Philosophy 301 -- Ethical Inquiry --
Spring Semester 2006 -- Syllabus

Instructor:            Tom Atchison                     Phone:  612-728-9421 (home – T, Th,
eve’s, wknds)

3734 17th Ave. So.                        651-523-2604 (Hamline – MWF till 3)

Mpls. MN
55407               E-mail:
[email-masked]

[email-masked]

Class
website:  I maintain my own website (not part of
D2L) where I post course handouts and information at:  www.woldww.info/classes

Course Objectives

To introduce
students to a variety of theories and arguments about the nature of
ethical thinking and moral judgment

To provide
students with an opportunity to reflect on what it means to lead an
ethical life

To learn
and practice skills and methods that may be helpful in thinking about
ethical problems.

To
introduce students to some critiques of traditional ethical theories --
critiques that raise questions about the role of race, class and gender in
ethical thinking and critiques that challenge the assumption that general
theories are what we want from moral philosophy.

Course Materials

The Elements of Moral Philosophy by James Rachels

Applied Ethics in American
Society,
edited by Wilcox and Wilcox

Other
readings will be photocopied and handed out in class or will be made available
on the Internet.  Some assignments
for this class will require access to the Internet – Metro State provides
access in its computer labs and library.

Please make
sure your Metro State Netmail account is working and
check regularly for class related emails

Please bring
the assigned readings to class each week

Please keep
copies of all the work you hand in.

Course Description

This course will raise and consider
several different kinds of ethical questions:

First,
some questions about ethics:
Is there such a thing as truth in ethics?  Or is it all just 'a matter of
opinion'?  Can ethical questions be
answered through rational inquiry?
Or must they be approached in some other way (through religious faith or
feeling or intuition)?  Is it
important to have ethical principles and to stick to them no matter what?  How can we know if an ethical principle
is correct?  (Is there really any
such thing as a correct ethical principle, or is it just a matter of deciding
which principles I am 'comfortable' with?)
Can rational inquiry in ethics lead to the development of an ethical theory
that explains or justifies our ethical judgments, perhaps by showing us how
they can be derived from some more basic ethical principle?  (We will study several attempts to
develop such a theory.)  Are the
ethical theories developed in the 'Western' philosophical tradition really as
universal and objective as they pretend to be, or do they express the particular
interests and limited points of view of the people who constructed them?  (We will approach this question
primarily by studying a feminist perspective according to which traditional
ethical theories and discussions express a distinctively male perspective.)

Second,
we'll examine what we might call ethical issues: Do we have a duty to
help those who are less fortunate than ourselves and, if so, to what
extent?  Is it immoral for two
people of the same gender to have sex with one another?  When, if ever, is it morally acceptable
to have an abortion or to end an ill or injured person's life? And so on.  Most of us have opinions about questions
like these and most of us have had at least some opportunity to think about
them and discuss them.  Here, we
will try to see if the 'professional thinkers' have anything to offer us that
can help to settle these contentious issues, and we will explore how they are
approached from a variety of moral perspectives.  In this process, we'll try to sharpen
the skills we need to think carefully about these issues for ourselves.

I
cannot promise we will answer any of these questions to your satisfaction.  They are, for the most part, very
difficult questions.  What we can
hope to do is to learn something about how various historical and contemporary
thinkers have answered them, and to become somewhat more careful and critical
in our own efforts to answer them.

Conduct of the Course

Class
time will be devoted largely to discussion, some in small groups, some all
together.  I will occasionally
lecture, more often I will answer questions as they come up in discussion, and
even more often I will try to help you figure out how to answer your questions
yourself.

Much
of our discussion will focus on understanding and evaluating the texts.  This will work well only if you have
done the assigned reading carefully -- often twice or three times -- and given
it some thought.  In philosophy we
are interested not in the information that can be extracted from a text, nor
simply in the conclusions or opinions that an author expresses; we are
primarily interested in understanding and assessing the reasoning that
an author uses to try to establish or support those conclusions.  This requires a very careful sort of
reading.

The
point of reading these texts is not only to understand what some great minds
have produced.  A guided tour
through the Museum
of Great Ideas is a very
good thing, but not the best thing that philosophy has to offer.  Better is the opportunity to learn to
think for yourself.  The readings
provide models of careful and/or creative thinking (sometimes), challenges to
our prejudices and assumptions, and starting points for our own
reflections.  But the only way to
learn to philosophize is to enter the conversation yourself.  In this way a course in philosophy is
more like a course in drawing or sculpture or dance -- a studio art course --
than like a course in art history or art appreciation.  You can’t learn to draw by just
watching other people draw, and you can’t learn to do philosophy by just
listening and reading.  You have to
express your views and expose them to other people’s critical
reactions.

Assignments and Grading

Reading assignments

I expect you to find time (several
hours) to do the reading for each class and to come prepared to discuss
it.  Come to class ready to say what
you found interesting, what you found confusing, questionable, or just plain
wrong, what seemed to you to be the most important claims made, and what
arguments or justifications were offered for those claims.  Expect that you will need to read the
assignments more than once to understand them adequately, and plan your time
accordingly.

Reading response papers

20
% of your grade will be earned by submitting brief (a page or two, typed,
double-spaced ) responses to the readings for each class.  These must be turned in at the beginning
of the class period to be counted.
(If you must miss class, send in your response paper by e-mail.) They
can contain questions, objections, observations and/or reactions to the reading
for that class. Sometimes I will assign topics or questions.   I will not grade these, but I will
reject any that do not seem to be based on a reasonably conscientious reading
of the assignment for that week.
You can miss one of these and still earn an ‘A’ for this
part of the course work, but missing more will be penalized on the following
schedule: 85% completed = A; 70% = B; 60% = C; 50% = D; less than 50% = F.  I will also notice and reward
particularly perceptive or thoughtful response papers.

Class discussion

Most
weeks we will have guided small group discussion projects.  The purpose of these projects is to open
discussion and to focus it on particular issues. They are also intended to be
"mini-labs" in which to practice the skills of careful reading and
evaluation of reasoning.  The
projects are done in class in groups of 3-5 and take roughly 20-45
minutes to complete.  Each group
should keep notes on its discussion, sign the notes and hand them in at the end
of each class session.  Often groups
will also report orally on their discussions.

If
you miss a discussion project, you should get hold of the instructions, write
out responses to the questions on your own, and hand them in as soon as you
can.

10%
of your grade will be determined by my evaluation of the quality of your
participation in class discussions.
Just showing up and paying attention earns a C for this component;
occasionally making helpful contributions earns a B; regularly making helpful contributions
earns an A.  Helpful contributions
include: asking pertinent questions, answering questions asked by the
instructor or by other students, expressing your views about the texts or
topics we are discussing, responding (relevantly and respectfully) to the views
expressed by others.

Position Paper

You
will be asked to write a (5-7 page) paper explaining and supporting your
position on an ethical issue or question.   The position paper will count for
30% of your grade. You will be required to turn in a topic proposal and a rough
draft before the final draft.
Please keep copies of all the work you hand in.

Exams

We
will have two one-hour, in-class exams, one in the middle and one at the end of
the semester.  Each exam will count
for 20% of your grade.

I
try hard to base my evaluation of your work on your understanding of the
reading, the quality of your reasoning and questioning, and the clarity and
effectiveness of your expression of your thoughts, not on whether I
agree with your ethical theories, ideas, or opinions.

Time
commitment outside of class

In
accordance with Metropolitan
State University
guidelines, I've designed this course with the expectation that students will
do 2-3 hours of course-related work outside of class for every hour spent in
class.  In other words, you should
expect to spend 6-9 hours a week outside of class working on this course.

Needed
reading and writing skills

Although
there are no prerequisites for this course, it is an ‘upper
division’ course and is designed for students who can read and write
English at the college level.  This
means I assume you have the following reading and writing skills, and
assignments are made with this expectation in mind:

Ability to read and to summarize the
main points of college-level texts;

Ability to tolerate and comprehend
the longer and more complex sentence structures found in
‘serious’ writing;

Ability to include appropriate
citations of quoted and paraphrased sources in your own writing;

Ability to edit written work well
enough to eliminate most errors in grammar, punctuation and spelling.

These abilities are part of
what I understand by “able to read and write at the college
level.”  There is (or should
be) no shame in lacking this set of skills. But this course is not the right
place to acquire them (though it certainly is a good place to polish and
improve them).

Course Policies

Attendance

I
do not require attendance per se, but part of your grade is
determined by discussion projects and general class discussion.  So, when you are in class, contribute to
the discussion and please be sure your name is on your small group's discussion
report and that the report gets turned in.
When you miss a class, get the instructions for the discussion project,
write out answers on your own and turn them in (and send in your response
paper).  I strongly advise regular
attendance (and prompt completion of missed discussion projects), because the
material in this course is relatively difficult and confusing, and few students
are able to do well on the exams and papers without the explanations and
practice provided in class.

Plagiarism

All
work submitted for this course must be your own.  Plagiarism is the academic
‘sin’ of presenting someone else’s work as your own.  It is plagiarism if you copy something
verbatim (word for word) from a published source, from the Internet, or from
another student.  It is still
plagiarism if you rearrange, paraphrase, condense, or summarize someone
else’s work without making clear to your reader what is your contribution
and what is taken from your source. If the exact wording comes from your
source, then use quotation marks.
If the idea comes from someone else, give him or her credit for it. The
way to do this is to cite your sources.  There is a clear and detailed
explanation of various forms of plagiarism and of proper citation practices at http://clover.slavic.pitt.edu/~tales/02-1/plagiarism.html    I will give a grade of
‘F’ to any student who submits plagiarized work for this course.