Course
Requirements
Philosophy 302—Mind and
Knowledge: Descartes to Kant
Spring 2025
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 are 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.
Students
can expect the Engaged Learning element of this course to focus on engagement
with the readings by addressing instructor-composed handouts and questions while
doing the readings, and to share their insights with the class.
Work due on a given day is due at the beginning of class, unless
otherwise noted. Late (even barely late) work loses the point equivalent
of one full grade (10%), and a further grade (10%) for each additional
twenty-four hours of lateness. (Except for the assignment due during finals
week, for which no late submission is allowed.) Keep in mind this cost when
deliberating about taking more time in which to complete a paper.
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
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.
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 three absences
per semester. (Whether excused or unexcused; that distinction might have been
used in your high school, but isn’t used in the
College’s attendance policy.) Having a fourth 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 67% 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 four absences,
but would automatically become an F upon the fifth.)
So because this is a
Tu/Th 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 fifth class, if you
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.
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.
Examinations
Both examinations will consist exclusively of
essay questions. At least one week prior to each examination, I will circulate
a list of possible questions from which I will construct the examination. A
question’s appearance on this list is a necessary condition for it appearing on
the examination.
The final examination will be cumulative and will be crafted to be a
three-hour final.
Tutorials
The papers will be run as paired tutorials. You
will be scheduled in pairs to come to my office and read your paper to me and
to the other student. We will talk about your paper, interrupting you more than
once. Then the other student will read her or his paper in the same way. So
that we may follow along as you read, hand in three copies of your paper
(including the original). Realize that it is your paper that 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 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.
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 44-point
paper of five pages, and you have made seventeen mechanical errors, then you
will receive a 41 for the paper. One more mechanical error would have given you
a grade of 40. 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.
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 for
accessing the readings online or by those with documented needs of which I’ve
been notified by the Office of Academic Services. You’ll need a laptop or
tablet for accessing the Perusall site during class.
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/
Go
to the home page for this
course.
Send me comments: mstaber at smcm dot edu
Go to Michael Taber's
home page.
Go to SMCM's home page.