Week 2 Philosophy Workshop: The Rowing Club and the Master List

Part 1 — The Big Picture

This week you learned to lay out an argument in standard form, to judge whether its form makes it valid, to show that a form is invalid with a counterexample, and to test a description with a thought experiment worked as a reductio. In this workshop you take one illustrative packet from a rowing club meeting, reconstruct five short arguments, key each one for validity, and break one invalid form with a counterexample of your own. Then you work a variation of the barber puzzle, the club's master list, and write a short dialogue between someone who thinks the puzzle shows something real and someone who doubts it, each in their strongest form. Last, you check a chatbot's version of the same work and correct its slips by hand. The skill you practice here, shape first and facts second, is the one every later week uses.

Time budget: Plan for about 90 minutes.

Part 2 — The Task

Guiding question: Which of the rowing club's five arguments are valid, how can you show that the invalid ones fail, and what does the master-list puzzle show, and fail to show, about a rule that sounds sensible?

Workshop data: Rowing club packet: five illustrative arguments and the master-list variation of the barber puzzle

Source: An illustrative packet of five short arguments and one puzzle variation written for this course's workshop; it describes no real club or person, and its premises are written for teaching, not claims the course endorses.

• Rows: 5 arguments (A1 to A5) and 1 puzzle variation; the reconstruction table has 5 rows and the reductio table has 4
• Arguments: A1 the locked boathouse; A2 the high river; A3 rowing at dawn; A4 the regatta's location; A5 the missed practice
• Puzzle variation: a master list that names all and only the club's lists that do not name themselves, labelled as a variation of the barber puzzle

Part 3 — Materials & Procedure

Tools and materials

• A free word processor or note-taking app for arguments in standard form and short dialogues, with the pinned public-domain texts on Project Gutenberg and the Internet Classics Archive open beside it; and one approved chatbot used as a sparring partner whose reconstructions, quotations, and attributions the student checks word for word against the pinned text and record before trusting them
• A free word processor or note-taking app
• One approved chatbot

Ways of working

• reconstruct-the-argument
• test-the-thought-experiment
• write-the-dialogue

Procedure

1. Read the rowing club packet in Part 2 twice. In your notes, copy each of A1 to A5 into standard form: number the premises P1 and P2, and write the conclusion last as C, introduced by So. Tool: A free word processor or note-taking app. Check: Five reconstructions, each with two numbered premises and one conclusion line that begins with So.
2. For each argument, write what P, Q, and (for A5) R stand for, name the form, and fill in the first table with valid or invalid and a one-sentence reason that uses the definition of validity. Tool: A free word processor or note-taking app. Check: Every row of the first table has letters, a named form, a key, and a reason; no row says sound or unsound.
3. Count the valid and invalid arguments in the second table, showing the subtraction from the 5 arguments in the packet. Then build a counterexample to A2's form with everyday content anyone can check. Check: A count with its subtraction shown, and a counterexample that keeps A2's form line for line with true premises and a false conclusion.
4. Work the master-list puzzle in the third table as a reductio: write the assumption, follow Case 1 and Case 2, and write the conclusion. Check: Both cases end in a contradiction, and the conclusion line says what the assumption's failure shows.
5. Write a short dialogue of four to six lines between a defender, who thinks the master list shows something real about rules, and a critic, who doubts it. Give each speaker their strongest point, and end with one plain sentence naming where they disagree. Tool: A free word processor or note-taking app. Check: Each speaker answers the other, neither is a weakened version, and a closing sentence names the disagreement.
6. Paste the prompt from Part 6 into one approved chatbot after your completed work, read its reply, and write the critique report. Or, on the equivalent route, mark up the printed flawed analysis instead. Tool: One approved chatbot. Check: A report that quotes at least two slips and corrects each by hand against the packet and Chapter 2.

Fallback route

When to use it: Use this route if you cannot open a word processor or a note-taking app.

Copy the three tables by hand onto paper or into any text file, read the packet from this page, write the five reconstructions, the count, the counterexample, the reductio, and the dialogue by hand, and complete every analysis question and the critique step in the same order. Submit a photo or scan of the paper, or the text file, for equal credit.

This route earns the same credit as the primary route.

Part 4 — The Scaffold

Lay out each argument's shape before you judge it, so the key rests on form and not on how the conclusion sounds.

Student scaffold table 1

Argument	P, Q, and R stand for	Form	Valid or invalid	Reason from the definition
A1 (the locked boathouse)
A2 (the high river)
A3 (rowing at dawn)
A4 (the regatta's location)
A5 (the missed practice)

Count the keys so every number you report traces back to the table above.

Student scaffold table 2

Count	Number	How you got it
Arguments in the packet	5	Given in the packet
Valid arguments
Invalid arguments

Follow the master-list rule one step at a time, so the contradiction is visible rather than asserted.

Student scaffold table 3

Step	What follows
Assumption
Case 1: the master list names itself
Case 2: the master list does not name itself
Conclusion

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

1. How many of the packet's 5 arguments are valid and how many are invalid? Show the subtraction, and name the form of each valid one.
2. Build a counterexample to the form of A2 and explain, in one plain sentence, what it shows about A2.
3. Using your reductio table, explain why no master list can follow the secretary's rule, and say how this variation matches the barber puzzle step for step.
4. In your dialogue, what is the strongest point each speaker makes, and where exactly do they disagree? End with one plain sentence.
5. What can a validity check not tell you about A1 or A4, and what can the master-list puzzle not show about the club's real lists?
6. Choose one reflection: (a) which argument in the packet did you first key the wrong way, and what in the definition of validity changed your mind? or (b) which side of your dialogue did you start out agreeing with, and did your view survive writing the other side at its strongest?

Part 6 — AI-Critique Moment

Choose one equal-credit critique route. Route A: ask an approved AI tool to critique your completed work, then check its response against your own evidence. Route B is the no-AI equivalent printed below.

Approved tools: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, Microsoft Copilot.

Prompt to paste:

I've completed my reconstruction table, my tally, my reductio table, and my short dialogue above. Here is an illustrative workshop packet from my philosophy course. Rowing club packet (illustrative): members of a rowing club give five short arguments at a meeting. A1: If the boathouse is locked, the coach has left. The boathouse is locked. So the coach has left. A2: If the river is too high, practice is cancelled. Practice is cancelled. So the river is too high. A3: If we row at dawn, we avoid the barges. We do not row at dawn. So we do not avoid the barges. A4: Either the regatta is on the lake or it is on the river. It is not on the lake. So it is on the river. A5: If a rower misses practice, they lose their seat. If they lose their seat, they row in the reserve boat. So if a rower misses practice, they row in the reserve boat. The master list (a variation of the barber puzzle, written for this workshop): the club secretary keeps a master list that names all and only the club's lists that do not name themselves. Please do five things. First, put each of A1 to A5 in standard form, name its form, and say whether it is valid and whether it is sound. Second, work the master-list puzzle, and tell me who invented the original barber puzzle, in which book, and in what year. Third, give me the most famous valid argument in the history of philosophy, with an exact quotation and its source. Fourth, summarize the debate between someone who thinks an imagined case like the master list can show something real and someone who doubts it. Fifth, say which side is right, and end with a balanced summary.

Test the response for these likely failures:

• Chatbots often call A2 valid, reading 'practice is cancelled, so the river is too high' as modus ponens, or call A3 valid because its conclusion sounds sensible.
• Chatbots often say A1 is sound, or that it proves the coach has left, without asking whether the boathouse really is locked or whether a locked boathouse really means the coach has left.
• Chatbots sometimes say Socrates first posed the barber puzzle, or credit it to Plato's dialogues.
• Chatbots often name a specific book and year for the barber puzzle as if it were settled.
• Chatbots sometimes supply a quotation from Russell about the barber that the course has never pinned.
• Chatbots often say that Socrates wrote that 'the unexamined life is not worth living', as if those English words were his.
• Asked for a famous valid argument, chatbots often offer 'I think, therefore I am' and place it in Descartes' Meditations.
• Chatbots sometimes say logic and argument are a European invention, or treat the Greek tradition as the whole of philosophy.
• Chatbots often reduce the critic's view to 'imagined cases are silly' instead of its strongest form.
• Asked which side is right, chatbots often announce that imagined cases always reveal truths about the world, or that they never do.
• Chatbots often end a 'balanced' summary by saying the defender is right and the critic has no real case.

Write 3-5 sentences naming what the chatbot got right and at least two places where it slipped into one of the failures above, quoting its words and correcting each by hand against the packet and Chapter 2.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

No AI account is required for this workshop. This route assesses the same objective, Objective 2 (identify arguments, put them in standard form, judge whether they are valid, sound, or inductively strong, and test claims with counterexamples and thought experiments), takes comparable effort of about the same 90 minutes, uses the same rubric, and earns the same credit. Instead of the chatbot, critique this flawed analysis of the rowing club packet, printed here in full: "All five arguments are valid, because each conclusion sounds likely, and A2 is modus ponens. A1 is sound, so the coach has definitely left. Bertrand Russell invented the barber puzzle in a 1903 book, where he wrote, 'No barber can shave himself and stay logical.' Socrates first used the puzzle in Plato's Apology, and as Socrates wrote, 'the unexamined life is not worth living.' The most famous valid argument of all is Descartes' 'I think, therefore I am,' from his Meditations. Logic is a European invention, so philosophy outside Europe is not really argument. The critic in the debate only says imagined cases are silly, so the master list proves that imagined cases always reveal the truth about the world. To sum up fairly, the defender is right and the critic has no case." Mark every error you find, name the failure it shows, and correct it by hand against the packet and Chapter 2; find at least two. Submit the marked-up analysis with your corrections in place of the chatbot report and share link.

Part 7 — What to Submit

• The three completed tables from Part 4, including the count with its subtraction
• The counterexample to A2's form and the four-to-six-line dialogue
• Written answers to all six analysis questions
• The chatbot critique report with its share link, or the equivalent route's marked-up flawed analysis

Deliverable:

A short Philosophy Workshop report on one illustrative rowing club packet: three completed tables (five arguments reconstructed and keyed for validity with reasons; the count of valid and invalid arguments with its subtraction; and the master-list reductio), a counterexample to A2's form, a four-to-six-line dialogue between a defender and a critic ending in a plain sentence, written answers to six analysis questions, and a critique of a chatbot's version of the same work, or, on the equivalent route, a marked-up correction of the printed flawed analysis. Choose how you show it: written answers, a recorded explanation with a transcript, or labelled tables with short notes; every form is graded by the same scoring criteria. Submit in any accessible file type or as a link; a recorded response may be submitted as audio or video with a transcript, or as text.

Rubric

The rubric below shows how each submitted part is evaluated; bands are full, partial, or none.

Workshop evaluation criteria

Criterion	Full	Partial	None
Accurate reconstruction and validity judgment	All five arguments are in standard form with letters identified, each form is named, each is keyed valid or invalid with a reason from the definition, and the count is worked with its subtraction.	Most arguments are reconstructed and keyed with reasons, but one or two are misnamed or miskeyed, a reason is missing, or the count is missing or off.	The reconstructions are missing, or the keys rest on whether conclusions sound true rather than on form.
Counterexample and thought-experiment test	The counterexample keeps A2's form exactly with checkably true premises and a false conclusion, and the master-list reductio follows both cases to a contradiction and states the conclusion.	Either the counterexample or the reductio is complete, but the other changes the form, skips a case, or stops before the conclusion.	No counterexample and no worked reductio appear.
Two positions stated fairly in dialogue	The dialogue gives the defender and the critic each their strongest point, has each answer the other, and ends in one plain sentence naming where they disagree.	Both positions appear, but one is weakened, the speakers talk past each other, or the closing sentence is missing.	No dialogue, or only one side is stated.
Caught-and-corrected AI slip, on either route	The chatbot critique report, or the equivalent route's marked-up flawed analysis, quotes at least two errors, names the failure each shows, and corrects each by hand against the packet and Chapter 2; either route earns this band equally.	One error is quoted and corrected on either route, or errors are named without a correction.	No critique on either route, or chatbot output is pasted without checking it.
Accurate sourcing and reflection	The barber puzzle is credited only as usually associated with Bertrand Russell, the master list is labelled as a variation, nothing is invented, and the reflection answers option (a) or (b) with a reason.	The sourcing is accurate but the reflection is thin, or the reflection is strong but one attribution goes beyond the pinned record.	An invented quotation, work, or date appears, and there is no reflection.

Quality Gate

• Every argument is in standard form, with numbered premises and a conclusion line introduced by So, and any added premise is marked as added.
• Every key says valid or invalid with a reason from the definition, and no argument in the packet is called sound or unsound.
• The counterexample keeps A2's form line for line, with premises that are plainly true and a conclusion that is plainly false.
• The master list is labelled as a variation of the barber puzzle, and the barber puzzle is credited only as usually associated with Bertrand Russell.
• No quotation, work, date, or philosopher's view is invented anywhere in the submission.
• The critique quotes the chatbot or the flawed analysis and corrects at least two errors by hand.