We invited students participating in Berkeley Connect in Spring 2018 to enter our Student Voice Contest and share with us a memorable experience they had in Berkeley Connect. The winning entry below was written by Mindy Dai, who participated in Berkeley Connect in Philosophy. Mindy is pictured here with the blue floor tile that provoked a deep philosophical discussion among Berkeley Connect students!
The question she asked really was a simple question: what color is that tile? Of course, our initial response was overwhelmingly uniform. But she pressed on, “Yeah, but what about dogs or bugs or basically anything that has more (or less) cones than us? Who is to say that they aren’t seeing the true color?” We ponder this for a bit before deciding to be even more pedantic with our response, asking things like “What is color?,” “Is there even such thing as objective truth?” and “Why the heck are we talking about this–it’s obviously a blue tile!” And I kid you not, we talked about this for the rest of our all-too-short hour. This snapshot of intellectual curiosity was not only one of the most stimulating debates I’ve had in my life, but also, in my opinion, a perfect example of why I like my Berkeley Connect Philosophy class so much. It is so rare we get to really sit down and have conversations about the “big questions,” but it’s even rarer to have such a wonderful group of people to do it with.