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Course info
KFR / MPRE2
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Course description
Department/Unit / Abbreviation
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KFR
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MPRE2
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Academic Year
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2024/2025
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Academic Year
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2024/2025
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Title
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Problems of Ethics II
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Form of course completion
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Examination
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Form of course completion
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Examination
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Accredited / Credits
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Yes,
5
Cred.
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Type of completion
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Combined
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Type of completion
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Combined
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Time requirements
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Lecture
1
[HRS/WEEK]
Seminar
1
[HRS/WEEK]
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Course credit prior to examination
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No
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Course credit prior to examination
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No
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Automatic acceptance of credit before examination
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No
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Included in study average
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YES
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Language of instruction
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English
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Occ/max
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Automatic acceptance of credit before examination
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No
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Summer semester
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0 / 5
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0 / 0
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0 / 10
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Included in study average
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YES
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Winter semester
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0 / -
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0 / -
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0 / -
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Repeated registration
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NO
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Repeated registration
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NO
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Timetable
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Yes
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Semester taught
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Summer semester
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Semester taught
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Summer semester
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Minimum (B + C) students
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not determined
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Optional course |
Yes
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Optional course
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Yes
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Language of instruction
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English
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Internship duration
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0
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No. of hours of on-premise lessons |
0
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Evaluation scale |
A|B|C|D|E|F |
Periodicity |
každý rok
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Periodicita upřesnění |
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Fundamental theoretical course |
No
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Fundamental course |
Yes
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Fundamental theoretical course |
No
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Evaluation scale |
A|B|C|D|E|F |
Substituted course
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None
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Preclusive courses
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N/A
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Prerequisite courses
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N/A
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Informally recommended courses
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N/A
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Courses depending on this Course
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N/A
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Histogram of students' grades over the years:
Graphic PNG
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XLS
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Course objectives:
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Content
In this course, we will be discussing contemporary debates and research in ethics. Throughout the semester, we will familiarize ourselves with specific moral issues relating to beings on the margins of traditional approaches to moral philosophyfetal humans, non-human animals, the environment, persons with cognitive disabilities, and future persons. The issues we will consider include: abortion; the killing and consumption of non-human animals; conservation; inclusion and disability; and procreation. Students will be invited to consider these issues from the problem-based perspective of applied ethics, but also to consider how one's approach to these topics may be inflected by deeper ethical and metaphysical presuppositions (e.g., about what makes life worth living and the link between capacities, species, and moral standing).
Two major goals of this course are: (1) to learn to identify and assess the argumentative strategies used to answer pressing ethical questions; and (2) to critically examine the presuppositions that structure philosophical discussions of ethical problems.
(February 12) Introductioncourse overview
(February 19) Nonhuman Animal Ethics: Anti-Speciesism (Peter Singer, "All Animals are Equal"; Jeff McMahon "Animals")
(February 26) Nonhuman Animal Ethics: Arguments from Marginal Cases (Elizabeth Anderson "Animal Rights and the Values of Non-human Lives")
(March 4) Nonhuman Animal Ethics: Rethinking Speciesism (Cora Diamond "Eating Meat and Eating People")
(March 11) Environmental Ethics: Challenging Anthropocentrism (Bernard Williams, "Must a Concern for the Environment be Centred on Human Beings?")
(March 25) Disability and Inclusion: The Ethics of Care (Eva Federer Kittay, "The Ethics of Care, Dependence, and Disability")
(April 1) Disability and Inclusion: Philosophical Ethics (Eva Federer Kittay, "The Ethics of Philosophizing: Ideal Theory and the Exclusion of People with Severe Disabilities")
(April 8) The Ethics of Abortion (Judith Jarvis Thompson, "A Defense of Abortion")
(April 15) Procreation and the Non-Identity Problem (Gregory Kavka, "The Paradox of Future Individuals")
(April 22) Procreation: Anti-Natalism (David Benatar "Why Coming into Existence is Always a Harm")
(April 29) Procreation: Obligations to Reproduce? (Saul Smilanksy "Is there a Moral Obligation to Have Children?")
(May 6) Procreation: Climate Change and the decision to have children (Christine Overall "My Children, Their Children, and Benatar's Anti-Natalism")
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Requirements on student
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Seminar Format: Each seminar will focus on a paper which you will be expected to have read. I will begin by making some introductory remarks before inviting you to raise clarificatory or critical questions about the text and make connections with previous readings from the course. You will be asked to prepare question sheets in advance and submit them electronically before the start of class.
Assessment: You will be responsible for submitting 3 problem analyses. Two will be due during the semester (worth 25% each), and the third during the exam period (worth 40%). Additionally, 10% of your final grade will be based on the timely submission of question sheets.
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Content
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Course Description: In this course, our central topic will be moral responsibility, the nature of blame, and when it should be withheld from apparent wrongdoers. We will examine a number of categories of "excuse", conditions that arguably mitigate the blameworthiness of behaviour, including: causal determinism, ignorance of fact, moral ignorance (especially forms rooted in culture and upbringing), and mental disorder. In each of these discussions, you will be invited to reflect on the forms that blame take, the role that blame practices have in human life, and how this bears on questions of the fairness of blame in the cases under consideration.
Seminar Format: Each seminar will focus on a paper which you will be expected to have read. I will begin by making some introductory remarks before inviting you to raise clarificatory or critical questions about the text and make connections with previous readings from the course. You will be asked to prepare question sheets in advance and submit them electronically before class.
Readings:
Week 1 JJC Smart, "Free-Will, Praise and Blame"
Mind (70: 1961), pp. 291-306.
Week 2 Peter Strawson, "Freedom and Resentment"
Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays (Routledge: 1974), pp. 1-28.
Week 3 Susan Wolfe, "Blame, Italian Style"
Reasons and Responsibility ed. Wallace, Kumar, and Freeman (OUP: 2011), pp. 332-347.
Week 4 Miranda Fricker, "What's the Point of Blame? A Paradigm Based Explanation"
No?s (50(1): 2016), pp. 165-183.
Week 5 R. Jay Wallace, "Dispassionate Opprobrium: On Blame and the Reactive Sentiments"
Reasons and Responsibility ed. Wallace, Kumar, and Freeman (OUP: 2011), 348-372.
Week 6 Jonathan Dancy, "Prichard on Duty and Ignorance of Fact"
Ethical Intuitionism ed. Philip Stratton-Lake (OUP: 2002), pp. 229-247
Week 7 Pamela Hieronymi, "Responsibility for Believing"
Synthese (161(3): 2008), pp. 357-373.
Week 8 Elizabeth Harman "Does Moral Ignorance Exculpate?"
Ratio (24(4): 2011), pp. 443-468.
Week 9 Michele Moody-Adams, "Culture, Responsibility, and Affected Ignorance"
Ethics (104(2): 1994), pp. 291-309.
Week 10 Gary Watson, "Two Faces of Responsibility"
Philosophical Topics (24(2): 1996), pp. 227-248.
Week 11 Normy Arpaly, "How It Is Not 'Just like Diabetes': Mental Disorders and the Moral Psychologist"
Philosophical Issues (15: 2005), pp. 282-298.
Week 12 David Bakhurst: Except from
The Formation of Reason (Wiley Blackwell: 2011), pp. 123-148.
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Activities
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Fields of study
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Guarantors and lecturers
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Guarantors:
PhDr. Antony Fredriksson, Ph.D. ,
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Lecturer:
PhDr. Antony Fredriksson, Ph.D. (100%),
Lesley Paige Jamieson, Ph.D. (100%),
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Seminar lecturer:
PhDr. Antony Fredriksson, Ph.D. (100%),
Lesley Paige Jamieson, Ph.D. (100%),
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Literature
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Prerequisites - other information about course preconditions |
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Competences acquired |
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Teaching methods |
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Assessment methods |
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