PHIL 160: Business Ethics Spring 2018
Employment Contract
Prof: Dr. O’ConnorClass Meetings: T, Th, 9.15-10.30 KY 281Office: PH 350U
Office hour: By appointment only on Tuesdays: 1.45-2.45 If you are in class during this hour we can talk by phone or Skype; talk to me before or after class to make these appointments.
Email: none. I do not read email sent to my QC account.
Phone: 718 997- 5283. Be advised that (a) students who attend my office hour take precedence over those who call during it; (b) messages are retrieved on Tuesday and Thursday only, and only while classes are in session. (This means: I will not pick up messages during breaks, including between the final and the first day of the next semester.)
Website:
Texts are online: either they are on the "Class Materials" page of the website or the URL is given in the syllabus.
You must bring hardcopy of all readings—including the syllabus—to class. Those who do not will receive a F for their participation grade each and every time they fail to bring the reading. You must bring properly formatted notes on each video to class. I will sometimes collect these notes for grading. Obviously if you have no notes for a given day you will earn an NC (no credit), which is worse than an F.
When you decided to take this PHIL 160 you decided to learn how to use accurate ethical reasoning on, as the course description puts it, "topics [including] the relationship between law and ethics; duties and responsibilities among employers, employees, stockholders, the public, and the environment; and issues involved in hiring, retention, marketing, investment, information disclosure, accounting, and advertising." Thus, unless you fail to do your work for this class you will be unable truthfully to claim that this class "doesn't apply to real life."
The source of the accurate ethical reasoning you will learn is philosophy. It is not religion or culture. There is no doubt that you bring preconceived notions about ethics, drawn from these two sources and perhaps from others, into this class. Many of those notions will be to some degree inaccurate. Some of them will be flatly false. If you persist in attempting to use such ideas in this class, you will probably fail it, since in philosophy there are no "alternative facts."
If you hope to succeed in the class you will instead have to learn accurate information, and to apply it. If for any reason you believe that you are incapable of giving up disreputable ideas and replacing them with reputable ones, philosophy is not a good discipline for you--and this class is an especially poor fit. Philosophy also requires that one do things with ideas. If you refuse, or even simply fail, to learn the ideas, you cannot do things with them. Your situation will be similar to a person who refuses, or simply fails, to learn Microsoft Word: no such person can possibly produce a document using Word. You cannot produce ethical reasoning without learning philosophical ethical ideas.
"Learn" does not mean "memorize." Memorizationisn'tsomething philosophers do. In the internet age, it isn't anything anyone with access to the internet should do. (Besides, your K-12 education made you all too sadly proficient in this useless skill.) Don't plan on succeeding in this class via memorization. It won't work.
Instead you will learn the new ideas via thinking, writing, and oral participation. Your full and active participation in class is required. Fair warning: If you are passive or disengaged, or if you fail to attend regularly, you will have serious problems in meeting the learning objectives for the class, and will therefore earn a poor grade. You MUSTparticipate orally!
Academic requirements
1. Courtesy. Be advised that (A) all electronic devices, including laptops, must be turned off when class begins; (B) you may not eat during class; (C) if you leave the classroom, you become “absent,” and your absence will be recorded. I will not remind you of these rules; I will simply lower your participation grade.
2. Preparation. The material indicated on each date on the syllabus is to be prepared for that class. This includes the readings as well as written work. Submitted written work that is not in 12-pt TIMES NEW ROMAN, double-spaced, dated, and (if on multiple pages) stapled will receive no credit (NC) after the second assignment of the semester. Unless otherwise specifically stated, the assignments are individual assignments. You may not collaborate on them. Evidence of collaboration will result in F grades for the assignments of all persons involved. First instance of plagiarism: F for assignment. Second instance: F for course.
3. Timeliness. Both your body and your work must be in class, on time, always. Absences will be recorded. If you arrive at class late, it is your responsibility to sign in after class, on the same day that you are late, by printing your name in the notebook that will be lying on the front desk. If you do not do so, the recorded “absence” will stand. Two “lates” equal one absence. Leaving class early, or wandering repeatedly in and out of class, also equals an absence.
All work is due within the first five minutes of the class on the date assigned. Written material handed in later (even during the class hour) WILL RECEIVE NO CREDIT, although you will receive feedback on it. Submitted written work that is not in 12-pt TIMES NEW ROMAN, double-spaced, dated, and (if on multiple pages) stapled will, after the second assignment of the semester, receive no credit (NC) at all.
The instructor monitors no e-mail address partly in order to prevent you from submitting work via e-mail; do not bother to add to the thousands of unread e-mails in the instructor’s QC inbox, since it is only a waste of your time. Unless you receive prior permission, you also may not place written work in the instructor's physical mailbox in the Philosophy Dept.
4. Adherence to Work Requirements
A. Quantity.You must complete at least 60% of the assigned work for the class, including note-taking on videos and all categories of participation. If you do not, you will receive a WU grade for the class. This grade is worse than an F.
Be advised that QC policy prohibits automatically assigning INC grades. Thus, if you are unable to complete the course you must meet with me to request an INC.
B. Quality. Unless otherwise indicated, assignments will receive standard letter grades F-A+. The most common cause of F grades, and other low grades, is failure to follow content instructions. It is YOUR responsibility to make sure you understand the instructions! I am not a telepath and therefore am not able to determine whether you understand what you have been told. When in doubt, ASK.
Any work that does not conform to format instructions will, after the first assignment in the semester, receive no credit (NC) at all. In other words, you may make this mistake exactly once before your grade suffers.
5. Course Grade Constituents Participation 40%. First and second exam 10%. Final 15% Case 10%. Fallacy list plus quiz grades 15%. Exams and fallacy list will receive standard letter grades (A+ through F). Quizzes will be graded 0-3. No so-called “extra credit” is available in this class.
Participation
The primary mode for philosophy is discussion. It is 40% of your course grade. If you will often not be in class, are determined not to be prepared for class, or know yourself incapable of talking in public, this class is not a good fit for you. I strongly suggest you drop it. On any day that it becomes clear that the class as a whole cannot have a productive discussion, we will have an essay quiz and I will dismiss the class. You will, however, continue to be held responsible for the material that should have been discussed. You will simply have to learn it by yourself. Each day you are absent during case discussions you will lose .5 from your participation grade for the course.
Types/Value
1. Voluntary. 20% of course grade. Answers, questions, and comments that contribute to class discussion of philosophical content. Mechanical questions (such as "When is _____ due?") or comments (such as "I didn't watch the video") have no philosophical content and do not earn credit. Obviously you must attend class to participate! But attendance is not itself participation. See p. 5 in the syllabus for how to earn credit. If you want to track your grade in voluntary participation, you must record your daily participation yourself. If you wish you may use the same schema for this that I do: NC, F, P (average), + (significant). I will answer questions about your voluntary participation grade only after you give me a copy of your own record of it.
2. Involuntary. 20% of course grade. Examples: work in groups/teams, giving an important idea from the day's reading/video when requested to do so. On any day that you haven't brought your text or you don't successfully respond to other demands for participation, or you violate courtesy criteria, you will earn an F in this category that will override any credit you might have earned that day in category (1).
Quizzes
In addition to those listed on the syllabus, I will regularly (if necessary, every day) ask a simple question about the reading or video assigned for the day. For example, I may ask “What is the main idea of paragraph one?" If you are not in class when the quiz cards are distributed, you cannot take the quiz. Grades on these will range from 0 -3.
Precursor Intellectual Skills
30 Jan: Intro to class.
1 Feb: Read: Discuss: arguments.
6 Feb: Syllabus Quiz. Watch: Discuss: formal vs informal fallacies.
8 Feb: Read: and the equivocation, begging the question, and false dilemma sections of Discuss: The three informal fallacies, explanations of "name, definition, example, and proof." Explain research assignment due 2/15.
13 Feb: Due: YOUR OWN example of either equivocation, begging the question, or false dilemma. Definition, example, and proof must be given, your sources must be given, and nothing in what you submit may be either quotation or paraphrase. You may not use onegoodmove.org as a source. Discuss examples; distribute lists; assign teams.
15 Feb: Due: first five fallacies from each team. Pair and share.
22 Feb: Due: completed informal fallacy list: TWO COPIES (OF SAME WORK) FROM EACH TEAM.
27 Feb: Discuss: Corrections to list.
6 Mar: Review.
8 Mar: First exam.
Ethical Framework
13 Mar: Read "Ethics Overview" (website) Focus on p. 1.
15 Mar: Read: "Ethics Overview" (website). Focus on p. 2.
20 Mar: Watch
22 Mar: Quiz. Watch:
27 Mar: Watch:
29 Mar: Read "Kitchen Table Ethics Rules" (website).
10 Apr: Watch:
12 Apr: Quiz. Watch:
17 Apr: Watch:
19 Apr: Review.
24 Apr: Second Exam
Applications
26 Apr: Due: Case choice. You must present an argument for your selection of this case. Pair & share: improve partner's argument. Case assignments will be made by email.
1 - 10 May: Case Presentations
15 May: Review
24 May: Final exam, 8:30-10:30. End time for exam will not be extended for those who arrive late. Please note that you should carefully check the final exam schedule, once it is finalized, to verify that you do not have conflicts. If you have a conflict, you must go to the Registrar's Office to get it resolved. Faculty are not responsible for adjudicating conflicts of final exams.
VoluntaryParticipation Criteria
By the second week of class you should be participating regularly. Merely attending class does not constitute participation. Attending, having done the reading, does not constitute participation. YOU MUST TALK in order to participate. If you feel that your personal characteristics will regularly prohibit you from talking, you should give serious thought to dropping this class.
Each class will be a conversation about the material assigned for that day. You should contribute to the conversation regularly; for an “A,” you should do so in at least 80% of the class meetings. Both questions and answers/comments are good ways of contributing. The objective is for you to show in class that you have read and thought carefully about the material. “Show” = TALK. It does you no good in respect of your participation grade merely to read. I am not a telepath and therefore cannot determine that your unarticulated thoughts are insightful.
Voluntary participation will be assessed according to the following criteria. CONTENT: philosophical, not mechanical; substantive; based on having read/watched the material; directly related to the point under discussion; leads to a significant response by instructor or other students. FORM: is not an interruption (either of the instructor or of another member of the class); is not a personal attack on a member of the class; is brief and to the point; is not repetition of an earlier question/comment (though it may be a follow-up). Involuntary participation will be assessed using the same content criteria.
If you have questions about what the criteria mean, please ask them early in the semester. By mid-semester it will be too late for you to recover from having been mistaken about their meaning. If at any time you have questions about your current participation grade, you must give me a copy of your record of your own participation before we can have a conversation.
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