PHIL&
101 – Intro to Philosophy Syllabus
Fall Quarter 2012
Instructor: W. Russ Payne
E-mail: wpayne@bellevuecollege.edu
Phone: (425) 564-2079
Office location: B100 E
Office Hours: 12:30 – 1:20 Monday –
Thursday
Website: http://facweb.bcc.ctc.edu/wpayne/
Philosophy department’s web
site: http://bellevuecollege.edu/philosophy/
Course Information
The range of questions that
philosophers investigate is perhaps as diverse as can be found in the empirical
sciences. We will cover a broad range of topics including but not limited to
the nature of mind and consciousness, free will and determinism, knowledge and
skepticism and the nature of morality. We will read a broad range of classic
and contemporary philosophers. No text purchase is required for this course.
All readings will be available free online or on the website for this course.
In case you are considering majoring
in philosophy, you should be prepared to answer you parents and friends when
they ask what you plan to do with a philosophy degree. Tell them you plan to
live well and make a living. Tell them that philosophy majors earn more than
any other arts and humanities major and more than most social science majors
(the exceptions being the dark arts of economics and political science.)
http://www.payscale.com/best-colleges/degrees.asp
Of course, you might find philosophy
enjoyable even if you are already anxious to go into Management Information
Systems or Aerospace Engineering.
Course Outcomes
The official outcomes for this
course are as follows:
Some unofficial commentary: People
come in all kinds of different. What you get out of studying philosophy depends
as much on who you are and how you’ve experienced the world so far as anything
I or any other philosopher can tell you. Philosophy provides rich intellectual
(and emotional and spiritual) nourishment. But to commit to specific outcomes
about what you will understand or be able to do at the end of this course is
analogous to a gardener saying plant here and you’ll get a nice zucchini. But
maybe you are a rose, not a zucchini.
According to Socrates, the point of
doing philosophy is the leading of the examined life. But the examined life is
not a bit of knowledge or a specific skill or ability that can be captured in
any sort of course outcome. Leading the examined life does involve applying
one’s capacity for reason to better understanding one’s own nature as a human
being and the nature of the world. But given our unique backgrounds, talents
and limitations, there is no saying just what route your examined life will
take or what perspectives it will open up for you. The real outcomes for
studying philosophy can only be identified after the fact. For me to specify
the outcomes for your study of philosophy up front would amount to stating the
moral of your story without having read it (much less lived it). One shudders
at the arrogance of it.
Though Socrates was among the
founders of philosophy as an academic discipline (and I’m not so sure he’d be
happy about that) this hardly gives him the final say about the point of doing
philosophy. My motivation for doing philosophy has never been quite so noble as
attaining enlightened self-awareness or acquiring wisdom. I’ve simply found the
problems of philosophy to be amusing and absorbing. Finding the interplay of
philosophical ideas amusing and absorbing is the course outcome I’d most
sincerely wish for you.
How Outcomes will be met
A good deal of reading and writing
and lots of conversation.
Course Requirements:
Attendance: A college course requires a significant
amount of time and attention. While we do not meet on campus at a set time,
attending the course is required in other ways. A 5 credit course is
defined as one that meets for 5 hours a week. While you get to choose the
hours, you are required to be in class for 5 hours a week. This includes
activities on the site like reading lecture notes, reading and participating in
discussions and taking assessments. In addition, you should expect to put well
over 5 hours a week into reading and writing outside of class. I do run
activity logs that show how much time students are putting into various
activities on the site, what documents you are reading and so forth. If my logs
show significantly less than 50 hours of active time in the course, then you
have an attendance problem that will adversely affect your grade.
Assignments and Assessments: Your grade in this course will be
determined by your performance on a variety of assignments and assessments plus
your participation on class discussion boards. There will be short
comprehension quizzes on the reading assignments, brief essay assignments that
may ask you to reflect on ideas from the reading or explain arguments offered
by the philosophers we will read. Most assignments and assessments will be
fairly brief, but a few (2 or 3) will be more involved tests including multiple
choice, true false, short answer and essay questions.. Assignments and
assessments will have deadlines. There will usually be ways for you to work
ahead, but do not fall behind and try not to let things wait until the last
minute (do you really trust your router that much?). I need to adhere to
deadlines in order to get timely feedback to the class.
Grading: Essay questions and brief essay assignments will typically
be graded on a 10 point scale with 9 or 10 point scores representing the A to
A- range, 8 point scores representing B work, 7 point scores representing C
work and so forth. Points for assignments will show up in you grade book. So,
at any point in the course, you should be able to identify how many of the
available points you have earned. My deliberations for letter grades for the
course start with a 10% scale where point totals above 90% are A range, 80% to
89% are B range and so forth. But I may adjust the scale for final grades based
on the overall performance of the class.
There will be points available for
participation on the discussion boards. Here I will be looking for engagement
with the material, including but not limited to explanation and analysis of
arguments, insightful questions, questions of clarification, objections to
arguments and so forth. Philosophy is done by critically questioning ideas and
arguments. So do this, but there is generally little to be gained by
criticizing people. So keep your critical focus on ideas and lines of
reasoning. If one of your ideas draws some critical attention, you should (a)
remember that it is an idea or argument that is being critically examined, not
you, and (b) be flattered that someone considers your idea or argument worthy of
careful attention. Approach discussions with humble good humor and don’t be
shy. If you are shy anyway, you can earn some discussion points from personal
emails with me. If a personal discussion is interesting, I may want to share it
with the class, but I’ll protect the identity of the innocent should they
prefer.
Secrets to success
Stay active and engaged. Being
active starts with keeping up with the reading and discussion. Being engaged
with the material will show in your writing and participation in discussion. I
will be encouraging scholarship and looking for evidence of it and the
intellectual maturity scholarship brings. Well-intentioned contributions in
class can help you significantly. Inappropriate or disrespectful behavior may
adversely affect your grade in the course. You should consult the BC
course catalog for information on grading standards at this institution. http://bellevuecollege.edu/about/publications/catalog/
Maintaining a good learning
environment will be your responsibility as well as mine. Philosophy is
best learned through actively engaging in discussion of the issues. You
may have strong feelings about some of the issues we will discuss. This is
fine and it will present no problem so long as we all make respect for each
other a guiding principle of our inquiry. While the experience will be
new to many of you, talking about the existence of God or the nature of
morality with people that disagree with you can actually be fun. Keep in mind
that what matters most in philosophy is that we do a good job at evaluating the
reasons for and against the views we consider. And we can do a good job
at this quite independent of our feelings about those views. That we all
end up agreeing is not essential to a fruitful philosophical dialogue.
That we are amicable and gracious towards one another is.
I take a dim view of cheating and
plagiarism. Write your own stuff. I have a duty to report cheating,
plagiarism and other conduct that is destructive to the course to
administration and student services. I would appreciate not having to act
on that duty.
Affirmation of Inclusion
Bellevue College is committed to maintaining an
environment in which every member of the campus community feels welcome to
participate in the life of the college, free from harassment and
discrimination.
We value our different backgrounds
at Bellevue College, and students, faculty, staff members, and administrators
are to treat one another with dignity and respect. http://bellevuecollege.edu/about/goals/inclusion.asp
Division Statements
You should also the Arts and
Humanities Expectations posted here: http://bellevuecollege.edu/artshum/policy.html
Information about Bellevue College’s
copyright guidelines can be found at: http://bellevuecollege.edu/lmc/links/copyright.html
A good resource for Plagiarism
is the Writing Lab: http://bellevuecollege.edu/writinglab/Plagiarism.html
Student Code
“Cheating, stealing and plagiarizing
(using the ideas or words of another as one’s own without crediting the source)
and inappropriate/disruptive classroom behavior are violations of the Student
Code of Conduct at Bellevue College. Examples of unacceptable behavior
include, but are not limited to: talking out of turn, arriving late or leaving
early without a valid reason, allowing cell phones/pagers to ring, and
inappropriate behavior toward the instructor or classmates. The
instructor can refer any violation of the Student Code of Conduct to the Vice
President of Student Services for possible probation or suspension from
Bellevue College. Specific student rights, responsibilities and appeal
procedures are listed in the Student Code of Conduct, available in the office
of the Vice President of Student Services.” The Student Code, Policy
2050, in its entirety is located at: http://bellevuecollege.edu/policies/2/2050_Student_Code.asp
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Final Exam Schedule
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