Course: introduction to ethics/moral philosophy

1. Learning objectives: one big, two sub for a course unit

Big: understand and apply utilitarianism to novel situations

Sub:
– understand/apply act-utilitarianism
– rule-utilitarianism

(utilitarianism: what’s morally right is what produces the best consequences)
(best actions versus following the best rules)

2. ARG play objective: generally “Save the world by X”

Save the world by making a compelling utilitarian argument for why humans should exist

3. RPG play objective: narrative object McGuffin style, and/or final product like a report to an authority figure

– Convince Skynet (the machine) not to wipe humanity off the planet

– Create multiple teams to address each kind of utilitarianism

– Arguing with each other, individual arguments trying to strengthen the whole

– Time travel aspect, each team represents the philosopher who espoused the theory (character sheets? worldviews?)

– And end up with this is the best argument?

– Skynet has these 5 reasons why the world should be destroyed (novel instances) — class breaks into 5 teams to address each?

– Utility is useful, but useful to whom? (metaquestion of the unit)

– Debate, have this be hashed out in a forum

– Point is to convince the machine that we’ve either made the right decision or that we’ve learned from our mistakes

4. Outline story-arc of RPG (including time period, setting, characters, etc.)

Props: Doomsday clock (lose minutes for not having an answer); Skynet costume for instructor

5. Integrate mechanics/activities: collect important objects? annotate important primary and/or secondary sources? Role-playing! (Mastery of a learning objective can always be expressed as performance as a master of that learning objective.)

Collaboratively research the theories of utilitarianism and contribute to a wiki which they will use to build their arguments (can also use this to embed assessment, both formative as well as summative)

Source: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1HNGuHdAg8b8fFpW-7YL240JXua5dxfZDzprVio6hmPc/edit