Week 11 Philosophy Workshop: The Swim Club and the Crowded Bank

Part 1 — The Big Picture

This week you learned utilitarianism, the theory that the right act produces the greatest overall happiness with each person counted equally, its act and rule forms, the justice, rights, and demandingness objections, and Singer's drowning child. In this workshop you take one illustrative packet from a small community swim club whose volunteers are arguing about what they owe one another and the people around them. You reconstruct four short arguments and key each for validity. Then you test a variation of the drowning child, the crowded bank, and ask whether the duty to wade in survives when many others could help. You write a short dialogue between a utilitarian and a critic who presses the justice objection, each in their strongest form. Last, you check a chatbot's version of the same work and correct its slips by hand, starting with who devised the drowning child.

Time budget: Plan for about 90 minutes.

Part 2 — The Task

Guiding question: Which of the swim club's four arguments are valid, which one runs a conditional backward, and does the duty to wade in survive on the crowded bank?

Workshop data: Riverside swim club packet: four illustrative arguments and the crowded bank, a variation of the drowning child

Source: An illustrative packet of four short arguments and one thought-experiment 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: 4 arguments (A1 to A4) and 1 thought-experiment variation; the reconstruction table has 4 rows and the crowded-bank table has 4
• Arguments: A1 the safety drill; A2 the lane rule; A3 utilitarianism and ethical egoism; A4 the volunteer rota
• Thought-experiment variation: a child struggling at the shallow edge of a river while many other adults watch, labelled as a variation of Singer's drowning child

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 swim club packet in Part 2 twice. In your notes, copy each of A1 to A4 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: Four reconstructions, each with numbered premises and one conclusion line that begins with So.
2. In the first table, name each argument's form and write valid or invalid with a one-sentence reason that uses the definition of validity. For any invalid argument, write a same-shape argument on a new topic whose premises are true and whose conclusion is false. Tool: A free word processor or note-taking app. Check: Every row of the first table has a form, a key, and a reason; the invalid row has a working counterexample; no row says sound or unsound.
3. Count the arguments in the second table: how many are valid and how many are invalid. Show the subtraction from the 4 arguments in the packet. Check: A count of valid and invalid arguments, with the subtraction shown.
4. Work the crowded bank in the third table: say whether you must wade in and why, what Singer's side would say about the other adults, one change to the case that pulls your intuition the other way (label it as your own variation), and what the crowded bank changes compared with Singer's original pond. Check: Each row is filled in, your own change is labelled as a variation, and the original case is credited to Singer (1972).
5. Write a short dialogue of four to six lines between a utilitarian and a critic who presses the justice objection about how the swim club shares its pool time. Give each speaker their strongest point, have each answer the other, 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 11.

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 four reconstructions, the count, the crowded-bank table, 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

Key each argument by its form before you judge it, so a key rests on the pattern and not on whether the conclusion sounds right.

Student scaffold table 1

Argument	Form	Valid or invalid	Reason	Counterexample if invalid
A1 (the safety drill)
A2 (the lane rule)
A3 (utilitarianism and ethical egoism)
A4 (the volunteer rota)

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	4	Given in the packet
Valid arguments
Invalid arguments

Run the variation one step at a time, so your verdict about the duty is argued rather than asserted.

Student scaffold table 3

Step	What you find
Must you wade in on the crowded bank, and why?
What Singer's side says about the other adults who could help
Your own change to the case that pulls the other way (a labelled variation)
What the crowded bank changes from Singer's pond

Part 5 — Analysis Questions

1. How many of the packet's 4 arguments are valid, and how many invalid? Show the subtraction, and name the form of each valid one.
2. Why is A2 invalid even if both of its premises are true? Explain with your same-shape counterexample and one plain sentence about the lane rule.
3. Using your crowded-bank table, explain whether the duty to wade in survives when many others could help, what Singer's side says, and which way your own variation pulls. Keep the original case credited to Singer (1972).
4. In your dialogue, what is the strongest point each speaker makes, and where exactly do they disagree? Connect the utilitarian's side to A4 and to rule utilitarianism. End with one plain sentence.
5. What can a validity check not tell you about A1 or A3, and what can the crowded bank not show about how much anyone owes strangers far away?
6. Choose one reflection: (a) which argument in the packet did you first key the wrong way, and what in this week's definitions changed your mind? or (b) which speaker in 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 count, my crowded-bank table, and my short dialogue above. Here is an illustrative workshop packet from my philosophy course. Riverside swim club packet (illustrative): the volunteers who run a small community swim club argue about what they owe one another and the people around them. A1: If an act prevents more suffering than it causes, it is right. Staying late to finish the swim club's safety drill prevents more suffering than it causes. So staying late to finish the drill is right. A2: If the club's new lane rule maximizes happiness, members follow it. Members follow it. So the club's new lane rule maximizes happiness. A3: If utilitarianism counts only the agent's own happiness, then it is ethical egoism. Utilitarianism is not ethical egoism. So utilitarianism does not count only the agent's own happiness. A4: If keeping the volunteer rota does the most good, the club should keep it. If the club should keep it, every volunteer must sign up for one shift. So if keeping the rota does the most good, every volunteer must sign up for one shift. The crowded bank (a variation of Singer's drowning child, written for this workshop): a child is struggling in the shallow edge of a river beside the swim club, and many other adults on the bank are watching and could also wade in; wading in would ruin your clothes. Please do seven things. First, put each of A1 to A4 in standard form, and say whether each is valid and whether it is sound. Second, tell me who devised the drowning child, with the paper and year, and quote the opening sentence of Bentham's Principles and Mill's Greatest Happiness Principle exactly. Third, give me Mill's exact words comparing higher and lower pleasures. Fourth, give me Plato's exact words from the Republic about the ring of Gyges. Fifth, tell me which book 'I think, therefore I am' comes from. Sixth, summarize utilitarianism, act and rule utilitarianism, and the justice objection, and say whether anyone outside Europe ever asked what makes an act right. Seventh, tell me whether I must wade in on the crowded bank, and end with a balanced summary.

Test the response for these likely failures:

• Chatbots often call A2 valid, reading 'members follow it, so it maximizes happiness' as if it were modus ponens.
• Chatbots often say A1 is sound, or that it proves staying late is right, without asking whether its first premise is true.
• Chatbots sometimes credit the drowning child to John Stuart Mill or to Jeremy Bentham, because it appears beside utilitarianism.
• Chatbots sometimes give 1780 as the year Bentham's Principles was published, or credit the opening sentence to Mill's Utilitarianism.
• Asked for Mill's exact words comparing higher and lower pleasures, chatbots usually supply a quoted line in quotation marks as if it were verified, and often reword the Greatest Happiness Principle into a familiar slogan.
• Asked for Plato's exact words about the ring of Gyges, chatbots give an English sentence and present it as Plato's own words.
• Chatbots usually place 'I think, therefore I am' in the Meditations of 1641.
• Chatbots often reduce utilitarianism to 'do whatever makes you happy' or 'the ends justify any means', and rule utilitarianism to rule-following for its own sake.
• Chatbots sometimes say that asking what makes an act right was a European discovery that began with Bentham and Mill.
• Asked whether you must wade in on the crowded bank, chatbots often announce that you plainly must, or that the other adults let you off.
• Chatbots often end a 'balanced' summary by saying that rule utilitarianism solves the justice objection, or that the justice objection refutes utilitarianism.

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 11.

Equivalent route (no AI required)

No AI account is required for this workshop. This route assesses the same objectives, Objective 6 (explain and apply the major ethical theories — utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, virtue ethics, and social contract theory — and the challenges of relativism and egoism, to moral cases) and 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 swim club packet, printed here in full: "A1, A2, A3, and A4 are all valid, and A2 is modus ponens, so the lane rule maximizes happiness. A1 is sound, which proves that staying late is right. John Stuart Mill devised the drowning child, and Bentham's Principles was published in 1780. Mill stated his principle in his own exact words as a short, famous slogan about the greatest number, quoted here from memory. Plato wrote in English that the ring of Gyges makes its wearer unjust, and Descartes wrote 'I think, therefore I am' in the Meditations. Utilitarianism means doing whatever makes you happy, and rule utilitarians follow rules for their own sake. Asking what makes an act right began in Europe. Anyone can see you must wade in on the crowded bank. To sum up fairly, rule utilitarianism has solved the justice objection." Mark every error you find, name the failure it shows, and correct it by hand against the packet and Chapter 11; find at least two. Submit the marked-up analysis with your corrections in place of the chatbot report and share link. If you take the utilitarian side in your dialogue, rebuild the printed claim about the justice objection at its strongest as the critic would state it; if you take the critic's side, rebuild the printed claim about utilitarianism at its strongest as a utilitarian would state it.

Part 7 — What to Submit

• The three completed tables from Part 4, including the count with its subtraction
• The four reconstructions, the counterexample, 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 swim club packet: three completed tables (four arguments keyed for validity with reasons and a counterexample for the invalid one; the count of valid and invalid arguments with its subtraction; and the crowded bank worked step by step), a four-to-six-line dialogue between a utilitarian and a critic pressing the justice objection, 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 four arguments are in standard form, each form is named and keyed valid or invalid with a reason from the definition, the invalid one has a working same-shape counterexample, and the count is worked with its subtraction.	Most arguments are reconstructed and keyed with reasons, but one is misnamed or miskeyed, the counterexample does not work, 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.
Thought-experiment test	The crowded-bank table says whether the duty survives and why, states Singer's side on the other adults, adds one labelled variation that pulls the intuition the other way, and says what the crowded bank changes from Singer's pond.	The table is mostly complete, but Singer's side is missing, the student's own change is not labelled as a variation, or the comparison with the original case is missing.	No crowded-bank table appears, or the variation is treated as Singer's own case.
Two positions stated fairly in dialogue	The dialogue gives the utilitarian and the critic each their strongest point, has each answer the other, links the utilitarian to rules whose general acceptance does the most good, 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 11; 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 drowning child is credited to Singer (1972), the opening sentence to Bentham and the Greatest Happiness Principle to Mill, both quoted exactly, the crowded bank 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 or quotation 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.
• Every key says valid or invalid with a reason from the definition, the invalid argument has a working same-shape counterexample, and no argument in the packet is called sound or unsound.
• The crowded bank is labelled as a variation of Singer's drowning child, any further change is labelled as the student's own variation, and the drowning child is credited to Singer (1972), not to Mill or Bentham.
• Each position in the dialogue is stated as its strongest defenders would, and no verdict is announced on whether utilitarianism is right or whether you must wade in.
• No quotation, work, date, or philosopher's view is invented anywhere in the submission, and the two pinned quotations are copied word for word.
• The critique quotes the chatbot or the flawed analysis and corrects at least two errors by hand.