Smithsonian X Philosophy

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An oldie but a goodie: What technologies exist today that you first saw as a kid watching #StarTrek? #StarTrekCourse @edX @LFASW

http://www.facebook.com/pages/p/759634880817046

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VERITAS TEAM MEMBER #1 of 6: Arsenal

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VERITAS TEAM MEMBER #2 of 6: The Phantom

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VERITAS TEAM MEMBER #3 of 6: Q

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VERITAS TEAM MEMBER #4 of 6: Marvelous Mairna (MM)

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VERITAS TEAM MEMBER #5 of 6: The All-Seeing Banshee (aka Professor Jack Dingo)

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VERITAS TEAM MEMBER #6 of 6: Worldbender

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by Rejana

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by TheMattHarding

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by HollyOlsen

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By johnadah

“My randomly assigned powers at the beginning of this course were x-ray vision and time travel. I felt that those two powers combined could open up a large amount of dangerous possibilities, as anyone who possessed them could theoretically go back in time and stop anything from happening, whether it was an actual crime that was committed, or simply seeing a gun in under someone's jacket and going back in time to try to prevent them from buying it, which would be an enormous invasion of privacy and even an infringement upon legal rights. Because of this, my concept for the character is that he works for the police as a detective, but limits his use of time travel strictly to only travelling back in time to observe a crime that has been committed from a distance with the use of his x-ray vision. This allows him to travel back to the present and cooperate with the police department in order to bring justice to those who commit the crime.

This does, of course, bring about the question of morality, due to the fact that he has the ability to travel to the time and location of the crime, thus, he also possesses the potential ability to stop the crime. However, stopping the crime could potentially set off a butterfly effect of much greater evils. Therefore, he refuses to interact with the past, and only seeks to observe what has occurred so that the offender might be brought to justice.”

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By rancorman

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By MargauxMaes

“I built off of the two powers I received from the course, Weapon Hands and Force Field Projection, the combination of which makes for a powerful fighter both offensively and defensively. Because I like close ties between superheroes and what they fight, I decided that Arsenal would have donned the costume for the reason of taking on arms trafficking rings, which link to tension between gangs around her home and how this affects friends and family.”

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By keithoneil

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We kicked off Power and Responsibility: Doing Philosophy with Superheroes with SmithsonianX and the Harvard Extension School this week. For our first issue, we asked our learners about Identities and Worlds. 

As budding superheroes and philosophy experts, we created our own superhero personas or adopted the mindset of a superhero character of our choice. (‘Superheroes’ can be super villains as well!)

When creating superhero personas, we thought about:

Does your superhero wear a mask/costume?

What is their motivation/reasoning behind this?

Does your superhero have dual identities?

Who knows about your superhero’s identity?

What does your superhero do? For example, do they fight crimes?

Come learn about philosophy and superheroes with us on edX.

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By jonesnforart

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By SebastianAragon