What is the "right" thing to do?
Uses moral dillemmas and thought experiments to explore issues around morality and introduce pupils to a very basic interpretation of utilitarianism and the categorical imperative.
Are we any different to machines?
Devised after being inspired by an assembly on Alan Turing, this unit explores questions like "what makes us human?" and "what is intelligence?"
What makes men and women different, if anything does?
Answering a question raised by the pupils, this unit explores the work of Naomi Wolf and other feminist philosophers, working in collaboration with the history department's examination of how attitudes to gender have changed over time.
The Anarchist Challenge
In this unit we consider what life would be like in the state of nature, whether government plays a positive or negative role in society, and under what circumstances it can be legitimate.
Epistemology
What can we know for certain about the world? What, in fact, is knowledge itself? Is the external world really as we percieve it to be - can we trust that our senses are giving us an accurate picture of the world? And of course, we'll tackle that infamous debate: if a tree falls in the wood when nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?
Uses moral dillemmas and thought experiments to explore issues around morality and introduce pupils to a very basic interpretation of utilitarianism and the categorical imperative.
Are we any different to machines?
Devised after being inspired by an assembly on Alan Turing, this unit explores questions like "what makes us human?" and "what is intelligence?"
What makes men and women different, if anything does?
Answering a question raised by the pupils, this unit explores the work of Naomi Wolf and other feminist philosophers, working in collaboration with the history department's examination of how attitudes to gender have changed over time.
The Anarchist Challenge
In this unit we consider what life would be like in the state of nature, whether government plays a positive or negative role in society, and under what circumstances it can be legitimate.
Epistemology
What can we know for certain about the world? What, in fact, is knowledge itself? Is the external world really as we percieve it to be - can we trust that our senses are giving us an accurate picture of the world? And of course, we'll tackle that infamous debate: if a tree falls in the wood when nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound?