Time & place

Lectures are on Tuesday and Thursday from 11:25-12:15 in 107 Hesburgh; discussion sections are on Friday.

Topic

Philosophy is the attempt to answer, by argument, the deepest and most basic questions about the universe. Our focus in this class will be on five such questions:

• Does God exist?
• What am I?
• What is real?
• What must I do?

Your central aim in this class will not be to learn what other people have thought about these questions -- though you will do that too. Your central aim in this class will be to develop your own views about the correct answers to these questions. You will be evaluated based upon your ability to defend those views. To do that, you will have to learn how to argue. Hence, one aim of the course will be to teach you the basic logic required to do that.

Texts

All of the readings will be made available in PDF form via links from the syllabus.

Assignments

There will be a midterm and non-cumulative final exam, each of which will consist of essay questions. There will also be three short analytical papers.

Grading

Your grade in this class will be determined as follows:

• Three short analytical papers, each worth 15% of your final grade.
• A midterm exam, worth 20% of your final grade.
• A non-cumulative final exam, also worth 20% of your grade.
• Participation & attendance in lecture and discussion sections, worth 15% of your grade.

Every unexcused absence in a discussion section will affect your participation grade. Every unexcused absence beyond the first two will reduce your particpation grade by a full letter grade (10 points). The only excused absences are those excused due to university activities which the university takes to be sufficient reason to miss class or documented illness.

Each of the written assignments is required, in the sense that failure to complete one or more assignments is sufficient to fail the course.

Notre Dame has no official way of indexing numerical grades to letter grades. This is the system that will be used in this course:

A	94+
A-	90-93
B+	87-89
B	83-86
B-	80-82
C+	77-79
C	73-76
C-	70-72
D	60-69
F	59-

Honor code

In all of their assignments, students are responsible for compliance with the University’s honor code, information about which is available here. You should acquaint yourself with the policies and penalties described there.

Sometimes, it can be hard to know what, exactly, the honor code implies with respect to different disciplines. For this reason, the philosophy department has prepared a document explaining, using examples, what the honor code requires of students when writing a philosophy paper. I strongly recommend that you read this document, which is available here. It is possible to violate the honor code without intending to do so; the best way to avoid this is to carefully read through the philosophy department's guidelines.

If you are in doubt about what the honor code requires of you in a particular case, please ask me.

How to access readings for the course

Online readings for the course are accessible via links from the syllabus. All readings are in PDF format. In the unlikely event that you're not familiar with downloading, reading, and printing PDF files, one easy way to do this is by downloading them by right-clicking (control-click on a Mac), and saving the linked file to your computer, then opening the downloaded file using Adobe Reader, Preview, or some other PDF viewer, and printing from that application.

When you click on the link for a paper, you'll be asked to enter a user name and password. You should enter the user name and password that you use to access your Notre Dame email.

If you are having trouble getting access to the papers, one of the following tips might help:

1. If your netID and password are being rejected, assuming that you have not forgotten your password, the most likely explanation is that your name has not yet been added to the list of permitted users for this course. If this is the case, send me an email with your netID so that I can fix the problem. (There is no need to send me your password as well.)

2. If a link which you expected to see is not appearing, try refreshing your browser.

3. If when you click on a link nothing seems to happen, or a blank screen appears, your browser may have downloaded the PDF to a location on your computer. Try searching your computer for the file, or right-clicking the link and saving the file to an easy-to-find location on your computer, like the Desktop.

4. Try using a different browser.

5. If none of these work, send me an email.

Writing philosophy papers

The best guide to writing a philosophy paper that I've seen was written by Jim Pryor; you can find it here. It is especially useful for beginning students, but advanced students will also learn something from it. I also highly recommend his guides to reading philosophical prose and philosophical terms and methods.

Here are some things to keep in mind when writing a philosophy paper. First: a philosophy paper is an argument. Like all arguments, your paper will contain premises and a conclusion. It should be very clear to the reader what the premises and conclusion of your argument are. (This doesn't mean that you have to write out the argument in "numbered premise" form, though it's fine if you want to do so.) Since your paper is an argument, it will be judged according to the standards of good argumentation. In particular, the argument of your paper should be clearly articulated, should show an understanding of the subject matter of the argument, and should be valid. You should also try your best to explain why the premises on which your conclusion depends are plausible.

Many of you will have learned various rules of academic writing in high school, or in other humanities courses. You should ignore these rules unless they are useful for constructing good arguments. Some examples of rules which are not useful are the following:

1. Every paper should begin with a paragraph which begins with a very general statement, and then narrows down to a thesis statement. Usually, this sort of thing adds nothing to the argument which follows. If it doesn't, you should delete it.

2. Avoid repeating terms; instead, look up a synonym and use that. Remember that the point of your paper is to construct a clear argument. The best way to clearly indicate that you are talking about the same thing over the course of your paper is to stick to a single term for it.

3. Never use the first person pronoun. Your paper will be a defense of your views about the topic in question. It is often easiest to express the fact that something is your view by saying something like "I believe that ..." It is perfectly fine to say this sort of thing, and much preferable to roundabout phrases like "The author of this paper believes that ..."

When editing drafts of your paper, you should ask yourself, of each sentence in your paper: "Does this sentence make my argument clearer, or more convincing?" If it does not, delete it.

Before writing papers, and before turning them in, you should review the philosophy department's guidelines regarding plagiarism. They do an excellent job of clearly explaning what the university honor code implies with respect to philosophical writing.

Philosophy on the internet

The internet offers a wealth of terrible philosophy. Fortunately, it also offers some very good philosophy.

In my view, the best philosophy resource on the internet is the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Another good resource, which occasionally covers topics not covered by the SEP, is the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (which is only accessible if you are on the ND network or that of another subscribing institution).The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy can also be valuable. Wikipedia is much, much less reliable.

Increasingly, journal articles are also available online (though, as above, usually only if you are connected to a university network). JStor is an especially good place to download articles (though usually not articles from the last few years) from a number of leading philosophy journals.

Notre Dame's library also contains links to online resources. If you are searching for an article online, a good place to begin is with the library's QuickSearch for Philosophy.

Philosophy at Notre Dame

Notre Dame offers a few different options for students interested in pursuing a major, minor, or interdisciplinary minor. For an overview of the various options, click here.

There are lots of philosophy-related events at Notre Dame. A useful overview is on the department's event page.

On the department web page you can also view course descriptions for current and upcoming philosophy courses.

Contact information

You should feel free to get in touch with me if you have any questions about the course, or about how you're doing in the course, or if you just want to pursue some of the topics we're discussing further.

I have office hours on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays, and sometimes other days as well. You can book a time here. If none of those times work for you, just let me know. My office is at 105 Malloy Hall.

You can also always get in touch with me by email, and this often the easiest route if you just have a quick question about the readings or assignments.

There are also eight TA's for the course, who will be doing all grading of written assignments. Contact information for the TA's — including office hours and email addresses — is available here.

Teaching assistants

There will be eight teaching assistants for the course, who will be grading the written assignments. Your work for the course will usually, though not always, be graded by the TA who leads the discussion section you attend. We make every effort to calibrate grades across discussion sections, so that different students are not judged by different standards depending upon their discussion section.

Contact information for the TA's for this course is as follows:

Dimitris Apostolopoulos email office hours: Tu 1:45-2:45 & Th 4-5 in 200 Malloy.	Kate Finley email office hours: Tu & Th 12:15-1:30 in the library atrium outside the classroom	Jack Himelright email office hours: M & W 3:30-4:15 M in Malloy 118	Mark Puestohl email office hours: M 3:30-4:30 & F 12:30-1:30 in 118 Malloy.
Alex Rausch email office hours: Tu 1-3 in 200 Malloy	Michael Rauschenbach email office hours: M 3-4:30pm & Th 10-11 in 200 Malloy.	Father Raphael Mary Salzillo email office hours: Tu & Th 10:15-11:15 on the 1st floor of LaFortune	Kevin Scott email office hours: Tu 1-2, W 1-2, & Th 1-2 in 200 Malloy.

If you cannot make the office hours of your TA, you should feel free to contact him or her to make an appointment to meet at another time.

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