Submission of Assessments

All assessment pieces are to be submitted via Turnitin portals that will be made available the unit's iLearn site. Written assessment pieces will be run through the Turnitin software system which detects unoriginal work.

 

Special Consideration Extensions and Penalties

All work must be submitted on time unless an extension has been granted. Requests for extensions must be made in writing and will only be considered on serious grounds. Extensions will not be given unless good reasons and appropriate evidence (e.g., medical certificates, counsellor's letters) are presented at the earliest opportunity. Please note that work due concurrently in other subjects is NOT an exceptional circumstance and does not constitute a legitimate reason for an extension.

 

Late Assessment Penalty

Unless a Special Consideration request has been submitted and approved, a 5% penalty (of the total possible mark) will be applied each day a written assessment is not submitted, up until the 7th day (including weekends). After the 7th day, a mark of‚ 0 (zero) will be awarded even if the assessment is submitted. Submission time for all written assessments is set at 11.55pm. A 1-hour grace period is provided to students who experience a technical issue.

This late penalty will apply to non-timed sensitive assessment (incl essays, reports, posters, portfolios, journals, recordings etc). Late submission of time sensitive tasks (such as tests/ exams, performance assessments/presentations, scheduled practical assessments/labs etc) will only be addressed by the unit convenor in a Special consideration application. Special Consideration outcome may result in a new question or topic.

 

Special Consideration Policy

The University classifies a disruption warranting special consideration as serious and unavoidable if it:

• could not have reasonably been anticipated, avoided or guarded against by the student; and

• was beyond the student's control; and caused substantial disruption to the student's capacity for effective study and/or completion of required work; and

• occurred during an event critical study period and was at least three (3) consecutive days duration, and / or

• prevented completion of a final examination.

Students with a pre-existing disability/health condition or prolonged adverse circumstances may be eligible for ongoing assistance and support. Such support is governed by other policies and may be sought and coordinated through Campus Wellbeing and Support Services.

 

How to submit a Special Consideration Notification

A Special Consideration Notification must be completed and submitted online through www.ask.mq.edu.au within five (5) working days of the commencement of the disruption. Applying for Special Consideration: 1. Log in at ask.mq 2. Click 'Special Consideration' from the 'Submit' menu on the left 3. Fill in the required fields as prompted. Once you have completed filling out the information, please click on 'Submit'.

 

Statement concerning the use of AI Tools/Chat GPT

You have undoubtedly heard about ChatGPT and other Generative AI tools that can be used to generate content in relation to prompts. You may find it useful and interesting to see what these tools can tell you about some of the topics we’re looking at. There are many interesting and important philosophical and ethical questions arising out of artificial intelligence, which we may discuss. A few warnings are in order, though, about content generated by ChatGPT or similar tools:

1. It’s not your work, so you can’t submit it, or adapt it a bit and then submit it. This will count as a breach of the Academic Integrity Policy. This applies to any assessments. 

2. It’s not reliable. It gets a lot of things right, but it also gets things wrong, makes up references etc, and its outputs tend to be shallow and generic.

3. It doesn’t count as research. We’ll discuss in class what count as good sources for academic work, but using ChatGPT means you don’t always have a way to trace and check the sources of the content you’re using. 

A useful analogy may be to think of ChatGPT as being like a fairly informed but slightly unpredictable and unreliable acquaintance. Talking to them might be a good way to get some ideas to inspire your own thinking and research, but you can’t take what they say for granted, and you can’t pretend their work is your own.

This unit covers a lot of really interesting topics. We want you to engage, and we want you to learn. You won't do that if you try to outsource your thinking.

This unit uses an iLearn website and Echo360 lecture recordings. The website contains links to the reading material, lecture notes, lecture recordings, and other learning materials such as video clips, weblinks, and images. Students will therefore require access to a computer and a good internet connection in order to access all the material and participate in the unit effectively. PHIL/PHIX3052 will be delivered using a combination of live lectures (recorded via Echo360) and tutorial discussions (in-class tutorials for 'in person scheduled' students; asynchronous online forums for 'online flexible' students). External students will engage in these activities online via dedicated iLearn discussion forums. Lectures are organised around key texts in which fundamental concepts and arguments are introduced and explained.  

Lectures

Lectures will take place on Tuesdays 2pm-3pm, 12 Second Way, Tutorial Room 301) and Thursdays 10am to 11am, 12SW (Second Way), Tutorial Room 304. All lectures will be recorded and made available via Echo360 Online Lecture Recordings shortly afterwards via the iLearn page.

 

Tutorials

Weekly tutorial classes (for all students) will be conducted commencing from Week 2. Internal students will have on-campus tutorials; external (online flexible and OUA) students will participate via online tuorial discussion forums. Week 1 will be a voluntary Introductory session where students introduce themselves to each other and we discuss any issues relevant to studying this unit. Weekly Tutorial Discussion Questions will be posted before the Tuesday lecture. Students are required to respond to the Tutorial Discussion Questions and engage each other in discussion responding to issues raised in these responses. N.B.: Weekly tutorials will begin in WEEK 2 and will continue until WEEK 13 (Week 13 will be a voluntary discussion week focusing on the film Get Out).

 

For lecture/tutoral times and classrooms please consult the MQ Timetable website: https://publish.mq.edu.au/ This website will display up-to-date information on your classes and classroom locations.

PART I - The Question of Existence [RS]

Week 1 Introduction: What is Existentialism?

What is the 'problem of existence'? How does existentialism differ from other approaches to philosophy? What role do literature and art play in existentialist thought?

Required Reading: Stephen Crowell, 'Existentialism', Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, online entry (2015): https://plato.stanfor d.edu/entries/existentialism/

Week 2 - Existence, Absurdity, and Anxiety

Why the problem of existence matters. Camus on the experience of existential 'absurdity'. Heidegger on existential anxiety and what it reveals about ourselves and the world.

Required Reading: Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, chapter 1, extracts from Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, and Heidegger's 'What is Metaphysics?'

Week 3 - Mortality, Freedom, and 'Bad Faith'

What does it mean to be 'mortal'? What is existential freedom? Are we 'authentic' or do we exist in the condition of 'bad faith'?

Required Reading: extracts from Jean-Paul Sartre, 'Existentialism is a Humanism', Sartre, Being and Nothingness

Part II: Ethics and Politics as Existential Tasks [RS]

Week 4 - The Problem of the Other

What is the relationship between the Self and the Other? Is it possible to exist authentically in an 'inauthentic' world? What do these existential insights mean for ethical and political thinking?

Required Reading: Heidegger, “The They” (from Being and Time); Sartre’s “being-for-other” (from Being and Nothingness and No Exit); Maurice Merleau-Ponty, extracts from The Phenomenology of Perception.

Week 5 - Feminist Existentialism

An existentialist approach to gender - the Self and the Other understood in relation to how gender is lived. De Beauvoir on how one 'becomes a woman'. Implications of feminist existentialism for thinking gender today.

Required Reading: Simone de Beauvoir, extraxcts from The Ethics of Ambiguity and from The Second Sex  

Week 6 - Black existentialism

Existentialist approaches to the experience of 'race'. Fanon on the 'divided consciousness' of the black subject. Lewis Gordon's existentialist approach to the experience of 'antiblack racism', philosophy and colonialism, ethics and politics.

Required Reading: Extracts from Frantz Fanon, 'The Fact of Blackness', from White Skin, Black Masks (1948), pp. 82-108 [121-147]. Lewis R. Gordon, 'Fanon as Critique of European Man' and 'Existential Phenomenology and History', from Fanon and the Crisis of European Man: An Essay on Philosophy and the Human Sciences.

 

Part III - Philosophical Approaches to Race [AH]

 

Week 7 - Social Constructionism about Race, Deconstructed

Required Reading: Esa Diaz-Leon, ‘What is Social Construction?’, European Journal of Philosophy 23(4) (2015): 1137–52.

Week 8 - Is Race a Social Kind?

Required Reading:

Ronald Sundstrom, ‘Race as a Human Kind’. Philosophy & Social Criticism 28 (1) (2002): 91–115.

Week 9 - Is Race a Social Status? Or, is it Phenomenological?

Required Reading: Extract from Ásta’s Categories We Live By: The Construction of Sex, Gender, Race, and Other Social Categories (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 93-108. Sara Ahmed, ‘A Phenomenology of Whiteness’. Feminist Theory 8(2) (2007): 149–68.

Week 10 - Is Race Cultural? Or, is it Technological?

Chike Jeffers. 'Cultural Constructionism'. In What Is Race? Four Philosophical Views (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019). Introduction of Alana Lentin’s Why Race Still Matters (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2020).

Supplementary Text: Chike Jeffers. ‘Jeffers’s Reply to Glasgow, Haslanger, and Spencer’. In What Is Race? Four Philosophical Views (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019).

Week 11 - Replacing Race: Racialisation and Racialised Groups

Required Reading: Lawrence Blum, ‘Racialized Groups: The Sociohistorical Consensus’. The Monist 93(2) (2010): 298–320.

Week 12 - Racial Identity and Transrace

Required Reading: Ann Morning, ‘Race and Rachel Doležal’. Contexts 16(2) (2017): 8–11.

Recommended reading: Tina Fernandes Botts, ‘In Black and White: A Hermeneutic Argument Against Transracialism.’ Res Philosophica 95(2) (2018): 303–29. Rebecca Tuvel, ‘Racial Transitions and Controversial Positions: Reply to Taylor, Gordon, Sealey, Hom, and Botts’. Philosophy Today 62(1) (2018): 73–88.

Week 13 - Film: Get Out (Peele, 2017) [AH and RS]

Class discussion and final wrap-up!