Seminar Requirements
Philosophy
381—Happiness and Meaning
Michael Taber
St. Mary’s College of Maryland, USA
Fall 2024
Because the readings will be the springboards for our discussions, and
because our discussions will be the primary focus of the seminar, you will be
required to keep up with the readings.
Your evaluation for the seminar will be based on the following, with
their point values (out of a semester total of 200):
As this is an upper-division seminar, you will be
expected to contribute to making this a seminar. This means more than you being
present, more than you speaking only when called upon, and more than speaking
up on your own only once every few weeks. It also does not mean merely talking
often, as if the more sound waves created, the better.
Late (even barely late) work loses one full grade (10%), and a
further grade for each additional twenty-four hours of lateness. (Except for
the assignment due during finals week, for which no late submission is
allowed.) I understand that there are times when students think it worthwhile
to take the grade penalty in order to spend a day improving their writing.
Missing a scheduled tutorial loses one full grade on that assignment, even if
the work was turned in on time.
Final letter grades for the course will correspond to the
following percentages:
A- 90–92 A
93–100 A+ **
B- 80–82
B 83–86 B+
87–89
C- 70–72 C
73–76 C+ 77–79
D- ** D
60–66 D+ 67–69
F 0–59 ** = doesn’t exist at SMCM
Attendance Policy
Executive summary: don’t hit the two-week mark!
You have sensibly chosen a small college. If you had
wanted to be facelessly anonymous, you could have chosen to enroll at Enormous
U. Directly relating to each other about matters of (I’m sure you’ll come to
agree) great importance to us as individuals and as members of communities is
the best of college experiences.
This course is structured as a seminar. That means we
use real-time, in-person discussions to explore, understand, and even disagree
about the text assigned. Even though I have guideposts for the discussions, the
presence or absence of individuals in a class on a given day will shape how
that day’s conversation unfolds and what new understandings we develop as a
class. Missing class isn’t just about missing the content. In this course, it’s
not just about “what we go over,” but “HOW” we go over it that’s critical for
your learning. That’s why showing up matters. And not just to you, but for the
rest of us, too.
For at least this reason, regular attendance at, and
participation in, class are required. (Furthermore, it is impossible to do well
in this course without regular attendance, and difficult without regular
participation.)
For this course, everyone is allowed five absences
(excused or unexcused) per semester. Having a sixth absence—excused or
unexcused—will result in failing the course, despite the quality of the rest of
the student’s work. (The College
policy’s minimum is to allow two—thus, I am out of the gates already 150% more
generous than the College requires!)
(Students using an approved ADA accommodation for
“modified attendance policy” will be granted one extra absence; so the grade
wouldn’t be affected even with six absences, but would automatically become an
F upon the seventh.)
So because this is a MWF class, you get one shy of two
weeks’ worth of absences. And you fail the course if you hit the two weeks’
worth. (Or if you hit your seventh class, for those of you who have an approved
ADA accommodation for modified attendance policy.)
The one exception to the preceding paragraph is for
students who are forced by quarantine rules to stay away from classes. In such
cases, the student should contact the instructor ASAP—and in any case, prior
to the first class missed due to quarantine. This being said, we hope the days
of quarantine are in our rear-view mirror.
The first recourse students should use for catching up
when absent—for any reason—is to look for a communication from their Back-Up
Buddy, a system to be explained and signed up for in class. Students can
also contact the instructor for added assistance, of course.
As I hope is obvious—or soon will be once the semester
starts—the fact that you are allowed
these absences without any automatic loss of grade should not be interpreted as
a recommendation to actually use said absences. Not only do you want to
avoid imprudently and prematurely emptying your bank account only to find out
that you’re getting walloped with some virus near the end of the semester, but
your ability to make sense of the material, your ability to become fluent in
philosophically informed ways of thinking, and your ability to succeed in your
assignments would be unhappily compromised in proportion to your number of
absences.
Perusall
Students can expect the Engaged Learning element of
this course to focus on collaborative skills by using the Perusall platform
outside of class to comment on the first book we’ll use (Lorraine Besser’s The
Philosophy of Happiness: An Interdisciplinary Introduction), as well as on
other students’ annotations. These will be discussed in class.
In order to access and annotate the readings on
Perusall, you will need to create a Perusall
account, and after registering there, enter this course code for Happiness
& Meaning: TABER-LGDKG
The direct link is: https://app.perusall.com/join/taber-lgdkg
See my Seminar Materials page
for this course for more information.
Tutorials
The tutorial papers will be run as paired
tutorials. You will be scheduled in pairs to read your paper to me and to the
other student. We will discuss your paper with you, interrupting you more than
once. Then the other student will read their paper in the same way. So that we
may follow along as you read, ensure that the other student has access to your
paper. Realize that it is your paper which will be graded, not your reading of
it or your answering any questions which I or the other student may bring up.
The purpose of having you read the paper to me is that I can give you most
comments directly and suggest ways to improve your future work. This is much
easier for me to do and much more helpful to you than having you read my
comments in dried ink on a dead piece of paper. Because I will have to schedule
many tutorial sessions, I am canceling class for the days during which the
tutorials will be held.
You will have the opportunity to submit a substantive
re-write (that is, not only correcting mechanical errors—see next paragraph) of
the first paper, and the grade recorded will be the average of the grade on the
first submission and on the second submission.
Writing
Since writing is central to the course, both in
reading others' and in creating your own, respect for writing will manifest
itself even at the level of writing mechanics. You will be expected to take
stylistic and mechanical concerns most seriously in your three papers. As a
motivational aid to this end, you will be allowed two grammatical, spelling, or
punctuation mistakes per page (partial pages counting as full), after which you
will lose one point for each pair of mistakes. For
example, if you have a 34-point paper of five pages, and you have made
seventeen mechanical errors, then you will receive a 31 for the paper. One more
mechanical error would have given you a grade of 30. N.B.: the same mistake (not just
similar) repeated will count as one mistake. You will be allowed to submit a
revised version with the mechanical errors corrected, and in these cases you
will be assigned the average of your original and revised grade.
You might consider spending a bit of time at my
writing site. Few
would fail to benefit. (Hint, hint….)
Discussion
leading
Each of you will lead a 50-minute class session. This
is not a lecture, for the 50 minutes should instigate and incorporate
discussion among the other students—even if you have to spend five minutes
giving a mini-lecture about this, or seven minutes about that.
We all will have read the
piece you have selected, so your job is not to provide us with a review of the
reading. You might, however, make explicit for us what the problem is that the
author is trying to solve, what the author’s proposed solution is, what some
objections are (whether addressed by the author, or not) to that proposed
solution, what some tie-ins are to readings we have done or to other
discussions we will have had, etc.
In planning the arc of your
discussion, you are free to use an excerpt from the article, a video, a
podcast excerpt, a poem, a PowerPoint, a song, group work, etc.
Your leading should not consist
of simply reading notes, reading off PowerPoint slides (shudder!), reading off
Perusall comments, or something similar. Nor is this an oral book report.
That’s what middle school was for. You have to remain true to the material,
while at the same time respecting your audience (which requires, at the very
least, keeping them awake!).
The sessions that are available for leading are marked
with asterisks on the course schedule. See the key at the top of the seminar
schedule page.
Evaluation of the discussion
leading is based on:
· evidence of preparation—e.g.,
does your leading seem well organized? Does the timing and sequencing indicate
practice? (5 points)
· command of the material—e.g.,
do you correctly understand the author’s points? Does that come through? (10
points)
· quality of the manner of your leading—e.g., is your leading clear? Did you exert the leadership needed to
avoid becoming a mere traffic cop (“Next!”)? If there were available tie-ins
(internal tie-in: to a comment someone made 20 minutes ago; external tie-in: to
a reading from last week), did you avail yourself of them? (10 points)
Personal
electronics
This seminar requires a free-flowing exchange of
ideas, between you and the authors, as well as among us. The presence of
electronic devices, replete with their glowing notifications, creates a barrier
to this flow. Therefore, the use of electronics is allowed in class only in
order to access the readings online or by those with documented needs of which
I’ve been notified by official channels.
Because in class you will need to have access to the
readings, and because, for our first book, this will be on the Perusall site,
you will need to have a tablet or laptop in class—to be used, of course, only
for class-related activities.
Cell phones should be stowed away in any case, and not simply on the table—even
if turned upside down—even if powered completely off. “Why,” you ask? Well,
recent studies indicate the distracting effect of even a cell phone not
one’s own, laying on a nearby table. In fact, of even a
drawing or a thought of a cell phone. So I hereby prohibit you during class even to
think of a cell phone! (I’ll keep
mine away, too.)
(If a phone is the only way you have of accessing the
readings in class, fine…just give me a heads-up so I know not to bark at you.)
And even with a laptop or a tablet, you have a
responsibility to stay on task during class time. This
provides a nice summary of some of the recent research on the
effects of off-task use of electronics in the classroom. Treat your seat in
class as if it were the driver’s seat in a car. Steer responsibly.
As for note-taking, consult this
study, which found superior recall in students who took notes by
hand compared to those who took them by typing, and this
recent article sums up some of the research findings.
Students with documented disabilities
“Following the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Section 504 of the
Rehabilitation Act of 1973, as amended, and applicable state law, St. Mary’s
College of Maryland (SMCM) does not discriminate against any individual on the
basis of handicap or disability. As a result, SMCM will consider requests for
reasonable accommodations for students who self-disclose a disability or
disabling health conditions. Accessibility Services works with students,
faculty, and staff to promote access on our campus.”
The SMCM Office of
Accessibility Services
Academic
integrity
As contagion
Of sickness makes sickness,
Contagion of trust can make trust.
--Marianne
Moore, American poet
from “In Distrust of Merits” (1943)
The College’s definitions and policies about academic
misconduct are laid out here. Ignorance of such matters is no excuse.
Academic misconduct can result in automatic failure of the course, regardless
of how well a student has been doing on other assignments. In addition,
extra-course penalties may be pursued, like being prohibited from ever
re-taking the class.
“So, what about using a chatbot?”
Using AI, including platforms like ChatGPT or Bard, can be
helpful as a tool in studying for exams. There’s no guarantee that the info you
get from it will be accurate or to the point of the question. So you have to
refuse to surrender your good judgment. It’s ill-advised to parrot what a
chatbot tells you the answer is, just as it is to assume that the first hit on
a Google search for “best Thai restaurant near me” will delight your palate.
“OK, but what about for writing papers?
AI can also be useful as a resource for getting clear on
some issues that you would need to understand in order to write the paper, as
would consulting Wikipedia or YouTube videos. In order, that is, for YOU to
write the paper.
1.
It’s fine by me for you to use AI as a RESOURCE,
pre-writing.
AI can also be helpful as an editor, to do proofreading and
grammar- and spell-checking, and to improve the organization of a paper. I’m
not saying that the suggestions you get will always be correct, of course.
Don’t outsource your common sense. Also, be wary of missing an opportunity to
*learn* how a proposed revision of, say, a given wording is an
improvement. (Assuming, of course, that it is an improvement.)
2.
It’s fine by me for you to use AI as an EDITOR,
post-writing.
Where AI software should NOT be used is as an author.
For YOU are the author, and to represent the work of another (whether of
another person or of a software application) as if it were YOUR work is clearly
plagiarism. As with using any other source, you should not copy and paste into
your paper any content you did not create.
3.
It’s def NOT fine by me for you to use AI as an AUTHOR,
doing the writing.
So as RESOURCE: fine
As EDITOR: fine
As AUTHOR: very not fine
Good (and short!) tutorials on topics like samples of
acceptable and unacceptableparaphrases can be found at a page put up by Indiana
University: https://plagiarism.iu.edu/
Send me mail: mstaber at smcm
dot edu
Go to the home page for this course.
Go to Michael Taber's home page.
Go to the SMCM home page.