Your grade for the course will be based on two papers (30% each), a final exam (30%), and short commentaries (10% total).
Writing a paper gives you the opportunity to engage more seriously with two or more of our course topics, deepen your understanding of what other people have said about those topics, and develop your own views and analytical skills. This is also a major component of the assigned work for this course. It is also (for most people) the hardest part.
The mandatory paper assignments are as follows:
There is also an optional third paper, due on the last day of class before the final exam (Monday July 3). You may submit a third paper if you have already submitted the first two papers, and you don't like your grades (or you just want to write a third paper). Your best two papers will count towards your final grade.
The standards for philosophy papers are rather demanding. Also, they are very specific to philosophy: a philosophy paper is a very different thing from a paper for, say, an English or Geography course, and correspondingly, the things that will earn you high marks are different. Many students score lower marks on their first philosophy paper than they expect (and lower marks than they have the ability to attain), simply because they have not sufficiently understood what is expected. Above all, you should aim for CLARITY (make sure your reader knows, at every point in your paper, EXACTLY what it is you are trying to say), and LOGICAL PRECISION (make sure the logical structure of your argument is extremely clear, and that you are not making any logical mistakes). We'll talk more about how to write a philosophy paper in class, but you should also read this article.
Papers will be graded on a scale from 0 to 40 (or, exceptionally, 0 to 43). An explanation of the grading scale is available here.
To submit your paper, you need to do two things: (i) give me a HARD COPY, in class; (ii) submit an electronic copy to TurnItIn.
How to submit a paper to TurnItIn:
If you have any technical problems with the TurnItIn site, please contact me.
The final exam tests your knowledge and understanding of the course material and readings. You are not required, or expected, to be original in your answers to the exam questions.
Further details are available here.
The final exam will be graded on a scale from 0 to 40.
The purpose of these assignments is simply to encourage you (a) to do the readings before class, and (b) to think about the points that the authors are trying to make. This will make the class time more productive, and will make sure that you are not hit with an unmanageable backlog of reading to catch up on just before the final. (The short commentaries are not intended to be a big additional burden: once you've done the reading, it should only take you a few minutes to write your commentary.)
Aim to answer the following two questions, for each reading:
(1) What is the main point (or one of the main points) the author is trying to make? Explain how the author makes this point. (Try to pick the most important point that the author is making. If the author is making several points that seem of equal importance, you could either choose to focus on one, or discuss a few.)
(2) State one (or more) comment(s), or question(s), that you have about this reading. (You might think that the author is wrong on particular points, or you might not understand what (s)he is saying.)
A short commentary should be short: you need not write more than two or three sentences in response to question (1), and one or two sentences for question (2).
Note: some of the readings for this course are hard. As a result, you may find that, for some of the readings, you just have literally no idea what the author is trying to say. If this happens, to the point where you really feel you cannot even try to answer question (1), just answer (2) (be as precise as you can about where in the reading you get stuck, and make sure you talk to me before, during or after class, so that the end of the day you are at least not completely lost). I will not be harsh with the grading on these assignments if you have made a sincere effort to try and understand the reading.
Short commentaries will be graded on a scale from 0 to 3. Your best six scores will count towards your grade. I won't write comments on these, but if your comments and questions don't get addressed during class time, I strongly encourage you to use the office hours and/or talk to me after class about any outstanding ones. You may also wish to use the office hour before class to clarify your understanding of the reading assigned for that day's class; this is fine too.