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Dec. 9, 2007 Dear Phil 3600 students, On Tuesday of this week, I'll begin by doing a bit of "summing up" of our discussion of the so-called "non-dual" perspective on the problem of evil. I'll try to do a better job of explaining how the book of Job fits into this part of the course. The rest of Tuesday will be devoted to lectures 4 and 5 of van Inwagen's _The Problem of Evil_. On Thursday, we'll turn to lecture 6 of the same book. (This was previously announced, but it never hurts to say the same thing twice.) About the final... As you know, the official date of our final exam is quite early both in the exam period and on the day of the exam. Sat., Dec. 15, 7:30am - 10am !Here's what I've decided... The final will be take-home. The exam questions will be handed out at the end of class on Thursday. This is an open book exam, and I don't mind at all if you talk with each other about the questions. But I do expect each of you to take responsibility for your own work. So far, I've seen no reason to think that any of you are unworthy of my trust. Let's keep it that way. The drop-dead deadline for handing in the final will be Sat., Dec. 15 at NOON. Please try to hand your exams to me IN PERSON. I will be in my office (Hellems 280) on Friday afternoon between 1:30pm and 3pm, and again on Saturday between 10am and noon. If you absolutely can't make those times, you MAY shove your exam under my office door or put it in my department mailbox. However, ALL exams MUST be handed in BEFORE NOON on Saturday. NO EXCEPTIONS, please. I do NOT want the exams emailed to me. Naturally, I'm willing to make exceptions for people with broken legs and such, or, more generally, for anyone who can make a case that it would be a VERY SERIOUS inconvenience to come to campus for this purpose. In any such case, however, you must get my EXPLICIT PERMISSION IN ADVANCE to submit your exam by email. The exam questions will be of the VERY SHORT essay type. Topics will be drawn entirely from the material we've covered SINCE the midterm exam. (I assume no one will object to this deviation from my original plan.) You will answer exactly TWO of my questions. Some questions may involve comparing and evaluating the views of two or more different authors. Others may deal just with one of the authors we've read. There may be ONE question that EVERYONE is required to answer. Your answers MUST be typed and double spaced. Try to make sure that no answer to a question EXCEEDS 500 WORDS IN LENGTH. In the initial assignment of final grades for the course, I will give roughly equal weight to the two papers and the two exams. I will then look for cases in which people have shown significant improvement over the course of the semester. Such persons will get some extra credit. The reason for this is that I want those who received relatively low midterm scores earlier on to have every incentive to do their very best on this last project. All the best, Wes P.S. Congratulations to everyone who is about to graduate! |