Posts are due by 8pm the night before the class that discusses the relevant material.

Each week I will provide a question to help guide your reading of the text, and you will be expected to write a short response post either: (i) in response to one of those questions or (ii) in response to another student’s response. These responses should be kept short – about 250 words, or 1-2 paragraphs. If another student has made a post responding to the same question you are interested in, you should seriously consider taking into account what they have said and responding at least in part, rather than posting your own thoughts independently. Your response post will be due by 8pm the day before the class, although I heavily encourage you to write before then, so that you have a better chance of interacting with each other. If you find outside articles or references to our topics, this would also be an appropriate place to share this link with your classmates.

The weekly posts are intended to help you prepare for class, but perhaps more importantly they are intended to be a low-stakes opportunity for you to develop your ability to discuss and write about philosophy, especially about complicated concepts and arguments that appear in the texts we will be reading. As such, they will be graded based on participation and effort, and they will not be marked based on conventions usually associated with philosophical writing. One should feel free to write as you speak, attempting to make what you want to say as clear as possible, as if you were explaining your ideas to someone outside of the class or philosophy in general. They are also intended to be an opportunity for you to interact with your peers and to develop skills in argumentation and discussion, so one should absolutely feel free to follow up on someone else’s post for the week or provide questions about other posts.