| Assignments | Paper 1 Paper 2 Final Exam |
|---|---|
| Contact | How to get in touch with Michael Green. |
| Grades | Qualitative and quantitative explanations of what grades mean. |
| Notes | My perspective on each session. |
| Pictures | Last day of class. |
| Sakai | Use Sakai for announcements, due dates, the roster, and e-reserve readings. |
| Syllabus | The plan for each session in glorious PDF. |
| Writing | My advice about philosophy papers. Worth every penny it costs to click. |
This course covers the best that philosophy has to offer: ethics, knowledge, religion, the self, and the value of life. If you don’t find something to like here, you probably just don’t like philosophy.
It can be profitably taken as an introduction to the field or as an elective for those majoring in another field. No background is presumed. But since the line between introductory and advanced is quite narrow in philosophy even those who have taken some courses may enjoy it too.
The syllabus is very much like the one I used several years ago. The web site for that class should give you a good idea of what the course will be like.
Students taking this course will become familiar with problems of philosophy that meet the following criteria. First, studying them gives insight into questions about how to live and our place in the universe. Second, the written material is exceptionally good. Third, the materials and questions are representative of the discipline of philosophy. This last point means that this course serves as an introduction to the discipline of academic philosophy. The first two points mean that the course should be valuable even to those who will pursue other academic interests.
The course emphasizes arguments and writing. Students who successfully complete this course will learn how to construct arguments, how to interpret analytical writing, how to raise objections to arguments, and how to write extended analytical essays of their own.
