General Information

Contact Information

Professor:: Abe Stone (abestone@ucsc.edu)[1]Please feel free to contact the instructor and/or your TA with questions about the substance of the course (philosophical issues, questions about the meaning of the texts, questions about paper topics, etc.). On administrative issues (grades, lateness/extensions, due dates, section times, etc.) please try your TA ﬁrst.
Push notiﬁcation:: Notify Abe
Website:: https://people.ucsc.edu/~abestone/courses
Zoom oﬃce hours:: Mon. 12 noon–1:00pm; Tues. 2:00–3:00pm
Teaching Assistants:
Austin Hunter: (authunte@ucsc.edu)
Oﬃce hours:: Friday, 1–2pm
Ana Pedroso: (apedroso@ucsc.edu)
Oﬃce hours:: Wednesday, 4:00–5:00pm

Course Requirements

Participation in class discussion, worth 10% of the course grade. This will be conducted via the Discussion tool on Canvas. Each Sunday night (beginning Sunday April 5th), the TA’s will post a passage from the coming week’s reading. Between that time and Thursday night of that week, every student is required (1) to post at least one question about this text and (2) to respond to at least one other student’s question. The questions do not have to be complicated or profound, and the responses do not have to be long or contain any deﬁnitive answers, but both should show at least some thought about/attempt to understand the text. Your TA will check to make sure your question and answer meet this criterion (not intended to be a high bar at all).

If you fulﬁll this requirement in at least seven out of the nine weeks (that is, if you post at least one question in seven out of the nine weeks and answer at least one question in at least seven out of the nine weeks — not necessarily the same seven weeks), your grade for this component of the course will be A. If you fall short of that, your grade will be lower, on a scale to be determined. Needless to say: if technical, health, or other problems prevent you from participation (for more than two weeks), you should contact me or your TA about alternative arrangements.

The above is the minimum requirement for participation. You are encouraged to discuss further! Especially good participation will be a ground for raising your grade if it is near a borderline.

There will not be live Zoom discussion sections, but the TA’s will hold Zoom oﬃce hours, at times to be announced soon.

There will be live Zoom lectures (see the front page of the Canvas site for the Zoom link). at the scheduled course time. Live attendance at these is not required (in general, I never require attendance at my lectures), but I highly advise you to attend if possible. It will be diﬃcult for me to teach if there is no live audience at all. However, all lectures will also be recorded and made available for viewing later (on YouTube). Links to the recorded lectures will appear on this syllabus as they are put up.

“Metaphysics exercises” (kind of a short take-home multiple choice quiz), due most class days (all exercises together are worth 30% 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 Monday, April 26 and Monday, May 17, each worth 15% of the ﬁnal grade. One longer paper (6–8 pages) (worth 30% of the ﬁnal grade). The paper is due Tuesday, June 8, but an introductory paragraph and brief outline (approximately one sentence per paragraph of the proposed complete paper) are due at some time on or before Tuesday, June 1. Feedback on this will be provided by a mechanism yet to be determined. 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 be 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., 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.)

Please do not plagiarize. If you do and I catch you, you will receive no credit for the assignment and may fail the course, and you will also be subject to “disciplinary sanctions” from the University. (In contrast: if you hand in a paper consisting mostly of quotes from or paraphrases of other sources you have consulted, properly cited, you will not get a good grade — a good paper will contain your own interpretations and thoughts — but you will not fail, either.) If you have any questions about what plagiarism is or how to avoid it, you can ask me, or consult the resources listed on the Library website.[2]https://guides.library.ucsc.edu/citesources/plagiarism. For possible consequences of plagiarism, see the Academic Misconduct Policy.[3]https://www.ue.ucsc.edu/academic_misconduct.

All assignments are due by 11:55pm on the due date.

I understand that conditions may be diﬃcult and will be ﬂexible about due dates, etc., if necessary. But please try to hand in work on time if you possibly can (keep in mind that the TA’s, who have to grade your work, are also working under unusual stress).

Texts

Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding: (Penguin, 1998) (ISBN: 978-0140434828).
An older edition is available on Google Books and Wikisource. In addition, there are the following LibriVox recordings: books I and II; book II (alternate); book III; book IV.
Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge: (Hackett, 1993) (ISBN: 978-0915145393).
The text is available on Google Books and Wikisource, among other places, and there is also a LibriVox recording.
Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding: (2d ed., Hackett, 1993) (ISBN: 978-0872202290).
The text, together with that of the other Enquiry, is available on Google and Wikisource, and there is also a LibriVox recording.
Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion: (Hackett, 1998) (ISBN: 978-0872204027).
Available on Google and Wikisource, and there is also a LibriVox recording.
Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature: (Oxford, 2000) (ISBN: 978-0198751724).
The readings are all from Book I, contained in Volume I of the text available on Google Books and LibriVox; both volumes together are available on Wikisource.

The above texts can be ordered and/or purchased as e-books from the Bay Tree Bookstore, and are also available online via the UCSC Library.

This document, and all other instructor-generated material in this course, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.