Syllabus Professor Tom Atchison
PHIL 301-01 Office: 320 St. John’s Hall (St. Paul Campus)
Ethical Inquiry Email: Thomas.Atchison@metrostate.edu
Fall Semester 2011 Office hours: M 5-7 (Midway), T 1-5, W 11-3
Phone: 651-793-1493
(Email is the best way to get a quick response.)
The Fundamentals of Ethics (2nd ed.) by Russ Shafer-Landau
The Ethical Life (2nd ed.), edited by Russ Shafer-Landau
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 email account is working and check regularly for class related emails
Please keep copies of all the work you hand in.
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. (Note: Some of these issues will be touched on, briefly, in the early part of the course, as illustrations of the way different ethical theories can be applied. In the latter part of the course we will have time to consider some issues in more depth.)
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, 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 -- 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.
Quizzes
20 % of your grade will be earned by completing brief multiple-choice quizzes on the reading for each class. My current plan is to have these quizzes at the beginning of each class, but I am also exploring the possibility of having them done through D2L. The intention behind this assignments is simply to ensure that most of the students will arrive each week having read the assigned reading carefully and, therefore, prepared to discuss it.
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 (from my web site), 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 the number of discussion projects you complete satisfactorily (on the same schedule as the response papers above.)
10% of your grade will also 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 Papers
Three 4-6 page position papers will be due at approximately equal intervals through the semester. These papers will require you to apply the more theoretical ideas we will study and to support your own opinions and positions with reasoning. Each paper will count for 20% of your grade.
Note: 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. This means I assume you have the following reading and writing skills, and assignments are made with this expectation in mind:
Disability Services
Metropolitan State University offers reasonable accommodations to qualified students with documented disabilities. If you have a disability that may require accommodations it is essential that you be registered with the Disability Services Office. You may contact the Disability Services Office, at Founders Hall, Room 221, St. Paul Campus or (651) 793-1549, or email Disability.Services@metrostate.edu For additional information on Disability Services, please visit: http://www.metrostate.edu/msweb/pathway/academic_success/disability/index.html
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. 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.
Late work
Response papers must be turned in at (or before) the beginning of class to receive full credit. Late response papers will receive half credit. In fairness to students who turn their position papers in on time, I will subtract one grade (e.g., B+ to B) for each day that a postion paper is late.
Incompletes
I will give incomplete grades only to students who have satisfactorily completed most of the course work and who are unable to finish on time because of circumstances beyond their control.
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.
Academic Standing:
To remain in good academic standing at Metropolitan State University students must meet two criteria: maintain a cumulative Metropolitan State GPA of at least 2.0; and successfully complete at least 66.66% of the cumulative Metropolitan State University credits attempted. Students who do not meet these standards will be put on academic probation. A student who continues to fall below standards will be dismissed.
Withdrawing from courses after the drop deadline (August 28) will result in a ‘W’ on your record and may bring your completion rate below this new standard. My advice is to determine quickly whether or not this is the right course for you and to drop before that deadline (just a few days away) if it is not. Again: If you drop before August 28, this class will not be counted in determining your completion rate. If you withdraw after that date, it will.