Syllabi for Fall 2005

Philosophy 430: Ethical Theories

Fall 2005 Prof. Kathryn Norlock

Office Hours: W 11-12:30 240-895-4471

110D Anne Arundel email: kjnorlock@smcm.edu

SYLLABUS

Required Texts:

John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

John Stuart Mill, The Subjection of Women

Immanuel Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals

Virginia Held, Feminist Morality

Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics

*Additional required readings on e-reserve

Course Requirements:

1. Readings (assignments begin on p.2 below). Lectures presuppose familiarity with readings. Take notes on your readings, bring relevant texts to class, and come with questions.

2. Attendance at lectures and participation in discussion. More than two absences will affect grade negatively; attendance and participation are required.

3. Two papers and an exam, which each count for 25% of the grade.

4. T.A. for a day: presenting and leading discussion of reading assignment for that day, worth 25% of your grade.

NOTE: Technological difficulties are certainly frustrating and make for many an anecdote, but are avoidable if you do your work ahead of time, save often, and print it out the night before it’s due. If you do not print it out the night before it’s due, you will run into some sort of trouble which will result in its being late. Note: If you have a whole huge story to tell me about your technological difficulties, I’ll feel lots of sympathy, because I’m very nice, but that’s all I’ll do, so consider doing the work well ahead of time so that you will be certain to be able to print it out. Use technology wisely, and don’t save your written work to one location when you can save it on multiple reliable sources like email, G drive and disk. Consider writing papers out longhand first.

If you have special requirements because of a disability, please inform me at the beginning of the term, if possible; come to my office hours or email me for a better time.

Don’t wait until the first exam to drop by my office hours if you have questions or want to discuss the material or just say hi. NO appointment required during office hours; just walk in, we’ll talk, we’ll rummage. If my office hours conflict with your schedule, I’m available by appointment, so email me, do.

You are encouraged to discuss with your instructor in any philosophy course that you are taking whatever questions or concerns you may have regarding the teaching of that course. If you wish to pursue a complaint with someone else, contact the chair of our department, Prof. Katharina Von Kellenbach.

If you don’t study with each other, you are not yet doing philosophy to its fullest. However, you could at the least make use of The Writing Center: The Writing Center, located in room 115 in the Library, has peer tutors trained to discuss your writing with you. No matter where you are in the writing process (brainstorming ideas, understanding assignments, or revising rough and final drafts), the tutors in the Writing Center can assist you. These tutors are your peers—they do not grade or proofread your paper, but instead offer an opportunity to work with others on becoming a stronger writer.

WARNING OF HAZARDOUS MATERIALS: The purpose of this course is to both read and write critically about the arguments for different philosophical perspectives, which inevitably requires evaluating your own beliefs about moral and metaphysical issues. Not only must you read selections that may offend you, but you and your classmates will be expected to represent these readings sympathetically and accurately in written work and discussion. If you would prefer not to be in a class that confronts issues offensive to you, seriously consider dropping this course. I am always available to talk about any difficulties you have with the class, but don’t wait until you have a problem to drop by during office hours. Like I said, let’s talk.

Schedule of assignments:

1^st week (8/29-9/2). Classical Utilitarian Values: Jeremy Bentham’s hedonism; John Stuart Mill on higher and lower pleasures.

J.S. Mill, Utilitarianism, ch. 1 and 2.

No class Friday, 9/2: I’m in another state (geographically, not just mentally).

2^nd week (9/5-9/9). NO CLASS MONDAY, Labor Day.

Util. concl.
(1) Mill, ch. 2, ch. 4.
(2) Mill, On Liberty, Ch. 1

3^rd week (9/12-9/16).

(1) Mill, On Liberty, Ch. 2
(2) Mill, On Liberty, Ch. 3

No class Friday, again: I’m in another state, again (geographically, and mentally).

4^th week (9/19-9/23). Friday 9/23 is last day to change grading option to Credit/NC.

Mill, The Subjection of Women.

5^th week (9/26-9/30). TUTORIALS.

6^th week (10/3-10/7).

(1) Kant, Fundamental Principles, preface and First Section.

(2) Fundamental Principles, Section 2, and recommended, on e-reserve: Onora O’Neill, “A Simplified Account of Kant’s Ethics,” excerpt.

7^th week (10/10-10/14). NO CLASS MONDAY, 10/10 (Reading days). Tutorial rewrites due Wednesday, 10/12.

(1) On e-reserve: *Bernard Boxill, “Self-Respect and Protest,” and *Laurence Thomas, “Self-Respect: Theory and Practice.”
(2) e-reserve: *Kant, “Duties Toward the Body with Respect to Sexual Impulse,” and *“On the Interrelation of the Two Sexes”.

8^th week (10/17-10/21).

(1) Kant, *“Retributive Theory of Punishment,” excerpt.

(2) Held, Feminist Morality, ch. 2, ch.3

9^th week (10/24-10/28).

Held, ch.4, ch. 8, ch. 9

10^th week (10/31-11/4). TUTORIALS.

Friday, November 4: LAST DAY to withdraw, without a grade penalty, from a full-semester course

11^th week (11/7-11/11).

(1) Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (“E.N.”), Bks I, II, X: chs. 6-9.

12^th week (11/14-11/18). Tutorial rewrites due Wednesday, 11/16.

(1) Aristotle, E.N., Bk III: 6-12; Bk IV

13^th week (11/21). Nov 22, Tuesday, Thanksgiving recess begins at 10:00 p.m.

E-reserve: *Aristotle, “On the Generation of Animals” and “Politics,” excerpts.

14^th week (11/28-12/2).

Aristotle: Responsibility and Incontinence
(1) Aristotle, Bk III: 1-5 (the voluntary and involuntary), Bk VII: 1-10 (esp. ch. 3)

15^th week (12/5-12/9).

(1) Aristotle on Friendship; Bks VIII-IX

About the fastest way to fail this class:

“I didn’t plagiarize. I just found this stuff on the web that I included in my paper with no attribution.”

That’s an F for the course. One sentence. One paper. That’s it. You’re done.

Definitions of plagiarism and the academic honesty policy are detailed in the student handbook. (URL: http://www.smcm.edu/stuhandbook/index.cfm) Copying another student's work, buying a paper from the internet, or presenting someone else's work as your own all constitute plagiarism. If you are unsure of what constitutes plagiarism, please feel free to contact me for clarification. Contacting me after I flunk you for plagiarism is too late. The lightest penalty possible for plagiarism in this course is an immediate failing grade in the course. More penalties are possible if I pursue your case with the Academic Judicial Review Board.

Philosophy 101: Introduction to Philosophy

Section 2: 1:20-2:10

Fall 2005 Prof. Kathryn Norlock

Office Hours: W 11-12:30 email: kjnorlock@smcm.edu

110D Anne Arundel 240-895-4471

TAs: Rob Perilla, Nick Iliff

SYLLABUS

Required Texts:

Reason and Responsibility, 12^th ed., Feinberg and Shafer-Landau

Thomas Paine, Common Sense.

Course Requirements:

1. Readings (assignments begin on p.2 below). Lectures presuppose familiarity with readings. Take notes on your readings, bring relevant texts to class, and come with questions.

2. Attendance at lectures and discussion sections, and participation in discussion. More than two absences will result in a homework’s deduction for each absence.

3. Two papers and an exam, which each count for 25% of the grade. Because of the fairly tight schedules of all parties, late papers cannot be accepted.

4. Short homeworks, one almost every week that there is a presentation for a total of ELEVEN papers. These are worth ten points each. At the end of the semester, I will drop the lowest-scoring homework to get your final grade. You can get 100 points total in this category, worth a total of 25% of the grade. These can only be handed in to TAs as a hard copy, i.e. in paper form. That won’t be a problem, because you’re going to hand it in, in person, right? Right, because you’ll be attending every session! Wow, you deserve an A.

Why these have to be in hard copy: I receive a hundred emails a day, and the assistants receive almost as many. We will easily overlook emailed work, so let’s avoid the inevitable by exchanging actual pieces of paper.

Technological difficulties are certainly frustrating and make for long, sorrowful anecdotes, but are avoidable if you do your work ahead of time, save often, and print out everything the night before it’s due. If you do not print it out the night before it’s due, odds are that you will run into some sort of trouble which will result in its being late. Sadly, your TAs cannot accept late homeworks. You may attempt to tell them your tale of woe anyway, and I’m certain they’ll feel lots of sympathy, because they’re very nice, but that’s all they’ll be able to do, so consider doing the homework well ahead of time so that you will be certain to be able to print it out. Use technology wisely, and don’t save your homeworks to email or G drive when you can save them on a more reliable source like a disk.

If you have special requirements because of a disability, please inform me at the beginning of the term, if possible; come to my office hours or email me for a better time.

About the course: I love philosophy. It’s hard, fun and terribly important. It consists of no less than reflection on and articulation of your most fundamental beliefs about the nature of the universe and the nature of your Self. As you can imagine, this takes a lot of work. We’re going to read a lot of philosophers, because they have already had mind-boggling insights that will help you work out your own positions, and they deliberately wrote their ideas down so that you wouldn’t have to start over from scratch. We’re going to write a lot, too, because doing philosophy requires developing your own positions on the topics we’ll discuss, not just passively taking in the ideas of others. Last, we’ll talk, both in the large lecture classes, wherein you can and should ask questions and offer interpretations, and in discussion sections with your teaching assistants.

WARNING OF HAZARDOUS MATERIALS: The purpose of this course is to both read and write critically about the arguments for different philosophical perspectives, which inevitably requires evaluating your own beliefs about moral and metaphysical issues. Not only must you read articles that may offend you, but you and your classmates will be expected to represent these articles sympathetically and accurately in homework and discussion. If you would prefer not to be in a class that confronts issues offensive to you, seriously consider dropping this course. I am always available to talk about any difficulties you have with the class, but don’t wait until you have a problem to drop by during office hours. Like I said, let’s talk.

Schedule of assignments:

1^st week (8/29-9/2). Paley, p. 32 and Pascal, p. 114. HW1 due Friday; discussion sections meet with TAs.

2^nd week (9/5-9/9). NO CLASS MONDAY, Labor Day. Hume, p. 199. HW2 due Friday.

3^rd week (9/12-9/16). Hume, concl. Salmon, p. 224. HW3 due Friday; discussion sections meet with TAs.

4^th week (9/19-9/23). William James, “The Will to Believe,” p. 101. EXAM Friday, 9/27. Friday is also the LAST DAY to change grading option to Credit/No-credit.

5^th week (9/26-9/30). Nagel, p. 449; begin Sartre, “The Wall,” on e-reserve. HW4 due Friday.

6^th week (10/3-10/7). Back to the textbook: W. K. Clifford, “The Ethics of Belief,” p. 97. Susan Wolf, “Sanity,” p. 457. HW5 due Friday; discussion sections meet with TAs.

7^th week (10/10-10/14). NO CLASS MONDAY, 10/10 (Reading days). Feinberg, Psychological Egoism, p. 476. Rachels, Ethical Egoism, p. 488. HW6 due Friday.

8^th week (10/17-10/21). Mary Midgley, p. 522; Martha Nussbaum, p. 622. HW7 due Friday; discussion sections meet with TAs.

9^th week (10/24-10/28). TUTORIAL WEEK

10^th week (10/31-11/4). Kant, p. 592-593 required, pp. 579-591 recommended; Mill, p. 594. HW8 due Friday; discussion sections meet with TAs.

Nov 4,	Friday,	LAST DAY to withdraw, without a grade penalty, from a full-semester course

11^th week (11/7-11/11). Plato, p. 615; Martin Luther King, available at the following URL: http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/Articles_Gen/Letter_Birmingham.html

or http://historicaltextarchive.com/sections.php?op=viewarticle&artid=40#, which has a nice “Printer Friendly Version” button.

HW9 due Friday.

12^th week (11/14-11/18). Malcolm X, also available at the following URL: http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/malcolmxballot.htm

or http://www.historicaldocuments.com/BallotortheBulletMalcolmX.htm.

Start reading Thomas Paine, Common Sense. HW10 due Friday; discussion sections meet with TAs.

13^th week (11/21). Movie week, multiple showings, don’t miss out!

14^th week (11/28-12/2). Thomas Paine, Common Sense. HW11 due Friday; discussion sections meet with TAs.

15^th week (12/5-12/9). Tutorials for final paper.