Week 2 Discussion — Imagined Cases and Fair Readings — Traditional alternative (no AI)

Instructors: publish this instead of the adaptive version if you prefer, and unpublish or delete the adaptive one.

Hook

A barber who shaves all and only those who do not shave themselves sounds like someone you could meet, until you follow the description and it collapses. A teammate's quick "we should split the work evenly" sounds easy to knock down, until you state it in its strongest form. This week's tools change what counts as a good reason, and they raise real questions about how far to trust them.

Your discussion question — choose Option A or Option B; they carry the same weight and the same rubric, and you say which you picked.

Option A: Philosophers often test a claim with an imagined case, like the barber puzzle, rather than with something anyone has observed. Can an imagined case that may never happen give you a good reason to give up a belief? Take a position, and support it with one thought experiment or counterexample of your own making, labelled as invented.

Option B: Reading an argument charitably means stating it in its strongest form before criticizing it. Should you always read charitably, even when the person arguing seems careless or unfair? Take a position, and support it with one ordinary case, such as a group project, a family decision, a work meeting, or a club's rule.

There is no single right answer. Careful thinkers disagree about how much imagined cases can prove and about when charity is owed. Pick the option you actually care about, and tell us your reasoning.

Expectations

Activity format: one initial post followed by two substantive peer replies. Plan on about 45 minutes across the two deadlines; your instructor sets both due dates in Canvas.

Your initial post — by the first due date (early in the module week):

• Say which option you chose.
• For Option A, say whether an imagined case can give a good reason to give up a belief, and build one invented case, labelled as invented; for Option B, say whether charity is always owed, and describe one ordinary case.
• Use at least two of this week's terms (argument, standard form, valid, sound, counterexample, thought experiment, reductio, reading an argument charitably) correctly.
• Give your reason, and say what would change your mind.
• Length: roughly 150–250 words if written. You may instead record your post as audio or video (about two minutes) and attach a transcript; both forms are scored by the same rubric.
• Keep any example you invent away from hot-button topics, and never name a real person in a case.

Your replies — by the second due date (the end of the module week):

• Reply substantively to at least two classmates.
• A substantive reply does more than agree: state the strongest version of the poster's view in your own words, offer a counterexample to a claim they make, or ask whether an argument they call sound has had its premises checked. "Nice point!" on its own does not count.

What a strong post looks like:

I chose Option A. I think an imagined case can give a good reason, because some claims are about every possible case, and one invented case can break them. Here is my invented case: a club rule says "every officer must approve every new officer," and the very first officer had no one to approve them. If the rule were true, there could never have been a first officer, so the rule as written cannot be right. What would change my mind is an imagined case that seems to prove something about the real world that we could never check.

Notice how it takes a position, labels its case as invented, ties the reason to the idea of a counterexample, and says what would change the writer's mind. That is the bar.

Participation rubric

This discussion is worth 10 points. The three criteria below look at your initial post and your peer replies.

Post early if you can — the best threads happen when people have time to reply before the second due date.

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