WHAT PHILOSOPHY IS: Philosophy is the attempt to come to a systematic understanding of the objective world through the use of reason. The philosophical approach assumes a commitment to follow the truth wherever it leads, however uncomfortable it may make us and in spite of what we may wish to be true. It strives for logical consistency and agreement with the empirical evidence. Philosophy is about asking questions, especially questions no one else wants to ask. Philosophy even questions the unquestionable, including things considered to be "common sense," such as the existence of an external world of matter, free will, God, the soul, an afterlife, or, in the case of this class, the existence of universal, objective moral values (or perhaps the unquestionable certainty of our age is the dogma that morality is culturally relative or completely subjective). Philosophy uses conceptual analysis as its primary tool. Properly analyzing concepts requires the rigorous definition of terms, so the precise use of language is very important to philosophers, or at least to the good ones. This goes all the way back to Socrates. Fuzzy language evinces fuzzy thinking.

WHAT PHILOSOPHY IS NOT: Philosophy is not about exploring your "personal beliefs." Nor is it about your feelings (please avoid the phrase "I feel" when expressing your point of view in class or online forums, as hopefully what you have to say is based on more than your subjective emotional state). Philosophy is not about your identity, your sex, your gender, your sexual orientation, your culture or your "race." It's not about your faith or "how you were raised." Please avoid referring to these things in class or online forums unless they have some direct bearing on the issue at hand. Also please void the phrases like "personally" and "in my personal opinion." Philosophy (and indeed all academic discourse) concerns your impersonal opinion, i.e. your opinion backed by reasons and evidence. Although there is an historical tradition associated with philosophy, it is not primarily about history, and even though understanding their historical or cultural context may help us understand the ideas of particular philosophers, it is the ideas themselves with which philosophy is concerned.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF WOMEN AND NON-WESTERN CULTURES: There were few women philosophers until the beginning of the feminist movement in the 19th century. This was true of most other academic fields due to the institutionalization of pre-modern gender roles. Because this is a survey class concerned with major historical figures and basic concepts in ethics, we won't be reading many women philosophers. This should in no way be seen as casting aspersions on women as a class of people. We will, however, be spending a significant amount of time with Ayn Rand, who happens to be a woman and also one of the most important and influential philosophers and intellectuals of the 20th century, especially in ethics and political philosophy.

Along those same lines, for various complex historical and cultural reasons, philosophy emerged and flourished in the West and is the heritage of Western Civilization. It uniquely sowed the seeds for the scientific and industrial revolutions in Western Europe, leading to our modern technological world, as well as providing the social and political concepts on which the United States was founded. Like the scientific method and industrial production techniques, Western concepts such as individual rights, separation of Church and State, democratic self-government, meritocracy and free market capitalism have been adopted by many non-Western societies and diffused throughout the world. This is yet another reason to focus on theories of value that arose from and influenced the development of the Western world and, consequently, the rest of human civilization. The ethical traditions of other civilizations, including indigenous cultures, are covered extensively in history, cultural anthropology and ethnic studies courses.

Finally, it is important to understand that "Western" is just a conventional term for ideas which first emerged in Western Europe. An idea's place of origin or the particulars of the person who first developed or expounded it has nothing whatever to do with its truth value or importance in increasing human understanding. Newton and Leibniz discovered calculus around the same time and each accused the other of stealing his discovery. Yet calculus is neither essentially a British idea nor a German idea, nor is it a European or "white male" idea. Who was first to discover it, where he lived and the details of his ancestry and nationality are irrelevant to the validity and usefulness of calculus. So it is with all intellectual discoveries and theoretical innovations, including those concerning moral value.

CATALOG DESCRIPTION: Ethics is the study of morality, including an analysis of the concepts of good and evil, right and wrong, justice, responsibility, duty, character and successful living. Topics include whether morality is relative to culture or to the individual, moral skepticism, the relationship between morality and religion, theories about what makes particular actions right or wrong, the source of moral knowledge and how morality affects the way we approach controversial social issues.

COURSE OBJECTIVES: The objectives for this course are for students to (1) come to a clearer understanding of ethical concepts through the study of classical and contemporary theories, (2) acquire some factual knowledge about the history of ethics and important ethical thinkers, (3) come to their own conclusions about which ethical theories are best or most likely to be true, even if those conclusions are of a tentative nature, (4) acquire critical and analytical reasoning skills along the way, and (5) apply conclusions about the nature of moral value to their present way of life.

READING: It is important to read the material in order to participate intelligently in online forums and perform well on exams.

AUDIO PODCASTS: In addition to written text in Moodle, this class uses audio podcasts from the Fall 2016 face-to-face class. Make sure to listen to these each week, as they will explain the readings, whiteboard notes and Powerpoint slides in Moodle. There may be material on the exams which is contained in these recordings but not explicitly stated in the text. Feel free to skip over any announcements at the beginning of the recordings. Any current announcements will be posted to the Announcement Forum or Social Forum.

FORUM POSTS: The purpose of the forum assignment is to allow you the opportunity to interpret, evaluate and apply what you have learned, and to discuss the merits and implications of class concepts and theories with your classmates. Every Monday a new forum prompt will be posted. To receive credit, you must make one reply of 100 to 300 words that substantially and directly addresses the prompt and displays a familiarity with the reading, i.e. your post must be distinguishable from someone who hasn't done any of the reading, looks at the prompt and "gives their opinion." Avoid all titles, headers and signatures. Moodle displays your name, the date, the topic and the forum week; duplicating this information clutters up the forum. Write in block format with no indenting, spacing between paragraphs, and use the standard font. If you're pasting from Google docs, Microsoft Word or similar programs, save as plain text first. After you've posted, make sure that your post's formatting looks OK, that the font matches everyone else's and that there are no extra spaces above or below the text (a common problem with copying and pasting). You will have 30 minutes to edit your post. Formatting errors will be penalized. If you're having trouble, you might try typing directly into the input box in Moodle and paste into Google docs or another text program periodically to avoid losing your work. Your post formatting must look exactly like the prompt. See the Student Help Desk for help using Moodle forums.

Read the prompt carefully before answering. Posts which do not directly address the prompt will not receive credit. Be careful about wandering into irrelevant biographical information or personal anecdotes unless you're absolutely sure they apply to the subject. The inclusion of irrelevant material a.k.a. "going off on tangents" may result in partial credit. Support your answer with examples that demonstrate your understanding of the concepts being discussed, and present arguments to support your claims. It is up to you to convince me that you understand the material, not up to me to try to wring some modicum of comprehension out of vaguely worded assertions without examples or illustrations or to try to figure out whether what you say could be reasonably construed as an "argument." If you receive partial or no credit and tell me what you meant by your post was such and such, I will tell you that then you should have written that.

Carefully revise and proofread your post for typos, awkward language, conceptual vagueness and inconsistency. Posts making unsupported or contradictory claims will not receive credit. Your post should not read like a stream of consciousness of you trying to figure things out "on the fly." It should not be a series of disjointed observations. If it helps you to write something like that first, go ahead, but then revise it into something clear, methodical and coherent. Avoid meaningless, introductory throw-away comments or restating the question; get straight to the point. If you pad your post with meaningless fluff at the beginning, you may lose credit for insufficient word count. Be concise. If you have trouble coming up with 100 words, you probably need to include an examples to clarify your claim or an arguments in support of it.

Plagiarism, which includes but is not limited to copying and pasting from websites, will result in a penalty of one letter grade on the first offense (10% of your course grade) and an F in the course on the second offense. If you do the readings, you should have no trouble responding to the prompt in a way that is sufficient for credit without looking at any other sources.

Postings will be awarded a grade of "2" (full credit), "1" (partial credit) or "0" (no credit) and are due before Sunday 11:55pm at the end of each week. You can post as many times as you like, but the maximum credit for each forum is 2 points, which amounts to 2% of your course grade and 20% at the end of the term.

Late posts receive at most half-credit, no exceptions. Set a weekly reminder in your phone or online calendar so you don't forget to post (while you’re at it, you might want to put in the exam dates and grade option/drop deadline, too). Late posts may have grading delay of up to one week. Posts of fewer than 100 words will not receive credit. Use the word count feature in your word processor or online if you are in doubt. Moodle will also show the word count after you have made your post. If your post is over 300 words, edit it down. Posts of over 300 words will receive no more than partial credit. If your post has a combination of the problems listed above, e.g. it is late and has formatting errors or it is over length and has meanders like a stream of consciousness or contains irrelevant material, it may not receive any credit at all.

Students are also expected to read every post and pay special attention to posts made by the instructor. If you receive partial or no credit for your post, please look at the forum and read any feedback before contacting the instructor.

EXAMS: You will have a window of several days during which you must take each exam, including the final, in Instructional Testing Services, (located in CEN 311 on the Main Campus), or at the Cottage Grove Center, the Florence Center, or with an approved proctor (see section below). Exams are taken via Moodle but with a test setting which restricts access to LCC testing centers (or approved proctors). Exams cannot be taken at home. Opening and closing times of exams are listed in the table above and may also be seen by clicking on the exam name in the main course view. Hours for Instructional Testing Services may be found at https://www.lanecc.edu/its/hours. Hours for Cottage Grove Center and Florence Center are different and may be found at https://www.lanecc.edu/cottagegrove/hours and https://www.lanecc.edu/florence/florence-hours (Florence asks that you call to check availability - see the link for details).

You must arrive one hour before closing. You will need an official photo I.D., such as a state-issued driver's license, state-issued I.D. card, student I.D. card, passport or "green card." Unfortunately, LCC bus passes no longer qualify as valid photo I.D. You will need to know your L Number and MyLane PIN to log into Moodle. If there is more than one exam open or you've been granted an extension to take an exam late, make sure to tell the testing personnel which exam you would like to take so they don't give you the wrong one by mistake. If English is your second language, dictionaries will be on hand for you to use. If your native language isn't a common one, please contact Instructional Testing Services ahead of time to make sure they have your language. Unfortunately, you are not allowed to use your own paper or electronic dictionary.

The exam format will be multiple choice and true/false questions. During the exam you may use a 3 x 5 note card (both sides) or a piece of paper measured with a ruler and cut to the same size. The final will not be comprehensive.

Once you take your exam, you'll immediately receive your score as well as be able to see the questions you missed along with the correct answers. Please give yourself time to review the exam right after you take it, as you will not be able to review your exam from home. Reviewing your exam will be especially helpful to you if you plan on taking the Comprehensive Midterm Exam, which will cover the same material. If you wish to review your exam at a later date, you will have to see me in office hours or review it in the Social Science Resource Center with a tutor (if available). A small curve be may included which will add to your raw score. Your adjusted score can be viewed by clicking on "Grades" on the side bar in Moodle.

PROCTORED TESTING FOR REMOTE STUDENTS: See http://www.lanecc.edu/laneonline/test-proctoring for details on proctoring if you are taking the course from out of the greater Eugene area. If you need help locating a proctor, try  Consortium of College Testing Centers at http://www.ncta-testing.org/cctc. A per test fee is usually required; fees will vary by institution.

EXAM DEADLINE POLICY: Since you will have at least a week to take each exam, you will be expected to meet the deadline, however, you may contact the instructor via Moodle message (not email)  to request an extension without penalty. Please include the class, the exam and the date you would like it extended to in your message. The Final Exam closes Wednesday 7pm of Finals Week. Extensions for it are only possible through Thursday 5pm, when the testing center closes for the term. If you miss the final due to some unforeseen circumstance or emergency situation, contact me via Moodle message for options ASAP.

PENALTIES FOR CHEATING: Students caught cheating will be given an F in the course.

COMPREHENSIVE MIDTERM EXAM: There is an optional Comprehensive Midterm Exam, based on the material from the First and Second Midterms. It will replace the lowest of your First or Second Midterm Exam scores. If it is lower than either or if you don't take it, it will have no effect. It is not a substitute for taking the Final Exam.

GRADING: There is no curve. At the end of the term, the class will be graded on the following absolute scale, with course totals rounded up to the nearest whole number: