Description: The Meaning of Life. Knowledge vs. Skepticism/Appearance vs. Reality. Justifying Moral Judgments. Minds and Bodies and Their Relationships. What Human Beings Are. The Rationality of Religious Faith, The Problem of Evil. The Functions of Philosophy. After we settle these easy matters, we will take up whatever more difficult questions the class wants.
Course Format: The main business of the course will take place in the classroom, in mixed lecture and discussion. The
readings are not the course but instead support what happens in class. Those whose grades are disappointments to them have been, with only a couple of exceptions, those who skipped classes. The costs of cutting class are often not obvious until it is too late to fix them. It is not a correspondence course. The proportion of lecture to discussion will vary. There may be several lectures in a row with only minimal discussion. More often we will have short lectures at the
beginning of class followed by discussion, some of it in small groups. I hardly ever show videotapes, and I
use the board rather than overheads or Powerpoint. I routinely accommodate students with disabilities. Some of those accomodations are made unnecessary by my practice of assigning essays a week before they are to be turned in. Students will participate in discussion via e-mail (see below), but not as a substitute for coming to class. I will sometimes write and hand out summary letters to the class as we come to a major change of topic. Students will help choose among course topics
toward the end.
The schedule provided here is only a model of how things may go. Our agenda is flexible and depends on our interests; it hardly ever goes according to a set plan. We will make many changes as we go. The course is writing intensive, with an expectation in common with other philosophy department courses that each student will write 20 graded pages (5000 words or more) over the semester. There will also be miscellaneous ungraded writing--intellectual inventory work, exercises to familiarize students with the grading criteria, etc.
Essays turned in late are graded down 1/3 grade (e.g., reduced from an A to A-, or from A- to B+, and so on) if not turned in by the class time at which they are due, one full grade if not turned in by the next class, two grades if not turned in by the next. I will accept late papers, though graded down, up until the scheduled time for the final, but none afterwards. Students turn in their essays by posting them to Moodle, accessible for the rest of the class to read on the course forum. Moodle keeps track of when you turn your essays in.
Your semester grade is the average of your grades on those 1500- to 2200-word essays. You are required to use a three-part structure. Mastery of that structure is a main goal for the course and shapes the grading criteria. The grading criteria and a more developed account of the three-part structure are posted at http://users.humboldt.edu/jwpowell/gradingx.pdf. We will go over it in class.
The Discipline of Philosophy:
First, not everyone is interested, and not everyone CAN be interested. Most students like the course, but a few
drop and a few more should drop. If the teacher loves the stuff, as I do, that only makes it worse for some students. The
kinds of thinking philosophy requires can take a while to get used to, and frustration is common, so tolerance of
frustration is a help. Keeping track of how this course can help you with your life is also hard--indeed, whether
philosophy is valuable is one of the traditional problems in philosophy. For some it will be delightful--you'll take to it
like a duck having crossed a desert to a marshy lake. On the other hand, for some the whole semester will be poking
ashes of a dead fire trying to get something to glow. Students who are convinced that they hold views which are important
insights sometimes find themselves tripped up and frustrated. Some of these views are current intellectual fads--everything is subjective, words are just conventional marks, morality is only cultural customs in disguise, gender and race and knowledge are only human constructions--but all of
these and many others besides need to be cross-examined. They mostly mistakes--and it is difficult for some of us to cast a cold eye on such ideas when we have committed ourselves to believing them. And, of course, anyone who says they are or are not mistakes has to back that up. That is, provide arguments. Providing arguments is a crucial part of doing philosophy. If you are so attached to your views that you cannot take seriously opposing views then that may make the course difficult or impossible or maddening.
There is a common way of talking about philosophy which has very little to do with the philosophy we will do here. People speak of putting together a philosophy, or give as a philosophy something that could be captured on a bumpersticker. Businesses trumpet philosophies about being centered on customer service, colleges about being
student-centered or (the phrase du jour) learning centered. Garrison Keillor on Prairie Home Companion sometimes speaks of a Lutheran philosophy which centers on the claim that "It's not that bad." None of those counts as philosophy for our purposes, but not much is at stake with any of those. --Although they may distract you from other ways to think about philosophy or distract you from their own flaws. For example, if it were true that some (or all) truths are only constructions, then that truth would be an exception and so the alleged truth would be false as a generalization--I know, it's a toy argument in a way, but it works against the game-like logic of the original claim.
If you are unwilling to re-examine your own views, if you are convinced you have already got all
this figured out, if you approach the questions as a competition rather than as an inquiry in which you might find
something new, if you let what you want to think run the show of what you do think, then your odds in this course are not good. (On
the other hand, some very good students have been deeply skeptical about the materials we read and about what I say in
lectures. Willingness to look at the arguments is not at all the same as trusting them.)
Next, what counts as progress in philosophy is in contrast to what counts as progress in many other disciplines--the
emphasis is often not on answering philosophical questions--rather, the emphasis is on questioning or unpacking those questions,
figuring out what they mean and the implications of what they mean, and whether there might be mistakes built into the questions before we ever get to the answers. Instead of trying to get the material covered, we often work very hard to go slowly and to catch our mistakes, even if that requires backtracking into the sources of our beliefs. Philosophy is in part about catching mistakes. It has often been said that philosophy is thinking about
thinking, but that is too easy, so easy that it is misleading. What it misses is the hard insight that there is a kind of schizophrenia (in the old Greek sense of the word as meaning split or divided attention) involved in thinking about our thinking. You do need to think, to start with, but then you need to re-examine that thinking with a cold eye. Rather than only defending your own view, you will learn to attack it; rather than trying to kill your opponents, you will try to help them out, help make their views as strong as possible. You do not have to change your mind, but you do have to take the possibility of changing your
mind seriously. --As seriously as possible, and, probably, more seriously than you are doing as you read these words.
There is a nice thing that happens if you do. It is this: if you do take the possibility of changing your mind seriously, then
every relevant argument becomes your friend. Every relevant argument is a help in thinking things through. Even bad arguments can help us clarify our thinking if we figure out why they are bad.
In general, philosophy attracts some of the smartest students in the university, but even that idea should be distrusted. Philosophy majors have consistently had among
the very highest averages on standardized tests of students going on to graduate school. But being smart may not correlate
directly with enjoying philosophy or with being good at it. It seems to me some of my very best students have been those
with a distaste for purely abstract thinking, for example, and who have their feet on the ground, who have something like
common sense. Some students who do not fit in well in other disciplines in the humanities or the sciences or social
sciences find a home in philosophy, and some of the things that make a person a good philosopher may make that person
a pain in the ass in other settings, including other academic settings. Being contrary is valuable in philosophy, but being arrogant is poisonous. I know, there's a paradox there. Tough shit.
Finally, philosophy can be thought of as grappling with a set of difficult and fundamental questions, many of which
have remained the same throughout human history. These questions have engaged and continue to engage
many of the smartest and best people of all cultures. The course gives students a chance to work on some of these most
profound and dizzying questions we can devise, and gives you training on thinking straight, learning how to work with
arguments and how to clarify issues. We do this in part by reading some of the central documents in the history of
thought (East and West), by reading some works from thinkers who have been pushed to the margins, and in part by
discussions in which some students (always and only by volunteering) will crawl out on a limb in front of the class, some of whom will try to cut them down. (I do call on students, but it is always fine for you to decline to answer or to ask that I try someone else.)
The course is rehabilitation of the reputation of thinking, lately thought a whore of ideology; it is in part self-examination; it is Big Questions without cynicism (well, maybe a little cynicism); a backpack trip into the life of the mind. I aim also to make clear how this discipline is a central part of a good education. I include notes on how this course fits in general education and we will discuss what education is for as one of our philosophical topics. I have published some articles on these matters (what education is for, terrible mistakes in thinking about accountability, attempts to reform general education), and will be glad to share.
Texts and Materials: There are no required texts for you to buy, though I've asked the bookstore to offer some dialogues of Plato having to do with the trial and death of Socrates, and a tiny book by Tolstoy about the meaning of life. I put almost all the readings up on Moodle, give them out in
class handouts, or put them on reserve in the library. Neither this nor the online version of this syllabus on Moodle has a complete list of the readings. For that, log on to Moodle a couple of times per week. Moodle will still leave out some of the in-class handouts. You may decide you want to buy some other of the texts. (besides Plato: Apology, Euthyphro, often bundled together with a couple of other dialogues, as in Trial and Death of Socrates, trans. Grube (Bobbs-Merrill, 1953, first published about 390 BCE), and The Problems of Philosophy, by Bertrand Russell.) All handouts in class will be relevant to discussion and will be useful to you as you write the essays. If you have not done the readings you are at risk of being ignorant of things you need to know. If you miss a class meeting, be sure to check whether there were handouts. I deliberately set up the essay assignments with the readings so that the readings will provide you help as you write the essays. If you have skipped readings those lacunae will show in your essays. I make lots of comments on essays. If I say you have not read one of the Moodle texts, that may damage a grade.
The reading load is not large in number of pages, but some of
the reading is difficult. Give yourself time to go slowly. The reading load is well within the standard expectation at Humboldt State that students will spend two hours preparing for each hour in class. The emphasis throughout is on clarification of issues and
description and evaluation of arguments, and we will spend some time on crucial methods early on. Again, what
happens in class is more important than the readings; don't skip class.
Grading: Quizzes are possible at any moment. If the class seems to need quizzes as motivation to do the readings, the quizzes will be more frequent as a service to students. They will be short, basic, multiple-choice, no trick questions; they will not be returned to students but a key will be posted on Moodle.
Attendance is required. No one who misses more than five of the approximately forty-five classes on attendance sheets or quizzes will receive a grade higher than a B, and no one who misses more than ten will receive higher than a C. I take attendance, not every class, using a rollsheet that students initial, or I pass around a sign-in sheet. I do not remind the class about this policy. It is your responsibility to attend consistently. You are free to remain in denial about the consequences of missing classes and blowing quizzes until it is too late to repair your grade.
So, attendance is required but the quizzes are small potatoes. The
main grades are grades you earn on your essays. Each of the essays you write is to be posted to the Moodle forum for the class (when you post your essay, it is e-mailed to everyone in the class, and will be available for the class to look at for the rest of the course). You can expect on average to write twenty or more
pages of essays over the semester, roughly at least five thousand words, divided into three or four assignments. There will be two or three midterm essays
and a final essay. All these essays use basically the same format, as spelled out below. Stellar performance on the quizzes,
optional assignments, extra research, outstanding participation in class or via e-mail or on the Moodle forum (see below) can raise your final grade by one third of a grade point (e.g., from a B+ to
an A- or from a B- to a B). Each of the essay assignments will consist of four to eight essay questions or prompts, from which you choose one to write your essay. All essays are to be written using a three-part structure. We will go over it in class, do trial runs for which you grade yourself and then check against how I would have graded you, and feedback on your essays will emphasize how well or poorly you have used the structure. In other words, we are going to drive that three-part structure into the ground. Mastering this structure is a main goal in this course--it is the structure of critical thinking regarding arguments. I try to set up each essay prompt so that if students have not read the materials then it will show in their essay. Essay prompts will be distributed at least a week before the essays are due. You will usually get two or three days to submit rough drafts of essays during the week before essays are due. The Final for the course is scheduled as noted at the top of this syllabus. You will have an opportunity to draft a question of your own for essays toward the end. I will usually also distribute an optional essay assignment toward the end of the course for those students who want a chance to raise their average grade. If I forget to do this please remind me.
I will spell out the grading criteria I use, and post and hand out grading criteria along with the 3-part structure before the first midterm. An abbreviation of that structure goes as follows, although it is the process of writing the essays that makes the structure clear: students are graded not on the positions they give on the philosophical problems but rather on how well they articulate the arguments involved, how well they work to clarify the issues, their ability to provide relevant arguments for their own views, and whether they sympathetically articulate the strongest objections to their own views and respond to those thoughtfully. If you are trying to support a position argued for or against in the readings or in lecture or discussion, be sure to show you understand those arguments. Getting ready for the essay assignments gives us some chances to provide organizational suggestions to make fulfilling these criteria easier, and the handout on grading also provides some help regarding strategy for writing philosophy. These grading criteria and the help with strategy are broadly applicable, not just to philosophy but to any situations in which you are working with issues and arguments and in which critical thinking is called for. The grading criteria and a more developed account of the three-part structure are posted at http://users.humboldt.edu/jwpowell/gradingx.pdf.
Posting your essays: Once again, students will be required to access the HSU Moodle web page, both to get materials and to post (send) their essays to the forum discussion list. Paste your essays into the body of messages--Do not attach files. I sometimes make paper copies of some e-mail exchanges available to the class.
I taught for several years at a university in which I taught the courses like this one to auditoriums of 180+ students. That made discussion impossible, and the teaching and learning that are helped by discussion did not happen, and I hated it. I will not require you to take part in discussion, but I will provide opportunities and I will encourage you not to hide out, because sometimes having people respond to your ideas is a help in thinking things through. The electronic discussion is another place where this can happen--that is, you may be prompted to rethink your own ideas.
Model Schedule: (Our pace and selection of readings depends on pace of discussion and the dangerous possibility that we will develop interests. These dates will be revised. Students pick the last topics in the course by voting for their choices among alternatives.)
The assignment due dates will depend on the pace of discussions and the abilities of students to master the materials. The dates given on this syllabus are approximations. Essay assignments will be distributed in class at least one week before the essays are due. This includes the final essay. That means that you will always have at least one week lead time with the essay prompts in hand before you have to turn in an essay. Also, I give a couple or three class meetings notice before I hand out the essay prompts with instructions and deadlines.
Here is an approximate schedule with examples of readings.
Weeks (estimated). . . . . Topics and readings . . . . . . Essay assignments/ Exams
1 and 2. Intro and methods, The Meaning of Life; Excerpts from Powell's Radish Logic; Tobias Wolff, "Bullet in the Brain." Handouts on methods. Plato's Apology . Critical thinking as describing arguments and clarifying issues. Written practice describing arguments.
3 and 4. The Meaning of Life, continued: Is there something we are here for? Plato's Apology; Tolstoy's A Confession; Sartre, from "Existentialism Is a Humanism;" Tom McGuane, from Nobody's Angel; William James, from "On a Certain Weakness in Human Beings;" Summary of Zen tenets, from Zen Art For Meditation by Holmes and Horioka; John Tarrant on Zen Koans; Stephen King, "All That You Love Will Be Carried Away;" Various poems regarding the meaning of life; Tobias Wolff, "Bullet in the Brain" discussion. Chuang Tzu, from the Inner Chapters; John Wisdom, "The Meanings of the Questions of Life," from Paradox and Discovery. John Wisdom's "Gods." Essay I at end of this discussion or before (announced a week ahead).
5 and 6. Appearance and Reality, Knowledge and Illusion. Bertrand Russell, Chapters One, Two, Three, and Four from The Problems of Philosophy. Meditations I and II from Descartes' Meditations on First Philosophy. O. K. Bouwsma, "Descartes' Evil Genius;" F. B. Ebersole, "Does It Look the Color It Is?" J. L. Austin, Lecture Seven, on reality, from Sense and Sensibilia; Powell, "Dreams and Illusions"
7 and 8. Absolutisms, Relativisms and Moral Judgments; Plato: Euthyphro; Ruth Benedict, "Psychology and the Abnormal," handouts on ethics, examples (e.g., adultery, academic cheating, The 8% Project) for moral judgments, tolerance and relativism.
9 and 10. Power and Oppression, and Can Logic Help? Nancy Tuana, from Feminism & Science; Andrea Nye, from Words of Power; James Faris, from Navajo and Photography. Essay II.
11 and 12. Minds and Bodies: Dualism and Pathetic Attempts To Get Out of It. Could We Make a Computer Our Equal? Human Beings, Machines, Bodies, and Consciousness: Daniel Dennett's "Where Am I?" J.F.M. Hunter, "How We Talk" (on having a speaking machine); John Searle, "Brains, Minds, and Programs."
13 and 14. The Problems of Love and Problems of Definitions; Plato, from Symposium; Russell, Chapters Nine and Ten from The Problems of Philosophy [on universals]; Dichotomies; from John Farella, The Main Stalk: A Synthesis of Navajo Philosophy; handout on definitions.
14 and 15. The Value of Philosophy; Derek Parfit, "Sterile Questions," from Reasons and Persons; wrapup.
Final Essay/Exam: see dates at top of syllabus
Course Goals and Objectives, Outcomes and Assessment : This course meets General Education lower
division Area C requirements. The HSU web pages on Academic Programs give a formal statement of the Objectives to be achieved in meeting those requirements. These have been revised in recent years and may be revised again as a consequence of the new University Strategic Plan. For now, they are on the
University's GE outcomes page.
When I review these goals, as faculty were recently requested to do, it seems to me that the Philosophy Department's courses are just about the only
courses at the University which have any hope of fulfilling those goals. This course is also exemplary for developing some
central critical thinking skills. Those are skills in recognizing and articulating arguments, clarifying issues,
identifying assumptions, anticipating objections, and developing one's own independent views based on
arguments rather than based on, e.g., desires that some beliefs be true, or laziness, or trust of others or your own reflexes or intuitions.
I have written about problems with the idea of outcomes assessment. One essay is published in the 2011 volume of the
Journal of Academic Freedom. I also have an earlier essay about the dangers of oversimplifying the answer to the question, "What is Education For?" and a review of a national study of General Education reform with some of my own recommendations. You can get to those and other essays through the "Thinking" page on my website. Different takes besides mine about these issues are available through the footnotes and bibliographies of my essays.