 A few weeks ago you read the story from this book called the fight and there's just a little bit here that I have to read to you about this just to remind you of where we are up to. It's actually moving on to a new topic, moving on from fair and right that you've been talking about. I'm going to move on to a new idea. It says when young people, when people make promises, not just young people, when people make promises they take on obligations either to do or to refrain from doing certain things. Yet the circumstances in which the promise is made or the things that happen after it is made can also lessen or negate these obligations. This applies to promises that are not freely undertaken but extracted through pressure of one kind or another. And an unforeseen change in the circumstances can not only lessen the obligation to keep the promise but might morally oblige someone not to keep their promise. So Joshua in the story you might remember Joshua tries to make Rachel his little sister promise not to tell the mother about the fight. She refuses and says that the promise is only real if you promise what you freely choose. So I want you to be thinking about that and we're going to think about some questions about promises. We're going to think about those in relation to the question quadrant. So can anybody tell me something they know about the question quadrant? About different types of questions we might have? What do you know Willa? There's four different things. Yeah there's four different areas. What are the ends of the lines? What sorts of questions are on one side and what sorts of questions are on the other side? Open and close questions. Can you tell me something about those sorts of questions? Okay so some questions are closed and they have one answer or they have a correct answer. So they might have multiple answers but the answers are all correct. What are the ingredients of a carrot cake? So you tell all the ingredients, there's multiple answers, they're all correct. So what about open questions? You can say something about that. Where do they come from? They come from your head. What's in your head? What are you using your head to do when you're coming up with answers for open questions? Your brain. Your brain? What part of your brain? What sort of thinking are you doing with your brain? To come up with answers for open questions? You're only your own problem. You are? What sort of thinking are you doing? Well when you're doing open questioning you're also doing open reasoning. So having a growth mindset, you have an open mind and you're open to all suggestions. So what we try and do in philosophy is we actually try and aim more for the open questions so we can deepen our discussion. Because with a closed question like the 2 plus 2 example, it's 4. That is the correct answer but it's not like it's deepening our discussion but we want to make them open questions. So we want to ask why, we want to ask how. We use words like ethics, epistemology, metaphysics and aesthetics. Aesthetics and logic. And logical questions. And we use those so that's the how, the why, the what, the if and why. To kind of deepen the discussion. Yes, yes we do. We also have these sorts of questions. We have questions from the text and questions from life. And then that helps us to make the 4 quadrants. So in this quadrant we have what sorts of questions? If they're text questions that are closed. Research? Not research that's down in this one. Like questions that are closed that we will kind of answer. Comprehension questions up here. Over here we're going to have philosophical questions down here and quarry type questions. And we're going to have up here questions where we use our imagination. Can we think of a reading comprehension question from that story of the fight? Why did his system give him a promise? Why did he give him a promise when she didn't keep it? I don't think that's reading comprehension either. What's the answer in the story? The answer has to be in the story, Kate. You think you've got one? It's a good question too, Beta. Did his sister promise? Did he? Did she? I don't think she did. I think she said, you know, if you're trying to force me to make a promise, it's not a real promise. So I don't think she did, but the answer's in the story, isn't it? Did Joshua's sister promise? Okay, so that would be a reading comprehension question. Can we think about a research question about promises? Another closed question, but we might be able to find the answers. Is there a part of the human brain that sometimes says that decides should we promise or should we not promise and makes decisions? So can I rephrase it, Hector? Is there a part of the human brain that makes decisions about promises? Or is there part of the human mind? Well, can we scan the mind if we're doing research? Well, I believe the mind is part of the brain, so just put the brain. Is there a research type of question? Is there an imagination type of question? Remember, when we're at the top half of the quadrant, we want to keep the story in the questions. When we're in the bottom half of the quadrant, we want to take the story out of the questions. So here you can still have something about one of the characters but about your imagination about what might happen. Can we think of an imagination question about Joshua and Rachel and the promise? Sir, how did Joshua's sister feel when she was supposed to make the promise? Okay. So we can imagine how she felt a bit like what Hector was talking about with empathy. Yeah, because she might have been scared that she... So can I just write how did Rachel feel because that was her sister's name? Yes. Now we have to think about a philosophical question about promises. You might want to think about all those areas Hector mentioned before. Ethics, logic, metaphysics, epistemology and aesthetics. Probably what was the point of asking Rachel to keep the promise? Okay, so remember we have to keep the story out of the question when it's going to be philosophical. What was the point of asking someone to keep a promise? What's the point of asking someone to keep a promise? Or forcing rather than asking? So now I'm going to give you one of these sheets of paper between two. I might get Harry to run around and do that. What's the point of forcing someone to keep a promise? If you can give them one between two. And I want you to think... I don't want you to come up with questions in these quadrants. I want you just to think about philosophical questions. Has to be about promises. Has to be a philosophical question about promises. Philosophical. If you want to write a second question, get a second piece of paper. Can we start here and just share the questions? If a promise has been made are you obliged to keep it? If a promise has been made are you obliged to keep it? What's the point of forcing someone to keep a promise? Is it connected? Do you think those two questions are connected? Do you want to put it out? We might connect them afterwards, we might just get them all out. Should you keep a promise if you've been forced to? Should you keep it if you've been forced to? What sort of question is that if it starts with should? I think it's epistemology. Is it right or is it wrong? What are we talking about? Ethics. Should we do it or shouldn't we do it? If people choose not to keep a promise, does that make them a bad person? Oh yeah, I was talking to my mum and dad about this on the weekend. We had another one. Should people feel the need to break a promise if it is bad? If they really know how to word it but like if it is the wrong thing? Yeah, if they've been put in a situation where they promise something but they then think that it's actually not safe or not right. If they're under pressure. If they're under pressure. Ladies? What is the point of keeping a promise like a secret? What is the point of keeping a promise like a secret? We had two. What makes a promise? What makes a promise? That's a great question. What makes a promise? Our promise is pointless and is a promise only a promise if kept? Yeah. Our promise is real. Are they real? And why do people ask for promises? Yeah, why do they? What is the point of making a promise if you can't do it? If you can't keep it. Why would you make that promise? Justlyn and Clay? We had what is a promise? What is a promise? The basic what sort of question? Anybody know it? The basic metaphysical question. What is a promise? What are we talking about here? Okay. Justlyn? Are there different types of promises? Are there different types of promises? All right. I thought of a confusing question while everyone was doing the questions. You think we need more confusing questions? Yes. Okay, just one more. Okay, so if you make a promise to someone not to let a secret out and they say, do you promise that you'll break your promise? Is that all right? Can you ever promise to break a promise? Yes. A promise is something that's supposed to break. But then you have to choose with the two promises. Which promise is more powerful? Yeah, like what? And then he told you to break the promise. You promise to break it? Promise me that you'll break that promise. Well, what we need to do is to pick a few questions that we can actually discuss. So I'm just going to read them again. I want you to think about the main question here. What do we need to focus on? Or maybe two or three that could get us started. What is the point of keeping a promise secret? What makes a promise? Is that like what is a promise? What makes a promise? There's a nice connection. What is a promise and what makes a promise? Do you have to keep a promise secret? So they're about promises and secrets, aren't they? Can you always keep a promise? So there's a whole heap of them there about keeping promises, aren't they? Keeping promises and breaking promises. So they're about keeping all those ones. That one's about breaking. Sort of got them in some sort of groupings there. What do we think? Where should we start? What do you think, Beta? Yeah, what's a promise? I think that was one of two questions. Why would we start there, Beta? Because first we need to know exactly what a promise is to then argue the rest. We need to know what a promise is to know what's the point of a promise. Okay, so if we start with what's a promise then we can figure out the rest. Alright, well let's start there. Let's start with what was it, Beta? What is a promise? Okay, let's just have a really short little discussion about that and then we'll do some reflection. Well, I think a promise is more like... It's like someone placing trust in you. To know that you're going to do exactly what the promise is. They're placing trust in you. It's almost like a power, almost, as some people were saying earlier. So we're already saying that promises are about giving your word. It might be about keeping a secret. It involves the placement of trust in another. It might involve knowledge or power, yeah? We're actually going to have to stop there and do some reflection quickly. If you had to give yourself a score out of ten for how you listen today. What score would you give yourself, how you listen to others? Who's got eight or less? Anybody got an eight or less? You got a nine? Why a nine? Because we went off the track. We moved from promise then we went to secret. Secret. So if we were listening well, we would stay on the track. Yes, but it was getting close to the end. What about what you've... What have you learnt already about promises? What's something you've learnt about promises today? I've learned that promise is to agree with something and say that I will walk on that thing. Okay, so it's some sort of agreement? Yes. I think of promise for Ireland that we all have different perspectives of promise. Claire thought that only a few people can have promise together. Some of us don't know anyone who has promise. Everyone has different perspectives of promise. When you put them together, they're all the same. But do you think differently about them? We think differently about them. And we can see already how close it is to other concepts, how close promise is to secret and how close promise is to trust. And that we might need to do some more making distinctions about those things before we could get a really clear idea of what a promise is.