The Death Penalty- not such a silent debate as the blogspot was filtered.
thank you Chloe for summarising the arguments below!


Arguments for: its cheaper,frees up space in prison,would kill all murderers so they wouldn't do it again.life sentence is not for life.
  
Arguments against: only punishment which is irreversible, if dealt with inappropriatelyit can be a very negative thing. being killed is not a punishment. we don't have the right to take peoples life. two wrongs don't make a right.Its unfair.

We are looking forward to meeting Jay Lakhani next Thursday and seeing Katie the week after. Any ideas for next meeting's discussion????

Philosophy club this Thursday (13th March)
Make sure you have logged into the blog so you are ready to take part in our silent debate on the death penalty.
Be ready to think...

Thank You

Just wanted to say a very big thank you to Katrina and Miss Clapp for giving up their spare time to plan and lead such amazing discussions which often prove fun and challenging (and sometimes, satisfyingly frustrating)! RE and Philosophy Club are my highlights of the week and I really look forward to them!

Thanks! - Alex

whats happened so far :)

Last week was thought-challenging and fun. We mainly focused on the question 'if you took a drug that made you forget,would you still be you?' We discussed many scenarios,like; if you were to commit a crime and then take a drug that changed you compleatly and made you forget,would you still be guilty?' Our  group had mixed opinions which lead to questions that played with your brain ( if you had a different mind would you still be you?) The group discussed many related questions and we worked together to a majority agreeing that you would be guilty, because if you took a drug knowing you would forget then that in itself is a crime, Like wearing a mask to cover up your identity. On the other hand,people argued that the mind makes you who you are so with a different mind then your a different person so therefore had no reason to be guilty.

Hopefully next week will be just as fun-filled as this one :) :) Chloe xx

Videos about memory

I think it would be nice if you could watch the following videos when you meet without me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cD-uQreIwEk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwigmktix2Y

Katie

Doctor Who

These are the videos we watched:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BehwuPQm16A

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVEY5AL5zzk

Katie

First Philosophy Club

I came into HSC on 28/01 to run the very fist philosophy club. It was really exciting. I'd been to the school twice before but this was the first time I had run the club so I wansnt exactly sure of what to expect.

Lots of students came which was really great. I love philosophy so it was nice to see that the students were intrested too.

We watched 2 clips of Dr Who. This sparked discussion about what a person's indentity depends on. In Dr Who the body of the doctor changes but he is still the doctor. We wondered if  this was possible?

Some people thought it wasnt really possible, beacuse what matters for your identity is the physical stuff, like the body or maybe the brain. (I think this was Sam and Ben?).

I asked the students what would happen if somone cut my brain out of my body and put it into Molly's body. Would that then be me, Molly, or neither?

People really disagreed on this point, with about half the class voting yes and half voting no.

Some people said it would depend on if my soul had been put into Molly's body too.

Others thought it depended my memories or maybe my personality, or maybe both.

We were all left thinking a lot and still a bit puzzled as to the answers, but I think that is a good thing!

We also talked about how to run the philosophy club. One worry is about if we should make people put their hands up before speaking. Some said yes, because this means it can be more fair and everyone gets a chance to speak. Some said no, beacuse it is hard to make the conversation flow properly. We will do some experimenting to see what works best.

We also talked about possible future topics for our club. I was really glad to see so much exictiment for philosophy. Some future topics might be:
 - Miracles
-What is the soul?
-Do animals have souls?
-Colour (what colour is a mirror?)
-Perception
-Language and learning language
-Rules and society
-Dreams

Overall I had a lot of fun and I hope the students did too!