Formatting Assignments

 Here are three assignments, formatted in different ways. Which is best? Why?

How your written works looks and is organized matters, since that displays organization and clarity, which makes things easier or harder to read and so easier and harder on your reader. 

Here is an assignment template that you can and should used to make your work look good.

Also, which photograph of notes looks best? (Imagine each box is a page). Which is easiest to read? Why? 

See also Online Course Communication Tips: How to Write Better Discussion Posts in Online Classes

Readings for Introduction to Ethics

 Readings for Introduction to Philosophical Ethics 

Some sample arguments for review

Below are some sample arguments. (What are arguments? Check your materials). Your questions about these arguments are this: 

• Are these arguments logically valid or not? 
• If they are valid, what is the argument pattern? 
• If they are valid, are they sound? Why is it sound?

If you don't know what these terms mean, you need to check your course materials. including the "Philosophical Ethics: Almost Everything You Need to Know" page and this video (and this TikTok on syllogisms too): 

Relativism in Ethics

Here's a quick video on relativism in ethics (and why it's a theory that be shown false by many sound arguments and isn't supported by any sound arguments!):

Some thoughts on teaching in the time of COVID, in The Philosophers' Magazine

Some thoughts on teaching in the time of COVID, in The Philosophers' Magazine:

“What's Culture Got to Do with It? Excising the Harmful Tradition of Female Circumcision.”

When would you be willing to have a surgery done? One answer is this: 

• only when it is medically necessary: if I don't get it, I will likely be worse off;
• likewise, only when it's likely medically beneficial;
• only when it's likely not harmful;
• only if it's done with my consent: I'd much rather they get my permission and approval especially if the surgery were not medically necessary.

You might think that if a surgery is done and these conditions were not met (it wasn't necessary, it's not beneficial, it's harmful or likely harmful, and its done without consent) then it was morally wrong to do that surgery. 

If this is a good principle (and it is!), this would seem to imply that infant genital cutting (female genital cutting; male circumcision) are morally wrong: 

• these are not medically necessary---most of the world does not do this;
• they are usually not beneficial;
• they are harmful and/or risky (losing sensitive skin is always a loss; greater harms, such as major injuries and death sometimes happen), and 
• they are done without consent. 

A trailer for a film on these topics (that apparently never was finished):

Online Course Communication Tips: How to Write Better Discussion Posts in Online Classes

You can make your experience in online courses (and all courses) better by thinking about how your work and participation affects other students. For online classes, a lot of that has to do with creating discussion posts that are easy to read and engage with. So here we give some guidance on how your discussion posts can contribute to a better experience for other students, and you yourself too!

Online courses have many requirements, some of which the instructors (and students) realize along the way. 

Some concerns are technical: for example, about how to operate Blackboard or the LMS (Learning Management System).

Other concerns are more profound and relate to thinking about your audience or readers and what can improve their reading experience with your posts. These concerns are based on empathy: seeing things from others' points of view, understanding their perspectives, and acting in ways that benefit these other people, given their perspectives and concerns. 

Here's an in-progress list of what's needed; check back for more tips.

TO MAKE YOUR POSTS AND WORK EASIER TO READ:

• DO NOT HAVE LONG PARAGRAPHS: follow the rule of "one main topic per paragraph." You NEVER want to have an assignment of any kind that is a single long paragraph if there are multiple topics per paragraph. That is true for all writing, but it's especially true for online writing. (Additional writing tips are here). 
• PROOFREAD and REVIEW YOUR SUBMITTED WORK: when you submit your work, e.g., post a blog post or a discussion post, look at it. Does it look nice? Does it look professional? Here are some concerns:
• Is there space (a "return") between paragraphs? Is that space the same between all paragraphs?
• Are there any indents? If so, are there indents on all paragraphs, so it's consistent?
• Is the font, font size and font color the same? Is some text highlighted and other text not highlighted? If so, you need to develop the technical skills to fix that: one thing that's helpful is the "remove formatting" button on the Blackboard text editor.
• GRAMMAR and SPELLING: simple grammatical and spelling errors are distracting, and you don't want anyone distracted from your main message. And these are errors that are just so easy to avoid these days that's there is really no excuse for them. So, use spell and grammar-check on your computer for everything educational or professional that you write: there is a great free program called Grammarly.com that works especially well that you should get, use and even learn from.
• GIVE CONTEXT: when responding to discussion boards, include the prompt you are responding to (and bold it or bold and underline it: that way, no readers have to think, "OK, what is this in response to?" because you will have made that obvious.
• "QUOTE" OTHER STUDENTS WHEN RESPONDING TO THEM: when you respond to others' posts, include what you are responding to: there is a "quote" button that allows that. If you do not do that, then it is hard to know what you are responding to, so please include that. Not including their initial post is like responding to an email but deleting the message that you are responding to: nobody knows what you are responding to that way, and that's not helpful. 
• DON'T UPLOAD PDFs: to make your posts immediately accessible, they should be created (or cut and pasted) as text on the discussion board: don't upload files, expecting that other students or the instructor is doing to download them, open them, read them, and then somehow comment on them, even though the text isn't really there to comment on. In short, always make things easy on readers. (A related rule: don't send information by email attachment when you could have just as easily put that information in the body of an email). 

OTHER GUIDANCE:

• WRITE POSTS THAT OTHER STUDENTS WANT TO RESPOND TO: instructors should try to develop discussion prompts and assignments that encourage or require students to respond to in ways that invite and encourage other students to respond to. Even if students are not asked to do so, they can think about how they can write their responses in ways that encourage other students to do respond. It's at least worth thinking about how to effectively do this. 
• WE WANT RESPONSES TO BE SUBSTANTIAL, SERIOUS, AND ENGAGING: the point of a discussion board is, really, to discuss. So we don't want to just affirm each others' posts, but we want to see where they can take us, in terms of extending or applying what was said to other topics, raising questions about the topic, raising objections ("have you considered this?") and more. See this post on better discussion responses: 

"Here are some prompts that might help you create more effective replies to your peers (you learn more) and earn you more points. For each reply, please comment on your peer's post, perhaps what you learned or found interesting, and then add new information to the conversation. Here are some prompts that might be helpful in directing your replies. 

First, summarize your peer’s post

I appreciated how you explained … because I learned…

What I found really interesting about what you said ...

Then, transition to what you will add to the conversation:

And, I think that we also need to consider…
Another important question we need to think about is…
What this means is …
That makes me think of …
I am confused about …, what I know is … and I would like help …
While you said…, I disagree because…"

• SET THINGS UP TO AUTO-RECEIVE RESPONSES TO YOUR POSTS: you can usually set up discussion boards so that you are notified when people respond to your posts. Figure out how to set that up in your system since "discussions" are real discussions only when there's that type of interaction and back and forth, and that happens only when you know that someone has responded to you.
• READ AND RESPOND TO RESPONSES: check to see if and when other students and your instructor responds to your responses. See what they have to say and respond to them about their response!
• KNOW THE REQUIREMENTS: there are usually length and "depth" requirements for discussion posts and other assignments. Make sure you know what these are.
• SAVE YOUR POSTS: save your posts, either by cutting and pasting them into the course system from somewhere else (making sure you address the formatting) or cutting and pasting them from the system into a word processor document. That way if your posts get lost or deleted, you've got backup.
• ANNOUNCEMENTS: often there are many announcements about online classes, so make sure you frequently check wherever those are sent out and/or posted. 

More guidelines, TBA! Check back!

And here's a song about being online that you might like, or you won't!

 

See also A Rulebook for Students: Success in College & Beyond!

James Rachels' The Elements of Moral Philosophy Chapter 1 notes

Here some notes on James Rachels' The Elements of Moral Philosophy, chapter 1, "What is morality?"

Here's a video overview (not by me):

I think this chapter would have been better called What is it to ‘Think Morally’ or 'Reason Morally'?

“Morality is …” is kinda abstract. This is less abstract: Someone is “thinking morally” or engaged in “moral thinking” when:

(1) one is guiding one’s thought by reasons – the best reasons – and
(2) one gives equal weight to each individual who is affected by one’s actions.

Re. (1): reasons include (scientific, empirical) facts and moral principles.

FACTS

+ 

MORAL PRINCIPLES

=

WHAT TO DO 

Note: the premises below all must be interpreted--what do they mean? What are they saying?--so they can be evaluated as true or false. This page does not provide that interpretation: the chapter does though.

Case 1: Baby Theresa (Google for images and stories) 

• · What’s her situation?
• · What did her parents want to do? What were their reasons?

The parents' argument:

(3) If we can (a) benefit someone without (b) harming anyone by doing action X, then action X is morally permissible.
(4) By kill Theresa and taking her organs we can (a) benefit others and (b) not harm anyone.
(5) So, killing Teresa and taking her organs is morally permissible.

The argument is valid, in that the premises lead to the conclusion. Is this argument sound or not? 

What did “the critics” say” (p. 2)

(6) “It’s too horrifying to use people as means to other people’s ends.”
(7) “It’s unethical to kill in order to save, unethical to kill person A to save person B.”
(8) “The parents are saying we should kill the baby to use the organs. That’s horrendous!

These remarks are the basis of arguments. Are these arguments sound or not? If any of them are, then argument (3)-(5) is not sound. Let's present these remarks as logically valid arguments. 

Re. Remark (6):

(A) If someone is used as a mere means to another’s end, then that is wrong.
(B) Taking Teresa’s organs would be to use her as a mere means.
(C) So, it would be wrong to take her organs.

Is the argument valid? Are the premises true? (Are they somehow ambiguous or imprecise? What does it mean, according to Kant, to use someone as a mere means?)

Re. Remark (7):

(D) If person A is killed to save person B, then that’s wrong.
(E) To kill Teresa would be to kill her to save others.
(F) Therefore, it’s wrong to kill Teresa.

Is the argument valid? Are the premises true? (Are they somehow ambiguous or imprecise, e.g., does D claim it's always wrong to do this, or just sometimes?)

Re. Remark (8): is that even an argument?

Case 2: Jodie and Mary (Google for images and stories) 

What’s their situation? What did her parents want to do? What did the hospital want to do? What were their reasons?

Some might throw up their hands and ask “Whose to decide?!” Asking this kind of question is often a way to avoid thinking about which arguments are best. (Also, it’s often unwise to ask rhetorical questions, since there might be good answers to them).

An argument:

(G) If we have a choice between saving one infant and letting both die, we should save one.
(H) We have such a choice.
(I) So we should save one.

Is the argument valid? Are the premises true?

Some critics say:

(J) If someone is an ‘innocent human life’, then they should never be killed.
(K) Mary is an innocent human life.
(L) Therefore, Mary should not be killed.

Is the argument valid? Are the premises true?

3rd Case: Tracy Latimer (Google for images and stories) 

• · What’s her situation? (We need to think about the details..)
• · What did her parents want to do? What were their reasons?
• · What did their critics say?

Conclusions: Overall, we need to take note of:

• · Feelings
• · Require reasons
• · Getting one’s (non-moral) facts straight: checking up on the empirical / scientific evidence
• · Impartiality: differences in treatment are justified only by relevant differences in the person/being and in light of general moral principles; otherwise these are unjustified prejudices.

Is This Like That? How to Make a Comparison

 A little educational material on comparisons or analogies that I just whipped up; suggestions for improvement on this and maybe a whole series of material welcome!

#thinking #criticalthinking #philosophy #ethics #reasoning #thinking #teaching #learning 

Philosophical Ethics: Almost Everything You Need to Know

Thank you notes!

Philipp Schulz has a blog post on "Practicing Academic Kindness in the Classroom" that offers the great suggestion of having students write "thank you" notes to authors of writings they read in class that the students appreciated: perhaps the reading changed their mind, helped them articulate a belief, presented an opposing view in an interesting light or anything else the student found valuable.

A philosophy professor friend of mine, or his TA, had students do this in their class and some students kindly wrote about how they appreciated my "Early and Later Abortions" and "Reply to Tollefsen" in Bob Fischer, ed., Ethics, Left and Right: The Moral Issues That Divide Us (Oxford University Press, 2019). (This chapter led to another chapter, which led to the Thinking Critically About Abortion book). 

It is, of course, very rewarding for me to know that someone read and enjoyed my writings and it helped them, they believe, think better about a complex and controversial issue. With permission and pride, I'm sharing their reactions below. 

Extra Credit, even now

I've seen a lot of posts about giving extra credit opportunities to address grade challenges brought on by the circumstances, and I want to quickly argue this is a bad, unfair, and counter-productive idea.

The current main motivation for extra credit is that students have been set-back and thrown off track because of the current situation, and so extra credit is an attempt to address that, to prevent them from being harmed by circumstances beyond their control.

However, *all* (or nearly all) students have been harmed by this pandemic, and so if *any* students should be compensated or boosted for this, they *all* should be boosted for it. To have to jump through a hoop or do more work to get this benefit, that everyone deserves, to try to make things more fair is, well, unfair.

Furthermore, this just creates more work for everyone, including students, at a time when nobody needs more work.

To address the motivating concern in a fair way, one could just simply raise *everyone's* grades by X % (10% 20%?). Then *everyone* gets the grade "stimulus" package, not just those who are lucky enough to know to apply and have the time to apply. Students who are currently so burdened that they don't have time to do extra credit (much less the new regular work) shouldn't lose out on a benefit that their more fortunate peers have time to access: that's not fair.

Sure, some will get a grade stimulus who don't need it, but that's less bad than forcing those who need it to do more work when they are already loaded down.

These arguments are motivated by this article - Christopher Pynes. “Seven Arguments Against Extra Credit.” Teaching Philosophy 37, no. 2 (2014): 191-214 -- and are summarized here:

https://1000wordphilosophy.com/…/25/ethics-and-extra-credit/

I hope this is interesting and helpful and contributes to making things simpler and more fair for all!

#extracredit #grading #grades

Videos on Ethics and Animal Research

Videos on Arguments about Abortion

Here are some videos that review a PowerPoint presentation on arguments about abortion that was recently developed for teaching purposes; the slides are the bottom of the page. These are also posted at AbortionArguments.com.

Introduction and Defining Abortion:

Question-Begging Arguments about Abortion

Common, "Everyday" Arguments about Abortion:

Arguments that Abortion is Prima Facie Wrong:

Arguments that Abortion is Prima Facie Permissible and Conclusions:

PowerPoint slides:





These slides in PDF.

Teaching Modules or Units at 1000-Word Philosophy

A “Teaching Units” page of links to select sets of essays has been developed to help create course modules on common topics in introductory philosophy and ethics courses. We hope this is especially helpful for instructors transitioning to online learning. 

Below are links to select sets of short introductory readings from 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology to help create “course modules” on common topics in introductory philosophy and ethics courses. 

Epistemology, Metaphysics, Ethical Theory and Theories of Justice, Contemporary Moral & Social Issues, Existentialism, Philosophy of Religion, Philosophy of Race & Philosophy of Sex and Gender, Philosophy of Science, Historical Philosophy, Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art

This page will be updated as more essays are identified as especially ideal for this resource. 

Discussion Reply Prompts

"One concern that I often hear from faculty is the poor quality of student replies in the online discussion. Some faculty have ameliorated the issue by adding specific instructions to students in the discussion topic instructions: Anytime we can clarify our expectations to students, it is useful to do so.

Another way to help students provide better replies is to provide them with prompts that will lead them to create the type of replies we are looking for in our online courses. Here is a set of prompts I share with my students that you might find useful as is or with some adaptations. Feel free to modify at will!

Students, here are some prompts that might help you create more effective replies to your peers (you learn more) and earn you more points. For each reply, please comment on your peer's post, perhaps what you learned or found interesting, and then add new information to the conversation. Here are some prompts that might be helpful in directing your replies. 

First, summarize your peer’s post

• I appreciated how you explained … because I learned…

• What I found really interesting about what you said ...

Then, transition to what you will add to the conversation

• And, I think that we also need to consider…

• Another important question we need to think about is…

• What this means is …

• That makes me think of …

• I am confused about …, what I know is … and I would like help …

• While you said…, I disagree because…"

(Source: Beth René Roepnack)

For more tips, see Online Course Communication Tips

An Animal Research Ethics lecture for a class

Ethical Egoism

New: Ethical Egoism at 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology.

"Thinking About Ethics"

New: "Thinking About Ethics" on the Morehouse Faculty Blog. (Now here?)

I’m a philosopher who teaches and writes mostly about ethics. Here I want to say a little about what philosophical ethicists do, how they do it and why they do it.

Ethicists try to discover which particular actions, and actions in general, are wrong, which are not wrong and what we are morally obligated to do, what makes people better and worse or virtuous and vicious, and what makes organizations and societies fair and unfair, just and unjust, and much more. The concerns are both abstract and highly practical, since they concern how we should live, as individuals and as communities.

How do we “do” ethics though? How do we try to engage ethics more productively, especially since clearly there are often deep and passionate disagreements about the issues? Here I want to offer some brief observations about what ethical thinking is and how we can all do it better.

First, ethics is not about “opinions” or “feelings”: it’s about reasons. Consider the near-daily moral tragedies of our world: we may, and should, have strong feelings about the many innocent victims of wrongdoing, but it’s not our mere “feeling” or “opinion” that what’s done is wrong: we have reasons. We can say why we think an action is wrong or not wrong, and we can learn to better figure out whether the reasons we give are good ones or not and why. We can learn to better think about complex and controversial ethical issues, often by developing skills and understanding from thinking about less complex and less controversial ethical topics. This happens in, among other places and spaces, philosophical ethics courses.

Second, ethics is often seen as intertwined with religion, but it doesn’t have to be and, arguably, it shouldn’t. Ethics is independent of religion, again, because we can reason about it. Socrates observed thousands of years ago that if anyone says some action is wrong because, say, they think God disapproves of the action, we can always ask why God would find the action wrong: we can always do better than “it’s wrong just because God says so!” Anyone and everyone can think about whether and why a God would or would not approve of some action, whatever their religious beliefs are (or not are), and debate various answers. Ethical thinking isn’t confined to any religious outlook since we can always ask why we should accept what some religious text, tradition or figure says and evaluate the answers. The possibility of inter- and intra-faith ethical dialogue is important since ethics affects us all and so we don’t want anything to be seen as an obstacle to productive ethical discussion when it really is not.

Third, ethical thinking requires an understanding of the facts of the issue under consideration. For examples, issues in medical ethics depend on understanding the relevant medical facts; engaging ethical and justice-related issues brought on by climate change, and other issues in environmental ethics, requires knowledge of the best scientific understanding of the causes and likely impact of climate change; addressing social justice involves knowing history and the political, economic and religious forces that have shaped people and peoples. Ethical literacy is thereby dependent on scientific literacy and other types of knowledge. Sometimes it’s easy to find the relevant facts; other times it takes some time and effort, but we all need to be willing to put in that effort. Those who don’t, or won’t, often wind up believing what they merely wish to be true, not what is true, which tends to contribute to ethical disaster.

Fourth, ethical thinking requires reasoning, which is the application of logic, or the rules of good reasoning, to complex issues. Logic is, ultimately, based in math, and so whether various given reasons “add up” to support a given conclusion or point of view on an issue is an objective fact to be discovered, not created. That ethical reasoning is based on logic contributes to the possibility of people productively engaging ethical issues from a range of perspectives, as long as they are willing to give reasons and attempt to carefully explain why they think their reasons support their conclusion. At the very least, we can use basic logic to show that many common arguments on important issues are unsound, and knowing what not to think about an issue is a step towards finding good arguments on that issue.

Fifth, and finally, ethics is best when done from a set of virtues or good character traits: what these are is an ethical issue in itself. One of the most important virtues is humility. We all know that other people have had mistaken views and incomplete, if not erroneous, understandings of issues. But the same is true of ourselves. Being open to the possibility that we are mistaken, and that we personally need to make some changes in thought, feeling and deed, is essential to genuine ethical thinking. Another virtue is understanding: we often criticize and judge others’ ethical views without really understanding them. We have an inaccurate sense of what others think, and why they think that, which does not contribute to positive discussion and debate. Ethics thus involves a lot of listening and learning from other people: while we may (and should!) have objections, we always want to make sure the objection addresses the other person’s real views, not inaccurate caricatures.

Finally, we can improve our understanding of ethics by reading and engaging writings in ethics, written by ethicists. Although we are all constantly engaging ethical issues, few people have taken a philosophical ethics course, much less teach such courses or publish books and articles about the issues, and a lot can be learned from people who have trained experience in these areas. One great source for introductory readings in ethics is 1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology, an open-access educational resource that I help edit. And I hope my co-authored open-access Thinking Critically About Abortion book demonstrates some of the skills and virtues I review above while addressing an obviously controversial and important topic.

Why do ethics, and do it better? Because we must. Righting the wrongs of the world is a complex challenge, and our efforts will always be guided by what we think. Philosophical ethics helps us improve that thinking so we might improve the world, for all who are in it.

______

Nathan Nobis is an associate professor of philosophy at Morehouse College. www.nathannobis.com

Classes

JMS:Ethics,Justice, &Social - 48145 - HEDU 499 - 05

Syllabus and notes.

Intro to Philosophical Ethics - 43875 - HPHI 302G - 01
Associated Term: Spring 2020 SYLLABUS AND NOTES Scheduled Meeting Times Type Time Days Where Date Range Schedule Type Instructors Class 10:00 am - 10:50 am MWF Sale Hall 105 Jan 15, 2020 - May 08, 2020 Lecture Nathan M. Nobis (P)
Intro to Philosophical Eth - 43876 - HPHI 302G - 02
Associated Term: Spring 2020 SYLLABUS AND NOTES Scheduled Meeting Times Type Time Days Where Date Range Schedule Type Instructors Class 11:00 am - 11:50 am MWF Sale Hall 105 Jan 15, 2020 - May 08, 2020 Lecture Nathan M. Nobis (P)

Intro to Phil. Ethics ONLINE - 48562 - HPHI 302G - 07
Syllabus draft.  Scheduled Meeting Times Type Time Days Where Date Range Schedule Type Instructors Class TBA ONLINE Jan 15, 2020 - May 08, 2020 Lecture Nathan M. Nobis (P)

Modern Political Theory - 48401 - HPHI 462 - 1
Syllabus draft Scheduled Meeting Times Type Time Days Where Date Range Schedule Type Instructors Class 1:00 pm - 1:50 pm MWF Sale Hall 110 Jan 15, 2020 - May 08, 2020 Lecture Nathan M. Nobis (P)