By Sophie Wesson (Lower Sixth)

Last week, the Sixth Form Philosophy students enjoyed an engaging debate focused on the following question: Is Wall-E (the Disney Pixar character) a person? After discovering life on the now deserted planet Earth, Wall-E is able to save humanity from their detached life in space, eventually restoring the planet.

Both year groups have been studying a topic on personhood, which considers what criteria is necessary for a living being (or robot), to be granted moral consideration. During the debate there were various ideas posed about how we might define personhood, and whether Wall-E as a robot should be granted it. One idea we discussed was whether being human was sufficient for personhood, or whether non-genetic criteria such as being an asset to our society, or displaying altruism to others should be sufficient.

It was interesting to be able to work with Upper Sixth students as we were able to see a wider variety of arguments from people who have been studying philosophy for a longer time than ourselves. It also required us to show versatility, speed and precision as we responded to arguments presented by those on the other side of the debate. Overall it was a really interesting and fast paced debate which definitely helped us towards our IB core theme study of what it means to be human.