Philosophy 1140 - Ethics Office Hours: M, W,
F 11:30-12:30
Fall Semester 2007 Office: LC143S; Phone: 2604
Professor
Tom Atchison Email:
tatchison@gw.hamline.edu
Course Materials
The following books are (or will be) available at the
bookstore: Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics; Immanuel Kant, Grounding for
the Metaphysics of Morals; John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism; Wilcox
and Wilcox, Applied Ethics in American Society. Other course readings will be photocopied or
made available on line. Please bring
the text to be discussed to class with you every time.
Class website:
I maintain a simple
website where I post course handouts and information. The URL is www.woldww.net/classes/. There are notes and study questions
posted there to help make sense of some of the more difficult readings.
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 (euthanasia)? 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 struggling with these difficult texts is not
only to understand what some great minds have produced. A guided tour through the
Assignments and Grading
I expect you to
find time (an hour or two) 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, silly, 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.
20 % of your grade will be earned by submitting brief (1/4-3/4 of a double-spaced, typed page) responses to the readings for each class. These must be turned in at the beginning of the class period to be counted. They can contain questions, objections, observations and/or reactions to the reading for that class. Each one should contain a brief statement of what you take to be the main point of the reading assigned for that day. 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 day. You can miss a few of these and still earn an ‘A’ for this part of the course work, but missing more than a few will be penalized on the following schedule: 85% completed = A; 70% = B; 55% = C; 40% = D; less than 40% = F. I will also notice and reward particularly perceptive or thoughtful response papers.
Class discussion
Occasionally 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.
Essays
You will be asked to write two short (4-5 page) essays
during the semester. Each paper will
count for 17.5% of your grade. Please
keep copies of all the work you hand in.
We will have two one-hour, in-class exams -- one at
mid-semester, one during the scheduled final exam period. Each exam will count for 17.5% of your
grade. Exam questions will be selected
(by me) from a list I will hand out in advance.
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.
Ethics – Fall 2006 -- Schedule of assignments
Date to be discussed |
|
Wednesday, Sept.5 |
Introductory session |
Friday, Sept.7 |
Classes cancelled for convocation |
Monday, Sept.10 |
Rachels and Pellegrino on euthanasia, Applied Ethics, pp.166-183 |
Wednesday, Sept.12 |
Mill, Utilitarianism, to bottom of p.17 |
Friday, Sept.14 |
Mill, Utilitarianism, to p.26 (End of Chapter 2) |
Monday, Sept.17 |
Mill, Utilitarianism, to p.41 (Chapters 3 and 4) |
Wednesday, Sept.19 |
No new reading, small group discussion project in class today |
Friday, Sept.21 |
Kant in Applied Ethics, pp.22-29 |
Monday, Sept.25 |
Kant in Applied Ethics, pp.29-37 |
Wednesday, Sept.26 |
Rawls in Applied Ethics, pp.38-49, concentrate on the last section |
Friday, Sept.28 |
No new reading, small group discussion project in class today |
Monday, Oct.1 |
Mill, Utilitarianism, Chapter 5 |
Wednesday, Oct.3 |
Intro to chapter on capital punishment in Applied Ethics, pp.238-247 and article by Bedau pp.248-259 |
Friday, Oct.5 |
Articles by van den Haag (pp.260-265) and Primoratz (pp.284-294) in Applied Ethics |
Monday, Oct.8 |
|
Wednesday, Oct.10 |
Singer and Hardin in Applied Ethics, pp.358-380 |
Friday, Oct.12 |
Van Wyk in Applied Ethics, pp.381-390 |
Monday, Oct.15 |
Hospers, in Applied Ethics,
pp. 311-322; First Paper Due |
Wednesday, Oct.17 |
Govier, in Applied Ethics, pp. 328-341 |
Friday, Oct.19 |
Rawls in Applied Ethics, pp. 38-44 (skip the last section of this selection) plus more Rawls in a handout |
Monday, Oct.22 |
Review |
Wednesday, Oct.24 |
Mid-term Exam |
Friday, Oct.26 |
No class – Midterm Break |
Monday, Oct.29 |
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Book I |
Wednesday, Oct.31 |
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Book II |
Friday, Nov.2 |
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Book III and Book IV (as much as you can stand) |
Monday, Nov.5 |
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Book VI |
Wednesday, Nov.7 |
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Book X |
Friday, Nov.9 |
Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Books VIII and IX |
Monday, Nov.12 |
Discussion project on virtues; Philippa Foot, Virtues and Vices in Applied Ethics |
Wednesday, Nov.14 |
Mohr in Applied Ethics, pp.665-674 |
Friday, Nov.16 |
Levin in Applied Ethics, pp.675-680 |
Monday, Nov.19 |
Sherwin in Applied Ethics, pp.59-69 |
Wednesday, Nov.21 |
|
Friday, Nov.23 |
No class |
Monday, Nov.26 |
Marquis in Applied Ethics, pp.99-110 |
Wednesday, Nov.28 |
Mackenzie in Applied Ethics, pp.120-133 |
Friday, Nov.30 |
Wolf-Devine in Applied Ethics, pp.145-155 |
Monday, Dec.3 |
Introduction to Chapter 8 pp.539-540 and Mill in Applied Ethics, pp.550-558 |
Wednesday, Dec.5 |
Introduction to Chapter 8
pp.541-546 and |
Friday, Dec.7 |
Gastil, in Applied Ethics, pp. 569-579. 2nd paper due |
Monday, Dec.10 |
Langton, in Applied Ethics, pp.602-625 |
Wednesday, Dec.12 |
|
Friday, Dec. 14 |
Review |
Monday, Dec.17, 10-12 |
Final Exam (Section 1) |
Tuesday, Dec18, 10-12 |
Final Exam (Section 2) |