Goals and Learning Objectives

1. Students understand major philosophical ideas accurately
2. Students apply their understanding of ideas in novel contexts
3. Students write effectively
4. Students speak effectively
5. Students argue with precision, balance, and insight
6. Students understand the formal structure of arguments and understand rules of inference
7. Students read analytically, critically, and empathetically
8. Students critically assess their own commitments and ideas

• Objective 1a: Students give accurate and relevant answers, complete with supporting details, to specific questions about philosophical ideas relevant to the course.
• Objective 1b: Students give accurate accounts of philosophical ideas relevant to the course in the context of criticizing or assessing those ideas.
• Objective 2a: Students speculate, in well-informed, well-supported, and plausible fashion, about what a given philosopher would say about a novel issue or problem.
• Objective 2b: Students extrapolate creatively and plausibly from their knowledge of philosophers or philosophical positions in developing their own related ideas.
• Objective 3a: Students write paragraphs that exhibit clarity, focus, a good command of the subject matter, and an orderly development of ideas.
• Objective 3b: Students write multi-paragraph pieces that exhibit clarity, focus, a good command of the subject matter and an ability to work with that subject matter creatively, and an orderly development of ideas both within and across paragraphs.
• Objective 4a: Students speak in clear, focused, well-informed, and orderly fashion.
• Objective 5a: Students state arguments accurately and clearly, and identify strengths and weaknesses of different arguments.
• Objective 5b: Students develop and defend their own arguments, taking into account a variety of philosophical positions but adding original insights or emphases.
• Objective 6a: Students translate ordinary language arguments into symbolic form.
• Objective 6b: Students assess formally stated arguments for validity and soundness.
• Objective 7a: Students explain difficult passages clearly, accurately, and thoroughly.
• Objective 7b: Students use apt quotations and creative, critical, plausible readings of texts in their writing.
• Objective 8a: Students are able to explain the weaknesses of their own present positions, and the strengths of competing positions.
• Objective 8b: Students are able to explain why their pre-theoretical commitments have or have not changed as a result of what they have learned in the course, and if they have changed how they have done so.