Philosophy 1140 - Ethics Office Hours: M W F,
10:20 – 11:20
Spring Semester 2008 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 emailed to me before class or 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. The purpose of this assignment is to increase the number of students who are prepared to discuss the reading and to make it less likely that you will fall irretrievably behind.
Class discussion
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.
Reading Assignments – Ethics – Professor Atchison – Spring 2008
Date to be discussed |
|
Wednesday, Jan. 30 |
Introductory session |
Friday, Feb. 1 |
Singer on hunger in Applied
Ethics, pp.358-368 |
Monday, Feb. 4 |
Mill, Utilitarianism,
to p.12 |
Wednesday. Feb. 6 |
Mill, Utilitarianism,
to p.26 (end of Chapter 2) |
Friday, Feb. 8 |
Mill, Utilitarianism,
to p.41 (Chapters 3 and 4) |
Monday, Feb. 11 |
Kant, Grounding, Section 1 |
Wednesday, Feb. 13 |
Kant, Grounding, Section 2 to page 33 |
Friday, Feb. 15 |
Kant, Grounding, Section 2, pages 33-48 |
Monday, Feb. 18 |
Mill, Utilitarianism,
Chapter 5 |
Wednesday, Feb. 20 |
Intro to chapter on capital
punishment in Applied Ethics, pp.238-247 and article by Bedau
pp.248-259 |
Friday, Feb. 22 |
Articles by van den Haag
(pp.260-265) and Primoratz (pp.284-294) in Applied Ethics |
Monday, Feb. 25 |
|
Wednesday, Feb. 27 |
Singer and Hardin in Applied
Ethics, pp.358-380 |
Friday, Feb. 29 |
Van Wyk in Applied Ethics, pp.381-390 |
Monday, March 3 |
1st paper due (no new reading) |
Wednesday, March 5 |
Hospers, in Applied Ethics,
pp. 311-322 |
Friday, March 7 |
Govier, in Applied Ethics,
pp. 328-341; |
Monday March 10 |
Rawls in Applied Ethics,
pp. 38-44 (skip the last section of this selection) plus more Rawls in a
handout |
Wednesday, March 12 |
Review |
Friday, March 14 |
Mid-term Exam |
March 15-23 |
Spring Break |
Monday, March 24 |
Aristotle, Nichomachean
Ethics, Book I |
Wednesday, March 26 |
Aristotle, Nichomachean
Ethics, Book II |
Friday, March 28 |
Aristotle, Nichomachean
Ethics, Book III and Book IV (as much as you can stand) |
Monday, March 31 |
Aristotle, Nichomachean
Ethics, Book VI |
Wednesday, April 2 |
Aristotle, Nichomachean
Ethics, Book X |
Friday, April 4 |
Aristotle, Nichomachean
Ethics, Books VIII and IX |
Monday, April 7 |
Philippa Foot, Virtues and
Vices in Applied Ethics; Selections from Aristotle's Politics
on Slaves and Women, online |
Wednesday, April 9 |
Alan Soble, "Philosophy
of Sexuality", sections 6 ("Sexual Perversion") through 13
("Natural Law vs. Liberal Ethics") online; Levin, "Why
Homosexuality Is Abnormal," in Applied Ethics, pp.675-680 |
Friday, April 11 |
Mohr in Applied Ethics,
pp.665-674 |
Monday, April 14 |
Kaplan , "Intimacy and Equality: The Question
of Lesbian and Gay Marriage,"
in Applied Ethics, pp.681-690 |
Wednesday,
April 16 |
Warren , "On the Moral
and Legal Status of Abortion," in Applied Ethics, pp.88-98 |
Friday,
April 18 |
Marquis , "Why Abortion
is Immoral," in Applied Ethics, pp.99-110 |
Monday,
April 21 |
Sherwin , "Ethics,
'Feminine' Ethics and Feminist Ethics" in Applied Ethics,
pp.59-69 |
Wednesday,
April 23 |
Wolf-Devine , "Abortion
and the 'Feminine Voice,” in Applied Ethics, pp.145-155 |
Friday,
April 25 |
Mackenzie, "Abortion and
Embodiment," in Applied Ethics, pp.120-133 |
Monday,
April 28 |
Introduction to Chapter 8
pp.539-540 and Mill selections from On Liberty in Applied Ethics,
pp.550-558 |
Wednesday,
April 30 |
Introduction to Chapter 8
pp.541-546 and Lynn, "Pornography and Free Speech" in Applied
Ethics, pp. 559-568 |
Friday,
May 2 |
Gastil, "The Moral Right
of the Majority to Restrict Obscenity and Pornography Through Law" in Applied
Ethics, pp. 569-579 |
Monday,
May 5 |
Langton, "Speech Acts and
Unspeakable Acts" in Applied Ethics, pp.602-625 |
Wednesday,
May 7 |
|
Friday, May 9 |
Review;
2nd paper due |
Tuesday, May 13, 2:45PM |
Final Exam for Section 5 (normally meets at
12:40) |
Wednesday, May 14, 10:00AM |
Final Exam for section 4 (normally meets at 11:30) |