The senses

We did about two hours of school time today.  After an hour of doing times tables, we moved on to P4C again, and did another hour of that.

We started by reading SenseStory.  It is quite similar to Dr Seuss’s story The Big Brag (which we have here at home).

I then got Mulan to write down a list of the five animals mentioned in the story (crow, dog, fly, bat, mole).

(Miya also got out a piece of paper and drew for the next hour.)

Next to each animal, I asked Mulan to write the sense that that animal is proud of about themselves (the crow could see, the dog could smell, the fly could taste, the bat could hear, and the mole could feel).  This was a bit of reading comprehension for her.

I then asked Mulan to think about each sense and decide which animal she would most like to be (thinking only about the senses, not about the cuteness, or otherwise, of the animal!).  She wasn’t sure.

So, I asked her about her least preferred.  She quickly decided that taste would be the least important.  But she thought all the others were equal.

So, I rephrased the question and asked her if she woke up one morning and couldn’t see, would that be worse or better than if she woke up and couldn’t smell.  This thought experiment gave her a structure for her to rank her preferences.

We had quite a long discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of each of the senses.  At first she thought that seeing was best, because then when she plays hide and seek she can see best where to hide.  I pointed out that a dog might be able to smell her, even if she was hiding in the closed wardrobe.  The bat might be able to hear her movements in the wardrobe, and the mole might feel her movement vibrations.  She realised that seeing wasn’t always best.

In the end, she ranked the senses in the order of hear, feel, see, smell, taste.  She wrote 1 to 5 next to each sense on her paper.  (Interesting that seeing only ranked third.)

I then asked her to think about which senses might be the best for discovering about the world.  She clarified the question, by saying that it was like she was a newborn baby who didn’t know anything about the world, and wanted to find out.  I agreed.

I asked her if this list would be the same as her first ranking list.  She said no.  Mulan decided that even though she still personally preferred to hear, hearing was not the best sense to find out about the world.

After more discussion, she ranked the senses in the order of see, feel, hear, smell, taste.  She wrote 1 to 5 next to her earlier ranked list.

I then asked her which of the following items in each pair is more real.  (She wasn’t sure at first what this meant, but after a short pause she soon made sense of it.)

The feel of an ice cube or the way it shines?  Mulan thought the feel was more real, with it being both hard and cold.

A ball dropping to the floor or the sound it makes?  Mulan thought the sound.

The weight of an apple or its colour?  Mulan thought the colour.

The flavour of an orange or its colour?  Mulan thought for a while but couldn’t decide at all.

A person in a dream or a person in a painting?  Mulan thought the person in the painting.  She said that the person in the dream is imaginary and we soon forget it.  But we can still see the person in the painting (even though it is also imaginary).

We then talked about animals that have senses that are alien to us, such as snakes than sense the difference between hot and cold, and bats that echo-locate.  I asked her if she could imagine what it might be like to be able to echo-locate, like a bat.  She said she couldn’t.  But she said that she could imagine what it would be like to be a cat (our new kitten, Mickey, was on my knee at the time).

I told her about one of my university teachers who was blind.  He said that he could echo-locate a little.  But he still couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be a bat (at the time we were discussing Thomas Nagel’s article What is it like to be a bat?).

I suggested that we stop to eat, but Mulan insisted that we still keep talking more.

We talked about the moon illusion (how the moon looks bigger when on the horizon).  Mulan didn’t think that the moon would really be bigger.  That it just seemed bigger.  But she wasn’t sure why it seemed bigger.  She thought maybe the moon is closer to us at that time.  I asked if she thought the moon would go in and out that much while circling the Earth.  She wasn’t sure.  I didn’t push this too much; it is a bit too complicated.

Mulan still wanted to keep talking.

So I asked her if she remembered Dr Seuss’s book, The Big Brag.  She did.  I asked her if the worm in the story could really see that far.  She didn’t think so; she said no one could really see that far.  I asked her why the worm might have said he could, if he really couldn’t.  She thought maybe he was just tricking the other animals, for fun.

At this point, I sort-of walked Mulan through the idea that the worm was criticising the other animals for each thinking that he was personally better than the other was.  I asked Mulan if she thought the worm was right that no one was better, just because of their particular senses.  She thought he was.

I asked her that if the worm is right, is it okay to rank the senses, like she did.  She said it was.  She said that she was just giving her own personal preference for herself.  And that is different.  Fair enough.

I then asked her that since we cannot know what it is like to be a bat, to what extent can we really rank the senses (here, I was trying to draw Mulan’s attention to the fact that when we rephrased the question from ranking animals to comparing her own senses, we were actually changing the subject).  When Mulan said that taste was the least important, she was basing it on her own experience of taste.  But we cannot know how wonderfully delightful a taste experience might be for a fly.  For all we know, a fly’s taste might be experientially far more pleasurable than a bat’s hearing.  She agreed.

Finally at midday she agreed to end our lesson and have our elevenses (morning tea).

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As you can probably tell, the final part our conversation was turning into a bit of a Socratic dialogue, with me doing most of the talking and Mulan saying “yes, Socrates” to me!  (The earlier rankings and preferences, with their reasons, were all of Mulan’s thoughts, though.)  Clearly, with just the two of us (and Miya drawing alongside us) what we do can never be a pure P4C lesson (even though it is still philosophy).  For it to be proper P4C, Mulan needs to be having these sorts of conversations with other children her own age.  The children need to be bouncing these ideas off each other, rather than me (authoritatively) putting forward suggestions.