WHAT PHILOSOPHY IS: Philosophy is an 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 unless they have some direct bearing on the issue at hand. 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 the role of morality in politics.

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.


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). See the Student Help Desk for help using Moodle forums.

Read the prompt carefully before answering. Make sure you are actually answering the question since off-topic posts will not receive credit. You should 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." 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.

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 (the equivalent of a zero on all forum posts) and an F in the class 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 graded on a credit/no-credit basis and are due before Sunday 11:55pm at the end of each week.

Late posts will not receive credit. Give yourself 30 minutes to review and edit your post after you have made it, making sure the formatting matches if you have copied and pasted it from a word processing program. If it doesn't match the font style and size, save as plain text in your word processor and try again. 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). 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. If your post is over 300 words, edit it down. An extra credit forum will be available in Week Ten to make up for one missed post. Students are also expected to read every post and pay special attention to posts made by the instructor.