PHIL 1200 (honors) – Contemporary Social Problems
Spring 2020, section 880
Tu/Th 3:30-4:45p, LIBR N424A

Professor
Chris Heathwood
heathwood@colorado.edu
Office: Hellems 192
Hours: Tu 1-3p (at least for now), and by appointment

Course Description
According to the catalog, this course

Examines competing positions in debates over a wide variety of controversial moral, social and political issues. Topics may include: abortion, world poverty, animal rights, immigration, physician-assisted suicide, freedom of religion, hate speech, cloning, income inequality, pornography, gun rights, racial profiling, capital punishment, overpopulation, prostitution, drug legalization, torture.

Because this is a small honors section of PHIL 1200, we are going to cover a smaller number of topics, but cover them in more depth, rather than cover a larger number in less depth.  Our plan is to address these five moral questions (put somewhat roughly here):

• Is it morally permissible to have an abortion?
• What should the law be on abortion?
• Is it morally permissible to eat meat?
• Should the U.S. government pay slave reparations?
  
• Should there be restrictions on hate speech?
  

In selecting our questions, I have tried to choose ones that are topical (i.e., of current interest in the media and wider culture), controversial, important, relevant to how one should vote and to what causes one should support, philosophically rich, and ones for which I could find good readings – especially readings by other professors at CU Boulder.

Our goals will be:

• to understand important positions in these areas
• to understand and evaluate important arguments for and against these positions
• to gain mastery of some central concepts in ethical theory
• to develop the ability to extract, explain, and evaluate arguments from philosophical texts
• to come to our own reasoned views on these topics.
  

Course Website
The course website, which you should check regularly, can be found here:

     http://spot.colorado.edu/~heathwoo/1200hSP20/.

Here you will find:

• this syllabus
• some readings
• what we did each day (check this first if you miss a class)
• paper assignment and guidance on papers
  
• and more.

There is nothing on Canvas for this course.

Readings
Four books are required:

1. Abortion: A Dialogue by Selmer Bringsjord (Hackett, 1997). ISBN: 0872203662. ($8.50)
2. Beyond Roe: Why Abortion Should be Legal – Even if the Fetus is a Person by David Boonin (Oxford University Press, 2019). ISBN: 0190904844. ($29.95)
   
3. Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism by Michael Huemer (Routledge, 2019). ISBN: 1138328294. ($19.95)
   
4. Should Race Matter?: Unusual Answers to the Usual Questions by David Boonin (Cambridge University Press, 2011). ISBN: 0521149800. ($42.99, or under $10 used)
   

I have ordered them all through the CU Bookstore.  The most expensive one (#4) is the one we'll be reading last, so you have plenty of time to buy a used copy online before we'll need it.  Any additional required readings will be made available on the course schedule below.

Please read the book that we are currently reading from to class with you each day.

Class Mates
So that you will have someone from whom to get the notes and any other pertinent information should you miss class, introduce yourself to two classmates and get their email addresses and phone numbers.

Course Requirements
1. Technology.  You must have a colorado.edu email account and regular access to the internet, and you must check your colorado.edu email address and the course website frequently.

Sorry to be this way, but texting during class, or using your phone in any other way, is strictly verboten.  We want this class to be a device-free sanctuary.  Special circumstances aside, use of laptops is also prohibited.  This is because students who use laptops in class do less well in college, as do those who sit near them.  (See also: "Why students using laptops learn less in class even when they really are taking notes.")  See also this quick slideshow by Andrew Mills at Otterbein University, which has, at the end, links to guides for how to take better notes by hand.

Violating these requirements will not only hurt my feelings, it will hurt your grade.  To get credit for participation over a two-week period, you must avoid use of electronic devices in class during that period (see next item).

2. Participation in Class Discussions (20%).  Since this is a small honors class, I want to have lots of discussion and class participation, from everyone.  Consequently, participating in class discussions will be a fairly significant part of the grade (20%).  So that I can keep track of your participation in a reliable manner and also make sure that I am giving everyone equal opportunity to participate, we're going to make use of a little system.  You will each receive three color-coded, single-use cards: a pink one (highest priority, use first); a yellow one (medium priority, use next); and a green one (lower priority, use last).  You'll write your name on each of your cards.  When you want to ask a question or make a comment, raise the highest priority card that you have, just as you would raise your hand.  I'll call on pink cards first, then yellow, then green (so I'll call on a yellow card only if there are no pink cards raised, I'll call on a green card only if there are no pink and yellow cards raised, etc).

When I call on you, I’ll collect your card.  In order to get full credit in the participation category in a given two-week period, you need to use all three of your cards during that period.  At the beginning of the next two-week period, I’ll redistribute the cards.  No more than two cards can be used on a single day -- though you can still certainly participate more than twice on a given day.  More generally, if you have already used up all of your cards or reached the daily limit, you are still very much encouraged to continue participating, and I hope you will!  Please don't not talk just because you are out of cards; simply raise your hand with no card in it.

More about the card system:

• Cards are not transferable
• If you lose your cards sometime during the two-week period, you won’t be able to get full participation credit for that period (but of course you can and should still participate)
• If you forget your cards on a given day, you won't be able to use any cards that day (but of course you can and should still participate)
• For the use of your card to count, your question or comment needs to meet a certain minimum threshold of substantiveness, of which I'll be the judge
• To get credit for participation over a two-week period, you must avoid using electronic devices in class during that period; otherwise, you'll get a zero for that period.
  

The two-week cycles begin again at the start of every even week, excluding week 2.  So that's weeks 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, and 14, making for seven cycles total.  Our weeks are numbered on the Course Schedule below.  Each cycle is worth 3% of your grade, and each card used is worth 1/3 of that.  (That totals 21%; the extra 1% is a freebie.)

Post-corona update: There will now be 6 cycles in all.  The final three will occur on these dates:

4th (Th 3/12 - Tu 3/31)
5th (Th 4/2 - Tu 4/14)
6th (Th 4/16 - Tu 4/28)

Each cycle is worth 6 points.  You earn 2 points for each card used.  6 cycles × 6 points/cycle = 36 points.  The other 4 points are basically free; you get them for filling out the surveys.  Participation is worth 40 points total.

I recognize that speaking in front of a group is scary for almost everyone and that, for some students, it is very difficult.  I hope you will use this opportunity to work on working on this fear in a friendly, supportive, respectful environment; you'll be glad you did.  However, if you have serious social anxiety or for some other reason absolutely, positively cannot talk in class, let me know.  We'll work together to come up with an alternative way for you to get discussion credit.

3. Attendance.  Attendance is required.  Although I hope you won't miss any class, you can miss three days throughout the semester without it hurting your grade.  Your fourth missed day will mean that you will definitely not be bumped up to the next grade if you are on the borderline at the end of the semester.  After that, it gets worse.  For each day that you miss after your fourth absence, your final grade in the class will be reduced one "notch" (e.g., from an A– to a B+, from a B to a B–).  So, for example, if you were to miss seven days of class in all, and you would have earned a B in the class, you'll instead get a C. 

So don't use up your free absences frivolously!  Save them for when you are really sick (or better yet, never use them at all).  Even if you are legitimately sick later in the semester, if you have already used up all of your free absences, you'll be out of luck.

The only exception to all this is a serious, documented medical condition that prevents you from coming to class for an extended period of time.  (In that case, though, it may be better, depending on the circumstances, to withdraw from the class entirely.)

There will be a few brief required questionnaires throughout the semester.  Missing any of those will count as an absence. 

4. Reading.  There will be reading due just about every time class meets, and it is absolutely required that you do it for the class in which it is due.  There is not a lot of reading; often under 15 pages per meeting and rarely over 20.  Now, reading philosophy is not always easy, and our readings do get harder as the class progresses; so you will likely need to read each reading slowly, carefully, and more than once.

There are some elements that you should look for in all of our readings:

• Questions: always try to identify the main question as well as possibly various sub-questions that are under discussion in any reading.  These, of course, can be written out in the form of a question.
• Theses or Claims: take note when the author (or one of the characters in the dialogue, if it's a dialogue) puts forth some interesting thesis or claim for consideration.  These can usually be stated in a single sentence.  Within the category of theses or claims, also take note of whether the claim in question is a moral claim (e.g., "slavery is morally wrong," "it was wrong for Bill Clinton to cheat on Hillary Clinton," "suffering is bad") or a non-moral (but still important) claim (e.g., "each of us came into existence at conception," "factory farming causes vast amounts of suffering," "putting a swastika on display makes many people feel unsafe").
  
• Moral Principles: take note of any moral principles that are under discussion or are put forth; moral principles are statements saying that some kind of act always has some moral status (such as morally wrong, morally permissible, morally obligatory).  For example: "it is always wrong to take innocent human life," "acts that cause pain for trivial benefits are wrong," "if you wrongfully harm someone, you have an obligation to compensate that person for that wrong."
• Accounts or Theories of Some Phenomenon: take note when someone is offering one of these, such as an account of what it is to be alive, what it is to be a person, or what it is for a being to matter morally.
• Counterexamples: these are examples that run counter to some general claim (such as a moral principle, or a theory of some phenomenon), and are meant to prove it false.
• Arguments: philosophers don't just assert theses or claims, they offer reasons to think they are true.  They also offer reasons against claims they think are false.  We call these reasons, or sets of reasons, arguments.  They are the central elements of a work of philosophy.  We will be talking about them a lot.  Look out for them in the readings.
• Definitions.  When some key term or concept is defined, take note.  This is similar to an "Account or Theory of Some Phenomenon" but may be different in that the definition might be stipulative. 
  

As you do each reading, always be on the lookout for these elements.  Make a note of them.  Reflect on them, and decide what you think about them.  Are the claims true, are the principles true, are the counterexamples successful, and the arguments successful?

If I start to get the feeling that you all aren't doing the reading and/or paying enough heed to these elements in the readings, I reserve the right to add a homework category to these course requirements, where I ask you to write out these key elements that you find in the readings (and perhaps do other things as well).

Please read the book that we are currently reading from to class with you each day.

5. Exams (60%).  Because studies show that "Frequent Tests Can Enhance College Learning," we're going to have a good number of fairly short exams rather than use a "high stakes" midterm-and-final format.  They will take place at the start of class on every odd week, excluding week 1.  So that's Tuesday of weeks 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, making for seven exams total.  Our weeks are numbered on the Course Schedule below.  They will mainly be short-answer-type exams.

Post-corona update:  There will now be 6 exams total rather than 7.  The last two will be take-home exams rather than in-class exams.  You will get to drop your lowest score from among the 4 in-class exams taken.  Those were worth 20 points each.  The last two exams will be worth 30 points each.  They will likely be due Monday 4/6 and Monday 4/20.  

If you miss an exam, you will be permitted to take a makeup exam only if you have a legitimate, documented excuse (e.g., non-trivial illness, death in the family, religious obligation).  If you need to miss an exam, let me know in advance, by email.

You can drop your lowest exam score; so if you miss an exam but do not have a legit excuse, all is not lost.  Your best six exams will count for 10% of your grade each.

6. Paper (20%).  One paper is required, due at the end of the semester, worth 20% of your grade.  I'll say more about the paper later on, but it will likely be in the 900- to 1,500-word range (about a 3-5 pages).  To get a sense of what I'll be asking of you, you can, in the meantime, look at my Philosophy Paper FAQ.

Grading
Your final grade for the course is determined according to the following simple scheme, plus the attendance policy: