Updated (but still partial) syllabus

SYLLABUS Courses: PPE Philosophy Seminar and Philosophy Tutorial Seminar Time: Thursday (and sometimes on Tuesday) 1:15-4:00 Seminar Place: Kravis 166 (when not online or outside) Tutorial Time: Tuesday, by appointment Professor: Paul Hurley Contact Info: paul.hurley@cmc.edu Office Hours: W 2:00-4:00, F 2:00-4:00, ABA INTRODUCTION This is the syllabus for both the PPE Philosophy Tutorial and the PPE Philosophy Seminar. Our focus will be on areas of philosophy of particular relevance to economics and politics – ethics, political philosophy, the philosophy of social science, and the philosophy of law. It is important to keep in view throughout these courses one distinctive contribution of philosophy to the PPE triad. Economics and political science are disciplines that are by their own methodological assumptions descriptive rather than prescriptive (political theory and jurisprudence are outliers here). They are inquiries into what is the case with respect to market interactions and political interactions. Ethics and political philosophy, by contrast, are primarily prescriptive. They inquire into what we ought to do individually and collectively – into which institutions are legitimate and which actions are justified. Economics determines which interactions are more efficient, but not, by its own admission, which are more just or fair, or whether and to what extent efficiency (as economists understand it) is a value, and if so how it weighs against competing values. The primary focus of political science is upon questions such as which coercive political structures are more stable; the primary focus of political philosophy is upon which ones are more or less legitimate, and when coercive use of force by the state is justified. When we ask not just whether a group can succeed in seceding, but whether it is justified in doing so, we have moved beyond empirical inquiry into ethics and political philosophy. When we ask not just whether we can win a war, but whether the war is just, we are engaged not just in political science, but in political philosophy. Such inquiry is important; indeed, much of the point of inquiry into what we ought to believe is to inform our decisions about what we ought to do. TUTORIAL The tutorial component of this course is loosely modeled upon the traditional Oxbridge tutorial. Each of you will be expected to produce six 5 page tutorial papers during the course of the term, and six 1-2 page (or the equivalent) comments on the tutorial papers of your peers. I will divide you into two groups, a and b. Each group will have a tutorial paper due roughly every other week (consult the syllabus), initially on a designated topic (the designated topics will be written in the final syllabus), and a comment due on the paper of a designated member of the alternative group roughly every other week. Tutorial day is Tuesday. Papers must be emailed to your commentator and to me by 3:00 PM on Monday (as a word doc); the commentator must come to the tutorial with copies of her comments for me and for the author. We will have 55 minute tutorials, scheduled on the hour, throughout the day on Tuesday. Your paper and comments will provide the basis for a three way discussion of the assigned text. If you are the writer, you are expected during the tutorial to defend your answer to the tutorial question, including your exposition of the relevant arguments in the original text and, when appropriate, the structure and content of your own arguments and criticisms. If you are the commentator, you are expected to evaluate the writer’s arguments, the extent to which he or she does justice to the relevant arguments in the assigned text, and the extent to which he or she answers the Tutorial Question effectively. If there are mistakes, lacuna, irrelevant tangents, flawed arguments, and/or unsupported claims in the paper, it is the commentator’s job to find them and point them out. The quality of the tutorial discussion is incorporated into my overall evaluation of your papers and comments. Each tutorial paper (including discussion) will be worth 1/8 of your overall tutorial grade; your 6 comments (including discussion) will together be worth 1/4 of your tutorial grade. SEMINAR Although some of the meetings of our seminar will be on Tuesdays (particularly at the beginning and the end of term), our primary seminar day and time is Thursday, from 1:15 to 4:00. Each of you will be expected to post on the blog most weeks, with a few self-selected bye weeks. At least 7 of your weekly posts should be original posts on the material to be discussed in the upcoming seminar; some of the others should be comments on posts by others. The original posts must be posted to the blog by midnight the day before the seminar. You must contribute at least 5 of these 7 original posts before the midsemester break (including one for our seminar meeting on January 19th). The focus of these blog posts should be the arguments in the text that will be discussed in the upcoming seminar; your posts will provide a jumping off point for class discussion. These posts will account for 2/5 of your seminar grade. 1/5 of your seminar grade will be determined by the quality of your participation in class discussion. Half of that grade will be determined by yours truly, the other half (confidentially) by your peers. The final 2/5 of your grade will be based upon a 15-20 page paper due at the end of the semester. POLICIES Attendance: Come, come on time, come prepared, and come to class with a copy in hand of the text to be discussed in seminar/tutorial. Lack of attendance (and chronic lateness) will adversely impact your grade, quite dramatically at the extremes. Class time takes priority over other commitments. When we are in person, class is a screen free zone. Be sure to have hard copies of the relevant texts to bring to in person class meetings. More on Attendance: If at any point in the semester you are under mandated Covid quarantine/isolation, I will make arrangements with you to continue your instruction on Zoom during that period. These arrangements will be adjusted to fit the circumstances, and what constitute appropriate adjustments in the circumstances will be at my discretion. If the majority of the class at any point is in quarantine/isolation, for example, we might temporarily move the seminar and tutorials entirely on to Zoom. If, as is more likely, only a small number of students are required to quarantine/isolate at some point, I might set up separate small group or one-on-one meetings with these students, or a zoom tutorial meeting for an impacted tutorial pair. These are only examples of the options to which I might have recourse, and they are only options for students in covid quarantine. Video Etiquette: Please observe the following policies so that we can collectively work to build a productive classroom when online:  Arrive at class on time, as per usual.  Videos must be turned on and kept on for the duration of class. Much of communication, even on Zoom, is non-verbal.  Mute yourself when not speaking if you are in an environment with distracting background noise.  Minimize disruptions (inform your cohabitants when you have class time and not to interrupt). Put other applications in “Do Not Disturb” or “Downtime”. Academic Integrity: I REALLY hate cheating! Possible violations of standards for academic integrity will be reported to the Academic Standards Committee and prosecuted most aggressively. If in doubt, cite!! More generally, students are expected to know and to follow the college’s guidelines for academic honesty. Academic misconduct can occur in a variety of ways, including (but not limited to) cheating, fabrication, and plagiarism. Please note that the College’s statement of academic integrity specifies that “all rules and standards of academic integrity apply equally to all electronic media … [which] is especially true for any form of plagiarism, ranging from submission of all or part of a paper obtained from an internet source to failure to cite properly an internet source.” Accordingly, students are prohibited from submitting papers that include text generated from a large-scale language model (LLM) such as ChatGPT. Students are expected to know and respect the boundary between using these technologies to generate text and using them for editing or polishing original text that the student has personally authored. When in doubt about whether some academic practice is acceptable, ask the instructor for assistance. Always err on the side of avoiding misconduct Extensions: Because of the cooperative, synchronized nature of this academic enterprise, it is very difficult to grant individual extensions for tutorial papers. Such extensions will only be granted in the most extreme cases. Mutual respect: Much of what we read is likely to make some among us uncomfortable, perhaps even to cause offense. Some of these readings certainly make me uncomfortable, and I find some of the views expressed within them offensive. But they engage with important and often extremely influential ideas, and if these influential ideas have uncomfortable and even offensive implications, it is vital to explore how and why this is true; indeed, it is irresponsible not to do so. These classes will not work as spaces of shared inquiry unless we are prepared to challenge each other’s claims and arguments and to explore controversial ideas. But they also will not work effectively as such spaces if we fail to treat each other with consideration and respect. We will proceed accordingly. Visiting Authors: I am making arrangements for some of the authors we will be reading this term to meet with us during our seminar time to discuss their work, some in person and some online. These direct, student driven discussions with the authors are an extraordinary opportunity; be prepared to make the most of them! Unless otherwise specified, plan to post on the blog for these meetings, and proceed on the assumption that the authors will have access to your blog posts. In particular cases some of our authors may prefer written questions to blog posts (I have offered them the option); we will adjust accordingly. TEXTS You are required to obtain hard copies of certain texts for the course, and I will distribute excerpts from many others electronically in PDF format or as handouts. The texts that you are required to obtain for the two courses are John Locke’s 2nd Treatise, Karl Marx’s The Marx-Engels Reader, John Rawls’ A Theory of Justice, Tommie Shelby’s Dark Ghettos, Antonin Scalia’s A Matter of Interpretation, Amartya Sen’s Development as Freedom, Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and Elizabeth Anderson’s Private Government. Please keep in mind that the original purpose of the PPE stipend was to defer costs of the purchase of these books. Among the texts from which I will provide excerpts as PDFs or handouts are Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, John Rawls’ Briefer Restatement, Cheryl Harris’s “Whiteness as Property,” Corey Brettschneider’s Democratic Rights, Arthur Ripstein’s “Roads to Freedom” chapter from his Force and Freedom, Simon Blackburn’s Ruling Passions, David Gauthier’s Rational Deliberation, Seana Shiffrin’s Speech Matters, Jean Hampton’s “Feminist Contractarianism,” and Elizabeth Anderson’s “Unstrapping the Straightjacket of Preference.” SCHEDULE We will be behind and perhaps even ahead of this schedule at various points during the term. Such departures will be announced in class; you are responsible for keeping track of them. Jan. 17: Seminar. Introduction and Hobbes (Leviathan chs. XIII-XVII) (Handout). Jan. 19: Seminar. Locke, 2nd Treatise, chs. I-V (with a particular focus on V); excerpt from Adam Smith’s Lectures on Jurisprudence (Handout) (Everyone posts on the blog) Jan. 24: Locke, 2nd Treatise, chs. VI-XIII, a writes Tutorial Question: In Par. 139 Locke maintains that the government can never have the power to “take…any part of the subjects property, without their own consent,” but in 140 he suggests that their own consent just is “the consent of the majority.” This might seem to render the subject vulnerable to the tyranny of the majority. What are Locke’s grounds for believing that in a legitimate political society such appearances would be misleading? Jan. 26: Seminar. Cheryl Harris, “Whiteness as Property” (Handout). Before break, 1709-1750; after break, 1750-1791. Jan. 31: Tutorial. Scalia, A Matter of Interpretation, pp. 3-37, b writes Tutorial Question: What arguments does Scalia offer against the view that a judge’s objective in interpreting statutes should be “to give effect to ‘the intent of the legislature,’” [16] that is, against the view that what judges should be looking for is “the subjective intent of the enacting legislature” – “subjective legislative intent?” [17] Feb. 2: Seminar. Antonin Scalia (and commentators). A Matter of Interpretation cont’d, Scalia/Tribe/Dworkin exchange, pp. 37-47, 65-94, 115-127, and 133-149 . Feb. 7: Tutorial. Corey Brettschneider, excerpt from Democratic Rights (handout), a writes Tutorial Question: Scalia argues that the commitment to a democratic form of government, properly understood, dictates his textualist/originalist approach to statutory interpretation. What is Brettschneider’s value theory of democracy? Does commitment to a democratic form of government thus understood dictate Scalia’s textualist/originalist approach to statutory interpretation? Feb. 9: Seminar. Adam Smith, A Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part I, Secs. I and II, and Sec III, chap. II Feb. 14: Tutorial. Excerpts from David Gauthier’s Rational Deliberation and from Simon Blackburn’s Ruling Passions, b writes Tutorial Question: Each of these philosophers poses a challenge to the economist’s traditional rational choice theory that resonates with elements of Smith’s account of the reasonable person. Present and critically evaluate the argument presented by one or the other of these philosophers. Feb. 16: Seminar. Adam Smith, A Theory of Moral Sentiments, Part II, Sec. II Feb. 21: Tutorial. Rousseau, excerpts from his “Discourse on the Origins of Inequality” and “On the Social Contract,” (handout), a writes Tutorial Question: In the “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality,” Rousseau concludes his account of the origin of society, and in particular of the role of property and the division of labor in the origin of society, having demonstrated, in his view, why the resulting society “gave new fetters to the weak, and new forces to the rich, irretrievably destroyed natural liberty, established forever the law of property and of inequality, changed adroit usurpation into an irrevocable right, and for the profit of a few ambitious men henceforth subjected the entire human race to labor, servitude, and misery.” (70) What is his argument here for this sorry state of affairs, and what is the centerpiece of his prescription, in “On the Social Contract,” for escaping it? Feb. 23: Seminar. Marx, “On The Jewish Question,” in The Marx-Engels Reader. Feb. 28: Tutorial. Marx, “The German Ideology,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, b writes (interleague play with the sophomore Murtys), b writes Tutorial Question: Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau all provide accounts of human beings as leaving their natural condition to enter into society. In “The German Ideology” Marx claims that society IS our natural condition (“as long as man remains in natural society” [160]), and that it is the natural forces governing society that divide our activity such that each person’s “own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him.” [160] What is Marx’s argument in “The German Ideology” for this conclusion that society is not an escape from nature to secure our freedom, but a natural condition that enslaves us? March 2: Seminar. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, ch. I (esp. secs. 1-6); ch. II (esp. secs. 10-15) March 7: Tutorial. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, ch III, secs. 20-24 and 29, ch IV, secs. 31-33 and 40, a writes. Tutorial Question: In sec. 23 Rawls introduces and motivates 5 fundamental constraints on the concept of right. In sec. 29 he provides additional arguments for his two principles of justice that are grounded in some of these constraints on the concept of right. Present and critically evaluate these arguments.