PHIL 4120/5120	Office hours: T, 1:30-3:00, and by appointment
Spring 2012	Office:   HLMS 182
Professor Norcross	Phone: 303 492 7527 Email: norcross@colorado.edu

Texts: Animal Liberation (2009 ed.), Peter Singer

Animal Rights, Human Wrongs, Tom Regan

The Animals Issue, Peter Carruthers

Course description: This course will focus on the ethical issues raised by human treatment of animals. It is commonly assumed that animals, if they have any moral significance at all, are subordinate in importance to human beings. Not only do we eat animals for our enjoyment and perform experiments on them for our benefit, but it is morally permissible that we do so. This is an assumption that most of us make without trying to justify it. In this course we will examine both attempts to justify and to challenge this assumption. I will expect you to participate in class discussion. Many of you will already have opinions about some of the issues we will be discussing. Although I will welcome your opinions, I will also expect you to be able to discuss the assigned readings. You may often disagree with what you read. Don't be afraid to criticize philosophers. They can't all be right, and they may even all be wrong! I expect you to attend class well-prepared and able to discuss any of the readings assigned up to and including the week of the class.

Requirements (with approximate weight towards final grade): mid-term paper (30%), final paper (60%), class participation (10%). Observance of the Honor Code, which applies to all aspects of the course. This class has the following attendance policy: starting in week 2 (the week beginning January 23) more than five absences from lectures, for whatever reason, will result in failing the course. Since you never know when you might get sick, it is not a good idea to miss class, unless you absolutely have to.

All requirements must be satisfactorily met in order to pass the course.

Suggestions: Do the reading assignments well in advance. You will probably have to read the text two or even three times before you have a sufficient grasp of the material. Philosophy is hard. Don't expect to understand it all at the first reading. Make use of my office hours to discuss things you don't understand. Ask questions in class. Very few questions are too silly to ask.

Disability Accommodations: If you qualify for accommodations because of a disability please submit a letter to me from Disability Services in a timely manner so that your needs may be addressed. Disability Services determines accommodations based on documented disabilities (303-492-8671, Willard 322, http://www.colorado.edu/disabilityservices).

Schedule of assignments. Readings are from Animal Liberation (AL), Animal Rights, Human Wrongs (ARHW), The Animals Issue (TAI), and web pages.

Week beginning	Assignment	Other
J 16	AL 1
J 23	AL 2, and Cohen (web) (http://carl-cohen.org/articles.cfm ) ‘The Case for the Use of Animals in Biomedical Research’	No class Jan 26
J 30	Engel 'Animal Experimentation'	No class Jan 31
F 6	AL 3
F 13	Norcross, ‘Puppies, Pigs, and People: Eating Meat and Marginal Cases’. Follow this link to online CV (http://spot.colorado.edu/~norcross/Norcrosscv.html): Engel “The Immorality of Eating Meat”
F 20	TAI 1 & 2	No class Feb 21
F 27	TAI 3 & 4
M 5	TAI 5 & 6
M 12	TAI 7, Norcross “Animal Experimentation” (use link to online CV above).	No class Mar 13
M 19	TAI 8 & conclusion	No class Mar 20
A 2	ARHW 1, 2, 3	No class April 5
A 9	ARHW 4 & 5
A 16	ARHW 6 & 7
A 23	ARHW 8 & 9, AL 6
A 30	Catch up, review, etc.	Final paper due M 3 Guidelines on writing a philosophy paper (James Pryor, Princeton) (http://www.jimpryor.net/teaching/guidelines/writing.html)