PHI-1012-70L: Ethics

Course Information

Examines human life, experience, and thought to discover and develop the principles and values for pursuing a more fulfilled existence. This course examines ethical theories designed to both justify moral judgments, as well as apply these ethical theories to a selection of personal and social issues in the world today. This is a statewide Guaranteed Transfer course in the GT-AH3 category.

For details on Parts of Term, please visit: Parts of Term.

Instructor Information

Course flow:

Each week, you should work through the module in roughly this order: watch the video, do the reading, complete the quiz, and then participate in the discussion. The quiz is meant to help make sure the basic ideas are in place before discussion. The discussion is where you practice using those ideas with others.

Required Text/Course Materials/Technology

• Shafer-Landau, Russ. Living Ethics: An Introduction with Readings. (Any Edition) OUP.
• A PersonifyAI.app subscription (10$ for 1 semester) will be required for writing your final paper. This is non-negotiable and must be purchased early in the semester. YOU MUST USE YOUR SCHOOL EMAIL WHEN REGISTERING. (Further instructions will be provided in class.)

Course Calendar

The professor has the right to adjust the content and structure of the course.

Course Specific Policies and Information

Attendance

Regular participation in all course activities is critical for academic success. Please review the College Non-Attendance Policy.

Students establish attendance in online and real-time remote courses by completing an academic activity based on course content. As defined by the Federal Department of Education, merely logging into the course site or introducing oneself to the class does not count as attendance. Some examples of successfully attending class include participation in a content-related discussion in the D2L discussion board or in WebEx/Zoom, taking a quiz, submitting an assignment, or contacting your instructor with a content related question. Students who have not participated by 11:59 PM on the deadline date will be dropped. Similarly, the last date of academic attendance must be reported to Financial Aid for students who do not earn a D or better; students who have not been in regular attendance may experience financial aid ramifications.

To establish attendance in this class, you must complete the human proof assignment described below.

Course Assignments

Your grade is made up of the following categories:

Human Proof - The first assignment is an unfortunate necessity today, but gives us a chance to have some fun. Given the rise of fraudulent (LLM backed) students, it’s important that we can weed out anyone here that doesn’t have a beating heart. For any of us to get something out of this class, we need to be able to trust we’re actually having legitimate conversations and we’re not merely wasting our time with bots. For that reason, the first assignment requires that you prove you are a human. To be clear, this assignment is ridiculously easy, if you are in fact a human. Details are in D2L. This assignment is not graded, but it is required: it must be completed before any other assignment, and it is how you establish attendance in this course.

Participation - The participation grade is earned by actively engaging in the weekly discussion boards. These activities include the following: discussions/debates, peer writing evaluation workshops, group critical analysis sessions, and others. These are largely completion based. They are meant to be low stress ways for you to engage with others and develop your skills. (There are certain philosophical skills that are simply impossible to develop without engaging with others.) There may be situations where I’d like to discuss your posts further in a video call. There may even be situations where I’d prefer not to grade the post until we discuss it further.

Quizzes - There are quizzes for every topic we cover, all of which are on D2L. These are due each week, alongside the discussion for that week. This is meant to keep you engaged with the material as we move through the course. If you wait till the deadline and some issue arises, you will very likely not get a mass extension on all of the quizzes.

These are simple multiple choice/multi-select questions asking about the course material. These should not take you too long if you are engaging with the material. But, if you do have trouble, don’t hesitate to reach out. You have multiple attempts on each quiz specifically so that you can come ask questions when you need help finding an answer.

Final Paper - The final paper is where you demonstrate the skills you’ve developed on the question you chose. It is not graded just on the final product, but on how you meet milestones and build on feedback through an iterative process. You will be required to start halfway through the semester, and there will be two peer review discussions (one on outlines and another on the paper itself) to help you develop your ideas and skills.

To steer clear of funny business, you will be required to write the paper from start to finish inside the provided writing environment, PersonifyAI.app.

Late work policies

I grant at most one extension for an assignment, and generally speaking I do not grant mass extensions. That means if you miss submitting several weekly quizzes, then I will likely only grant an extension on one. Peer review discussions must be completed during their assigned week to receive credit, and they cannot be made up after the fact.

Each extension is contingent on being professional. As college students, you should recognize yourselves as professional students. (Anything less, and you’re not fully appreciating the level of investment you’re making.) That means I expect you to communicate timely, clearly, and respectfully. In addition, it means you have realistic standards for yourself and your instructors. I will work with you on extensions so long as you are professional in your requests and expectations. Here’s an example of a bad email:

“hey I missed Thursday three weeks ago”

Can you spot all of the errors? The recipient isn’t addressed. There is no signature. It is not clear which class or section the student is in. The first letter isn’t capitalized, and there’s no punctuation. These are all issues that might seem small but show a lack of attention to detail and likewise a lack of respect for the recipient. Worst of all, there is no actual question. It is just a statement, meaning it is asking the recipient (i.e. the instructor) to figure out what you need and what you’re looking for. Finally, this email is way too late. If you (expect to) miss a deadline, you need to handle it as soon as possible. Here is a better approach:

“Dear Dr. Conte, I hope this finds you well. I am in your PHI-1012-70L class. You may have noticed I was unable to submit my finished paper by the deadline on Friday (Nov 13). If possible, I would sincerely appreciate an extension to submit the assignment for full or partial credit until the following Monday (Nov 16). I understand that it is my responsibility to complete assignments by the due date and there is no guarantee that I get an extension. Thank you for your consideration and have a great day! Billy Pilgrim S0123456789”

Plagiarism and Artificial Intelligence (AI)

Plagiarism. If you are having difficulty with a paper or MLA citations, please communicate with me. I’ll be glad to work with you. Plagiarism, in my view, is something students resort to when they feel desperate. If you are behind, not sure you understand the assignment, are struggling with the assignment, don’t understand how the MLA citation system works, or a similar situation, please get in touch with me. We will work one-on-one to get you back on track. This is a much better solution than turning in work which is not yours. Many students don’t always realize that in academic communities, plagiarism is a serious offense, and is grounds for failing an assignment or course and/or disciplinary action. Plagiarism means copying passages directly from the text of any source, without quotation marks and citations, or not citing summarized or paraphrased information. The written work you submit must be original: written entirely by you alone and not previously submitted in another class. All quotations, summaries and paraphrases (restatements of others’ ideas) need to be cited within your paper. No credit will be given for plagiarized papers and/or assignments. Students who plagiarize will be referred to the Provost.

Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Imagine asking someone, “Hey, I’m hungry. Could you go eat lunch for me?”. You’re not asking if they’ll bring you lunch. You’re asking that they will eat lunch and in doing so satisfy your hunger. Absurd, right? Someone else eating doesn’t do anything for your empty stomach.

Now imagine doing the same for learning. “Hey, I’d like to learn how to swim. Could you learn how for me?” If the only thing that happens is your friend learns how to swim, you should still steer clear of the deep end.

There are some things that cannot be done for you. Learning is one of these things. Your use of external resources -whatever they are- should always be done in service of your learning, helping you master the material and skills better.

Completing assignments with regurgitated LLM responses will not lead to you learning (nor passing).

Other Policies

The professor reserves the right to change this syllabus (and course) at any time.

Grade Scale

Point Distribution

This course is weighted by category rather than by a fixed point total. Your overall grade is the weighted average of the categories listed under Course Assignments above: Participation (30%), Quizzes (30%), and the Final Paper sequence (40%, split evenly across four milestones — the Personify Notes, the Outline & Review, the Paper & Review, and the Revised Paper). The Human Proof assignment is required but ungraded. Individual assignment point values are shown in D2L, and the D2L gradebook is configured to match these weights.

Institutional Outcomes

Graduates of the Community College of Denver are prepared to be successful on a personal, professional, and global level. For a full description of these institutional outcomes please see Institutional Policies module on this courses D2L shell.

In this class we will focus on:

Effective Communication: Students will communicate a central guiding idea to a defined audience, for a concrete purpose, employing effective conventions in the service of meaning.

Critical Thinking: Students will analyze information and ideas from multiple perspectives and articulate an argument or opinion or a conclusion based on that analysis

Intercultural Literacy: Students will apply a set of cognitive, affective, and behavioral skills to effectively interact in a variety of cultural contexts.

Standard Competencies/Outcomes

1. Explain major ethical concepts and describe the problems and/or issues in clarifying them that are used to comprehend and express moral or ethical problems.
2. Analyze major ethical theories.
3. Explain each major ethical theory from the perspective of a follower to identify what is significant in a particular situation or context for that theory.
4. Justify how each ethical theory reaches conclusions about what should be done regarding specific moral problems.
5. Reflect on the logical implications and consequences of the conclusions that each ethical theory reaches.
6. Demonstrate philosophical and/or logical thinking through writing and other forms of assessment.

Topical Outline

1. Metaethics
2. Normative Ethical Theories
3. Applications of Ethical Theories