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Schedule

Bryan's Guide to writing better philosophy papers.

Wk Date Topic Reading Due Coursework Due
1 Jan 9 Introduction
First Order Ethics 1:
Overview, philosophical foundations		 [ppt] [ws]  
2 Jan 15 First Order Ethics 2
Philosophical foundations, Reconstructing Arguments		 [ppt 1] [ppt 2] Sign up for a presentation before class begins.
3 Jan 23 Aid in Dying 1: Letting Die, Incompetence, & Personhood
  • Rachels (Pence 1998, §1)
  • Wisbard and Siegler (Pence 1998, §2)
  • Fletcher 1 (Pence 1998, §3)

[ppt 1] [ppt 2]

  
4 Jan 30 Aid in Dying 2: Euthanasia, Assisted suicide
  • Brock (Pence 1998, §4)
  • Motto (Pence 1998, §5)
  • Callahan (Pence 1998, §6)

[ppt 1] [Kevorkian 60min]

  
5 Feb 6

-

 - Snow Day-  
6 Feb 13 Allocation of Scarce Resources: God Squad, Transplants, exotic procedures
  • Rescher (Pence 1998, §18)
  • Cohen et al. (Pence 1998, §19)
  • Ubel et al. (Pence 1998, §20))
 Midterm 1
7 Feb 20
 Preferences of Patients (Religion, informed consent, animals) + Testing and Probability (Intro to probability, base rate neglect, Huntington's, the human genome)

[ppt - probability]

  
8 Feb 27 Weighing Difficult Options: Expected utility, Using one baby for another

[ws]

 Notebook 1 due
9 Mar 6 Abortion
  • Thompson (Pence 1998, §12)
  • Warren (Pence 1998, §13)
  • Marquis (Pence 1998, §14)
  
10 Mar 13 - - Spring Break
(No Class)
11 Mar 20 Assisted Reproduction 1: Surrogate mothers
  • Fletcher 2 (Pence 1998, §9)
  • Krimmel (Pence 1998, §10)
  • Robertson (Pence 1998, §11)
Midterm 2
12 Mar 27 Assisted Reproduction 2: Cloning  
13 Apr 3 Access to Medical Care
  • Lamm (Pence 1998, §26)
  • Gutmann (Pence 1998, §27)
  • Gawande (2009)
  • McArdle (2009)

[ppt]

  
14 Apr 10 Global Obligation: AIDS, famine + term paper guidelines Paper Description due
15 Apr 17 Argumentative strategies and reconstructing arguments - Midterm 3, and
Notebook 2 due
16 Apr 21
(Wed)		 - - Term paper due
before midnight