Foundations of Ethics HOME PAGE
Topics, reading and lecture presentations week by week
Foundations of Ethics HOME PAGE |
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Topics, reading and lecture presentations week by week |
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Lecture/Seminar Friday 10-noon, Media Factory 312
Tutor: Vernon Pratt v.pratt@btinternet.com
Module Value – 1 (Single Module)
Year 2
Semester 2
Prerequisites: Completion of Year 1
A combination of formal lecture and ‘workshop’ sessions in which a particular theme, as represented in a section or chapter relating to one of the syllabus topics, is examined in detail.
By the end of the module you should be able to:
1. Demonstrate the ability to undertake conceptual analysis of key terms in ethical debates
2. Outline and discuss central problems and theories in meta-ethics
3. Present a critical analysis of these approaches
4. Present a reasoned argument on a particular topic in ethics.
There's one main thing to read each week, plus suggestions for further reading. These are given in the Week-by-Week information. All the main readings are reprinted in:
Sterba, J. (ed.) (1998), Ethics – The Big Questions, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 170 ETH.
The suggestions for further reading should specially useful for preparing your assignment.
There are many many books and articles on our main topics- so it's quite likely that there are things out there which would be really useful to you - useful in taking your own thinking forward. Use the web and the library to find them - different things will speak to different people. I hope you will find it more rewarding to find your own than for me to give an enormous list - such lists are readily available if that is what you want. The The London Philosophy Study Guide is an excellent example at its best (but some topics are maintained more regularly than others).
The web has almost everything on it of course (well, I'm exaggerating, but still - how did we live without it?)
Don't forget Athens, available through your library registration.
Our own Warwick Fox has recently published a new approach to ethics:
Warwick Fox, A Theory of General Ethics, Cambridge Mass., 2006, MIT
One essay (2,500 words) and one examination in which you write answers to two questions in two hours from a list of 6. The two assessments are equally weighted at 50% each.
Writing an essay - one possible technique
Approaching a (time-limited essay or) seen exam
In setting the coursework, I am anxious to get you (a) to develop your own thinking in ethics and (b) to develop your skill in getting help with your thinking from other clever people.
So I'm setting some questions (you choose one, guided by your interest) and asking you choose one of the required readings listed in the week-by-week guide to help you develop your answer. I'm asking you to include in your answer a detailed report of the reading you choose. The detailed report - 'exposition' - should take about a half of the essay as a whole.
The other half of the essay will consist of you developing your own position by arguing against points you have found in the reading you have chosen, or by developing further the good points you have found in it, or by bringing in other arguments on the topic.
You will get credit for bringing in other relevant reading, ie other relevant literature, in addition to the core reading you have chosen, but bringing in the core reading is the only reading that is actually required. That is, if you write a brilliant essay which covers just the one piece of reading, namely the core reading you have chosen, no marks will be deducted on the grounds that there ought to have been more 'coverage of the literature'.
The questions are:
1. When, in a difficult situation, you are thinking out what is the ethical thing to do, should you try and be as ‘unemotional’ as possible?
2. Is biology relevant to morality?
3. Are there any actions you should perform no matter what the consequences?
4. Would understanding be worthwhile even if it didn't bring any pleasure?
5. Is there any reason to help other people?
6. Is happiness the only truly desirable thing there is?
Deadline: 5 o'clock 20th March 2009. Please note: the penalties for late submission are really serious (and out of my hands!).
Word Limit: 2,500 Words
Warwick Fox has provided the following guide on referencing and plagiarism:
All mention of other texts and to the ideas of other people needs to be properly referenced. You can use either the Harvard system (names and dates in brackets in the text) or the Chicago system (numbers in the text and full reference details at the end).
See Warwick's How to Reference (available on the website) for further guidance.
An important aspect of both careful note taking and good referencing is that you do not slip into unintentional – let alone intentional! – plagiarism, that is, presenting the words or ideas of someone else as if they were your own. This is a form of theft, pure and simple, and is rightly treated as a serious academic offence. The normal penalty for a clear instance of plagiarism is a mark of zero. In extreme cases, including multiple offences, plagiarism can lead to exclusion from the university.
With the availability of information on the web plagiarism is an increasingly important problem in university work. In consequence, academics are on the lookout for any abrupt changes in style, which we are very good and spotting, and have increasingly sophisticated search engines available to locate the source of any suspicious, unaccredited work by typing in a few choice words or phrases. Thus, the message is simple: never commit this offence. Not only is it unethical, and subject to heavy penalties if you are caught, but you are also likely to be caught.
Note also that submitting the same text in more than one piece of work constitutes self-plagiarism and is also unacceptable.
Please refer to the Academic Regulations for a more detailed explanation of cheating and plagiarism and the procedures by which the University deals with it.
1. Write a draft of your essay.
2. Go through it a paragraph at a time. Write one simple sentence expressing the claim that the paragraph is making. Be sure you write the claim - ie the point it is making - and not just the topic. Your summary sentence must be a complete sentence saying just one thing.
3. If you find a paragraph where you can't do this, find a way of splitting the paragraph or rewriting it so you can.
4. Review your list of sentences.
See if they make logical sense. Usually in a philosophical essay they will be steps of an argument. Check the logic - is there a step missing? (Write a new para to make good the gap.) Is there an irrelevant point? (Ditch it, or put it somewhere else where it fits better.) Are all the points in the correct logical order? (Re-order as necessary.)
5. Put in subheadings to make clear the structure of your essay - eg
6. When you have worked on your list of sentences (ie your synopsis) in this way rewrite the essay following the changes you have seen you need to make. Include the subheadings you have decided divide the essay into chunks that make sense.
Use the weeks before the exam to write the two essays required.
Make well-designed notes. Use the synopsis technique to draw your notes up.
Choose the questions which seem easiest to you but bear in mind:
1. Don't repeat work already submitted as an essay. Err on the side of safety.
I would say if you have already written on Hume you will probably not be able to answer a question on Hume for the exam.
2. Reading.
We are interested in you developing as an independent thinker, but probably all of us need to read what experienced/brilliant philosophers have written if we are to reach satisfying/passable levels of understanding. This reading prompts us into more subtle, sophisticated thinking, and often shows how what we would think if left to ourselves is untenable. My presentations should help, but an answer which doesn't bring in any other reading will be seen as weak. At this level my suggestion is that you find one serious and challenging piece of philosophy to expound and react to in you answer. You should choose what it is, but be careful to choose something at the right level. You are looking not for opinions or claims but for arguments with which you can engage.
3. A good format is: X says this. I think this is wrong because... (Thus separating exposition and critique.)
4. Think what you are good at. Forensic analysis of an argument (q. 3,4) or constructing a discussion of a broader question (q1,6).