PHL 1002A Western Philosophy 2 Honors Section RC CRN

Dr Christian Perring, Department of Philosophy, Dowling College

Monday Wednesday 100-220PM

E-mail: perringc at dowling.edu [All email to me should have "PHL1002 Honors" in the subject line]

Office Phone: 244-3349

Office: 330B RC (next to the computer lab)

Office Hours: MW 10:00-11:30 AM, T 1:30-2:30 PM

Textbook: A Historical Introduction to Philosophy: Texts and Interactive Guides, by James Fieser and Norman Lillegard. (Oxford University Press, 2002) [HIP]

Grade assignment:

First paper: 12%

Second paper: 24%

Third paper: 36%

Attendance and participation: 10%

Presentation: 8%

Personal reflections (4): 10%

Aim of the course: This course will introduce you to some of the central philosophical themes in western thought from the seventeenth century up to the twentieth century. You will learn skills of reading carefully, reading out loud, comparing different world views, analyzing arguments, clarifying ideas, making careful distinctions, finding the strengths and weaknesses of arguments, assessing the plausibility of claims, constructing your own arguments, defending and strengthening your own arguments, discussing controversial ideas with other people, presenting ideas to a group, expressing your ideas and criticisms of others in writing, and formulating your own arguments in writing. Ultimately, this course should help you to think for yourself, express yourself, and better understand the ideas of other people. Hopefully, it should also give you some understanding of the philosophical foundations of western civilization.

Reading assignments: Each week, several sections of A Historical Introduction to Philosophy are assigned for reading. You must do the reading before that week. You should be familiar with the main ideas in each assigned chapter, and you should make notes of those parts that are hard to follow.

Attendance: If you need to miss a class, you should notify me by phone or email before the class. Your attendance grade will suffer significantly if you miss classes without excuse. If you miss classes, you should request make-up work from me. To get full credit for attendance, you need to be in class on time, be there for the full class time, and you need to be awake and paying attention to the class. If you have to miss class for a legitimate reason, you should provide me with some evidence for your excuse.

Participation: You should participate in class discussion, both answering questions that are put to the class, raising questions when you do not fully understand an idea or a part of the text, or what someone in the class says.

Keep copies of all your writing. For any paper or piece of writing, there is a chance that I will mislay it. So you must keep a copy of everything that you give me. If your copy is electronic, you should keep your copy in at least 3 different places (floppy disk, hard drive, memory card, jump drive, etc) in order to minimize the danger of losing it in a computer crash or hardware failure. If you give me something handwritten, you should photocopy or scan it first.

Due dates: Work is due on the day stated in the schedule. You can give it to me in class, in my office if I am there, in my mailbox, or by e-mail or using turnitin.com by midnight. If you are unable to make a deadline, you should tell me and explain why. If your work is late without excuse, you may be penalized.

Plagiarism detection and prevention: All papers should be submitted via Turnitin.com or sent to me by email as an attachment in MS Word or RTF. I will give you information about how to use Turnitin.com. Note that I view any form of academic dishonesty very seriously, and if I find that you have engaged in any significant form of plagiarism or cheating I will fail you in this course and report my action to the Dean of Students.

The class ID for turnitin.com is "1151840"

Password: "socrates"

Presentation: You must sign up to do a presentation in by the end of the second week, W Feb 9. You can do a 10-minute presentation on your own, or a 20 minute presentation with another person. If you do a joint presentation, you will both get the same grade. You can use Powerpoint to do your presentation, but it is not required. However you do your presentation, you must keep it lively and interesting, and you should not simply read out from a pre-written text. You should provide some information that is not available in the course textbook. Your presentation will be assessed using the form available by clicking here.

Personal Reflections: These should be at least 400 words, in grammatical English. They will not be graded, but I will give you some feedback on them. You either get credit for them or you don't. They are not meant to be academically challenging, but are meant to give you the opportunity to link the topics of the class to your own life and ideas you have about how best to make decisions. It is up to you how much of your own personal experience you include, but you are encouraged to link your own life with philosophical discussions.

Grading: As a rough guide, I assign the following meanings to grades:

A - excellent

B - good

C- effort made but major problems

D - some understanding and effort made, but deep confusion

F - little understanding and little effort made, or complete lack of understanding.

Extra credit and make-ups. I will sometimes allow students to get extra credit by attending talks, exhibitions or performances at Dowling College and writing a 2-page summary or reflection connecting the event with philosophical themes. Occasionally I allow extra credit by writing an extra paper. If you get a B- or less on a paper, I will allow you to rewrite it and raise your grade somewhat if you significantly improve it.

Classroom Etiquette. All cell phones ringers should be turned off and you should never talk on your cell phone in class. You should not eat any food in class, especially food that others will notice through sound or smell. You should turn up on time to all classes. Prepare yourself before class so you don't need to take a bathroom break. However, if you do need to leave the classroom briefly, choose a moment when it will not disrupt the class much. You should not take a long break during the middle of class: if you do, you may be counted as absent Even if you are tired, you should stay awake and keep your eyes open. Your attention needs to be on the class, and you should not do other reading or work during the class. If your attention is not on the class, you may be counted as absent. You are free to express your views and question the views of others, including your professor, and you can be passionate about your opinions. However, you must always treat others in the class with respect; you can criticize the views and arguments of others, but you cannot criticize them as persons. You should also make sure you are not dominating classroom discussion to the exclusion of other class members.

Schedule

Date	Topic/Reading	Reflection/Presentation Topics
M Jan 31	Introduction
W Feb 2	Descartes. HIP Ch 7, pp. 319-326	Presentation: What were the major scientific theories and discoveries of the 17th century in Europe? Presentation: What were the religious beliefs of the major scientists of the 17th century?
M 7	HIP Ch 7, pp. 326-336	Presentation: In the 17th and 18th centuries, what were the major events in the European exploration and colonization of the rest of the world? *Reflection 1*: Give one example of a theoretical possibility that might mean your beliefs are fundamentally flawed, and one example of a real cause for concern that some of your beliefs might be wrong.
W 9	HIP Ch 7, pp. 336-349	Presentation: In the 17th and 18th centuries, what power was the Catholic and Protestant Churches over the rest of society?
M 14	Malebranche. HIP Ch 7, pp. 355-365	Presentation: In the 17th and 18th centuries, what were the main events in the spread of democracy?
W 16	HIP Ch 7, pp. 365-374
W 23	Leibniz. HIP Ch 7, pp. 365-378	*Reflection 2*: Does it seem to you that you are the cause of your bodily movements? Could any piece of philosophy or science convince you otherwise?
M 28	HIP Ch 7, pp. 378-392	Paper 1 due
W Mar 2	Locke. HIP Ch 8, pp. 403-415	Presentation: In the 18th and 19th centuries, how prevalent was slavery in Europe and what political movements were there to prohibit the trade?
M 7	HIP Ch 8, pp. 415-427	Presentation: Explain what modern theories of perception tell us about how we experience the redness of a tomato or the sweetness of honey.
W 9	HIP Ch 8, pp. 427-435	Presentation: Give brief biographies of Locke, Berkeley and Hume
M 14	Hume. HIP Ch 8, pp. 463-471	*Reflection 3*: Is there any way to tell if different people experience the world in similar or different ways?
W 16	HIP Ch 8, pp. 471-480
M 21	HIP Ch 8, pp. 491-497
W 23	Kant. HIP Ch 9, pp. 516-525	Presentation: Read 10 minutes of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, dressed up as the philosopher.
M 28	HIP Ch 9, pp, 525-533	Paper 2 due
W 30	HIP Ch 9, pp. 533-540
M Apr 4	Hegel. HIP Ch 9, pp. 540-548	Presentation: The lives of Hegel and Nietzsche.
W 6	HIP Ch 9, pp. 548-555
M 11	Nietzsche. HIP Ch 9, pp. 593-603	Presentation: In the late 19th century, what was the reception of Darwin's theory of evolution?
W 13	HIP Ch 9, pp. 603-613	Draft of paper 3 due
M 18	Russell. HIP Ch 10, pp. 619-629	*Reflection 4*: Should we judge Christianity on its teachings or on what people have done in its name?
W 20	Wittgenstein. HIP Ch 10, pp. 629-635	Presentation. The lives of Russell and Wittgenstein.
M May 2	HIP Ch 10, pp. 635-641
W 4	HIP Ch 10, pp. 641-648	Paper 3 due
M 9	Quine. HIP Ch 10, pp. 648-655	Presentation: Find a living philosopher who has gained national prominence by writing a best-selling book or getting a detailed profile about him or her in a major newspaper or magazine. Describe the main ideas and accomplishments of that philosopher. Presentation: Choose a field within contemporary philosophy such as philosophy of mind, science, metaphysics, language, ethics, religion, epistemology, or political theory. Outline some of the current debates in those fields by describing some books, academic journals, conferences that have appeared in the last 10 years.
W 11	HIP Ch 10, pp. 655-661	Presentation: What is the life of an academic philosopher like? Describe the training process, the job search process, and the career track of people employed in Philosophy Departments in the USA. Presentation: What non-academic careers do philosophy majors choose, and how does their major prepare them for their career? Present some well-known and some unknown people. Presentation: What is philosophical counseling and what does the APPA do?

Paper Topics (Tentative and subject to revision)

Paper 1: >600 words. Describe Descartes' method of doubt, and explain what he uses it to show in his Meditations. Is the method of doubt the same as scientific method?

Paper 2: >1200 words. Answer ONE question.

A. Explain Locke's distinction between primary and secondary qualities of bodies. On his view, what kind of knowledge can we have of the ultimate nature of bodies? Do you think modern science confirms, refutes, or is irrelevant to his view?

B. What can philosophy achieve, on Hume's view? Explain his reasoning. Is Hume's view about philosophy plausible? Spend at least one third of your paper evaluating it.

Paper 3: At least 1800 words, no more than 3000 words. Answer ONE question.

This paper must refer at least two scholarly websites, books or articles, (one of these must be available in print) and it must use references to help the discussion of the topic. The paper must be in MLA format. (I recommend using the resources on the Library's Citation of Sources page to help you get the citation format correct: http://www.dowling.edu/library/links/citlink.shtm )

A. If we cannot have knowledge of things-in-themselves, then how is scientific knowledge possible according to Kant? Do you think that sub-atomic physics tells us about things-in-themselves or appearances? Spend at least a third of your paper on this last part.

B. Explain Nietzsche's attack on Christianity and Judaism. Is there any truth to his description of these religions as embodying 'slave morality'? Does he provide any reason to rise above such morality? Your evaluation should be at least half your paper.

C. Why does Wittgenstein think it is a mistake to think that we give meanings to words by attaching them to personal experiences? Examine some possible counter-examples to his view and discuss whether Wittgenstein could defend his view from them. You should devote at least a third of the paper to this second part of the question.

Links:

· Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Descartes by Douglas Burnham and James Fieser

· Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Descartes' Life and Works by Kurt Smith

· Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on John Locke

· Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on John Locke

· Catholic Encyclopedia on Nicholas Malebranche

· Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Leibniz

· Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Leibniz's Philosophy of Mind

· Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Berkeley by Lisa Downing

· IEP Entry on Berkeley by Daniel Flage

· Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Malebranche by Tad Schmaltz

· IEP Entry on Malebranche