Week 7 Discussion — What Stays the Same, and What Makes a Choice Yours? — Traditional alternative (no AI)

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

Hook

You still say "that's me" about a photo of a five-year-old who shared almost none of your body, tastes, or memories, and you still feel that your last real decision was up to you, even though it had causes. Plutarch's ship of Theseus and Harry Frankfurt's cases press on exactly those two feelings.

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: Pick one thing in your life whose parts have all changed over time, such as a team, a band, a family recipe, a neighborhood, or yourself since childhood. Is it numerically the same thing it was? Take a position, say whether Locke's memory theory or the Buddhist teaching of no-self better explains what stays the same in a person, and test your view against your chosen example.

Option B: Pick one real choice you made that felt free. If every event, including that choice, had causes, was the choice still free? Take a position as a hard determinist, a libertarian, or a compatibilist, test it against your choice, and say what a Frankfurt case suggests about whether you could be responsible for it even if you could not have done otherwise.

There is no single right answer. Careful thinkers still disagree about what makes a person the same over time, and about whether a caused choice can be free. 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 your chosen thing is numerically the same thing it was, and whether the memory theory or no-self better explains what stays the same in a person; for Option B, say whether your chosen choice was free, which free will position you take, and what a Frankfurt case suggests about it.
• Use at least two of this week's terms (numerical identity, qualitative identity, identity over time, personal identity, memory theory, no-self, determinism, fatalism, hard determinism, libertarianism, compatibilism, principle of alternate possibilities) correctly.
• State the view you reject in its strongest form, 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 give 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, ask whether their example really fits the view they tie it to, or offer a variation that pulls the other way. "Nice point!" on its own does not count.

What a strong post looks like:

I chose Option B. The choice I picked is switching my major to nursing, and I think it was free in the compatibilist's sense: it came from my own reasons, a summer volunteering at a clinic, and nobody forced me. The strongest objection is that those reasons had causes too, all the way back before I was born, so in the end the choice came from earlier events, not from me. I grant that my reasons have a history. But a reason with a history is still mine, the way my accent is mine though I picked it up as a child. A Frankfurt case helps here: even if I could not have chosen otherwise, I would still own the choice if it came from my reasons. What would change my mind is evidence that my reasons were planted by someone else, the way a hypnotist plants a suggestion.

Notice how it takes a position, states the other side at its strongest, ties the reason to compatibilism and a Frankfurt case as the course defines them, 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.

Built with The Course Maker · samples.thecoursemaker.com