Philosophy Club Reflection 1

Philosophy Club has been a fruitful experience thus far. We have had many new members to the club, especially in the younger grades, and due to this, although our average academic understanding of philosophy may be lower than in previous years, our intellectual curiosity is strong, and discussions during sessions are helping these new members understand concepts in a meaningful way. Presentations in the club have mainly revolved around ethics. I, as the chair and facilitator of the club, have taken it upon myself to play the devil’s advocate on several occasions and ask prodding questions about seemingly obvious ethical decisions. I have also been attempting to apply ethical scenarios to practical settings to allow for a clearer envisioning of the scenario. For instance, for one session, a fellow Grade 12 and I decided to play an interactive cartoon game in which you have to choose to save a certain group of individuals over another group based on several factors including number, age, gender, and socioeconomic status. In essence, it is a game that attempts to assess by what factors we choose to prioritize human life. In this session, I pointed out inconsistencies in logic and created new hypothetical scenarios to make some of the members realise that their position was not sound when applied to other settings. This was overall an enjoyable session in which we pushed the members’ perceptions of morality to the limits and challenged them to think about how people should be judged in real life.