PHIL 14: Business: Moral Issues



PHIL 101: Intro FALL 2020

Office hour: By appointment only, Tuesdays: 1.45-2.45 on Zoom. If you are in class during this time we can discuss another day/time. If you make an appointment for another day/time and do not keep it I will not meet with you except on a Tuesday between 1.45 and 2.45. If you miss a second scheduled meeting I will not make another appointment with you; you will have to arrive early at a class meeting to discuss your issue.

Email: patricia.oconnor@qc.cuny.edu Please be advised that I do not check my email Friday-Sunday. If you email me on one of those three days your message will be answered in the order in which it was received, starting on Monday.

Phone: Do not call! Since I will not be in my office I will not be retrieving voice mail messages.

Website:

Texts: Online readings/videos. URLs are given beginning p. 3, below. You must have read/watched before the date on which the text is listed or you will not be prepared for class. You must take notes on the videos. I may collect these notes and grade them at any time.

You must have the reading, or your notes on the video for the day, in front of you during class meetings! This is a discussion class, and if you do not have the reading/notes you will not be able to follow the discussion. Sometimes at the end of class I will ask you to email your notes on the video to me. These notes will factor into your participation grade.

This class is philosophy as self-defense. Like any form of self-defense, this discipline requires that its practitioners do things. The foundational principle of this class therefore is: you know only what you can do. Or, to put the same thought negatively: if you can't do it, you don't know it. By the end of the semester you will be able to ask philosophical questions. You will be able to locate, articulate, analyze, and critically evaluate arguments. You'll be able to defend yourself against many forms of poor reasoning (both innocent and deliberate).

Memorization isn't something philosophers do. In the internet age, it isn't anything anyone with access to the internet should do. (Besides, your K-12 education made you all too sadly proficient in this useless skill.) Don't plan on succeeding in this class via memorization. It won't work. Instead you'll have to do the (much harder!) work of thinking, and routinely demonstrate (via full and active participation in class) that you have done that thinking.

Fair warning: If you wish to be passive or disengaged, if you fail to attend class regularly, or if you fail to do your work, you will perform badly in this class and therefore earn a poor grade.

Academic requirements

1. Courtesy. Be advised that, as in a business setting, you are expected to be on time and to focus exclusively on the meeting. We can all tell by now when someone is not focused on the meeting. It should go without saying that you may not eat, play music, etc. during class, and that it is your responsibility to make certain that you are not the source of distractions for the class. You should use the Zoom "raise hand" function or send me a private chat message when you want to speak, and this should be done only after the speaker has reached a pause in his/her comments or remarks. You may not attempt to interrupt/talk over the instructor or a classmate.

2. Preparation. The material indicated on each date on the syllabus is to be prepared for that class. This includes the readings as well as written work. Written work that is not submitted as an Adobe attachment, or is not in 12-pt TIMES NEW ROMAN, double-spaced, pages numbered, dated, class section indicated will receive no credit (NC) after the first assignment of the semester. Unless otherwise specifically stated, the assignments are individual assignments. You may not collaborate on them. Evidence of collaboration will result in F grades for the assignments of all persons involved. Theft of intellectual property from websites is plagiarism. First instance of plagiarism: F for assignment. Second instance: F for course.

3. Timeliness. Both you and your work must be present on time, always. I will take attendance at the beginning of class. If you are late to class and miss roll call you must send me an email by 9 p.m. that day stating (a) that you were late and (b) in one sentence, the main idea of that day's class. If you do not do this the recorded absence will stay in the record. On any given day I may also call the roll at the end of the class. If you have left our meeting early you will be marked absent.

Just as in business, all written work is due when stipulated. Written material handed in late will receive no credit, although you will receive feedback on it. Submitted written work that is not a correctly-formatted Adobe file (see [2] above) will, after the first assignment of the semester, receive an automatic no credit (NC) grade.

4. Adherence to Work Requirements

A. Quantity. You must complete at least 60% of the assigned work for the class, including note-taking on videos and all categories of participation. If you do not, you will receive a WU grade for the class. This grade is worse than an F.

Be advised that QC policy prohibits automatically assigning INC grades. Thus, if you are unable to complete the course you must meet with me to request an INC.

B. Quality. Unless otherwise indicated, written assignments will receive standard letter grades F-A+. The most common cause of F grades, and other low grades, is failure to follow content instructions. In business, the instructions are not negotiable. In this class, the instructions are not negotiable. If you don't understand the instructions, ask questions until you do. That is your responsibility, not mine. I am not a telepath and therefore am not able to determine whether you understand what you have been told. When in doubt, ASK.

Any work that does not conform to format instructions will, after the first assignment in the semester, receive no credit (NC) at all. In other words, you may make this mistake exactly once before your grade suffers.

Participation

The primary mode for philosophy is discussion. It is 50% of your course grade. If you will often not be in class, are determined not to be prepared for class, know yourself incapable of talking in public, or have discovered that you cannot focus when online for 75 minutes, this class is not a good fit for you. I strongly suggest you drop it. On any day that it becomes clear that the class as a whole cannot have a productive discussion, I will give you a writing assignment and dismiss the class. You will be held responsible for learning by yourself the material that should have been discussed. Each day you are absent during the classes in December you will lose .5 from your participation grade for the course.

Types/Value

1. Voluntary. 40% of course grade. Answers, questions, and comments that contribute to class discussion of philosophical content. Mechanical questions (such as "When is _____ due?") or comments (such as "I didn't watch the video") have no philosophical content and do not earn credit. Obviously you must attend class to participate! But attendance is not itself participation. See p. 6 in the syllabus for how to earn credit. If you want to track your grade in voluntary participation, you must record your daily participation yourself. If you wish you may use the same schema for this that I do: NC, F, P (average), + (significant). I will answer questions about your voluntary participation grade only after you give me a copy of your own record of it.

2. Involuntary: 10% of course grade. Examples: Working in groups/teams, either in Zoom breakout rooms or outside class time. Giving a substantial answer (even if it is incorrect) to a question the instructor asks about an important idea from the day's reading/video. On any day that you are clearly not paying attention to the class meeting (don't know what we are discussing let alone how to begin answering a question) or don't have the text/notes for the video in front of you, or violate courtesy criteria, you will earn an F in this category. Such an F will override any credit you might have earned that day in category (1). Grading schema as specified above for "voluntary" participation.

Quizzes

If it becomes necessary I will give quizzes. A simple quiz might consist of a question about the reading or video assigned for the day. For example, I may ask “What is the main idea of paragraph one?" I will then provide class time for you to email me an answer to the question. A more complex quiz you will answer on your own time, outside of class, and email to me by a specified day/time. If you are not in class when the question is asked, you cannot take the quiz. Grades are given according to the same schema as participation grades and will either enhance or damage your "involuntary" participation grade.

Course Grade Constituents

Voluntary participation 40%. Involuntary participation 10%. Three fallacy games total 15%. Your own definitions of fallacies total 10%. First exam 5%. Final exam 15%. Short assignments 5%. Fallacy games cannot be made up. No so-called “extra credit”is available in this class.

Informal Logic

27 Aug: Read: Syllabus. Both I and you will have the opportunity to ask questions about this document. The goal is that you understand as accurately as possible the class you will be taking. We will also be discussing the concept of restorative justice.

1 September: Read: teaching/vocab/argument.html. Discuss: arguments, premises, conclusions.

3 September: Read: , section 1 (validity) only. Prepare answers to the exercises (highlighted in yellow). Discuss validity.

8 September: Read: , sections 2, 3, and 5. Prepare answers to the exercise in the "sound" section. Distribute: list of argument topics.

10 September: Due: first argument from topics list. You will be putting this argument on Zoom chat so that we can all read it and ask questions about the form of the argument and the truth of its premises.

15 September: Due: Another argument from the topics list. You will be putting this argument on Zoom chat so that we can all read it and ask questions about the form of the argument and the truth of its premises. Your written version of this argument must be emailed to the instructor no later than 9 a.m. on 9/17.

17 Sept: Review.

22 Sept: First exam.

24 Sept: Read: first two pages of and the equivocation, begging the question, and false dilemma sections of . Discuss: Building your own definition, how to argue successfully that a given fallacy is exemplified in an argument. Distribute a list of arguments that may exemplify one of the seven fallacies discussed.

29 Sept: NO CLASS MEETING, but due 9/30 on/before 9 a.m.: Your argument showing that one of the arguments on the list is/is not fallacious, and why.

1 Oct: You will be reading to the class and taking questions on the argument you submitted on 9/30. You may resubmit this work in writing to the instructor, if you wish to revise it given classmates' questions, on or before 9 a.m. on 6 Oct.

6 Oct: Discuss: Results of first fallacy argument exercise. Assignment for 10/8: Go to . Choose one fallacy type that we have NOT already done in class. Pick one example from that type. The work you present orally to the class on 10/8 will: give YOUR OWN definition of that fallacy, give the Texas State example you have chosen, and give YOUR OWN argument showing how we know the Texas State example is indeed an example of that fallacy.

8 Oct: Oral presentations as described above (6 Oct).

13 Oct: Watch: Discuss: Amphiboly, composition, division. Not on video: counterfactual conditional. Note differences in fallacy definitions from different sources. What traits let you recognize these fallacies? Mixing specific and general traits for a good argument.

15 Oct: Watch: Discuss: Complex question. Discuss: How do we successfully argue that something is a complex question? Not on video; gamblers fallacy, hot hand.

20 Oct: Watch: . We will not discuss the fallacy of suppressed evidence and you are not responsible for learning it. Discuss: false dichotomy (also known as false dilemma) and how to prove an argument is a case of false dichotomy/dilemma. Not in video: sunk cost fallacy.

22 Oct: Fallacy game, round I. Due by 9 a.m.: Your list of YOUR OWN definitions of all the fallacies we have studied so far.

27 Oct: Watch: The only fallacies you are responsible for in this video are force, pity, bandwagon, and what Dr Koehl calls "appeal to vanity" (but is more widely known, and will be called by us, the appeal to celebrity). Not in video: inconsistency.

29 Oct: Watch: Discuss: the "two-step" fallacies of ad hominem abusive, circumstantial, tu quoque, and straw person; fallacy of accident. How do we distinguish abusive and circumstantial?

3 Nov: Watch: Discuss: straw (con't), missing the point, red herring. How do we prove an argument commits the fallacy of missing the point? Explain the two-part structure of red herring.

5 Nov: Fallacy game, round II. Due by 9 a.m.: Your OWN definitions for all fallacies 10/27 through 11/3.

10 Nov: Watch: Discuss: appeal to ignorance (both versions) and to what Dr Koehl calls "unqualified authority" but is usually known as what we will call it: the misplaced appeal to authority. What are the appeals to ignorance that are not fallacious?

12 Nov: Watch: . Discuss: hasty generalization, false cause, post hoc. Not in video: anecdotal fallacy. What are the two possible problems with the sample that might cause hasty generalization?

17 Nov: Watch: Discuss: slippery slope (con't), weak analogy. How can we prove that an argument commits the fallacy of weak analogy?

19 Nov: Fallacy game, Round III. Due by 9 a.m.: Your OWN definitions of all fallacies 11/10 through 11/17.

24 Nov: Discuss locating arguments for use in last section of course. You must submit the URL for one freely-accessible online article that contains arguments by 9 a.m. on 11/30.

Applications: Dec 1, 3, and 8

In this section of the course you will be applying your new skills to news articles, blog posts, etc that contain arguments. If possible these readings will come from the URLS provided by the class on 11/30. You will analyze the readings for whether they contain informal fallacies, and if they do you will name each fallacy and give an argument showing that it exists in the article. Since this is exactly the work you will be doing for the final exam, one way of looking at what we are doing is: spending three classes reviewing for the final. Absence from class any day during this time will result in a loss of .5 a grade from your course participation grade.

Final Exam date/time: 12/17 8.30-10.30. Although no conflict of final exam should arise, you should check your personal final exam schedule (on CUNY First) to verify that you do not have conflicts. If you have a conflict, you must go to the Registrar's Office to get it resolved. Faculty are not responsible for adjudicating conflicts of final exams.

Voluntary Participation Criteria

By the second week of class you should be participating regularly. Merely attending class does not constitute participation. Attending, having done the reading, does not constitute participation. YOU MUST TALK in order to participate. If you feel that your personal characteristics will regularly prohibit you from talking, you should give serious thought to dropping this class.

Each class will be a conversation about the material assigned for that day. You should contribute to the conversation regularly; for an “A,” you should do so in at least 80% of the class meetings. Both questions and answers/comments are good ways of contributing. The objective is for you to show in class that you have read and thought carefully about the material. “Show” = TALK. It does you no good in respect of your participation grade merely to read. I am not a telepath and therefore cannot determine that your unarticulated thoughts are insightful.

Voluntary participation will be assessed according to the following criteria. CONTENT: philosophical, not mechanical; substantive; based on having read/watched the material; directly related to the point under discussion; leads to a significant response by instructor or other students. FORM: is not an interruption (either of the instructor or of another member of the class); is not a personal attack on a member of the class; is brief and to the point; is not repetition of an earlier question/comment (though it may be a follow-up).

If you have questions about what the criteria mean, please ask them early in the semester. By mid-semester it will be too late for you to recover from having been mistaken about their meaning. As previously stated in the syllabus, if at any time you have questions about your current participation grade, you must give me a copy of your record of your own participation before we can have a conversation.

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