 

A3.  Processing Information: assess, record, analyse, and synthesize information gathered through research and inquiry; 

A4.  Communicating and Reflecting: communicate the results of their research and inquiry clearly and effectively, and reflect on and evaluate their research, inquiry, and communication skills.

B1.  Nature of Philosophy: demonstrate an understanding of the main areas of philosophy, periods of philosophical development, and the differences between philosophy and other areas of inquiry; 

B2.  Philosophical Reasoning: demonstrate an understanding of philosophical reasoning and critical thinking skills, including skills required to identify and avoid common fallacies of reasoning, and demonstrate the ability to apply these skills in various contexts. 

Week 2: 

CLASSWORK:

1. Lecture: Logic Syllogisms

2. Lecture: The Pre-Socratics

3. Seminar: Philosophical Issues

4. Seminar: Is Human Nature Irrational

HOMEWORK:

1. Reading: Russell, The Problem with Philosophy, p.69-71

2. Reading: Velasquez, The First Philosophers, p.39-41

REVIEW QUESTION:

1. Contrast the theories of Heraclitus and Parmenides. Which do you agree with and why?

Philosophical Issues

Virtually every activity and every profession raises philosophical issues. Science, psychology, the practice of law and medicine, and even taxation all involve questions that more or less directly force us to address philosophical issues. Mark Woodhouse invites us to consider the following examples: 

1. A neurophysiologist, while establishing correlations between certain brain functions and the feeling of pain, begins to wonder whether the “mind” is distinct from the brain. 

2. A nuclear physicist, having determined that matter is mostly empty space containing colorless energy transformations, begins to wonder to what extent the solid, extended, colored world we perceive corresponds to what actually exists and which world is more “real.” 

3. A behavioral psychologist, having increasing success in predicting human behavior, questions whether any human actions can be called “free.” 

4.Supreme Court justices, when framing a law to distinguish obscene and non-obscene art forms, are drawn into questions about the nature and function of art. 

5. An IRS director, in determining which (religious) organizations should be exempted from tax, is forced to define what counts as a “religion” or “religious group.” 

And, as Woodhouse also suggests, philosophical questions are continually raised in our everyday life and conversations. Consider, for example, the following statements, which all involve philosophical issues: Sociology is not a science. Drugs reveal new levels of reality. History never repeats itself. Every religion has the same core of truth. We should all be left free to do our own thing, as long as we don’t hurt anyone else. All truth depends on your point of view. The most important thing you can do is find out who you are. This could all be a dream. 

QUESTIONS:

1. Are there any areas of life that do not involve philosophical issues? 

2. What are your views on the issues that Woodhouse lists? Can you give any good reasons to support your views on these issues, or is it all “just a matter of opinion”? 

______________________________________________

Source: Mark D. Woodhouse, A Preface to Philosophy (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1984), 1–2, 26–27. Used by permission. 

Is Human Nature Irrational?

Many social psychologists who have studied the choices and behaviors of people have concluded that humans do not behave rationally. For example, Max Bazerman, in his book Judgment in Managerial Decision Making, cites numerous studies that show that humans rely on irrational beliefs and rules of thumb when making important decisions. For instance, people rely on a nonexistent “law of averages” that they believe influences the risks they take. People believe they can control purely chance events. People regularly underestimate the risk of dying in familiar but highly risky activities such as driving, smoking, or eating fried foods, and overestimate the risks of unlikely but memorable events such as dying in a plane crash or being attacked by a grizzly bear in a national park. Robert Cialdini notes in his book, Influence, that he found people’s choices can be manipulated by appealing to six non-rational norms or rules that we generally follow: 

Reciprocity: I should do this for you because you did something for me. 

Commitment and Consistency: I should do this because it is consistent with something I already committed myself to doing. 

Liking: I should do this because I know and like you. 

Authority. I should do this because an authority says I should.

Scarcity. I should do this because there’s only a few chances left and I won’t get a chance later. 

QUESTIONS 

1. Suppose that the social psychologists are right in claiming that human beings behave irrationally. Does this show that human nature itself is not rational? Why or why not? 

2. Many advertisers, sellers, and promoters believe that Cialdini is right and that his theory provides the key for manipulating people into buying their products or doing what they want. Is there anything wrong with giving people the knowledge about human nature that will enable them to manipulate others? 

____________________________

Bazerman, Max, and Don A. Moore. Judgment in Managerial Decision Making. 8th ed. John Wiley & Sons, 2013.

Week 4: 

CLASSWORK:

1. Lecture: Socrates & the Sophists 

2. Lecture: Plato & Aristotle

3. Seminar: Breaking the Law for the Sake of Justice

4. Seminar: Groupthink 

5. Seminar: Society and the Bomb

6. Seminar: Sanctuary and the Law

7. Viewing: Genius of the Ancient World -  Socrates 

HOMEWORK:

1. Reading: Velasquez, (selections from) Philosophy, ed. 11

REVIEW QUESTION:

1. Compare and contrast Plato's and Aristotle's theories of knowledge. Which do you agree with and why?

Breaking the Law for the Sake of Justice

On March 2, 2009, more than 2,500 demonstrators illegally forced their way onto the property of a Washington, D.C., coal-burning power plant and shut it down by blockading its entrances. Only two weeks earlier scientists had reported that global warming was melting the ice sheets on Greenland and the Antarctic faster than expected, thereby raising sea levels and initiating changes in ocean currents that would have “a dramatic impact on the global climate system.” The demonstrators were protesting the use of coal by power plants, which generates 40 percent of the greenhouse gases heating the planet. In a letter to the public they wrote, “There are moments in a nation’s—and a planet’s—history when it may be necessary for some to break the law in order to bear witness to an evil, bring it to wider attention, and push for its correction. We think such a time has arrived.” 

These were not the first Americans to deliberately break the law to protest something they felt was morally wrong. During the 1960s, thousands of black people illegally sat in “white-only” sections of restaurants, theaters, buses, and other segregated businesses to protest unjust segregation laws, and thousands of blacks and whites engaged in civil disobedience to protest state laws that kept blacks from exercising their constitutional rights to vote and to attend the same public schools as whites. During the 1970s, tens of thousands of people broke the law to protest the U.S. war in Vietnam, occupying government property, refusing to pay taxes that would support the war, and trespassing on the private property of companies that made military weapons. In the 1990s, thousands broke the law to protest the Gulf War, and in 2003, thousands more did so to protest the war in Iraq. When arrested, protesters have inevitably said that their actions are a matter of conscience and that they are obligated to obey their conscience rather than the law. 

QUESTIONS: 

1. Is it morally wrong to break the law in the situations described here? Is it wrong when a demonstrator breaks only those specific laws the demonstrator believes are unjust? 

2. How would Socrates respond to the civil disobedience of these various groups of protesters? Who is right, Socrates or the demonstrators? 

_____________________________________________

Source: Open letter by Bill McKibben and Wendell Berry, released December 12, 2008, and posted at www.yesmagazine.org/article. asp ID=3347. 

Groupthink

The psychologist Irving Janis coined the term groupthink to refer to the tendency of cohesive groups to get increasingly out of touch with reality. Janis studied how numerous political leaders and their close advisors made decisions that were spectacularly out of touch with reality, including (1) the Japanese decision to attack the United States at Pearl Harbor, (2) President Truman’s decision to escalate the Korean War, (3) President Kennedy’s deci- sion to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, (4) President Johnson’s decision to escalate the Vietnam War, and (5) President Nixon’s decision to launch a cover-up of the Watergate break-in. Janis found that “the social pressures that develop in cohesive groups,” particularly the desire “to preserve friendly intra-group relations,” lead such groups to develop an “us-versus-them” mentality that gradually distorts their ability to evaluate their situation realistically. Symptoms of such groupthink include an “illusion of the group’s invulnerability”; a “belief in the inherent morality of the group” and its activities; “collective rationalization” that discounts any outside information that might conflict with the group’s assumptions; “stereotypes” of outsiders and critics as weak, stupid, or evil; “direct pressure on dissenters” within the group; “self-censorship” that leads each member to discount his or her own doubts about the group’s beliefs and assumptions; the “illusion of unanimity” within the group; and the emergence of “self-appointed mind-guards” who protect the group from any contrary outside information that might shatter their comfortable assumptions. 

QUESTIONS 

1. What aspects of Plato’s Myth of the Cave can be interpreted as groupthink? 

2. Do you see any of the symptoms of groupthink in any groups within our society, an entire nation or society, the entire human race? 

___________________________________________________________________________

Source: I. L. Janis, Victims of Groupthink (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972). 

Society and the Bomb

The decision to drop the nuclear bomb that killed tens of thousands of the civilian inhabitants of the city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, was made while the United States was at war with Japan. Henry L. Stimson, the American Secretary of War at the time, later explained that he advised President Truman to drop the bomb on the basis of utilitarian reasoning: 

I felt that to extract a genuine surrender from the [Japanese] Emperor and his military advisers, they must be administered a tremendous shock which would carry convincing proof of our power to destroy the Empire. Such an effective shock would save many times the number of lives, both American and Japanese, that it would cost. . . . Our enemy, Japan, . . . had the strength to cost us a million more [lives]. . . . Additional large losses might be expected among our allies and . . . enemy casualties would be much larger than our own . . . . My chief purpose was to end the war in victory with the least possible cost in lives. . . . The face of war is the face of death; death 

is an inevitable part of every order that a wartime leader gives. The decision to use the atomic bomb was a decision that brought death to over a hundred thousand Japanese. . . . But this deliberate, premeditated destruction was our least abhorrent choice. 

Objecting to this kind of utilitarian justification for killing the inhabitants of cities with nuclear weapons, philosopher-theologian John C. Ford wrote the following: 

[Is] it permissible, in order to win a just war, to wipe out such an area with death or grave in- jury, resulting indiscriminately, to the majority of its ten million inhabitants? In my opinion the answer must be in the negative. . . . [It] is never permitted to kill directly noncombatants in wartime. Why? Because they are innocent. That is, they are innocent of the violent and destructive action of war, or of any close participation in the violent and destructive action of war. 

QUESTIONS:

1. Is killing the innocent always wrong, no matter what the consequences? 

2. Would you side with Stimson or Ford about the morality of dropping the bomb? 

____________________________________________

Source: Henry L. Stimson, “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,” Harpers (February 1947), 101–102, 106–107; John C. Ford, “The Hydrogen Bombing of Cities,” Theology Digest (Winter 1957). 

Sanctuary and the Law

In January 1985, sixteen people, including two Roman Catholic priests, a Presbyterian minister, and three nuns, were charged with illegally smuggling and sheltering Central American refugees in the United States. The refugees were people fleeing from torture and virtually certain death in their own war-torn countries. The sixteen people charged with illegally helping the refugees argued that giving sanctuary to the refugees was a matter of conscience and that they were obligated to obey their conscience rather than the law. Several newspapers carried the story.

Tucson, Arizona- In direct defiance of immigration statutes, the Rev. John Fife and his combat riots in the sanctuary movement help transport Central American refugees across the Mexican border into the United States. They find food and shelter for them, often in churches, and then transport their wards through relays to cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, Cincinnati and Seattle.

Two hundred churches publicly have declared their status as sanctuaries, and the pastors, priests, rabbis and lay workers who have joined the movement speak freely about their work... "When you hear about the fear and the violence and the torture these people face at home, you have little choice but to help," said Jill Levis of Christ Church Presbyterian in Burlington, VT. "The Bible says that God takes sides and he tells us to take the side of the needy. We are acting out our faith," said Peggy Hutchison, who was charged in the same federal indictment as Fife and fourteen other sanctuary workers. "We believe very strongly in what we are doing." Fife said, "You have to help the refugees or else you lose your soul."

Ruth Anne Myers, district director in Arizona for the Immigration and Naturalization Service, insists that "the government's position is simply that ti is against the law to smuggle, harbor or transport aliens into the United States. The law doesn't say if good people are doing it, it's OK, or if the people doing it think the law is wrong, it's OK," Myers added. "It's like the bombing of abortion clinics. These are people who take the law into their own hands for religious reasons."

Sanctuary activists argue that it is too difficult for most Central Americans to prove to the satisfaction of the INS that they will be murdered or tortured if they return home. All of the Arizona activists facing trial have said they will not suspend their sanctuary activity as long as they are free. Twenty-five un-indicted co-conspirators, from places such as Seattle, Germantown, Pa., and Rochester, N.Y., have said they will continue their work and plan to refuse to testify against their indicted friends. Even fi al the charged activists are jailed, Fife said, the movement will not stop. "They can put Jim and I away for years, and sanctuary will go like gang busters," he said. "No one runs this movement. It runs by itself, on faith."

QUESTIONS:

1. Is it wrong for the workers in the sanctuary movement to break the law? Is it wrong to refuse to testify against sanctuary workers who have broken the law? Is it wrong to continue to break the law once the courts have reached a decision on the sanctuary cases?

2. How would Socrates respond to the sanctuary movement workers? Would vou agree with Socrates?

____________________________________________

Source:  "Answering to a Higher Obligation,"San JoseMercury News, January 1, 1985, p. .1

Week 6: 

CLASSWORK:

1. Viewing: The Matrix (1999)

2. Culminating Evaluation:  Unit 1 Test 

UNIT 1 TEST OUTLINE:

• Brightspace online test

• Available from the beginning of class to the end of class

• 1 attempt for each question, so be careful

Part A Knowledge & Understanding: 

• 25 multiple choice questions, 1 mark each

• May be, but not only, based on the following...

Part B Application & Communication: 

• Choose and answer one of the Unit 1 review questions in 200-300 words, 10 marks

Part C Thinking & Inquiry:

• Answer following provided question, in 200-300 words, 10 marks

• How is the “matrix” like Plato’s Cave, and how is Neo like Plato’s released prisoner?