General Information
Contact Information
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Office:
- Cowell Annex A-106
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Phone (office):
- 459-5723
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Office hours:
- Tues. and Thurs. 2–3pm (or by appointment)
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Teaching Assistants:
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Course Requirements
Participation in discussion sections (good participation will be possible grounds
for raising course grade, especially if it is on a borderline).
“Metaphysics exercises” (kind of a short take-home multiple choice quiz), due
most class days (all exercises together are worth 35% of the final grade; graded
heavily on a curve). These will be made available on-line via the “Tests &
Quizzes” tool on Canvas.
Two short papers (2–3 pages), due Tuesday, February 6 and Tuesday,
February 27 (each worth 15% of the final grade).
One longer paper (6–8 pages) (worth 35% of the final grade). The paper is due
Wednesday, March 21, but you must hand in an introductory paragraph and brief
outline (approximately one sentence per paragraph of the proposed complete
paper) at some time on or before Tuesday, March 13. Your TA will send this
back to you as soon as possible with suggested changes, which you should
take into account. This preliminary assignment will not be separately
graded, but if you do not hand it in at all or if it is wholly unsatisfactory,
your grade on the final paper will be reduced by one half step (e.g. A to
A-).
All paper assignments are available on-line, and there are links to them
from this syllabus as well as from my main course page. I will discuss the
assignments in class when the due date draws near. You can find answers to
some commonly asked questions about my assignments and grading in my
FAQ.
Papers are to be handed in, as attachments, via the “Assignments” tool on
Canvas. Please submit in MSWord format (.doc or .docx), or in a format easily
convertible to MSWord (e.g., Google doc, plain text or RTF). The system will
accept late submissions, but late papers may not receive full credit. The system is
not set up to allow resubmissions: once you press the “submit” button, it will
not let you change your response. If, however, you mistakenly submit
something and want to change it, please contact me and I can make an
exception.
As noted above, the ME’s will be accessed and submitted on-line via Canvas.
(The system will accept late submissions, but credit — possibly reduced — will
only be given up until the time that the correct answers are announced, either in
section or on-line.)
All assignments are due by 11:55pm on the due date.
Texts
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Descartes, Selected Philosophical Writings
- , tr. J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff
and D. Murdoch (Cambridge, 1988) (ISBN: 0521358124).
Most, if not all, of the assigned readings from this text are available,
in a different translation, on Google Books and Wikisource. There are
LibriVox recordings (again, in a different translation) of the Discourse on
the Method and the Meditations.
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Leibniz, Philosophical Essays
- , ed. R. Ariew and D. Garber (Hackett, 1989)
(ISBN: 0872200620).
This collection is available on-line (free to read, but costs to download)
on Scribd. Many of (but not all) of the assigned readings are to be found
free on Google Books. There is a LibriVox recording of the Monadology.
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Spinoza, The Ethics, Treatise on the Emendation of the Intellect, and Selected Letters
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, tr. S. Shirley, ed. S. Feldman (Hackett, 1991) (ISBN: 0872201309).
Again, there are free versions of the Ethics on Google Books and LibriVox,
though not in the same translation.
The above texts should be available at the Literary Guillotine, and they will also
be put on reserve at McHenry. Readings not from texts on the above list are
available on Canvas.