"Ah, I'm sorry." Jason scratched the back of his head. He couldn't believe he had just tried to help such a legend find the right classroom.
"Don't worry about it." Dyon smiled. "I appreciate the help."
Jason awkwardly made his way back to his seat as Dyon turned his back to the classroom. He took a look at the podium but shook his head, instead eyeing a foldable white table. With a single leap, Dyon say cross legged on it, looking out into the classroom to find gazes filled with fire.
Clara suddenly raised her hand. Penelope looked over in shock. Clara never did anything like this, there had even been times where movie stars and peak level athletes with hundreds of millions of followers visited the white house and she never batted an eye. Why would she being so active with Dyon?
Seeing the hand, Dyon smiled. But, when he noticed who it was, his lip twitched. 'I guess I didn't escape that easily…'
"Clara. How are you?"
Penelope gave her friend another weird look. She knew Dyon personally? Enough for him to remember her name? What was going on?
'She is the president's daughter, I guess…'
Clara however, maintained her normal cold gaze. "Since you need a lecture topic, I thought I'd give you one."
It didn't escape Dyon that Clara had ignored his question. But, he could only chuckle bitterly at that. "What did you have in mind?"
"A topic in philosophy." Clara replied quickly, her emotions never wavering. "How do we know when we know something?"
Dyon's eyes flashed, but he kept his thoughts inside, instead turning his gaze to the rest of the class. "Skepticism. Foundationalism. Infallibilism. Justified True Belief. Internalism. Externalism.
"The theory of knowledge has touched everything from the philosophy that accepts we know next to nothing to the philosophy of trusting your senses to present things as they are.
"In the end, we ironically know quite little about what it takes to know something. Even the most intuitive philosophies have been falsified. For example, the idea that we have knowledge when something is justified first, then proved true and then finally believed, was widely accepted previously. But, even that has been proved to be on shaky footing."
Clara raised her hand, waiting for Dyon to nod toward her to speak again. "How has JTB been falsified?"
Dyon smiled. "Say you have two people. Person A and Person B. Both are in line for a promotion to a job. Just before the announcement, Person A takes Person B to lunch where Person B sees that Person A leaves the affair with ten cents left in his pocket. Person B then later find out that he's lost the promotion race. So, Person B then asserts that the newly promoted official had ten cents in his pocket just after leaving their lunch.
"However, what Person B then finds out is that he was wrong. The promotion was, in fact, for him. But, when he looks in his pocket, he realizes that he too has ten cents in his pocket.
"Technically he was justified because he saw Person A with ten cents and thought Person A got the promotion. His belief was also true, because even though the promotion wasn't for Person A, the person who did get it also had ten cents in their pocket.
"By this logic. You can see that the JTB was followed perfect, but it's still not real knowledge. If anything, it was a lucky coincidence."
The students nodded in acknowledgement. Justified True Belief seemed like a foolproof method. And yet, here was a clear example where it wasn't the case.
Clara raised her hand again. "Then what about our morals? How do we know they're right if we can't even decide on how to tell what is factual and what isn't?"
"Morals are something that are often dictated by how we're raised and the society we were brought up in. Everything from our religion to how we consume entertainment is likely decided very early on. It's only in recent times that morals have begun to be forged by popular opinion and that's because of the advent of things like social media and technology."
Clara gave up on raising her hand and simply spoke out directly.
"So. If I went to a completely different world, are you saying its likely my morals would be effected by their culture? Or are you saying that what I'm susceptible to accepting was decided from a very early age?"
"Well. The latter is likely on a gradient. If you were engrained with something from youth, it would likely take you a much longer time to change that portion of you. Maybe you have an example? I'm open to a class discussion."
"Sure." Clara's cold eyes flashed. "Let's talk about polygamy."
Dyon's breath got caught in his throat, causing him to cough violently.
"Sure," Dyon coughed again, "what about it?"
"I was just curious. If you were raised in a society where monogamy was the norm and you left to a place where polygamy was accepted, how long would it take you to flip? Two years? One year? Less than that?"
The class began to feel some tension in the air. They didn't know what was going on or why their normally cold and quiet class beauty was pressing this discussion so hard, but no one could get a word in. Even Dyon was struggling to, let alone Penelope or the rest.
"Extenuating circumstances?" Dyon wasn't even lecturing anymore. It was almost like he was caught red handed and had to explain himself. The class never thought they'd see this side of their living legend, but here it was in front of them.
"Do tell. I'm also interested in how gender differences might be incorporated here. When it comes to polygamy, how likely is a male to switch his morals versus a female?"
"Uh – " Dyon cleared his throat.
"Also. When said person goes off to a new world with a completely new set of morals, do they forget about their world? How much of their old selves do they erase? Do they forget their past relationships? Do they forget the ties they used to have? Or did they purge all of that before they left so that they could change their moral code as much as they wanted when they left?"
Clara stood, her cold eyes flashing as she placed her laptop into her bag and walked down the lecture hall steps.
"Just thought I'd help with the lecture topic. I'm not feeling well, I hope you'll excuse me."
"Ah – " Dyon's voice seemed caught in his throat as Clara walked out, leaving the light click of the lecture hall door as the only noise in the space.
