Time & place

Tuesday & Thursday from 9:30-10:45, in 346 Grace Hall

Topic

We will begin the seminar by discussing the central arguments for and against the existence of God. The philosophical questions we discuss for the remainder of the semester will be up to the class; I'll distribute a list of questions we might discuss on the first day, and we'll decide which ones to cover then. In most cases, we'll be discussing in sequence a number of arguments for opposing views on the chosen topics. Students will be asked to understand these arguments, and form and defend their own views about which among them are most successful. We will spend a bit of time at the beginning of the course, and occasionally throughout, discussing what good arguments are, and why they might be worth pursuing.    

Format

This course is a seminar rather than a lecture; classes will be be discussions of the readings, with the class and professor as participants. Accordingly, students should come to class ready to discuss the reading assigned for that day, rather than just ready to listen.

Texts

Students will be required to obtain Peter van Inwagen's Metaphysics. Other readings will be made available in PDF form via links from the syllabus.

Assignments

There will be four written assignments. The first will be a short 1-2 page assignment worth 10% of the grade; the next three will each be 5-7 pages in length, and worth 25% of the grade. Late papers will be penalized 3 points/day, including weekends. The remaining 15% of the grade will be given on the basis of class attendance and participation.

Grading

There will be four written assignments. The first will be a short 1-2 page assignment worth 10% of the grade; the next three will each be 5-7 pages in length, and worth 25% of the grade. Late papers will be penalized 3 points/day, including weekends. The remaining 15% of the grade will be given on the basis of class attendance and participation.

Each assignment 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.

You can 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. You should also feel free to stop by my office. Somewhat confusing, I have two — my regular office is 205 Malloy Hall, and my office as Director of Undergraduate Studies is 105 Malloy. The latter is your best bet.

My office hours are  Tu 11-12, W 11-12, and Th 11:30-12:30 in 105 Malloy. If those don't work, just let me know and we can set up another time.

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