Note: If you were not in class for this group exercise, please complete it as a written exercise and turn it in as soon as you can.


Group work on Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.'s "Who am I this Time?"


(Note:  Before doing this group work, make sure the class has reviewed methods of authority, rationalism, empiricism, pragmatism, coherentism.)

Break up into small groups (4-6). Delegate one or more members of your group to (1) prepare a summary of your group's discussion and (2) make a list of your group's members.

1. What is acting?  How does someone learn how to act?  What do you have to know to be able to act like someone else? 

2. Pick a person that at least 2 members of your group know.  How does that person act?  What does this tell you about what that person is like?  (Please change names and specific details to protect privacy.)

3. When you decide you know what another person is like, how do you know?

4. What kind of real experience(s) does this story capture?

5. Why do you think Vonnegut wrote this story?

Michael Kagan, for Philosophy 403, Heroism and the Human Spirit
Dec. 7, 2004.

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