| Course Number | Phil 101H.001 (fall 2023) |
| Title | Honors: Introduction to Philosophy: Central Problems, Great Minds, Big Ideas |
| Credit Hours | 3 credits |
| Course Description | See below |
| Prerequisites | None |
| Target Audience | First-year students with no prior experience with philosophical texts or reasoning |
| Class Times and Location | Mon Wed 3:35–4:50 pm in Graham Memorial 038 |
| Instructional Format | In-person, mix of structured presentation and group discussion, with presentation and collaboration components |
| Instructor | Professor Jim Pryor (he/him), email jimpryor@unc.edu |
| Teaching Assistants | None |
| Course Website | http://phil101.jimpryor.net |
| Instructor’s Office Hours | Mon 11-12 pm and Wed 11-1 pm in Caldwell 108A |
| Course Texts | 3 required textbooks and additional readings provided by web links |
UNC students enrolled in the course can access the Canvas site.
Those pages include the Zoom links for any course meetings you need to attend remotely, and for Professor Pryor’s office hours. These can also be retrieved from this restricted page.
Most of the information for the course will be published here, outside of the Canvas system, and can also be viewed by people not enrolled in the course.
This front web page won’t be updated frequently. Regular announcements, readings, and lecture notes will be posted at this page instead.
Here is an index of all the course handouts, webnotes and readings we’ve covered so far (together with some of the upcoming ones).
This course will be an introduction to philosophy in the analytic tradition, by focusing on a few representative issues:
How can we tell whether animals and future computers have “minds” — that is, their own thoughts, experiences, ambitions, self-awareness, and so on — or whether they’re instead just mindless automata?
Relations between minds, brains, and machines: Are your mind and body made of different stuffs? If a machine duplicates the neural structure of your brain, would it have the same thoughts and other mental states that you have?
What does it take to have free will? Is this incompatible with one’s choices being programmed or physically determined?
The course will place a strong emphasis on learning how to read philosophical texts and how to evaluate and produce philosophically compelling arguments. The format will vary between lectures and in-class group discussion.
The course is offered by Professor Jim Pryor (he/him). Undergrads genrally address me as “Professor Pryor,” and grads as “Jim.”
Professor Pryor’s office is Caldwell 108A. He can best be reached by email, at jimpryor@unc.edu.
Professor Pryor’s office hours are on Mondays starting at 11 am (until at least noon, sometimes I can go later), and Wednesdays from 11-1 pm. (If you have a quick question, you can also ask just after class.) If you’re unable to meet in person, we can also arrange to meet by Zoom. The Zoom link for office hours can be found on this restricted page.
Feel free to drop into office hours to discuss anything you like about our course. I’m happy to talk about paper ideas, continue discussion, and so on. If you do come to my office and I’m already speaking with someone, make sure that we know that you’re waiting for us to finish.
This course does not presuppose any prior background or coursework in philosophy.
It aims to introduce you to a range of philosophical topics and writing, and give you experience analyzing and discussing arguments and writing philosophical papers.
Our class meetings will be a mix of structured presentation and intense group discussion, in which I’ll be both a guide and participant. We will also consult closely about your writing, which will be submitted in several stages.
In addition to the group discussions, you’ll also be learning how to give each other constructive feedback on your writing-in-progress.
You’ll be learning how to engage respectfully and charitably with the arguments of others: both your peers and the philosophers we study. This includes identifying what the arguments and their underlying assumptions are; learning how to clearly explain an argument; formulating counter-examples and other reasonable objections; and recognizing how a view can best be defended (whether you endorse it or not).
You’ll also be learning how to develop your own independent arguments, objections, proposals, and responses.
All our philosophy courses aim at the acquisition and nurturing of basic philosophic skills. One of the main goals of our philosophy curriculum is to instill and enable the development of skills that are distinct to philosophy, but which are foundational to all forms of knowledge.
These basic philosophical skills involve being able to:
This course satisfies the Ways of Knowing Focus Capacity (FC-KNOWING). These courses help students develop intellectual humility; learn to question assumptions, categories, and norms that structure their worldviews; and understand the sources and effects of biases. They’ll learn, use, and distinguish strengths and weaknesses of one or more approach(es) to knowledge of the unfamiliar, such as: aesthetically, philosophically, linguistically, historically, or culturally remote forms of knowledge and worldmaking, or formal logic, scientific practice, and similar formalized approaches to countering bias and creating knowledge.
These courses address questions like these:
As an FC-KNOWING course, we will aim at the following learning outcomes:
Alternatively, this course satisfies the Ethical and Civic Values Focus Capacity (FC-Values). These courses help develop your capacity to think carefully and critically about how to make and justify private and public decisions, and address questions like these:
As an FC-Values course, we will aim at the following learning outcomes:
Every Focus Capacity course includes the following activities:
These elements — referred to as “recurring capacities” — will help you repeatedly practice crucial skills for future study, life, and career success.
These should be available in the bookstore. You can also buy or rent them online.
Total expected cost: approximately $35.
Additional readings will be provided by web links. Some of these are in a restricted section of the course website. The username and password for these will be emailed to you, and also announced in class.
In addition to philosophy articles and textbooks/dialogues, we’ll also read some science fiction stories that deal with issues that we’re examining in the course. We’ll discuss these in class.
The University advises you that a 3 credit course should be expected to demand 9–12 hours of work per week on average, including the time for classroom meetings. For our course, that means in a standard week (when no written assignment is due) you should still expect to be devoting about 7 hours to this course outside of our in-class meetings. This includes reading (and re-reading, analyzing, and taking notes on) the assigned texts, reviewing any lecture notes, coming to my office hours, discussing the isses with other students, and so on. When you’re working on a paper or preparing for the final exam you should expect to need substantially more time.
It is essential that you attend the class meetings regularly. Material not in the readings will often be presented there, and useful background and framing for many of the readings will also be provided.
The University’s Class Attendance Policy can be found here. In brief, they authorize absences only for some University activities, religious observances, disabilities, significant health conditions including pregnancy, and personal or family emergencies. If these include your situation, then consult these links:
The University Approved Absence Office (UAAO) provides information and FAQs for students related to University Approved Absences.
Students can be excused because of disability, pregnancy, or religious observance, as required by law and approved by Accessibility Resources and Service (ARS) and/or the Equal Opportunity and Compliance Office (EOC).
Students can be excused for significant health conditions (generally, these will require you to miss classes for five or more days) and/or personal/family emergencies, as approved by the Office of the Dean of Students (ODOS), Gender Violence Service Coordinators, and/or the Equal Opportunity and Compliance Office (EOC).
If you need to miss class because of a more temporary illness, just email to let me know. If you need to miss class for other kinds of reasons (like a job interview or to attend your mother’s wedding), ask me about it well in advance. If you do miss a class, you will be responsible for catching up with missed content; and permission to miss a class doesn’t excuse you from deadlines for work due before or after the class.
If you need to stay home during any of our class meetings, try to attend the meeting by Zoom instead.
See the Policies section below about using laptops or other devices in class.
When you join our class meetings, you are expected to have read any material assigned for that day, and to be ready to discuss it and/or ask questions about it.
It is essential that you ask questions when things in the readings or lectures are unclear, and be ready to participate when we have class discussions. I’ll expect you to actively engage with each other in class, and encourage you to do it outside of class too.
Talking about philosophy is one of the best ways of learning how to do it. Your overall participation will make up 10% of your grade for the course. See this page on participation for more details. (This course won’t have separate “discussion sections” as that page assumes; we’ll integrate discussion into the main meetings.) If you don’t plan to participate earnestly, you should not take this course.
Your participation grade will reflect your regular contributions to our class discussion, and also other aspects of how you’re engaging with the course, including the brief writing exercise (more on this below).
The course also has a collaboration component involving you giving each other feedback on a paper-in-progress, and a presentation component involving you signing up for two “on-call days” (more on this below too). Often, several of you will sign up to be on-call for the same session, so this offers more opportunities for collaboration. Together these two components make up another 10% of your grade.
There will be reading assignments for most class meetings. These readings are often pretty short, but they all require close study. You should read them carefully before we discuss them in class (even when you’re not “on-call”), and you’ll need to read them more than once. For most of the readings, you won’t understand the material sufficiently with just a single reading. A good strategy would be to read the assignment once before we discuss it, and then go back and read it again after we’ve discussed it. If you don’t plan to do this, you should not take this course.
Here is a detailed explanation of how you’ll be expected to read philosophy papers.
You will have to submit a brief writing exercise (half-page to one-page) for the course, due on Tue Sept 19 Tue Sept 26.
These will be graded one of: High quality/Satisfactory/Low quality.
You will submit a more substantial (4-5 page) midterm paper on Tue Oct 17 Thu Oct 19.
This will receive a normal letter grade and written feedback. You will then have to rewrite, expand, and resubmit that paper, improving it in light of the feedback.
The rewrites will be due on Tue Nov 7 Sun Nov 12 Tue Nov 14, and will also be graded.
Instead of a final exam, you will write a final paper (approx 6 pages) for the course, that will be due before our scheduled final exam session on Thu Dec 14 at 4 pm.
In total, this will all exceed the University requirement of ten pages of writing.
We will also have an final wrap-up discussion meeting online during the scheduled exam session.
As mentioned above, you’ll need to sign up for two “on-call days” during the semester. These are days where you’re expected to be especially well-prepared for class, to have asked any clarifying questions in advance, to have 2-3 topics for discussion ready for the class, and you may be invited to remind the rest of the class about key points in the readings, suggest responses to objections raised in the readings, and so on. This will constitute the “presentation” component of the IDEAs in Action requirements.
See below about missing or rescheduling your paper deadlines.
I will arrange that grading of your work is done without me knowing whose work is whose.
Here is a detailed explanation of how you’ll be expected to write philosophy papers. That page includes a section “How you’ll be graded”; here is more information on how I understand different grades for written work.
The University Honor Code applies to all course assignments and petitions for absences or rescheduling. In brief, this means students are expected to refrain from “lying, cheating, or stealing” in the academic context. For more information or to clarify which actions violate the honor code, consult with your instructors, studentconduct.unc.edu, and/or The Instrument of Student Judicial Governance.
What constitutes “lying, cheating, or stealing” depends on the academic activity.
One general rule is that you can’t resubmit your own work for different courses (whether taken the same semester or not). Work you turn in for different courses must be substantially different.
In this course, you are allowed (indeed are encouraged! and sometimes will be required) to get feedback from your peers on your essays before submitting them. You can also make use of UNC’s Writing Center and/or Learning Center (see description and links later). But in all cases, the work you submit must represent your own developed thoughts and expression, and you must give appropriate credit for ways that others influenced the essay.
In this course, you are also allowed to build on work that was started by others — whether this be papers you found online, or got from a friend, or were generated ChatGPT, LLaMA, or similar resources. In principle, it can be OK to begin with such sources, but there are rules and limits for how you have to proceed. And as I’ll explain, it will generally work out worse for you to do this, both educationally and in terms of your class performance.
When turning in essays for this class, every student — whether they used other people’s work as a starting point or not — will have to turn in not only their final product, but also earlier notes, drafts, and a log of their work process. If you built on other people’s work, or work generated by an AI, those original sources have to be provided, and you need to document where it was found (and/or what prompt was used to generate it). There won’t be any automatic penalty for using such resources. But your grade for the assignment will be based on what contributions you made to the final product. So if you, say, started with a mediocre paper found on a paper mill or output by ChatGPT, but then you transformed and refined it into something much better, using it as a springboard for your own original thinking, and you’re completely forthcoming about having done this, that’s okay, and you can get a decent grade from doing that.
However, in many cases, the distance between what you start with and your finished product may not be very substantial, and your grade for the assigmment will certainly reflect that. This is one reason why it will be hard to get a good grade from these methods. Another is that often the sources you start with will contain ideas or argumentative moves that you’re not fully on top of, and that will be evident in the finished product. This will also be reflected in your grades.
So if you want to explore the freedom our course allows you to honestly incorporate/build on work started by others, and develop your skills of finding such work and adding to it to make it your own, you are free to do so. But the nature of what you’re doing will in most cases make it harder for you to get the best grades.
The important thing is for you to be explicit and straightforward about how you produced your assignment, and what resources you made use of. To the extent you do that, I will be charitable and fair in grading what value your own efforts added to the final result.
Misrepresenting any of this is a bad idea. Use of online papers or AI-generated work may be caught by the courseware. It may stand out when I’m reading your essay, and reviewing your notes/drafts/work log. Or your submission may be manifestly similar to work turned in by other students in the class, who relied on the same kinds of resources you did. In some such cases, I may invite students to orally explain and defend the reasoning of their paper. But it’s part of your assignments that you provide evidence that it’s your own work with the original submission. So there won’t be opportunities to suddenly come up with earlier drafts, after doubts have been raised.
If there are significant parts of a submission that a student hasn’t explained in terms they fully understand, that’s presumptive evidence that they relied on outside sources. If they did document all such sources, and how they made use of them, then although it will be a demerit in the paper that they’re using material they haven’t understood and made their own, this need not be an Honor Code Violation. But if there’s reason to believe there are further undocumented sources, or that they’ve misrepresented the ways and extent to which they’re making use of them, that will be presumptive evidence of a violation, and the case will be given to the Honors Court for investigation. This starts a formal process where ultimately, a committee of other students will decide whether wrongdoing occurred, and if so, what the penalty should be.
Your grades for the different components of the course will be weighted as follows:
15% for participation and brief writing exercise (due Sept 19 Sept 26 Sept 28)
10% for presentation component (on-call days) and collaborative feedback on each other’s papers
15% first version of midterm paper (due Oct 17 Oct 19)
25% revised version of midterm paper (due Nov 7 Nov 12 Nov 14)
35% final paper (due before our scheduled final exam session on Dec 14)
When it’s necessary to convert between numeric and letter grades, I use the following correspondences:
F 0 or 50, explained below D 63.3 D+ 66.7 C- 70.0 C 73.3 C+ 76.7 B- 80.0 B 83.3 B+ 86.7 A- 90.0 A 93.3
Grade Appeals: If you feel you have been given an incorrect grade for any part of the course, we can review together how I applied the announced standards. If this doesn’t resolve the issue, you have the right to discuss with our department’s Director of Undergraduate Studies (currently Professor Markus Kohl), or to appeal through a formal University process. You’ll be expected to make a case that the grade reflects an arithmetic/clerical error, arbitrariness, discrimination, harassment, or personal malice. To learn more, consult the Academic Advising Program website, or this summary of University policies.
Most requests that I and other professors hear for changing grades are based on how good/bad it would be for a student to get a given grade; but it would be unfair and inappropriate for justifications like that to succeed.
This schedule lists due dates for assignments and the rough order of our topics. See this other page for course announcements, context for the main readings, links to optional further reading, lecture notes, and any minor tweaks to the schedule. Check that page frequently.
Honors course enrollment and wait list procedures are located here. Please direct all registration questions to Jenn Marshburn jenn.marshburn@unc.edu, Enrolled Student Services Coordinator for Honors Carolina.
The deadline for the final paper is when our course’s final exam would have taken place, and can be extended only in the special circumstances that you could be excused from an exam. These must be documented and approved by an academic dean. See the final exam regulations and fall schedule for more details.
If you know in advance you’ll have good reason for being unable to submit another paper for a deadline:
What if it turns out that you can’t turn your work in, but now it’s only days or hours before (or even after 😮) the deadline?
The Office of the Dean of Students (ODOS) has staff who work with students who are dealing with medical and/or personal issues that are interfering with their courses. If you contact ODOS, they will be able to work with you to verify the cause of the disruption, connect you with campus services that may help, and notify me and other professors about the issue. They sometimes make recommendations about what would be reasonable accommodations for your situation, which I will take seriously. If you’re going to fall behind in the reading, class meetings, or assignments, then get in touch with them as soon as possible (in any case within five days) to tell them about your situation. I’ll expect any last-minute or after-the-fact requests for extensions or other academic accommodations to come through the ODOS.
What if you missed the deadline and don’t have an extension, or you were granted an extension but you missed that too? Then I’ll permit you to turn the paper in up to 72 hours late, for a 10% grade penalty. (For example, this takes what would have been a B- to a C-.) This permission can only be used once during the semester (and does not apply to the final paper).
What if your paper is more than 72 hours late, or you already used up your permission to turn a paper in late earlier in the semester? In that case, it’s still best for you to complete the late paper and turn it in. I will still grade it and give you feedback on it, and if the work would have earned at least a C had it been turned in on time, then I’ll give you a grade of 50% for the assignment. That’s still an F, but as a “high F” it’s better than getting the 0% you would otherwise have gotten. Also you’ll still get the pedagogical benefits the assignment was supposed to serve in the first place.
The first few of these are specific to our course; the rest are information that the University mandates we include on every syllabus. (So you will see a lot of overlap with your syllabi for other courses.)
I won’t prohibit the use of laptops or tablets for taking notes, though I strongly discourage this. I’ll post summaries of the main outlines of our lectures, so you won’t need to write everything down during our meetings. You should be reviewing those lecture notes outside of class anyway. An effective use of your time in the classroom is to focus on following my presentations and any class discussion, and actively raising questions when you don’t. If you must have a device open in class, don’t browse the web, or read/send texts or other social media during our meetings. It’s pretty clear to everyone when you are doing this, and it’s rude and distracting to your instructors and your classmates.
You may not record our class meetings in any format without prior express authorization from me and the department. To request the use of assistive technology as an accommodation, contact the ARS (see below). For others, permission to record will only be granted in extraordinary circumstances. Students are never permitted to copy or distribute recordings of the class, and must delete any they possess when the course concludes.
The University’s Class Attendance Policy was summarized above.
The Honor Code and how it applies to this course was also summarized above.
UNC-Chapel Hill is strongly committed to addressing the mental health needs of a diverse student body. The Heels Care Network is a place to access the many mental health resources at Carolina. Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) is the primary mental health provider for students, offering timely access to consultation and connection to clinically appropriate services. Go to their website caps.unc.edu or visit their facilities on the third floor of the Campus Health building for an initial evaluation to learn more. Students may also call CAPS anytime at 919-966-3658 for immediate assistance.
In this course, as in other University programs and activities, you should expect an environment free of discrimination, harassment, and other misconduct. If this expectation isn’t respected, here are links for more information about University policies, how to obtain support, and file grievances:
The University’s Policy Statement on Non-discrimination says:
The University is committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment and to ensuring that educational and employment decisions are based on individuals’ abilities and qualifications. Consistent with these principles and applicable laws, it is therefore the University’s policy not to discriminate on the basis of age, color, disability, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, national origin, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation or veteran status as consistent with the University’s Policy on Prohibited Discrimination, Harassment and Related Misconduct. No person, on the basis of protected status, shall be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to unlawful discrimination, harassment, or retaliation under any University program or activity, including with respect to employment terms and conditions. Such a policy ensures that only relevant factors are considered and that equitable and consistent standards of conduct and performance are applied.
Prohibited Discrimination, Harassment and Related Misconduct
Any student who is impacted by sexual discrimination, harassment, dating or relationship violence, sexual violence, sexual exploitation, or stalking is encouraged to seek resources on campus or in the community. Reports can be made online to the Equal Opportunity and Compliance Office (EOC) using this form. Please contact the University’s Title IX Coordinator (Elizabeth Hall, titleixcoordinator@unc.edu), Report and Response Coordinators in the EOC (reportandresponse@unc.edu), Counseling and Psychological Services (confidential, link above), or the Gender Violence Services Coordinators (confidential, gvsc@unc.edu) to discuss your specific needs. Additional resources are available at safe.unc.edu.
If you’re experiencing other forms of harassment or discrimination contrary to University policies, you can also seek assistance through the Report and Response Coordinators in the EOC (reportandresponse@unc.edu), or file a report using the EOC form.
For free feedback on any course writing projects, check out UNC’s Writing Center. Their coaches can assist with any writing project, including multimedia projects and application essays, at any stage of the writing process. You don’t even need a draft to come visit. To schedule a 45-minute appointment, review quick tips, or request written feedback online, visit writingcenter.unc.edu.
Want to get the most out of this course or others this semester? Visit UNC’s Learning Center at learningcenter.unc.edu to make an appointment or register for an event. Their free, popular programs will help you optimize your academic performance. Try academic coaching, peer tutoring, STEM support, ADHD/LD services, workshops and study camps, or review tips and tools available on the website.
By attending UNC-Chapel Hill, you agree to abide by the University’s Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) for IT systems and services. The AUP sets the expectation that you will use the University’s technology resources responsibly, consistent with the University’s mission. In the context of a course, it’s quite likely you will participate in online activities that could include personal information about you or your peers, and the AUP addresses your obligations to protect the privacy of class participants. In addition, the AUP addresses matters of others’ intellectual property, including copyright. These are only a couple of typical examples, so you should consult the full Information Technology Acceptable Use Policy, which covers topics related to using digital resources, such as privacy, confidentiality, and intellectual property. Additionally, consult the Safe Computing at UNC website for information about the data security policies, updates, and tips on keeping your identity, information, and devices safe.
I reserve the right to make changes to the syllabus, including assignment due dates. These changes will be announced as early as possible so that students can adjust their schedules.
I welcome your input about the course at any time. You are welcome to approach me directly. I’ll also provide opportunities for anonymous evaluation and feedback during the term.