Seite - 158 - in Reflective Cosmopolitanism - Educating towards inclusive communities through Philosophical Enquiry

158 REfLECTIvE COsMOPOLITANIsM 5. Christian does not want to lend his phone to Galina because she is Ukranian. 6. The radius of a square is equal to its diagonal. 7. Taking the bag from my book, I elbowed Giuseppe on his nose and now it is bleeding. 8. During the 5v5 football match, Mario, trying not to prevent the opponent from scoring, committed a foul on Carlo, and because of the foul, Carlo needed 5 stit- ches to his lip. 9. 8594 plus 10000 equals 20001. 10. To dispose of toxic factory and radioactive waste, people bury it in the poorest countries on the planet. 11. I deny I am not doing a logic quiz, so I affirm I am not doing a logic quiz. Episode 2 Leading Idea 1: Belief Rosaria is convinced that, after seeing Vanessa and Fela hug, there is a love story between them. The information she has to support this includes the objective data derived from her own testimony and the experience that her young life has drawn from the fact that if two people hug they love each other. This is a hurried conclusion but justified by the fact that Rosaria did not have the right information to contradict the evidence of what she saw and by her emotional involvement. Rosaria does not know, and cannot imagine, that two peo- ple with such evident physical differences could be brother and sister, and her experience of never having met a multiracial family lead her to believe what is not completely true. Rosaria is not wrong to deduce that the two people love each other, but she is wrong in her deduction about the type of affection they share. She constructs a belief in part on the basis of empirical information that seems evident to her, and also in part on the basis of other beliefs assimilated previously. Believing can be seen as an act of loyalty towards what we build in our own mind due to, among other things, the loyalty assimilated from our experience, as well as the loyalty given by the official culture. The problem can arise if we meet traditions and cultures that are different from our own. Will we be ready to question the loyalty towards our traditions? What I have believed my whole life may be questioned after I discover a belief that is true for another person. In this case, what would my reaction be? Would I question my belief and consider the other person’s belief? Or will I remain anchored to the belief I have always taken to be true? Maintaining our beliefs gives us a sense of sureness and of certainty in our knowledge. They might even reflect a sort of mental laziness, we are ready to believe what we are taught, passed on, or seems evident. This is a very interesting point to discuss with your students. How much are we prepared to question our beliefs? How much are we disposed to be open to doubt our beliefs in order to evaluate if we are moving closer to a truth or a prejudice? Exercise: Belief Read the following statements and decide which of them you are prepared to ques- tion and explain why.