Back to Christian Perring's Home Page
CRN 90377
Room: RC 317
MW 830-951AM
Professor Christian Perring, Department of Philosophy,
E-mail: perringc at dowling.edu [All email to me should have "PHL1042" in the subject line]
Texting: message me at
631-256-7167, always starting your message with PHL 1042 and your name.
Office Phone: 244-3349
Office: 330B RC (next to the computer lab)
Student Hours: MW
100-230PM, Tuesday 300-600PM, or by appointment. You can IM me during
office hours using the Digsby widget on my home page.
Textbook: The Moral of the Story: An Introduction to Ethics by Nina Rosenstand. McGraw-Hill, 2009. You need the SIXTH (6th) edition.
Course description. This course will cover central ethical theories, including the work of Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Hume, Adam Smith, Kant, Bentham, Mill, Kierkegaard, and Sartre. The course will be unusual in that it will discuss the works of philosophers in the context of stories from books and movies. We will use the textbook The Moral of the Story, put together by Nina Rosenstand. We will watch extracts from several movies and we will read some literature. Students will each do a presentation, in-class quizzes and tests, a paper, and some reflections. They will be expected to actively participate in class or online, because in articulating your thoughts to others, you both teach others and also learn more about yourself. The aim of this course is to teach you what some of the great philosophers have said about morality, but also to get you to think for yourself about morality, how other people think though moral decisions, and how you make your own moral choices. Through this examination of morality, you should become a more rational moral agent.
Learning outcomes:
Grade Assignment:
Attendance and Participation: 10%
Tests & Quizzes: 35%
First paper: 15%
Second paper: 25%
Presentation: 5%
Reflections: 10%
Plagiarism detection and prevention: All papers should be submitted via Turnitin.com 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.
Attendance: Attendance is required. You need to be in the classroom by the start of the class period, when I will take attendance. If you are late, you only get half-credit for attendance that day. If you are late to class, you need to speak to me at the end of class to explain why you were late and ask me to record your presence on my roster. If you need to miss a class, you should notify me by phone or email before the class. If you are ill and see a medical professional, or you have an unavoidable legal obligation, you should show me some documentation as evidence. Your attendance grade will suffer significantly if you miss classes without excuse. If you miss classes, you should write a 600 word summary of the reading assigned for that class, or arrange some alternative make-up work. If you miss more than 5 classes without excuse, you will fail the course. Arriving late for class will count as an absence unless you make sure that I registered your presence, and then you get half-credit.
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. There is a Blackboard site for this course, and you can also participate and discuss issues there.
Papers. There will be 2 papers. The first will be 800 words (excluding the bibliography); it should have at least one scholarly reference. The second will be 1200 words (excluding the bibliography); it should have at least two scholarly references. They should use APA formatting, both in-text and in the Works Cited list at the end -- use the resources on the Dowling Library web page for this.. The paper should focus on critically examining arguments. The scholarly references should be used in a way that helps your paper. It is important that you write in clear English with no grammatical or spelling errors. Good writing style will be rewarded. For each, 70% of the grade is on the content, and 30% is for writing style, formatting, grammar and spelling.
Useful links:
· Determining if a Resource is Scholarly
· Distinguishing Scholarly Journals from Other Periodicals
Missed Tests. If you miss a test, you get zero credit for it, and there is no option of make ups, whatever, your excuse. I will allow you to drop your lowest test grade and lowest quiz grade.
Late Papers. Late papers will be penalized, 1% for each day late. No excuses will be accepted. You should start early on your papers and have them close to finished a few days before they are due. For each day that your draft of your final paper is late, I will take off 1% off your final paper grade.
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 do so link your own life with philosophical discussions.
Classroom Etiquette. All cell phones ringers should be turned off and you should never talk on your cell phone in class. Don't put your bag on the desk and put your phone behind it--that is just annoying. You should never text in class and your texting device needs to be put away. 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. 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.
Extra Credit. There will be a few extra credit options such as going to talks by visiting speakers or going to plays and writing 600 words about it afterwards. All extra credit options will be available to all students. If you want an extra credit option or have an idea for a task to perform to get extra credit. Extra credit options normally provide 2% added to your total grade. No student can receive more than 4% extra credit.
Academic and Personal Problems. If you have problems that cause you to be late with work or to miss a number of classes, please stay in communication by phone, email, or by meeting with me in person. I will be willing to work with you and sort out a way for you to still stay in the class and get a fair grade. If you miss a number of classes or fail to hand in work on time but don't give me any explanation then you risk failing the class. Most people experience some sort of crisis during their college career, and you need to find ways to make sure that such problems don't ruin your college career.
Presentations. You must sign up to do a presentation in by the end of the Week 2. It should be at least 5 minutes long. You can use Powerpoint to do your presentation; it is not required but it is a good idea if you do it well. 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. You must rehearse your presentation ahead of time and get the timing right. The main priority is to explain your information clearly and in ways that get people's attention.
Presentation topics: You should summarize a fictional story or a true life story and explain how ethical issues arise. It can be from a newspaper article, a magazine, a novel, a short story, a religious work, a TV show, or a movie. The more articulate and sophisticated your presentation, the better the grade. You cannot show any video clips during your presentation, but you can show a clip of up to 4 minutes before or after.
Email and Blackboard. You should check your Dowling email at least twice a week. You should check the Blackboard shell for this course at least once a week.
Keeping Copies of Your Work. It is your responsibility to keep copies of all your work in this course until your final grade is submitted. You need to keep copies of your work in at least 3 different places, because all storage methods are fallible. Floppy disks are very unreliable and I recommend you don't use them. If you do use them, back them up every day. Better methods of storage are writable CDs, flashdrives or jumpdrives, zip-drives, hard disks, and emails to yourself with your work attached to the emails. You can also use free online backup programs such as Mozy or Dropbox. It can be a good idea to print out your work and keep a hard copy. But remember that no method of data storage is perfect, which is why you should keep your work stored in at least 3 separate places.
Final Deadline: All work is due by December 14. I will submit final grades to the Registrar on December 15. You must make sure that you have given me:
Course Schedule
|
Date |
Topic |
|
Work Due |
|
9/1 |
Introduction |
|
Self-information |
|
9/8 |
Thinking About Values |
Ch 1. pp. 1-33. |
|
|
9/13 |
"Good Will Hunting" |
pp. 33-36 |
|
|
9/15 |
Case Studies in Virtue |
|
|
|
9/20 |
|
pp. 579-582. |
Refection 1 |
|
9/22 |
Ethical Relativism |
|
|
|
9/27 |
"Do the Right Thing" |
pp. 151-157. |
|
|
9/29 |
|
Discussion/movie |
|
|
10/4 |
Myself or Others? |
|
|
|
10/6 |
Primate Life |
pp. 221-223 |
Reflection 2 |
|
10/11 |
Test 1 |
|
|
|
10/13 |
Utilitarianism |
|
|
|
10/18 |
|
pp. 267-268 |
|
|
10/20 |
Kant's Deontology |
|
|
|
10/25 |
"The Invention of Lying" |
pp. 301-304 |
Paper 1 due |
|
10/27 |
Personhood, Rights, and Justice |
|
Reflection 3 |
|
11/1 |
|
Ch 7 |
|
|
11/3 |
|
Ch 7 |
|
|
11/8 |
Virtue Ethics |
Ch 8. Pp. 385-414 |
|
|
11/10 |
"Pieces of April" |
|
Paper draft due |
|
11/15 |
David Hume |
David Hume (on Blackboard) |
Reflection 4 |
|
11/17 |
|
Paper writing workshop, Test Review |
|
|
11/22 |
Test 2 |
|
|
|
11/29 |
Contemporary Perspectives: Modern Virtue Theory |
|
Final paper due |
|
12/2 |
Existentialism |
Ch 10 pp. 514-518 |
|
|
12/6 |
Contemporary Approaches |
|
Reflection 5 |
|
12/8 |
Review & Tidying Up |
|
|
|
12/13 |
Test 3 |
|
|
Links:
David Hume's Enquiry Concerning Morals
Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiment.