Notes-Assignments for Medical Ethics, Fall 2014

Basics

  • You must turn in 10 total notes-assignments this semester. (Since there will be roughly 22 readings to choose from to write your notes on, this shouldn’t be too hard—think of it as a roughly once per week assignment.)
  • If you turn in more than 1 in a week, I will count the best from that week and won’t count the other one.
  • If, after I’ve picked the best from each week you still have turned in more than 10 notes-assignments for the semester, I will count the ten best toward your final grade.
  • Due Deadlines: Notes are due before the start of class on the day of the reading that they cover.
  • A single notes-assignment should only cover one reading.
  • Notes-assignments should cover required readings only. (I.e., no “optional” readings.)
  • A notes-assignment should have your name, the date, and the title and author of the reading at the top.
  • Lateness: A notes-assignment on a reading that has already been lectured on will not be accepted.
  • Length: There is no hard and fast length requirement, but in general a single notes-assignment that is over 4 pages is too long. If you continually submit very long notes-assignments we may need to discuss ways for you to condense them.
  • Working in Groups: I encourage you to work in groups on these assignments; i.e., to read the assigned readings together and take notes and discuss them together.
  • If you work in a group, you must turn in handwritten notes, and each member of the group must list the members of the group at the top after stating their name!

“Two Phases”

Ideally, you should take notes in two phases or stages. The first phaseshould take place as you read the paper the first (or second) time. In the first phase you’re mainly just jotting down key terms and phrases that the author uses and also writing down any questions that you may have about things the author says. The second phase should take place after you’ve read the paper through at least once, as you go back through it again to get a more settled idea of what’s going on in it. In the second phase you’re trying to expand on the first phase by defining or paraphrasing the terms/claims you wrote down in the first phase, and you’re also going to try to reconstruct any of the author’s reasons or arguments for the key claims she gives.

Elements of the Notes(and When To Create These Elements)

  1. Key terms– List any words that the author uses that seem like “technical” or “philosophical” terms, or any words taken from ordinary language that the author is using in a special or unique or puzzling way. (Note: don’t include general philosophical terms like “obligatory” or “a priori” unless you think the author is making a point of using them in an unusual way.)
  2. Phase One: Just write down the terms.
  3. Phase Two: Try to give the author’s definition (or rough gloss) for each of the terms.
  4. Key theses/claims – List any claims that the author makes that seem important, unusual, obscure, noteworthy, or otherwise especially relevant.
  5. Phase One:Write them down verbatim.
  6. Phase Two: Try to paraphrase as many of the verbatim claims as you can.
  7. Arguments/Reasons – Write down or reconstruct any arguments or reasons that the author gives for her key claims. (Be on the lookout for occasions when the author says something like “I will be arguing for the claim that __,” or “My argument for the claim that __ is the following.”)
  8. Phase Two: It would probably be best to write down arguments or reasons in the second phase, after you’ve read the paper through once.
  9. You can write something like, “Smith thinks we should believe __ because she thinks that if it is true, it helps explain __.” Or you could write something like, “Jones thinks we should believe this because she thinks it’s just obvious!” Or you can write out an argument that you think the author has given for the claim (see below).
  10. Questions – Write down any questions you may have; in particular, write down questions like, “What does the author mean by this?” or “The author is assuming __ here, but why should we think that?” But in general, you can write down any questions that may occur to you as you’re reading.
  11. Phase One or Phase Two: It’s ok to write down questions in either of the two phases, but you’ll probably be more inclined to write them down in the first phase.

Form that Notes should Take

I will accept handwritten or typed notes. I don’t care how they’re organized on the page except that I would like you to adopt some convention for organizing things so that I can easily tell what is supposed to be a key term, what is supposed to be a key claim, what is supposed to be a question, etc. You can devise what works best for you but it may be best to have two drafts; one created as you read and then added to afterwards, and then a second draft that presents everything in a clean and organized way.

When you write down an argument, write it in Premise-Conclusion form, as I’ve written arguments in class. Premise-Conclusion form looks like this:

P1) This is the first premise.

P2)This is the second premise.

------

C) This is the conclusion (i.e., the claim that is being argued for).

Often authors don’t write out their arguments in Premise-Conclusion form, so you’ll have to “reconstruct” or “extract” the arguments from the text. In general the key claims the author makes will be things they want to argue for, or things that they think are true and that they think can be used as premises in an argument for some other key claim.

Try to reconstruct arguments so that they are valid, unless you’re very confident that the author’s argument is not valid. If you aren’t sure what a “valid” argument is, re-read the Hardegree article from the course webpage, or come talk to me during my office hours (Monday and Wednesday from 10:30 to 11:30 in Bartlett 351). (A valid argument isn’t just “a good argument.”)

Grading

These will be graded on a 4 point scale.

A “check plus” (i.e., ✓ is 4 points, and means an excellent job evincing that you not only did the reading very carefully and thoroughly but that you understood it very well.

A “check” (i.e., ✓ is 3 points, and means a good job evincing that you did the reading carefully and had a good sense of it.

A “check minus” (i.e., ✓ is 2 points, and means an adequate to mediocre job evincing that you did the reading and at least know a little about what’s going on in it.

A “frowny face” (i.e., ) is 1 point, and means a poor job evincing a superficial read-through and little to no idea of what is going on in it.

A “zero” (i.e., 0) is 0 points, and means that what you turned in did not follow the guidelines for note-taking and/or seemed to have nothing to do with the reading whatsoever.