PHIL 6100 -- Seminar in Ethics: Topics in Well-Being
Fall 2021
Thursdays 5:30-8:00 p.m.
Hellems 196

Professor
Chris Heathwood
heathwood@colorado.edu
Office: Hellems 278
Hours: Tuesdays 4:00-5:30; Fridays 11:00-12:30; and by appointment on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays

Course Description
What things are of ultimate benefit or harm to us? What is it in our interest to get?  If someone is well off, or has a high quality of life, what features of their life make this the case?  These are various ways of asking the philosophical question of well-being, which is the starting-off point for this course.  The topic of well-being is not only interesting in its own right, it is of fundamental importance to moral and social philosophy.  On any plausible moral or social theory, how an action or social policy affects the welfare of people and other beings capable of it is at least one relevant factor in determining whether the action ought to be done or the policy instituted.

This course aims to combine breadth with depth.  I assume no prior familiarity with the philosophy of well-being, so we will begin with a rapid, three-week tour through the entire field, using an introductory textbook as our guide.  Then we will study four specific subtopics in depth: the resonance constraint on well-being; whether subjective theories of well-being should idealize; the problem of adaptive preferences for subjective theories of well-being; and ill-being.

Readings
One book is required:

• Guy Fletcher, The Philosophy of Well-Being (Routledge, 2016).

We will be reading most of this book.  I ordered it at the CU Bookstore, but if you are content to access it entirely online, the CU Library evidently gives us free access to it.  You just need to be logged in with your credentials.  Additional required readings will be linked to below on the course schedule.

Course Requirements
1. Technology.  Classrooms should be free from external intrusions.  Except for the occasional times when we want to look something up as a class, our classroom will be an internet-free zone. Thus, please silence your cell phone when you get to class.  And please never text in class.  If you need to communicate with someone from the outside world during class, no problem — just step outside of the room to do so.

In my undergraduate classes, I allow laptops only in special cases.  That seems too paternalistic for a graduate class, but do know that students who use laptops in class evidently do less well in college, as do those who sit near them.  Also, students using laptops apparently learn less in class even when they really are taking notes.  This quick slideshow by Andrew Mills at Otterbein University has more on this and, at the end, links to guides for how to take better notes by hand.

2. Weekly Question, Criticism, or Comment.  Each week (aside from the first week and the last three weeks of class, which is when our Conference on Well-Being will take place) you are required to submit by email a question, criticism, or comment about the reading.  I will use these to guide what we talk about in class that week.  These are due on Tuesday nights at 11:59 p.m.

3. Very Short Paper.  You are required to write a Very Short Paper (about 500 to 1,000 words) at the end of the introductory part of the course. The paper is due by email on Sunday, September 19 at 11:59 p.m.  Although I dislike Microsoft Word as much as you do, please send it to me as a Word .docx file; that makes it easy for me to comment on it electronically and get it back to you by email.

The main elements of your Very Short Paper are (i) a non-trivial philosophical thesis or claim having to do with well-being and (ii) an explanation of why we should think it's true.  Since this paper is so short, your thesis can be a very tiny point – in fact it probably should be.

I know that this isn't your first rodeo, but I have a pretty detailed document giving some guidance on writing a philosophy paper: my Philosophy Paper FAQ.  It is aimed at undergraduates, but you'll probably benefit from looking at it too.

4. Long Abstract.  You are required to submit a Long Abstract (about 750 to 1,000 words) of your Term Paper.  This is due by email on Sunday, October 31 at 11:5🎃 p.m. (.docx file again please).  This is to help get you going on your Term Paper and to get some feedback from me on your plan for it.  And writing these long abstracts is actually a pretty good skill to develop since more and more conferences seem to be requesting them rather than full papers for submissions.  If you'd like to see some sample long abstracts, here are three different ones that I myself wrote and submitted to actual conferences.  Your Long Abstract and Term Paper can be outgrowths of your Very Short Paper, but certainly don't have to be.

5. Term Paper.  The most substantial course requirement is the Term Paper.  It is due to me by email on Sunday, December 12 at 11:59 p.m. (.docx file again please).  It should be about the length of a short-ish journal article (about 4,000-7,000 words, not including notes and bibliography).  Your Term Paper is supposed to be an outgrowth of your Long Abstract, but talk to me about it if you later decide that you no longer want to write that paper.

6. Talk.  The last three weeks of the class will consist of our very own Conference on Well-Being, with you all as the speakers.  Each student will be the speaker in a brief session devoted to the topic of their Term Paper.   Just how brief will depend on how many students are enrolled in the course.  The idea here is that you will be laying out the main ideas and arguments of your Term Paper, and getting feedback on them before the paper is due.  For each speaker, a classmate may be assigned to ask the first question, which can be prepared in advance.

If you think it would be helpful for us in following your talk, you can ask us to read something, or some passages from something, in advance of your talk.  Don't assign a lot of reading, though.  One reason that I like to spend the last few weeks of a graduate seminar in this way is that it frees you up from the normal reading load to do your own outside research and reading on the topic of your Term Paper.

I do recommend that you use make some use of visual aids during your Talk, whether a handout, slides, or simply writing on the chalkboard.

7. Attendance and Participation.  Of course I expect you to attend all of our class meetings (missing one is equivalent to missing a week's worth of classes).  If you have to miss a day, please let me know; otherwise, I'll be worrying about you.  And please participate in our classroom discussions.  Classroom discussion is really what graduate seminars are all about.  Don't be afraid to ask dumb questions (if not now, when?).  Don't be afraid to challenge anything I or a classmate says.  Don't be afraid to explore or endorse unpopular views, or to criticize ideas that seem sacrosanct.  Just do it respectfully.

Grading
I basically give out just three grades in graduate classes: A, A–, and B+. 

'A–', for me, means meets expectations.  This is a good grade.  It means that in this class you did, in my assessment, the caliber of work that you need to be doing to succeed in graduate school.  This is the most common grade given in my graduate courses.

'A' means exceeds expectations.  I reserve this grade for exceptional work, the sort of work that seems like it wouldn't be completely out of place in a professional journal.  (Incidentally, you should definitely be aiming for at least some of your work in graduate school to look like this; you should expect this of yourself.  And doctoral students should have it as an explicit goal to have at least one publication in a decent journal before going on the job market.)

'B+', for me, means fails to meet expectations.  This means that, in my opinion, if all of the work that you did in our program was of this quality, you might struggle to get all the way through the program.  Of course, this would be just one person's opinion on just one small part of your graduate career.

This grading scheme for graduate classes is my own; other professors might mean slightly different things by their grades.

The main thing that will determine your grade for the course is the grade that you get on your Term Paper.  I won't even be officially grading anything else.  But your Very Short Paper, your Long Abstract, your Talk and Q&A, and your contributions to class discussion can also influence your grade for the course.