HARD CHOICES – Sophomore Seminar – Spring 2011



HARD CHOICES – Sophomore Seminar – Spring 2011

Wednesdays, 1:10-4 p.m., Bishop House

Professor Ruth Chang, email: ruthechang@

Office Hours: By appointment (Tutorial schedule determined later)

Suppose you are faced with a choice between spending your life with Sam and spending it with Jo, or between pursuing a career in law and pursuing one in medicine, or between giving your kidney to mother and giving to your father, each of whom will die without it. This course investigates two questions. First, what makes a choice ‘hard’, and, second, what does it make most sense to do in the face of such choices?

Our investigation will take us through some of the leading contemporary philosophical work on these questions, especially debates about the nature of reasons and values, both moral and non-moral. But we will also be examining work in decision theory and the neuroscience of choice. Some of the reading will be very challenging, but all of it will be manageable. We will be exploring some surprising answers to both questions.

Pedagogic goals

1. To ensure that each student learns to orally communicate complex ideas in a clear and coherent manner to his or her peers.

2. To develop each student’s analytical ability both to understand difficult reading from a variety of technical disciplines (philosophy, decision theory, neuroscience) and to formulate cogent arguments at home in one or more of these fields.

3. To work cooperatively toward a polished final term paper by each student that is suitable for publication in an undergraduate journal of philosophy.

Readings

Readings for the course are available electronically at . Click on the ‘Teaching’ Link. There are no course materials to purchase.

Requirements

1. Attendance requirement. Attendance is mandatory. We meet only once a week and missing any week’s session will severely impair your ability to make progress in the course. If you can’t make a class, be sure to email me beforehand with an explanation for your absence. More than two absences will trigger an automatic failing grade in the course.

2. Tutorial requirement. Each student is required to meet privately with the professor as part of a group of 3 students to discuss each student’s paper ideas. These tutorials will take place outside of class times and signup is available at the beginning of the course.

3. Draft paper requirement. Each student is required to email an electronic copy of his or her draft paper in Microsoft Word as an email attachment for evaluation and grading by two fellow students and the professor. The draft should be between 2000-5000 words in length. (The final paper may be longer). This draft should be emailed only to the professor by Wednesday noon, before the start of the class, two weeks before the student is scheduled to present her ideas in the paper to the class for comment and review. The professor will remove identifying information in your draft as far as possible and assign your draft for review by two (anonymous) members of the class. Each student will receive three sets of comments on his or her draft paper a week before he or she is scheduled to present the ideas of the paper to the class and will have the opportunity to improve the ideas in her draft dramatically by thinking about those comments and adjusting her ideas accordingly.

The professor’s email is ruthechang@ and the deadline for submission of these draft papers will be strictly enforced. No late drafts will be accepted, and the student will receive a failing grade for the course if this draft is not submitted on time to the professor. So, for example, if a student is scheduled to present her paper on April 13th, her draft paper must be emailed to the professor by noon, March 30th. It is important that this exchange of drafts and comments be conducted in one program format, Microsoft Word. If you do not have Word, please submit your paper in Rich Text Format. All drafts should be submitted as an email attachment and allow for electronic input of comments.

4. Peer evaluation requirement. Each student is required to grade and comment on a draft paper of two members of the class (again, using Word). The student will receive the paper in electronic form as an email attachment (blinded for review) on a Wednesday, and will have about a week to write comments, suggestions for improvement and to assign a grade. These comments and criticisms should be embedded in the Word document and distinguished from the author’s text by using ALL CAPS. The student’s evaluation must then be emailed to the professor at the email address above by noon the Wednesday following receipt of the paper for review. Student comments and criticisms will be sent to the student author anonymously. Each student will be graded by the professor on his or her comments and grading. The grade students assign to the paper they are reviewing will have no impact on the grade received by the student author, but, in a twist of delicious irony, it will have an impact on the grade the grader receives for his or her critical acumen and judgment in evaluating the student paper. Be accurate in your grading!

5. Presentation requirement. The last three meetings of the course will be devoted to 30-minute student presentations. Each student will prepare a 30 minute presentation of the arguments that will appear in his or her final term paper. This presentation will be followed by a question and answer period and discussion of the quality of the ideas presented. Signup for these presentations will take place during the first week of the course. It is never too early to start thinking about your draft paper and your presentation.

6. Writing requirement. Each student will be required to turn in a final term paper by May 6th, noon. This should be a polished piece of work with correct footnote citation and bibliography. It should be at least a fourth or fifth draft beyond your initial draft. It can be anywhere from 4000-9000 words in length. The final term paper should be emailed to the professor as an attachment by noon, May 6th. No late papers will be accepted.

7. Submission for publication. Most calls for publication in undergraduate journals of philosophy will come well after your paper has been submitted for a course grade. A list of possible venues for publication will be made available to each student at the end of the course, and students who receive an A in the course will be strongly encouraged to submit their papers to one of these journals.

Class participation is key. One of the goals of the course is to create a comfortable and respectful environment in which every student can speak freely and share her thoughts with the other members of the class. We want to hear what you are thinking! By thinking out loud about the material discussed in the course and getting feedback from others, you are also much more likely to hit upon a good idea for a paper. So it’s a win-win situation for all.

You will only get as much out of this course as you put in. This course is labor-intensive but the aimed-for result is that each student learns what is involved in writing a polished, perhaps publishable, paper. This is not something most students have the opportunity to learn how to do in the course of their usual curriculum. So work hard and make the most of the small class size and individualized attention you will receive!

SCHEDULE – subject to revision

1. Jan 19: Introduction

2. Jan 26: Getting the Lay of the Land

Reading: Chang, Introduction to Incommensurability, Incomparability, and Practical Reason (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997)

3. Feb 2: Betterness judgments – how do we put disparate considerations together to make judgments of betterness?

Reading: Chang, “All Things Considered”, 18 Philosophical Perspectives, December 2004, pp. 1-22

4. Feb 9: Incomparability and Choice

Reading: Joseph Raz, “Incommensurability and Agency”, in his Engaging Reason, ch. 3 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), pp. 46-66

5. Feb 16: Parity: a fourth comparative relation beyond the standard trichotomy?

Reading: Ruth Chang, “The Possibility of Parity”, 112 Ethics July 2002, pp. 659-88

Erik Carlson, “Parity DeMystified”, 76 Theoria (2), 2009, pp. 119-28

6. Feb 23: Skepticism about Parity

Reading: Wlodek Rabinowicz, “Value Relations”, 74 Theoria 2008, pp. 18-49

Johan Gustafsson and Nicholas Espinoza, “Conflicting Reasons in the Small-Improvement Argument”, Philosophical Quarterly 2009, pp. 1-10

Erik Carlson, “The Small Improvement Argument Rescued”, 61 Philosophical Quarterly 2010, pp. 171-74

7. Mar 2: Choosing in Hard Choices I

Reading: Edna Ullman-Margalit and Sydney Morgenbesser, “Picking and Choosing”, in Social Research 44 (1977), pp. 758-759

Edna Ullman-Margalit, “Big Decisions: Opting, Converting, Drifting”, Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements 81 (58):157-72

Edna Margalit, “Difficult Choices: To Agonize or Not to Agonize”, ms

8. Mar 9: Choosing in Hard Choices II

Reading: Richard Holton, “The Act of Choice”, 6 Philosophers’ Imprint (September 2006), pp. 1-15.

Hilary Bok, “Acting without Choosing”, 30 Nous (June 1996), pp. 174-96.

SPRING BREAK

9. Mar 23: Choosing in Hard Choices III

Reading: Caspar Hare, “Take the Sugar” forthcoming in Analysis

Caspar Hare, “Perfectly Balanced Conflicting Interests” forthcoming in Philosophical Perspectives

10. Mar 30: Choosing in Hard Choices IV

Reading: Ruth Chang, “Do We Have Normative Powers?”, ms

**Draft papers for students presenting on April 13th due at noon. Email them to ruthechang@. No late drafts accepted.

11. Apr 6: Neuroscience and Choice

Reading: Jonah Lehrer, How We Decide (New York: First Mariner Books, 2009), excerpts pp. 196-211; 232-50

Patrick Haggard, et al “Voluntary Action and Conscious Awareness”, 5 Nature Neuroscience (April 2002), pp. 382-85; and “Human Volition: Towards a Neuroscience of Will” 9 Nature Neuroscience (Dec 2008), pp. 934-46

Jeffrey Schall, “Neural Basis of Deciding, Choosing and Acting” 2 Nature Neuroscience (Jan 2001), pp. 33-40

**Draft papers for students presenting on April 20th due at noon. Email them to ruthechang@. No late drafts accepted.

12. Apr 13: Student Presentations

**Draft papers for students presenting on April 27th due at noon. Email them to ruthechang@. No late drafts accepted.

13. Apr 20: Student Presentations

14. Apr 27: Student Presentations – LAST DAY OF CLASS – FINAL PAPERS DUE MAY 6 NOON

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