A Pretty Giant Unknown

Reasoning Through Mysteries #2: A philosophical inquiry workshop on the construction of social reality

A Pretty Giant Unknown - featured image

_{Image of the Vinland Map via PLATO: Philosophy Teaching and Learning Organization}

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This workshop follows directly on from the preceding workshop, ‘A Sonic Attack? Reasoning through a mystery‘. This workshop, ‘A Pretty Giant Unknown’, invites contemplation of epistemological questions arising from various stimuli including:

Dr Lisa Feldman-Barrett’s neuropsychological research about occasions when social reality becomes untethered from physical reality, leaving our social reality fragile and vulnerable to manipulation;
an amusing news story about the discovery of a lost space tomato grown from seed in microgravity;
the Vinland Map Exercise by Richard Farr (created for PLATO–The Philosophy Teaching and Learning Organization).

This workshop raises questions including:

What is the relationship between being confident that you know something, and actually knowing it?
Can we reasonably hold someone accountable for an action in the absence of direct evidence?
How compelling is circumstantial evidence – in other words, evidence that doesn’t directly prove a fact, but allows you to draw an inference about the fact?
What is a fact / evidence / a theory / story / hypothesis / explanation? How are they related?
What factors make a theory seem plausible or implausible?

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The following workshop materials are shared under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike) for all original material. (Materials from other sources are clearly credited in the runsheet.)

Runsheet: A Pretty Giant Unknown (100 mins)
The Vinland Map Exercise by Richard Farr, created for PLATO–The Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization (used with permission).
Slideshow (PDF copy): A Pretty Giant Unknown (audio clip not included – to access audio clip, use hyperlink indicated on the runsheet)
Richard Farr’s Vinland map exercise handouts – to print and cut and accompanying Teaching Notes

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