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Contemporary Moral Theories: Introduction to Contemporary Consequentialism Syllabus [Kian Mintz-Woo]

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Contemporary Moral Theories: Introduction to Contemporary Consequentialism Syllabus [Kian Mintz-Woo] Contemporary Moral Theories: Introduction to Contemporary Consequentialism Syllabus [Kian Mintz-Woo] Course Information In this course, I will introduce you to some of the ways that consequentialist thinking leads to surprising or counterintuitive moral conclusions. This means that I will focus on issues which are controversial such as vegetarianism, charity, climate change and health-care. I have tried to select readings that are both contemporary and engaging. Hopefully, these readings will make you think a little differently or give you new ideas to consider or discuss. This course will take place in SR09.53 from 15.15-16.45. I have placed all of the readings for the term (although there might be slight changes), along with questions in green to help guide your reading. Some weeks have a recommended reading as well, which I think will help you to see how people have responded to the kinds of arguments in the required text. Please look over the descriptions and see which readings you are most interested in presenting for class for our first session on 10.03.2016. (Please tell me if you ever find a link that does not work or have any problems accessing content on this Moodle page.) I have a policy that cellphones are off in class; we will have a 5-10 minute break in the course and you can check messages only during the break. As a bonus, I have included at least one fun thing each week which relates to the theme of that week. Marking The course has three marked components: 1. a weekly presentation of the main text by one or two students (20%), 2. weekly short responses (200-300 word) to the main or recommended texts (due Tuesday at noon before class) (all together 20%), 3. and a final paper (60%). If you are presenting that week, you do not need to have a short response! There will be no penalty if you miss up to a combination of two things between weekly responses and classes missed. For instance, you can miss two classes or you can miss one weekly response and one class. However, if anyone attends all the classes and all of the weekly responses, I will round them to the nearest grade up. Also, I realize that people have different levels of background and I will try to keep this in mind while marking. For presentations, either a handout (1 page either single- or double-sided) or a slideshow (presentation/'beamer') is required. If you want to use a slideshow, you can email it to me (at least three days before class at noon) or you can bring it on a USB drive, but please tell me either way. If you want to bring a handout, please print enough copies for the group. Your presentation does not and should not completely explain everything in the paper. Part of the goal of the presentation is to be able to select some part(s) of the paper that you think are interesting (and I'll be pleased if you also manage to use the recommended readings in your analysis, but this is not required). Every presentation should 1. choose 2-3 ideas from the text that you think are interesting or important; 2. explain why those are interesting or important--how do these ideas support the author's view? Do these ideas change how you think about something? How do you think these ideas should influence society?; 3. explain why you agree or disagree--is the argument valid (are the links between the different parts of the argument logical)? Are there counterexamples to the claims? Could opposing positions be raised?; and 4. include at least three questions about the text to help start the discussion. 5. The presentation cannot be longer than 15 minutes, but can be shorter--the goal is just to start the class discussion, not to be complete! The short responses have three functions. First, they are to make sure that you get credit for reading the texts before coming the class. Second, they are to help you learn to read like a philosopher. When a philosopher reads a text, she usually is thinking about which of the claims she agrees with and which she objects to and which she is interested in. In the short response, I want you to do these things: pick one or two ideas from either the main text or a recommended text and explain what they are, why they are interesting/surprising/(un)convincing/new to you, and why you (dis)agree with them. I prefer responses which are critical and show something that you think is mistaken in the text, but it is of course okay to also explain why you agree with the idea(s). You do not need to copy the text, you can cite it by page number. For instance, you could write "Bostrom argues that we should maximize the probability of an 'okay' outcome and calls this the maxipok rule (19). I think that Bostrom's defence of the maxipok rule is mistaken because..." Finally, if there are particularly interesting questions or thoughts in short responses, I may use them to advance the discussion in class (although I will not say who they are from unless the author wants me to). These can be submitted in the assignment sections on Moodle at noon (12:00) on Tuesday before each Thursday class. The first one is due at noon on 15.03 for our class on 17.03. They can be submitted late up to the day of class, but if submitted late, I may not be able to return comments before class and your mark for that assignment will be lower than otherwise. The hope is that one of your short responses (or your presentation!) can lay the groundwork to think about a topic for a final paper. The final paper will be discussed later in the course, but I want you to be thinking about potential topics that interest you. I am happy to meet with anyone who has an idea of an argument they want to make either for or against any of the papers in class (including the recommended readings) after the course ends. I will discuss this further on during the course. Some resources for writing a philosophy essay can be read under the final class at the bottom of this Moodle page. Introduction (10.03.2016) No prereading required, but if you listen to the podcast, that would be very helpful. • BBC Podcast on Utilitarianism (2015): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05xhwqf o BBC's Radio 4 has a podcast on Utilitarianism--it's a great introduction. You can download the MP3 version to listen on the go or can listen on the BBC webpage. It features one of my old teachers, Brad Hooker. Janet Radcliffe Richards is quite amusing in it as well. • Carla Bagnoli on How to Write a Philosophy Paper: https://pantherfile.uwm.edu/cbagnoli/www/paperguidelines.html o This is an excellent short introduction on writing philosophy papers. • XKCD – Being Wrong: https://xkcd.com/386/ • *Optional: A Pretty Silly (Non-Academic!) Introduction to Utilitarianism: http://raikoth.net/consequentialism.html#utilitarianism Does consequentialism make demands on us for the global poor? (17.03.206 / Philipp Schönegger) After discussing the Singer text, we will have a Giving Game, where we discuss three potential charities to donate money to... and we will actually donate money (ten euros/class attendee) according to the majority of how the class decides after discussion. To make for a reasonable discussion, there are three charities that I have chosen. These are Innovations for Poverty Action, Oxfam, and Against Malaria Foundation. • Peter Singer – Practical Ethics Chapter 8 (and 1) o Peter Singer is the most influential utilitarian working in ethics today, although he has changed the type of utilitarian he is throughout his career (he began as a hedonist, meaning that he thought utility was pleasure/happiness, and now he is a preference utilitiarian, meaning he thinks utility is the satisfaction of desires or preferences). This is his book on applied ethics. We will not be reading the whole thing, although if you find it interesting, it is available free through this link as an e-book at our library. (If the link below does not work, you can just find it in the Suchportal UB Graz as Practical Ethics.) The required reading is Chapter 8, although I also recommend reading Chapter 1, especially if you have not done much ethics before. In Chapter 1, Singer discusses what ethics are in a university setting. In Chapter 7, Singer discusses a revised version of a very famous argument that he developed in a paper called Famine, Affluence, and Morality (you can download that article here: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2265052). In both the original version and the revised version in Chapter 8, Singer argues that, in light of the huge amount of suffering from poverty in the world, rich people (which include most of the people living in the developed world, and certainly most of the philosophy audience that read ethics papers) are allowing people to die and that, if allowing someone to die is not intrinsically different from killing, we are all murderers. He argues that this means we should donate significant amounts of money to proven charities which decrease poverty and suffering. Many people find this conclusion very strong, and you may too if you have not read this before. What are your personal reactions? Do you think that philosophical arguments like this can motivate people? Should they motivate people? Why? Think through the steps and see if you agree with all of the ways the argument is developed.
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