General Information

Contact Information

Professor:: Abe Stone (abestone@ucsc.edu)
Office:: Cowell Annex A-106
Phone (office):: 459-5723
Push notiﬁcation:: Notify Abe
Website:: https://people.ucsc.edu/~abestone/courses
Office hours:: Tues. 3:15–4:15pm, Thurs. 5:15–6:15pm, or by appointment
Teaching Assistants:
Brett Dinovo: (bdinovo@ucsc.edu)
Thomas Rule: (trule@ucsc.edu)

Participation in discussion sections (good participation will be possible grounds for raising course grade, especially if it is on a borderline).

“Metaphysics exercises” (kind of a short take-home multiple choice quiz), due most class days (all exercises together are worth 35% of the ﬁnal grade; graded heavily on a curve). These will be made available on-line via the “Tests & Quizzes” tool on Canvas.

Canvas site

Two short papers (2–3 pages), due Tuesday, May 1 and Tuesday, May 22.

One longer paper (6–8 pages) (worth 35% of the ﬁnal grade). The paper is due Tuesday, June 12, but you an introductory paragraph and brief outline (approximately one sentence per paragraph of the proposed complete paper) are due at some time on or before Tuesday, June 5. There will then be special section meetings, including perhaps extra meetings, at which you can get feedback on these plans from your TA and fellow students. This preliminary assignment will not be separately graded, but if you do not hand it in at all or if it is wholly unsatisfactory, your grade on the ﬁnal paper will be reduced by one half step (e.g. A to A-).

Final paper

All paper assignments are available on-line, and there are links to them from this syllabus as well as from my main course page. I will discuss the assignments in class when the due date draws near. You can ﬁnd answers to some commonly asked questions about my assignments and grading in my FAQ.

Papers are to be handed in, as attachments, via the “Assignments” tool on Canvas. Please submit in MSWord format (.doc or .docx), or in a format easily convertible to MSWord (e.g., plain text or RTF). The system will accept late submissions, but late papers may not receive full credit. The system is not set up to allow resubmissions: once you press the “submit” button, it will not let you change your response. If, however, you mistakenly submit something and want to change it, please contact me and I can make an exception.

As noted above, the ME’s will be accessed and submitted on-line via Canvas. (The system will accept late submissions, but credit — possibly reduced — will only be given up until the time that the correct answers are announced, either in section or on-line.)

All assignments are due by 11:55pm on the due date.

Texts

Texts and editions
Text	Edition	Note
Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding	(Penguin, 1998) (ISBN: 0140434828). An older edition is available on Google Books and Wikisource. In addition, there is a LibriVox recording of Books I and II.
Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge	(Hackett, 1993) (ISBN: 0915145391). The text is available on Google Books and Wikisource, among other places, and there is also a LibriVox recording.
Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding	(2d ed., Hackett, 1993) (ISBN: 0872202291). The text, together with that of the other Enquiry, is available on Google and Wikisource, and there is also a LibriVox recording.
Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion	(Hackett, 1998) (ISBN: 0872204022). Available on Google and Wikisource, and there is also a LibriVox recording.
Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature	(Oxford, 2000) (ISBN: 0198751729). The readings are all from Book I, contained in Volume I of the text available on Google Books and LibriVox; both volumes together are available on Wikisource.

The above texts should be available at the Literary Guillotine, and they will also be put on reserve at McHenry.