Class 1.1 Course Introduction
Phil 166: Current Moral and Social Issues
Welcome to Phil 166! We're going to spend a lot of time this semester talking about controversial moral issues, but this class is not about debating, or about controversy. You will leave the class with a more self-critical perspective on your own moral opinions, and with practice at seeing how complex problems can be broken down into smaller pieces that applies to problem-solving of all kinds.
Instructor
I'm Mark Schroeder, the instructor for this course. This is my fifteenth year teaching at USC, and you can find out more about me here. The teaching assistants for the course are Madiha Hamdi, Laura Nicoara, and Shane Ward, and you should feel free to discuss course matters or the material with any of us at any time during the semester. We have arranged to have office hours at different times, so that you can find someone's office hours to attend, no matter what your schedule is like.
It is our goal to make every one of you successful in this course. We measure such success first and foremost by whether you are challenged and grow in your own thinking and how much you improve at the specific analytical skills involved in the course. But we understand that you also measure success in terms of a grade, and it is also our goal for you to be successful along that dimension as well, without compromising on the high standards that we should expect of USC students and that are appropriate to the subject matter of philosophy. If you are willing to buy in and do the work for this course on a weekly basis, at the end of the semester, you will see measurable improvement in your analytical thinking, and you will be proud of what you have learned and accomplished.
COVID Disruption
The Omicron wave is moving across the US, and USC has moved to online-only instruction for the first week of classes. Because hospitalization rates are still rising and California is still behind the drastic rise in case rates that have hit Europe and most of the US, my best guess is that the period of online-only instruction will be extended by USC for at least another week, and possibly longer. As long as we are in online-only instruction, the “in-person class” component of our class will take place over Zoom, using the Zoom link that has been automatically generated for our class and which all of you should have available when you log into Zoom. Everything that the syllabus says about in-person classes applies to Zoom classes. As soon as USC moves back to in-person instruction, we will begin meeting in person in our assigned classroom.
The Flipped Classroom
This class incorporates a flipped classroom. What that means, is that you can view all lecture material at your own time and pace, so that when we meet as a class for our scheduled class time, we have the opportunity to go deeper, discuss, and practice the applied skills that we are developing for the class. Our scheduled class meetings will have ample time for discussion, questions, and feedback, and there will be a variety of planned exercises and activities that will deepen your understanding and better prepare you for the written assignments in the course, but all of the essential knowledge that you must not miss will be in pre-recorded video content, and you can digest that content at your own pace and schedule, so long as you keep up, at a minimum, with the course calendar.
Course Calendar
Everything that you need to know, you can find in the course calendar on the main course webpage or in the syllabus. Congratulations! This is the bottom of the class preparation instructions for class 1.1, so you have already done everything that you need to do, in order to prepare for the first day of class. Make sure that you follow the instructions to prepare for each class before you attend class for that day!
Lecture 1.1
Starting with our second class, you will be viewing the pre-recorded lecture before coming to class. But because we’re just getting started this week, you have probably already attended our first class without first watching the lecture video. Nevertheless, here is the lecture video corresponding to our first class of the semester. It’s an important overview of what to expect from class this semester. Note that at about 3:18 I describe the format of this class as ‘asyhchronous’, when the correct word for what we are doing this semester is ‘flipped’. The word ‘asynchronous’ is a residue from when I recorded these lectures in spring 2021, when the class was fully asynchronous to accommodate students taking the course from India, China, and elsewhere. Occasionally throughout the semester you may note small infelicities like this in the pre-recorded lectures - for example, sometimes the number of the class will be different than it appears in our calendar - but I believe that they are all immaterial to the main content.
In order to view the video and answer the corresponding questions embedded in the video, you will need to establish a free account with PlayPosit. Please use a username from which I can decipher which student in the class you are. PlayPosit will allow you to view the lecture at faster or slower speeds and add closed captioning, but it will no allow you to skip material until you have viewed the full video and you will be required to answer questions as you go.
I will always include the full set of slides used in the lecture video here for you to peruse at your own speed in case you find it helpful to review any course material.