Lecture Notes from Summer School (for the Interested)

This has been my life the last month - getting these handouts ready, walking through them with my students, meeting one on one to work out what they didn't understand in class, then rushing home to start the cycle all over again. It's all done now except for the grading, but I still thought some of you might enjoy seeing my handiwork.

(As a heads-up: these were the starting point of my class's discussion. If you know philosophy and my discussion seems simplistic or flat-out wrong, that's because I probably used this as a jumping-off point to get to a better way of approaching the issues. I'm mainly sharing this because several people asked just what I've been so busy with.)

Day #1: What's this course all about, anyway?

• Hour #1: Syllabus
• Hour #2: Introduction to Logic
• Hour #3: Overview of Different Ethics Systems

Day #2: Can we be Good without God?

• Hour #1: How to Structure a Philosophy Paper
• Hour #2: Divine Command Theory and the Euthyphro Dilemma
• Hour #3: Do our moral intuitions make sense, without an afterlife? (our reading)

Day #3: Does our society decide what counts as moral?

• Hour #1: Student presentations
• Hour #2: Cultural Relativism (our reading)
• Hour #3: Logical Positivism and Moral Language

Day #4: Morality and the Law

• Hour #1: Logical Fallacies + Writing with Sources
• Hour #2: Justice as a Social Contract (our reading)
• Hour #3: Why should we obey the law? (our reading)

Day #5: Can we really act against our best interests?

• Hour #1: Student presentations
• Hour #2: Psychological Egoism (our reading)
• Hour #3: Ethical Egoism Critiqued (our reading)

Day #6: Do we have a duty to help others?

• Hour #1: Student presentations
• Hour #2: Singer on Famine Relief (our reading)
• Hour #3: Mill's Greatest Happiness Principle

Day #7: Utilitarianism vs. Libertarianism

• Hour #1: Symposium #1
• Hour #2: Criticisms of Utilitarianism
• Hour #3: Philosophical Libertarianism

Day #8: Is true equality even possible?

• Hour #1: Student presentations
• Hour #2: Rawls on equality
• Hour #3: Are we responsible for bad luck? (our reading)

Day #9: Does motive matter?

• Hour #1: Value Pluralism
• Hour #2: Mill vs. Kant on Criminal Justice (our reading)
• Hour #3: Kant on the Good Will

Day #10: Kant on Choosing Rightly

• Hour #1: Student presentations
• Hour #2: The First Formulation of the Categorical Imperative
• Hour #3: The Second Formulation of the Categorical Imperative (+ Application to Animal Rights) (our reading)

Day #11: Criticisms of Kant's Ethics

• Hour #1: Is love morally significant?
• Hour #2: Sympathy (our reading)
• Hour #3: The Doctrine of Double Effect (our reading)

Day #12: What counts as a human, anyway?

• Hour #1: Student presentations
• Hour #2: Aristotle's Account of Happiness + the Human Function
• Hour #3: (Human) Life Begins with Conception (our reading)

Day #13: How do we become good?

• Hour #1: Symposium #2
• Hour #2: Aristotle's Doctrine of the Mean
• Hour #3: The Importance of Friendship (our reading)

Day #14: Does our society decide what counts as moral?

• Hour #1: Aristotle on Justice
• Hour #2: Do We Have Special Duties to Our Community?
• Hour #3: Feminist Ethics

Things I Learned

1. Aristotle and Kant require more time to show why they're relevant and convincing.
2. Kant in particular needs more focus. To say nothing of more understanding on my part. Next time I'm finding time, somehow, to do Kant's kingdom of ends and maybe a little out of the Religion book. Really.
3. Even though these students all have had an introductory philosophy course, I can't expect them to be exposed to the things I teach my students in that first course. In particular, I can't expect them to know the problem of free will. Since Aristotle really ties in to those same problems, I need to find at least an hour to introduce that problem.
4. The things that I think need refuting before we can get on with the business of philosophical ethics. Cultural relativism is much less a part of my student's mindset than it ever was with mind, as is the whole idea that religion and ethics are tightly bound. The bigger problem is to show why you can't just pick and choose pieces from different approaches.
5. Having a class willing to think and talk makes all the difference. My group rocked.

 
(Originally posted to LJ.)

gone, gone, gone!

I was explaining to someone just what decompressing from a summer session had been like, and all of a sudden I was struck by what seemed like the perfect fannish analogy. This has been me these last several days as I finished up the actual teaching portion of summer school.

( Read more... )

All of which raises the question, just what is my inner Gollum here? What i'm like in that intense of teaching? The stress itself? Regardless, the freedom and the wanting to dance all around? Yeah, I was totally like that.

(Originally posted to LJ.)