Washington and Lee University, Spring 2002
Philosophy 101: Problems of Philosophy
Ben Eggleston—EgglestonB@wlu.edu
Introduction to Ethics
Description: This
course provides an introduction to those problems of philosophy that are
problems of moral philosophy, or
ethics. We will begin by examining certain problems that arise when we try to
make moral judgments: problems such as cultural relativism (“What’s right
for us is not necessarily right for them”), subjectivism, (“What’s right
for me is not necessarily right for you”), and the role of religion in
morality (e.g., “What’s right is just what God says is right”). Second, we
will consider several historically important and still-prominent theoretical
approaches to ethics that purport (most of them, anyway) to provide systematic
procedures for answering questions about right and wrong. In the third and final
part of the course we will consider more concretely a wide variety of
controversial moral issues such as abortion, famine, euthanasia, and animal
rights. Throughout, we will seek not so much to form judgments about specific
moral issues—most of us do that on our own anyway, albeit with varying degrees
of certitude—but to improve our thinking about the considerations that may
count as reasons for, as well as possible objections to, moral judgments.
Logistics:
I am teaching two sections of this course:
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One meets M-W-F, AB (8–9:55), in
Newcomb 9.
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The other meets T-Th, GHI (2–4:55), in
Williams 324.
My office hours are on Mondays
and Fridays from 2 to 4, and on Tuesdays from 9 to 11, in Newcomb 25. You are
also welcome to look for me at my office at any other times, though there
may be times outside of my office hours when I am in my office but not
available to talk. But feel free to stop by and at least check whether I’m
available whenever you’d like.
Grading:
Here are the factors that will
determine your overall grade, and their weights:
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first paper: 25%
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mid-term test: 12%
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second paper: 30%
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final exam: 18%
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attendance: 7%
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participation: 8%
The mid-term test and the final exam
will mainly test your knowledge of what
you’ve read, while the two papers will manifest your ability to articulate,
and to present arguments for, your own views. Further information about these
assignments will be provided as needed, as well as upon request.
If you have a learning disability on
the basis on which you may or will be requesting any special accommodation
(extra time for tests, etc.), please let me know as soon as possible.
This semester I am experimenting
with the Blackboard course-management software, which (unlike any Web pages
I’m capable of creating) is supposed to enable me to enter your grades into
the system and to enable you to view them, confidentially. To see the grades I
have for you at any point, select the link corresponding to your section of this
class (sorry, these links no longer work, because the class is over):
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section
01 (M-W-F, AB)
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section
03 (T-Th, GHI)
You will be prompted to log in. If I understand correctly how the system has been set up, your
username is your Novell log-in name, and your password is your I.D. number (from
your W&L I.D. card), omitting any leading zeros. (Once you get there, click
on “Tools,” then “Check Grade.”) Note that although
Blackboard provides a shell for all sorts of course-related documents, I am
using it only to provide you with access to your grades; all course-related
documents, such as this syllabus and assignments, will be here on my Web site.
Books to buy:
Schedule:
Part 1: Meta-ethics
Week 1:
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EMP, preface (pp. xi–xii)
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EMP, chapter 1: “What
Is Morality?” (pp. 1–19)
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EMP, chapter 2:
“Cultural Relativism” (pp. 20–36)
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EMP, chapter 3:
“Subjectivism in Ethics” (pp. 37–52)
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first paper assignment
handed out
Week 2:
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EMP, chapter 4: “Does
Morality Depend on Religion?” (pp. 53–69)
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EMP, chapter 5:
“Psychological Egoism” (pp. 70–81)
Part 2: Normative Ethics
Week 2, continued:
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EMP, chapter 6:
“Ethical Egoism” (pp. 82–95)
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in-class readings of first
paper: Bring two copies of your paper to class on Thursday, May 2, or
Friday, May 3.
Week 3:
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first paper due at 8 a.m. on
Monday, May 6
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EMP, chapter 6:
“Ethical Egoism” (pp. 82–95), continued
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Utilitarianism
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EMP, chapter 7:
“The Utilitarian Approach” (pp. 96–106)
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EMP, chapter 8:
“The Debate over Utilitarianism” (pp. 107–121)
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For further (and optional)
reading:
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In “What
Is Wrong with Slavery” (Philosophy & Public Affairs
vol. 8, no. 2 [Winter 1979], pp. 103–121), R. M. Hare replies to
the objection—often lodged against utilitarianism—that
utilitarianism is liable to condone slavery in certain circumstances
(i.e., if the circumstances are such that the harm that the slaves
suffer, as a result of slavery, is outweighed by the benefits to
others that result from the availability of slave labor). On the
contrary, Hare claims, utilitarianism provides a better account
of why slavery is wrong than do the traditional arguments against it
that rest content with invoking concepts such as freedom or rights
without providing any deeper account of why such things as freedom
and rights are morally important.
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In “Utilitarianism
and Welfarism” (The Journal of Philosophy vol. 76, no.
9 [September 1979], pp. 463–489), Amartya Sen argues against the
welfarist component of utilitarianism: that is, utilitarianism’s
commitment to the thesis that, when consequences (or states of
affairs) are being judged good or bad, what matters is the amount of
welfare (or well-being) in them. Sen argues, that is, that in order
to judge properly the goodness or badness of a state of affairs, you
need to know more than just what level of well-being each person in
it is experiencing. (He does not, in this paper, take issue with
utilitarianism’s commitment to consequentialism—only its
commitment to welfarism.) Although this paper takes some work to get
through, it is a model of organizational clarity, as Sen argues for
a series of increasingly ambitious theses, culminating in the
rejection of welfarism itself.
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In “Utilitarianism
and the Virtues” (Mind vol. 94, no. 374 [April 1985],
pp. 196–209), Philippa Foot argues against utilitarianism’s consequentialist
component. She does not just claim that it is not always right to do
what will have the best consequences (although she seems to hold
this position); she also claims that it does not always make
sense to say that one set of consequences, or state of affairs,
is better than another. That is, she questions the very idea of
ranking states of affairs in terms of their goodness, as well as the
claim that—once states of affairs have been ranked in this
way—one must always act in whatever way will bring about the best
one.
Week 4:
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mid-term test
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Kantian ethics
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EMP, chapter 9:
“Are There Absolute Moral Rules?” (pp. 122–131)
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The distinction between
hypothetical and categorical imperatives is fundamental in Kant’s
thought. If you want a clearer account of this distinction than
Rachels provides (though I think his account is pretty clear), you
could (this is optional) look at the first three pages or so of
Philippa Foot’s landmark paper “Morality
as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives” (The Philosophical
Review vol. 81, no. 3 [July 1972], pp. 305–316). Although (as
the title suggests) Foot argues against the Kantian (and very
common) notion that the requirements of morality are categorical,
she begins her paper with a wonderfully clear account of the
distinction between hypothetical and categorical imperatives. See,
in particular, paragraphs 2–5 of this paper—that is, from p.
305, line 12, through p. 308, line 4.
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EMP, chapter 10:
“Kant and Respect for Persons” (pp. 132–142)
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If you feel, after reading
Rachels’s account of Kantian ethics, that you would like another take
on it, you might look at (about 13,000 words), by David
Velleman. (This, too, is
optional.)
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EMP, chapter 11: “The
Idea of a Social Contract” (pp. 143–161)
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second paper assignment provided
Part 3: Applied Ethics
Week 5:
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Cloning
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Gregory
E. Pence, “Who’s Afraid of Human Cloning?” (RTD, pp.
129–140)
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I’ll provide this: Leon
Kass, “The
Wisdom of Repugnance” (New Republic article, June 2,
1997)
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Print this yourself:
“The
Great Cloning Debate” (Economist article, May 9, 2002)
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Print this yourself: “President
Bush Calls on Senate to Back Human Cloning Ban” (White House press
release, April 10, 2002)
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Print this yourself: “Statement
by 40 Nobel Laureates Regarding Cloning” (American Society for
Cell Biology press release, April 10, 2002)
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I’ll provide this: “The
President’s Narrow Morality,” (New York Times editorial,
April 11, 2002—sign-in required)
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Print this yourself: “Open
Letter to U.S. Senators on Human Cloning and Eugenic Engineering,”
(Center for Genetics and Society, March 19, 2002)
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Print this yourself: Michael Kinsley, “My
Life for Poetry” (Washington Post column, April 8, 2002)
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- Peter Singer and Helga
Kuhse,
“Letting Handicapped Babies Die” (RTD, pp. 116–128)
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videotape on Peter Singer
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Famine
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Peter Singer, “Famine,
Affluence, and Morality” (RTD, pp. 167–176)
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Jan
Narveson, “Feeding the Hungry” (RTD, pp. 177–189)
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in-class readings of second
paper: bring two copies
Week 6:
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second paper due
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Euthanasia
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James Rachels, “The
Morality of Euthanasia” (RTD, pp. 190–194)
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Richard Doerflinger,
“Assisted Suicide: Pro-Choice or Anti-Life?” (RTD, pp.
195–204)
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videotape: “Choosing
Death”
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Animal Rights
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Immanuel Kant, “Why We
Have No Obligations to Animals” (RTD, pp. 205–206)
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Peter Singer, “All Animals
are Equal” (RTD, pp. 207–218)
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Print this yourself: Peter Singer and Richard
Posner, “Animal
Rights” (all five days of their dialogue, not just the first day)
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Exam envelopes are due to me
(handed to me personally, slid under my door, or left in my mailbox) by
9 a.m. on Thursday, May 30. (Envelopes turned in late may not be
ready for pick-up by the time you want to take your exam.) On your
envelope, you do not need to indicate when you will take the exam, but
please do fill in the other blanks (the four blanks at the top and the
two blanks along the right side).
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If you want to take the exam
early, you may do so on Friday, May 31, from 2 to 4. In order to do
this,
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Let me know by 9 a.m. on
Thursday, May 30, so that I can separate your exam envelope from
those that I turn in to the secretary for distribution during the
regular exam period.
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Come to my office on
Friday at 2. I’ll give you the exam, and you’ll have 2 hours to
go take it somewhere else. You’ll return it to me at my office by
4.
Final Exam:
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The final exam will have two
parts and, as indicated above, will determine 18 percent of your final
grade.
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The first part will be like
the mid-term: 25 multiple-choice questions. These will be on the
material covered in the second half of the course (Kantian ethics to the
end). This part of the exam will determine 12 percent of your course
grade.
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The second part of the exam
will consist of a list of sentences or quotations and an “answer
bank” including the names of philosophical theories (e.g., cultural
relativism) and specific philosophers (e.g., Peter Singer). Your job
will be to identify, for each sentence or quotation, the theory it is
characteristic of, or the philosopher who said it. There will be
considerably more answers in the “answer bank” than questions. (So,
it won’t just be a matter of matching; thus, process of elimination is
not likely to help much.) The sentences and
quotations will come from the whole course (so this part of the final
exam will be cumulative), and this part of the exam will determine 6 percent of your course grade.
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Exams for philosophy (and
several other departments) can be picked up in the hallway on the second
floor of Newcomb Hall (right outside my office, coincidentally). You can
then take the exam anywhere in the building.
- There will be a time limit of
2 hours, but due to the exam-distribution procedure we follow in the
philosophy department, you must pick up your exam at the beginning of
whatever exam period you are taking your exam in. (So, if you’re taking it
during the 9–12 period, don’t come at 10, planning to take it between 10
and 12. Come at 9.)