Dr. Laura Soter
lksoter@yorku.ca

Office hours: The instructor will be available to meet with students for scheduled office hours both in-person and virtually through Zoom (T 12:00-1:00pm). All students are encouraged to attend office hours, individually or as a group, and discuss assignments and, more generally, topics related to the course that are of interest to the students. Individual meetings can also be scheduled by appointment.

This class will explore issues at the intersection of contemporary philosophy and psychology. Our focus in this version of the class will be moral psychology: how do people make moral judgments and decisions, what kinds of cognitive processes are involved in this, and what (if any) upshots do these have for normative theorizing? Along the way, we will use moral psychology as a lens to explore other prominent ideas in psychology and cognitive science (such as the relationship between intuition and reason, the nature of emotions, and theory of mind).

Technical requirements for taking the course: This course will be in-person.

All assignments, the schedule of readings and seminar meetings, course announcements, and course policies will be posted to the eClass site for this course. All assignments will either be submitted via eClass or completed within the eClass interface (e.g. posting on discussion forums). The instructors will also use eClass as their primary way of communicating with students.

Graded assignments will take place in class. Students are expected to be able to attend the full class meeting.

Here are some useful links for student computing information, resources and help:

Student Guide to Moodle

Zoom@YorkU Best Practices 

Zoom@YorkU User Reference Guide

Computing for Students Website

Student Guide to eLearning at York University

To determine Internet connection and speed, there are online tests, such as Speedtest, that can be run.

Times and locations:

Readings will be made available online through the eClass website.

1. Participation                                                                                    15%
2. Weekly Reading Quizzes                                                  15%
3. Discussion Questions                         10%
4. In-Class Essays (2, 20% each)                                                                         40%
5. Cumulative Test 20%

(Specific breakdown and weighting of assignments is tentative and subject to change.)

Weekly seminar meetings (3 hours, with breaks). Class meetings will be conducted in-person and on-campus at the designated classroom. Any exceptions will be explicitly noted. Materials, assignments, and assessments will all be delivered through the eClass website.

In this class, students will improve their ability to:

• Read and understand research articles in both philosophy and psychology
• Think critically about the relationship between philosophical questions and empirical questions
• Interpret and analyze argumentative papers
• Express their ideas verbally and in writing
• Understand key concepts and issues in contemporary philosophy of psychology

Course policies

Grading

The grading scheme for the course conforms to the 9-point grading system used in undergraduate programs at York (e.g., A+ = 9, A = 8, B+ - 7, C+ = 5, etc.).  Assignments and tests* will bear either a letter grade designation or a corresponding number grade (e.g.  A+ = 90 to 100, A = 80 to 90, B+ = 75 to 79, etc.). Final course grades may be adjusted to conform to Program or Faculty grades distribution profiles.

Assignment Submissions

Assignments will be submitted either in person via eClass. Weekly reading quizzes happen at the start of every class; the two lowest grades will be dropped, and there will be no makeups offered for these.

Contacting instructors

You should contact the instructor via email. Please note that I will be responding to messages within during working days (i.e. not on weekends or holidays).

Course recordings:

Recording of this course is not permitted, as this is a heavily discussion-based course. Slides will be made available on eClass after class is over. Students do not have permission to duplicate, copy and/or distribute the any course materials outside of the class (these acts can violate not only copyright laws but also FIPPA).

Academic honesty and integrity

In this course, we strive to maintain academic integrity to the highest extent possible. All submitted coursework must be an expression of the student’s own understanding and ideas. Please familiarize yourself with the meaning of academic integrity by completing SPARK’s Academic Integrity module at the beginning of the course. Breaches of academic integrity range from cheating to plagiarism (i.e., the improper crediting of another’s work, the representation of another’s ideas as your own, etc.). All instances of academic dishonesty in this course will be reported to the appropriate university authorities, and can be punishable according to the Senate Policy on Academic Honesty.

Student Accommodations

We are committed to fairly accommodating students with disabilities. Please contact the instructors and Student Accessibility Services (https://accessibility.students.yorku.ca/) as soon as possible, and we will all work together to find a fair accommodation. Note that in addition to sending the letter, accommodations for individual assignments must specifically be requested well ahead of the assignment's deadline.