Philosophy 1120 – General Philosophy Office Hours: M W F, 10:20-11:20
Spring Semester 2005 Office: LC143S; Phone: 2604
Professor Tom Atchison Email: tatchison@gw.hamline.edu
Or: tomatchison@bigfoot.com
Course Objectives
·
To introduce students to some of the questions philosophers
have traditionally asked (questions about what we know and how we know it,
about what is real, about what is valuable and about how we should live) and to
some of the answers they have proposed, and to see how these issues bear on our
current circumstances and way of life.
·
To introduce students to some
of the skills and methods used in philosophical inquiry, skills and methods
that may be useful in other sorts of inquiries as well. These include the ability to read a text
carefully, sympathetically and critically, the ability to analyze and criticize
arguments, and the ability to articulate one’s own views and to support them
with reasoned arguments.
Course Texts
The following books are (or will be)
available at the bookstore: Simon
Blackburn, Think; Plato, Five Dialogues; Rene Descartes, Meditations
on First Philosophy; David Hume, Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding;
John Locke, Second Treatise of Government; David Johnston, ed., Equality. Any other course readings will be
photocopied. They will be handed out in
class at least a week before they are to be discussed. 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.
Course Description
Alfred
North Whitehead wrote (in his great work Process and Reality), “The
safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that
it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” We will begin with Plato, studying several of his shorter works.
These will introduce us to the life and death of Plato’s beloved teacher
Socrates and to the activity of philosophical inquiry. Then we will let Simon Blackburn
guide us on a tour through some of the greatest (short) hits of modern Western
philosophy. The works we study will deal
with questions about what we can know and how we can know it (including what,
if anything, we can know about right and wrong), what is real and what is
merely appearance or illusion, what reasons there are for believing (or
disbelieving) in God, in miracles, in life after death, and in free will and
about the nature of the human mind and its relation to our bodies. The later part of the course will consider
some fundamental questions of political philosophy. We will begin with another short classic (John Locke’s Second
Treatise of Government) and then consider a more contemporary set of essays
on the nature of equality: In what sense is it true that “all men [and women!]
are created equal”? What is involved in treating people as equals? What sorts of policies would do justice to
the ways in which we are or should be equal (and to the ways in which we are
not)? Does the pursuit of greater social equality threaten to undermine liberty
or fairness?
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 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 texts can serve as models of careful and/or creative
thinking, as challenges to our prejudices and assumptions, and as 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 (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.
Reading response papers
20 % of your
grade will be earned by submitting brief (1/4-1/2 of a double-spaced, typed
page, perhaps just a few sentences) 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. 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
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 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.
Essays
You will be asked
to write two short (3-5 page) essays during the semester. Each paper will count for 17% of your
grade. Please keep copies of all the
work you hand in.
Exams
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% of your grade.
Grading criteria
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 or not I agree with
your philosophical theories, ideas, or opinions.
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.