Dr. Philip MacEwen
pmacewen@yorku.ca

Virtual office hours: Each registered student will be assigned to a tutorial and a Teaching Assistant. Your Teaching Assistant will contact you shortly after the course begins. If you have concerns about the course, please contact your Teaching Assistant

This course is an introduction 1) to the nature of reasoning and 2) how one can/should reason about some of the major issues of morality and values of our time.

Technical requirements for taking the course: This is an entirely asynchronous on-line course. In other words, there are no in-person lectures and/or tutorials. Rather, weekly combined lectures and tutorials will be recorded and downloaded to the course website where students can access them at their convenience. Students are not required or expected to attend the live on-line lectures and tutorials. If they do, that is entirely up to them. In any case, students will not appear on video unless they decide to do so themselves. To log onto the course website, students will need a) to be registered in the course and b) have a computer with high-speed Internet access.

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: Early each week, a combined lecture and tutorial will be recorded and posted on the course website. Students can access these recordings in video and/or audio format.

The course text/readings will all be posted on the course website. There are no other required course texts/ readings.

There are 5 short group-writing assignments in the course, each worth 20% of the final grade (20x5=100%). Students will be placed in writing groups of no more than five members (including themselves) who will help them plan, write, and submit these assignments. Students will receive the contact information of the other members of their writing groups from their  Teaching Assistants as soon as the deadline for dropping 2025-26 F/W courses with the permission of the instructor has passed, i.e., Sept. 30.

TBA

The learning objectives are i) to help students attain facility in reasoning, something they will need in any profession to interface with their clients, colleagues, customers, students, patients, principals, etc. To accomplish this goal, ii) students will be introduced to a number of issues of morality and values which are relevant, not only to the professions, but to living in the contemporary world.

Course policies: The five graded assignments must be submitted to your Teaching Assistant by the deadlines indicated in the Course Outline, which will be posted on the course website. When classes begin, Teaching Assistants will inform their students how to submit assignments to them (e.g., email, Turnitin, etc.). Late assignments will be accepted without deduction, provided official documentation (e.g., health practitioner’s note) is provided to justify them. Assignments will be marked and graded by the Teaching Assistant of your tutorial. If you have an issue or concern with the course, please contact your Teaching Assistant.