COURSE SYLlABUS

Electronic Course Syllabus

Click through on each heading below to expand the corresponding section of the course syllabus. Make sure that you read each section carefully and understand what is expected.

Course Overview

PHIL 166 is a philosophy course, which means at least three things: we are going to think about hard questions, we are going to impose rigor on these questions by constructing and studying arguments, and we are going to try to think about these questions as rationally and objectively as we can. In this class, I will not tell you the answers to the hardest questions that we discuss, but that is not because they do not have answers that are worth discovering; it is because the questions themselves are too difficult.

This is not a class for simply sharing conflicting opinions about controversial issues, though a willingness to put into words and share your opinions is a good place to start. What I will ask you to do, all semester long, is to subject your opinions to critical scrutiny, in order to come to a more mature view of which are worth endorsing, and which may be the result of non-rational influences. If you’re ready and willing to think hard and patiently about hard moral questions without easy answers, and ready to acknowledge the possibility that any one of us – including you or I – may learn from this process that our opinions are mistaken – then you are ready for this class.

Course Objectives

As a student enrolled in Phil 166, you will:

(1) Acquire an understanding of the differences and relationships between easy and difficult moral questions.
(2) Learn how to use arguments that leverage our knowledge of the answers to easy moral questions in order to make incremental progress on more difficult ones.
(3) Learn how to charitably reconstruct arguments from written texts.
(4) Develop skills at seeing the problems in arguments even when you agree with their conclusion.
(5) Learn how to sympathetically engage with views with which you disagree.
(6) Develop the skill of slow and careful reading of primary source texts.
(7) Improve your argumentative writing skills.

I take these learning objectives seriously, and every part of the course is designed to advance one or more of them.

Course Texts

There are no required texts for Phil 166. All required readings will be linked to electronically from this site, together with further instructions on what to look for and pay attention to in the readings and some context. You will find the link to each reading in the instructions corresponding to each scheduled day of class in the course calendar, above.

Even though all course readings will be electronic, I strongly recommend that you print each reading out if you are able. Studies show that everyone reads more carefully and attentively from paper than from a screen, and you are bound to spend far too much time looking at your screen as it is. I urge you even more strongly to make sure that you use a laptop or tablet to read this site, even though it is accessible using your phone.

Following Along with Class

Course Calendar
You can follow along with all of the work that is expected of you for the course by keeping up with the course calendar. For each scheduled class meeting there is required reading and required quiz questions. For some class meetings there will also be auxilliary materials to review. And in even-numbered weeks of the semester there will always be an additional assignment due before midnight. You will find all of this required content organized into the course calendar on the main course page, located on the appropriate Monday or Wednesday of each scheduled class.

The Flipped Classroom
We will be employing a Flipped Classroom model in Phil 166 this semester. That means that instead of me lecturing to you in class or mixing lecture with questions, discussion, and planned activities, you will view and answer questions about a pre-recorded lecture before coming to class. Then we will use our assigned class time together to focus on questions, discussion, and more active-learning activities. To be prepared for class I expect you to have done all of the reading and viewed the lecture before coming to the corresponding class.

PlayPosit Modules
All of the pre-recorded lectures are embedded directly in the course calendar using a program called PlayPosit, which allows me to insert questions directly into the lecture videos and other course videos. To view the video content, you will need to set up a (free) account with PlayPosit. As you view the videos, it will require you to answer questions as you go. You will be allowed to re-answer each question until you get it right, and PlayPosit will record your participation for course credit. You must complete every question of every video in order to satisfy the requirements of the course.

What to Expect

For many of you, this may be your first humanities course in college. Humanities courses, as a general rule, are structured differently from courses in other disciplines, in ways that can be confusing or misleading. Some ways in which they are different are especially important to understand and keep in mind all semester.

The most important way in which humanities courses are different from courses in other disciplines, is that readings, lecture, and sections are cumulative, rather than redundant. In a math, physics, or economics class, the goal of the course is for you to understand a fixed body of material that we would expect to be mastered by anyone taking a similar course at a similar institution. This material will all be covered in the textbook, it will all or mostly be covered in lecture, and it will be reviewed in sections. In that way, those courses are structured in a way that is redundant – you have multiple opportunities to learn the material, and some of you may find that you learn best from the textbook, while others find lecture the most helpful. I expect that all of you are familiar with this kind of course structure, and so you may naïvely expect that it is how this course will work, as well.

But humanities courses are not like this at all. There may be no fixed body of material that we would expect to be mastered by anyone taking a similar course at a similar institution, but only a glimpse, chosen by the instructor, of a small corner of the field of study. Readings, lecture, and sections are therefore almost never redundant in humanities courses. Rather, each of these are cumulative. Every humanities course that I know of is structured around the assumption that every student does the readings before the appropriate assigned class, uses the assumption of shared familiarity with the readings as the starting point for analysis and deeper understanding, in lecture, and uses lecture as the launching point for activities or discussion in breakout sections. You should therefore not expect the lecture to repeat what is in the readings; rather, you need to know what is in the readings in order to be prepared in lecture to take it further.

The same goes in this class, even though you can review the lectures online at your leisure. You should plan to do all of the reading and follow all of the instruction to prepare for class before class meets, and make sure that you have set aside enough time to do so.

How to Be Successful in This Class

Time Commitment
This is a four-unit class. That means that it is 25% of the credit load of a full-time student. Full-time employment is 40 hours per week, and so that means that I am entitled to expect you to put an average of ten hours into this course, every week, all semester long. Setting aside one hour a week for breakout sections and two and a half hours for class, that means that you should expect to spend over six full quality hours, on average, between the readings, assignments, and office hours every week.

If you spend your homework time listening to music, or intermittently talking to friends or following Instagram or Twitter or Tik Tok or Tinder, that is not quality time, and you should expect that you will need to put in correspondingly more time, overall. That is the minimum that I expect from every one of you, and if you are not prepared to put in that work, then you should drop this course now. A common rule of thumb for every college course is that you should expect to put in three hours outside of class for every one hour of in-class time. If you followed that rule of thumb, which I recommend for you to get an ‘A’ in this or any other class at USC, then you should actually expect to spend ten hours of out-of-class time on Phil 166, on average, every week, all semester long. You should plan ahead and schedule the time for this course in advance, every week, for throughout the semester.

Reading
For most of the semester, we will be reading primary source texts – original articles that are not written as a textbook for students, but are primary sources for key developments in practical ethics over the past fifty years. You should not expect to follow every word of these articles on your first read, or even on your second. But the patience required in order to master primary source argumentative writing is one of the key skills that it is the goal of this or any university-level humanities course to advance. You cannot acquire this skill by reading crib notes, searching YouTube supplementary lectures, or asking your roommate what they learned last semester. Learning to read argumentative texts is like learning to speak a new foreign language. The only way to acquire this skill is to practice it – over and over again, without fail, week after week after week. So do not give up on doing the reading each week, and do not rely on anyone else to tell you what is in it. You should plan and expect to read many of the assigned readings twice. The readings that are assigned are all correspondingly much shorter than what you might expect in another university humanities course in a different field, such as literature or history. They are shorter because they are harder and you may often need to read them twice, not because they have less to say.

Talking to Professor and Teaching Assistants
If you do the work required for this course, week in and week out, and you seek help outside of class from me and your teaching assistant with the material that is the most difficult, then you will be successful and get a grade that you will be happy with. I expect you to work hard, but the course is designed for consistent effort to be rewarded.

Student Contact Hours and Course Communication

Student Contact Hours - usually called 'office hours' - are hours that every instructor at USC sets aside each week to talk to students outside of class. 'Office hours' does not mean that these are the only hours that a professor spends in their office; it means that these are the hours that students are welcome to drop by without an appointment. You should make it your practice in this class and in every other that you take at USC to make regular use of your professors' office hours. You have made considerable sacrifices to attend an elite research university like USC, and faculty are USC's number one resource. My best general advice to you as students is to try to get to know them outside of class.

The teaching assistants and I have all scheduled different student contact hours each week, so that you should be able to make at least one of ours, no matter what your other scheduled commitments. Links to the Zoom rooms where we are each available for contact hours are at the bottom of the course webpage. You may come to student contact hours with specific followup questions about any course material, for help with your assignments or paper, or just to chat.

We also have a course Blackboard site, which I will use for exactly two purposes: for you to submit assignments and papers, and for you to receive feedback on assignments and papers and to see your grades. I think that you will find that this course website is easier, faster, and more intuitive to navigate.

Finally, the teaching assistants and I are all available by e-mail, and all of our e-mail addresses are available at the bottom of the main course webpage. I do not generally reply to e-mail outside of work hours, but I make every effort to respond to e-mails within 24 hours, whatever my other commitments are.

Evaluation

Your grade will be determined by the following, subject to the proviso that to receive a C- or better in the course, you must receive a D or better in all four of the major course components:

Active Participation:    25%
    Lecture Quizzes:    10%
    Class grade:        5%
    Section grade:        10%

Assignments:            25%
    Week 2 assignment:    5%
    Week 4 assignment:    5%
    Week 6 assignment:    5%
    Week 8 assignment:    5%
    Week 10 assignment: 5%

Paper:                    30%
    Draft:                5%
    Term Paper:            25%

Final Examination:        20%
    Exam                  20%

Grade Scale and Deadlines

Wherever possible, I will use numerical grades corresponding to a 90-80-70-60 scale. So 93.4% and higher is an A, 90.0%-93.3% is an A-, 86.7%-89.9% is a B+, 83.4%-86.6% is a B, and so on. You should interpret every numerical score that you receive from me or your teaching assistant in this way.

The deadlines for all quiz questions, assignments, and papers are clearly marked on the course syllabus, in the course calendar, and on the instructions for each assignment or paper. In general, all readings, lectures, and quiz questions should be completed before the start of class at 2pm on Mondays and Wednesdays, and biweekly assignments must be completed and turned in midnight on Wednesdays.

Late assignments and papers will be subject to a penalty of 10%, or one full letter grade, per day late, unless an extension is granted in writing in advance by me or your teaching assistant.

Active Participation

The first component of your course grade is for Active Participation. Active participation in the course means coming prepared to every class and every section meeting having done all reading and consumed all additional course materials, including supplementary video, audio, and course handouts, and answered all questions before class begins, as well as participating actively in class as an active, participatory learner, and not just a passive recipient of ideas. Active participation means participating appropriately and respectfully both in sections and in discussion threads on the course Slack, and attending student contact hours. Success in this class will be determined not just by how much material you passively receive or master, but by how critically you think about it, and how much you make it your own.

There are three distinct components of the course grade for active participation: attendance, quizzes, and your section grade.

Lecture Quizzes
Your lecture quiz grade is recorded by PlayPosit as you view the pre-recorded lecture videos and answer questions to encourage understanding or reflection as you go. PlayPosit will allow you to answer every question until you get it right and will not let you advance the video until you get it right, and so if your grade in this category will only be less than 100% if you do not complete all of the lectures.

Class Grade
You can earn points toward your class grade in any of the following ways: confirmed attendance during class (1pt each), attendance in Professor Schroeder's office hours (1pt each), constructive contributions that engage with another student on the course Slack (1pt each), or valuable contributions in class as acknowledge by Professor Schroeder (1pt each), up to a maximum of fifty points.

Section Grade
Your teaching assistant will explain the standards for your section grade, which will be based on active participation in sections.

Assignments

There are five roughly bi-weekly regular assignments for the course, with due dates spread out in alternate weeks over the course of the semester. Each assignment will come with its own set of instructions and seeks to combine development of general philosophical skills with engagement with particular course material. All assignments, as well as the final paper, will be turned in through a TurnItIn link on the course Blackboard site.

Papers

The instructions for the term paper will be distributed separately. You will be required to submit a partial draft of your paper in week 12, and your complete paper in week 14.

Final Examination

There will be a final examination for the course, to be held during the university’s scheduled exam period for this course. Barring pandemic-related complications, the exam will be held in-person and will consist of short-answer questions that you will answer directly on the exam booklet.

The final exam will have two kinds of questions: content-based questions, and skills-based questions. Together, they will test your ability to not only recall, but to explain and also apply key course concepts and exercise the philosophical skills that you will have developed such as identifying the problems in arguments, summarizing the argument from a passage of text in premise-conclusion form, posing counterexamples to necessary and sufficient conditions, identifying disanalogies, and comparing the plausibility of theoretical principles by testing them against cases.

Every content-based question that appears on the exam will come directly from a list of questions that will be pre-circulated prior to the exam. Every skills-based question that appears on the exam will be a variant on an exercise that you will already have done in your homework. There will be clear examples throughout the semester of what satisfactory and unsatisfactory answers to similar questions look like, and by taking advantage of these examples, you will shine on the exam.

Accommodating Disabilities

It is essential for every student to have the same opportunity for success in the classroom, so I look forward to cooperating with any student who is registered with disability services to satisfy all recommended accommodations, and I actively look for ways to structure my course so that accommodations are not necessary. In order for me to accommodate you, you need to bring this registration to my attention at the beginning of the semester. If I don’t know that you require special accommodations, I cannot arrange for them. If you are not registered with disability services and believe that you may have a legitimate need for some accommodation, you should contact them at https://dsp.usc.edu/. A list of common accommodations recommended by DSP is given here: https://dsp.usc.edu/accommodations/.

Note on Academic Honesty

Academic dishonesty in any form will not be tolerated. This means that the consequence of any form of plagiarism or cheating will result in an ‘F’ for the course, and students will be referred to student judicial affairs for possible further penalties. See https://sjacs.usc.edu/students/academic-integrity/. If you have any questions whatsoever about what constitutes plagiarism or academic dishonesty, you should ask me directly in office hours, after class, or by e-mail; this paragraph constitutes your notice that professed ignorance of any kind about the standards for academic honesty is never an excuse, no matter whether it is actual or feigned.

Schedule of Meetings

Please refer to the course calendar on the main course webpage for a complete calendar of all course events and instructios for all readings, assignments, and lectures.

Statement on Academic Conduct and Support Systems

Academic Conduct:
Plagiarism – presenting someone else’s ideas as your own, either verbatim or recast in your own words – is a serious academic offense with serious consequences. Please familiarize yourself with the discussion of plagiarism in SCampus in Part B, Section 11, “Behavior Violating University Standards” policy.usc.edu/scampus-part-b. Other forms of academic dishonesty are equally unacceptable. See additional information in SCampus and university policies on scientific misconduct, http://policy.usc.edu/scientific-misconduct.

Support Systems:
Student Counseling Services (SCS) – (213) 740-7711 – 24/7 on call Free and confidential mental health treatment for students, including short-term psychotherapy, group counseling, stress fitness workshops, and crisis intervention. engemannshc.usc.edu/counseling

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline – 1 (800) 273-8255
Provides free and confidential emotional support to people in suicidal crisis or emotional distress 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org

Relationship and Sexual Violence Prevention Services
(RSVP) – (213) 740-4900 – 24/7 on call Free and confidential therapy services, workshops, and training for situations related to gender-based harm. engemannshc.usc.edu/rsvp

Sexual Assault Resource Center
For more information about how to get help or help a survivor, rights, reporting options, and additional resources, visit the website: sarc.usc.edu

Office of Equity and Diversity (OED)/Title IX Compliance – (213) 740-5086
Works with faculty, staff, visitors, applicants, and students around issues of protected class. equity.usc.edu

Bias Assessment Response and Support
Incidents of bias, hate crimes and microaggressions need to be reported allowing for appropriate investigation and response. studentaffairs.usc.edu/bias-assessment-response-support

The Office of Disability Services and Programs
Provides certification for students with disabilities and helps arrange relevant accommodations. dsp.usc.edu Student Support and Advocacy – (213) 821-4710 Assists students and families in resolving complex issues adversely affecting their success as a student EX: personal, financial, and academic. studentaffairs.usc.edu/ssa

Diversity at USC
Information on events, programs and training, the Diversity Task Force (including representatives for each school), chronology, participation, and various resources for students. diversity.usc.edu

USC Emergency Information
Provides safety and other updates, including ways in which instruction will be continued if an officially declared emergency makes travel to campus infeasible. emergency.usc.edu

USC Department of Public Safety
UPC: (213) 740-4321 HSC: (323) 442-1000 24-hour emergency or to report a crime. Provides overall safety to USC community. dps.usc.edu