Week 7: Conclusion — Final Major Essay

• No new reading — reread the passages your Final Essay uses — the course ends Monday, October 5; Canvas sets the exact time

Textbook chapters (Payne): Ch. 9: Meta-Ethics · Ch. 10: Right Action · Ch. 11: Social Justice

1. The course arc: Plato (turn toward the Forms) → Socrates (examine everything) → Aristotle (explain by causes) → Augustine and Aquinas (faith and reason) → Descartes (doubt to certainty) → Locke (experience first) → Kant (dare to know) → the New Horizons thinkers (who counts as a knower).
2. Two questions ran under every week: What is real and how do we know it? (metaphysics and epistemology) and How should we live? (ethics).
3. Rationalists (Plato, Descartes) trust reason to reach truth beyond the senses. Empiricists (Aristotle in spirit, Locke) start from observation. Kant tries to combine them: experience gives the material, the mind gives the structure.
4. Meta-ethics (Payne ch. 9) asks whether moral claims can be true. Right action (ch. 10) asks which rules: utilitarianism (the most happiness) vs. Kant (respect for persons). Social justice (ch. 11) asks what a good society owes its members.
5. A defensible argument has: a thesis, reasons that support it, evidence from a text, an objection answered, and no fallacies. That is Course Outcome 3 and the rubric for the Final Essay.
6. Synthesis means showing relationships, not stacking summaries: 'Descartes would reject Locke's blank slate because…' beats 'Descartes said… Locke said…'.
7. The Final Essay is due by the course end date, October 5 — Canvas sets the clock. Submit a file. Late work is not accepted.
8. The final quiz is cumulative. Run the Final review on this site until three runs in a row clear 85%.

Discussion post

1. Claim: the one idea from this course you will still use in five years, and why.
2. Name the thinker and quote or paraphrase the line.
3. Say what changed in how you argue.
4. Reply to two classmates — ask which thinker they would argue against.

Netiquette from the syllabus: address ideas, not people. Complete sentences, correct spelling. Personal matters go to email, never the board.

Confirm the exact prompt and rubric in Canvas. Final essays in this course ask for synthesis across the term; this outline is built for that.

1. Introduction: the question you chose and a thesis that takes a position.
2. Thinker 1 (early weeks): the argument in your words, with textual evidence.
3. Thinker 2 (middle weeks): same — and one sentence on how they answer Thinker 1.
4. Thinker 3 (late weeks): same — and one sentence on what they add that the first two missed.
5. The clash: where two of them cannot both be right, and your verdict.
6. Objection: the strongest case against your verdict, stated fairly.
7. Reply.
8. Conclusion: what follows for a contemporary issue (Course Outcome 4).
9. Final pass: fallacy check, active voice, citations, rubric, file upload, confirmation saved.

Write it in your own words. Cite the reading by author and section. Submit the file in Canvas before the deadline — Late work is not accepted except for a documented emergency (doctor's note, funeral announcement) arranged case by case.

Raise your hand. Mr. James gets a message right away and can help you remotely. Nothing else is stored — just your last name, grade, and where you're stuck.

Ask at home: If you could invite any thinker from this course to dinner, who would it be — and what one question would you ask them?

En español: Si pudieras invitar a cualquier pensador de este curso a cenar, ¿a quién invitarías y qué única pregunta le harías?