Philosophy 355/455		Contemporary Moral Problems	Fall 1999

THE MORAL CONVERSATION PROJECT

        Every student will be assigned to a group of two students.  Each group will be 
required:

1. To meet together outside of section before the date you are assigned to report back to 
your discussion section in order to have a conversation about an assigned moral issue 
or issues.

2. The conversation should last at least an hour.  (Try to have it in a place where you can 
really talk--for example, a coffee shop.)  Your object will be to discuss the issues 
seriously, guided by the desire to find out what is the best way to think of the issue (if 
you like, what the answer is, if there is one) and, most importantly, what the relevant 
considerations are that bear on the issue.  Even if you have a committed position, we 
want you to be genuinely open to thinking about other perspectives, objections that 
might be raised to the way you approach the issue, and reasons that might be offered 
for opposing views.  The idea is to try to define and express your own ideas as clearly 
as possible and to stretch yourself in trying to understand how your conversant sees 
things.  It doesn't matter if you don't start out with any particular convictions on the 
issue.  The project is one in mutual exploration.  We hope both people will come 
away with a deeper understanding of their own ideas, as well as a grasp of how the 
other person sees things.

You and your conversant may be asked to discuss an argument or set of arguments 
from one or another text we are reading.  Here your job will primarily be to try to 
figure out together exactly what the arguments are, that is, what premises the author is 
relying on to prove her point, whether her conclusions follow, whether her premises 
are plausible, and so on.

3. On your assigned day, the two of you will have a collective responsibility to report on 
your conversation: what seemed the most important issues and relevant 
considerations on various sides of the issue, where you agreed, where you disagreed, 
how views changed, if they did, how they didn't, if they didn't, and so on.  We will be 
especially interested in your collective sense of what the most important remaining 
questions are as this will help structure the discussion for the day.  Ultimately, what 
began as a report of your conversation will turn into an extended conversation that 
includes everyone in your discussion section.