If we want to have a big impact on our audience, one way to achieve this is to make them rethink their deepest convictions, some so deep-rooted that they cannot be seen (the metaphor of water for fish).
The Axiology Game is an exercise about exploring those implicit frameworks to produce an interesting result, trying to blow their minds (the “wow effect”).
It is also useful for developing creative thinking, as well as understanding and testing our own beliefs about what is valuable.
The game is about instrumental and intrinsic value. The stages of the game are:
- List things that have value.
- Set arrows when something has value (instrumental) because it in turn allows something else, which is also valuable.
- Provoke, if it does not happen naturally, also list the things that have negative value or “disvalue”.
- Continue establishing as many arrows as possible. See where they lead us.
- Those end nodes are candidates to be things with intrinsic value. What really matters.
Using colored chalk, we can circle with a green circle those ideas that have positive intrinsic value, and with a red circle those concepts that have negative intrinsic value. Similarly, we can color in green the arrows of things that are instrumentally valuable because they allow something else that is also valuable in a positive sense; and in red if they have negative instrumental value.
Examples:
- The same concept (pain) may be intrinsically negative (red circle) but instrumentally positive (green arrow) since it can alert and prevent a serious health problem.
- From some concepts several arrows of different colors may emerge. Statistics can be instrumentally valuable, positively (green arrow) if they produce knowledge that leads to good policies (green arrow) that lead to peaceful coexistence (green arrow) that leads to the satisfaction of interests (green circle); but they can also be instrumentally valuable in the negative sense (red arrow) if they produce stereotypes which produce prejudices (red arrow) which produce discrimination (red arrow) which produce lack of opportunities (red arrow) which produce frustration and suffering (red circle).
I have been organizing this game with my students since 2021 at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. I created it when I started teaching Communication Skills. As a result of the game, students must write a short text about what really matters.
Some of the skills that this exercise aims to develop are: public speaking, precision and synthesis in expression, creative thinking, creative writing, argumentative ability, persuasion.
If you find this game useful, I appreciate that you mention that it was created in 2021 by Manu Herrán, Departamento de Humanidades: Filosofía, Lenguaje y Literatura, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid.
Definitions:
- Axiology: branch of philosophy that studies value.
- Intrinsic value: is valuable by itself.
- Instrumental value: the value is derived from the relationship with something else.
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