Course syllabus

Introduction to Philosophy — Syllabus

Introduction to Philosophy Free sample edition

Introduction to Philosophy is a 3-unit, lower-division undergraduate course offered at [Institution] in [Term]. The class meets in person twice a week for about 75 minutes each time: [Meeting days/times].

This syllabus is the governing document for the course. It tells you what the course is, how your grade is built, what happens each week, and the policies you can count on. Weeks are numbered from Week 1 to Week 16; your instructor's course site gives the due date for each item.

Instructor and Contact

Instructor: [Instructor name]
Contact: [Contact info]
Office hours: [Office hours]

Bring something specific to office hours, such as an argument you cannot put in standard form, a premise you suspect is hidden, two positions that seem to say the same thing, or an objection you do not know how to answer. Reach out early: a question asked in the week it comes up is far easier to answer than one saved for exam week. Philosophy asks you to sit with questions that have no settled answer, and that can feel unsettling at first. That is normal, and it is what the weekly work is for. Check the course announcements at the start of each week.

Course Description

This is the introductory, one-semester philosophy course. It is a problems-based survey of the main branches of philosophy (knowledge and reality, mind and self, God, ethics, and politics) through the arguments and thought experiments that define them. Confucian, Daoist, Buddhist, and ubuntu philosophy are studied alongside the European tradition, and the course ends with existentialism and the question of life's meaning. Students in every major take it, and it has no prerequisite.

The course teaches the philosopher's way of working. You state a view as its best defenders would, put the argument for it in standard form, judge whether it is valid and whether its premises hold, test it with a counterexample or a thought experiment, and answer the strongest objection. It is not a history-of-philosophy sequence, and it is not a formal logic course: Week 2 teaches only the argument skills every later week uses. It is not a comparative religion course, and it never tells you what to believe about God, morality, or politics.

Every week practices one habit. You meet an idea in plain words first, then attach the term, then see it in an argument. Every reading walks the same order: the claim, the premises that support it, whether the argument is valid, the strongest objection, and a reply from the position's side. The reading ends in one plain sentence, such as "Gettier's cases show that a belief can be justified and true by luck, so justified true belief may not be enough for knowledge."

The arc of the course

The course opens with method, because every later week reconstructs and tests arguments. Week 1 asks what philosophy is, through Socrates and his trial in Athens in 399 BCE. Week 2 teaches how arguments and thought experiments work: premises and conclusions, standard form, validity, soundness, and inductive strength.

Reality and knowledge come next. Plato (Week 3) opens the questions of reality and knowledge that Descartes, Locke, and Hume take up (Week 4) and that Gettier sharpens (Week 5). The mind (Week 6) and the self and free will (Week 7) follow from those questions about what we are and what we can know. Week 8 reviews the first half by the one distinction each topic asks for, adds one light topic, Pascal's wager, and holds the midterm. The wager bridges into the philosophy of religion (Week 9).

Ethics then takes three weeks: the challenges of relativism, divine command, and egoism (Week 10), utilitarianism (Week 11), and Kant, virtue, and the trolley problem (Week 12). Political philosophy follows (Week 13), because justice builds on the ethical theories. Confucian, Daoist, Buddhist, and ubuntu philosophy (Week 14) come after the European theories so they can be compared on the questions the course has already asked. Existentialism, the meaning of life, and the course synthesis close the course (Week 15). Week 16 holds the cumulative final.

What you will work with

One thread runs through the whole term: a roster of 15 thought experiments and puzzles, one at the center of each instructional week, so each week's question is met in a single vivid case before it is met in argument. In order, they are the trial of Socrates (Plato's Apology); the barber who shaves all and only those who do not shave themselves (a standard logic puzzle, usually associated with Bertrand Russell); the allegory of the cave (Plato's Republic, Book VII); the evil deceiver (René Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, 1641); the Gettier cases (Edmund Gettier, 1963); the Chinese room (John Searle, 1980); the ship of Theseus (Plutarch's Life of Theseus); Pascal's wager (Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1670); the watch on the heath (William Paley, Natural Theology, 1802); the ring of Gyges (Plato's Republic, Book II); the drowning child (Peter Singer, 1972); the runaway trolley (Philippa Foot, 1967, and Judith Jarvis Thomson, 1976); the veil of ignorance (John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, 1971); the chariot (the Questions of King Milinda); and Sisyphus and his rock (Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942).

Around the roster, the course works with an illustrative set of 10 arguments keyed for validity (6 valid and 4 invalid), 10 verified quotations from public-domain texts and translations, the 4 ethical theories, the standard positions on the mind, free will, and the arguments about God, the social contract accounts, a set of 12 concepts from four world traditions (3 from each), and an illustrative set of 8 statements to match to the ethical theories. The argument set and the theory-matching set are written for teaching and are labelled illustrative wherever they appear; their premises are not claims the course endorses. Examples also come from jury rooms, hospitals, help desks, town meetings, classrooms, and family decisions, and the people in them get roles, not names.

Our approach: fairness, accuracy, and evenhandedness

Four commitments run through every week.

The strongest version first. Every position is stated as its best defenders would state it before any objection is raised, and every objection gets a reply from the position's side. A weakened version of a view, set up to be knocked down, counts as a mistake in this course, in our materials and in your work.
No verdicts on open questions. Whether God exists, which ethical theory is right, whether we have free will, and how to answer a thought experiment are open questions. The course teaches the arguments, and you argue for a view of your own, but no page, quiz, or exam announces the answer. A graded item may key an argument's validity, but never its soundness when its premises are an open question.
Religion is taught as arguments. Week 9 studies the classic arguments for and against the existence of God, and the objections and replies to each, as philosophy. It never renders a verdict on belief or unbelief, and you are never asked to say what you personally believe about God.
Traditions beyond Europe in their own terms. Confucian, Daoist, Buddhist, and ubuntu philosophy are each presented as philosophy, with their own questions and arguments, and none is ranked against another or against the European tradition. Week 14 compares them on the questions the course has already asked, without ranking.

The same evenhandedness covers politics. Week 13 studies theories of the state, justice, and liberty, from Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau to John Stuart Mill, Rawls, and Robert Nozick. The course argues no current policy question and takes no side on a live political issue, and no living politician, party, outlet, or commentator appears in the course.

No grade depends on which view you hold on an open question. Your grade depends on stating each position fairly, reconstructing an argument accurately, judging its validity correctly, answering the strongest objection, and crediting every quotation, view, work, and thought experiment to its source.

Quotations, translations, and attributions

Philosophy's most common errors are a quotation reworded, a view credited to the wrong philosopher, and a translator's English read as the philosopher's own words. The course guards against all three.

Only verified quotations are quoted. The course quotes 10 passages, each reproduced exactly as a public-domain text prints it, spelling and punctuation included (Hobbes's "poore", for example). Every other reference to a text is a paraphrase and is marked as one.
Translators are named. A translated line names its translator, because the English words are the translator's. For example, Socrates says in Plato's Apology that "the unexamined life is not worth living" (Plato, Apology, trans. Benjamin Jowett), and those English words are Jowett's.
Attributions are checked. "I think, therefore I am" comes from Descartes' Discourse on the Method (1637), not the Meditations; Foot devised the runaway-tram case (1967), and Thomson (1976) named it the trolley problem; the ring of Gyges is Glaucon's story in the Republic, Book II; "existence precedes essence" is Jean-Paul Sartre's formulation; and the harm principle is Mill's (On Liberty, 1859).

Required Materials

You buy no textbook and pay nothing for course materials. Every reading and video is a link to an external resource, opened from the week's page so you always reach the version the course teaches from. Beyond a web browser, you need these free tools:

A free word processor or any free note-taking app: for arguments in standard form, counterexamples, and short dialogues. Pen and paper work too.
Free public-domain texts: the course's quotations come from public-domain texts and translations on Project Gutenberg and the Internet Classics Archive, and from a public-domain transcription of Bentham's 1823 edition. You open each one from its link and check a quotation against the text as printed; none costs anything.
Free reference and explainer sources: each week's Readings & Resources page links reference entries, short explainers, and captioned videos. None requires an account or a payment.
A free account with one approved AI chatbot, from the list in the AI-Use Policy below. A free tier is enough for everything in this course, and every AI-based activity also has a route that needs no AI at all.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course you will be able to:

Outcome A. Argument analysis: reconstruct a philosophical argument in standard form, judge its validity and the plausibility of its premises, and test it with a counterexample or a thought experiment, stating the result in one plain sentence.
Outcome B. Fair interpretation and accurate sourcing: state a position as its strongest defenders would, attribute every view, work, and thought experiment correctly, quote only from a verified text, and check any claim about a philosopher, including AI output, against the source.

The nine course objectives below build toward those two outcomes. Each week's overview page names the objective that week serves and turns it into a short checklist of what you should be able to do by the end of the week.

Explain what philosophy is, name its main branches, and describe the Socratic practice of examining beliefs through questioning and argument.
Identify arguments, put them in standard form, judge whether they are valid, sound, or inductively strong, and test claims with counterexamples and thought experiments.
Explain central positions in metaphysics and epistemology — Plato's Forms, rationalism and empiricism, skepticism, and the analysis of knowledge — and evaluate the arguments for them.
Compare positions on the mind-body problem, personal identity, and free will, and evaluate them with the thought experiments that test them.
Evaluate the classic arguments for and against the existence of God and the relationship between faith and reason.
Explain and apply the major ethical theories — utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, virtue ethics, and social contract theory — and the challenges of relativism and egoism, to moral cases.
Compare social contract theories and theories of justice and liberty, from Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau to Mill, Rawls, and Nozick.
Describe central ideas of Confucian, Daoist, Buddhist, and ubuntu philosophy, and compare them with the European tradition without ranking.
Explain existentialist and other answers to the question of life's meaning, and write a reasoned position on a philosophical question that answers the strongest objection to it.

How this course works

Every module presents the same content in three ways — a chapter to read, a slide deck with speaker notes, and captioned videos — so you can choose how to take it in. Each module's lecture page also carries the week's explanation as one spoken-style walk-through.

A typical week runs in this order:

Week overview. Open the module's overview page, titled "Week N Overview" (for example, Week 1 Overview). It lists the week's work in order with time estimates and names the week's checkpoint, the one thing you should be able to do by the end of the week.
Chapter (about 25 to 60 minutes; each chapter prints its own time). The week's primary reading, where each idea moves from plain words to the term to an argument in standard form. Read it first.
Lecture page and slide deck (about 15 to 20 minutes for the lecture, plus time with the deck). The same ideas, explained aloud and in slides.
Readings and videos. An optional go-deeper menu of primary texts, reference entries, and explainers; every video has captions.
Lecture tutorial (60 to 90 minutes). A one-on-one session with your chatbot that teaches, gives practice, and ends with a completion summary you submit.
Practice set (15 to 25 minutes). Ungraded practice with a Socratic coach that asks questions, offers hints, and gives you a short self-check rubric for each problem, at your own pace and on fresh everyday scenarios.
Philosophy Workshop (about 90 minutes). One argument or thought experiment worked end to end. You reconstruct it in standard form, marking any premise you add, and judge and explain its validity. You test it with a counterexample or a labelled variation of the thought experiment, and you state what its strongest defender and its strongest critic would say, ending in one plain sentence naming where they disagree. Next, you ask your chatbot to reconstruct the same argument, check every quotation word for word and every attribution against the pinned record, and catch and correct one of its slips by hand. You finish with a short reflection on which intuition you started with and whether it survived.
Discussion (about 45 minutes) and assignment (about 60 to 90 minutes). Where you put the week's ideas to work on an arguable, applied question and on problems of your own.
Quiz. A short auto-graded check of what you now know, taken on your own.

Week 8 is lighter: the chapter (about 35 to 45 minutes), the lecture, slides, readings, practice set, and discussion, then the study guide, exam-prep tutorial, practice exam, and midterm. Week 16 has no new module; it holds the final exam and its study guide, exam-prep tutorial, and practice exam.

Grading

Your course grade is the weighted average of the six groups below. The weights sum to 100%.

Grading weight by assessment group
Component	Weight
Tutorials & Practice	10%
Quizzes	10%
Workshops	20%
Assignments	25%
Discussions	15%
Exams	20%
Total	100%

What each group holds

Tutorials & Practice: the 14 weekly lecture tutorials, one in every module except Week 8. The practice sets sit beside them and are ungraded.
Quizzes: 14 weekly quizzes, one in every module except Week 8. Quizzes are closed to AI.
Workshops: the 14 weekly Philosophy Workshops, one in every module except Week 8. Each Workshop publishes its rubric with it. The rubric rewards an accurate reconstruction, a correct validity judgment, a fair statement of both positions, the chatbot slip you catch and correct, and accurate sourcing, never which side you take.
Assignments: 14 weekly assignments, one in every module except Week 8. Each assignment publishes its rubric with the assignment.
Discussions: 15 weekly discussions, one in every module from Week 1 to Week 15.
Exams: the midterm in Week 8 and the cumulative final in Week 16. Within this group, the final carries twice the midterm's weight.

Each week's discussion, and each week's assignment outside Week 8, ships in two versions. The adaptive version is published and graded by default. A traditional version that uses no AI is also in the module, unpublished; your instructor may publish it instead. An unpublished version does not appear to you and does not count. A published traditional version takes the adaptive one's place in the same group and counts the same.

Letter grades follow the standard scheme:

Letter grade by final course percentage
Letter	Percentage range
A	90–100
B	80–89
C	70–79
D	60–69
F	below 60

Weekly Schedule

The course runs for sixteen weeks: fifteen weeks of modules and a finals week. Every module from Week 1 to Week 15 holds the same materials: the week overview, the chapter, the lecture page (titled "Lecture:" followed by the module's title), the slide deck, the readings and videos page, and the practice set. Every module also ships both an adaptive discussion and a traditional no-AI alternative, and every module except Week 8 ships both an adaptive assignment and a traditional no-AI alternative. The adaptive versions are scheduled, graded, and published; the traditional alternatives are unpublished by default and count only if your instructor publishes them instead.

Module title, published graded work, and unpublished traditional alternatives by week
Week	Module	Graded and published	Traditional alternative (unpublished)
1	What Philosophy Is: Socrates and the Examined Life	Tutorial, Philosophy Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
2	Arguments and Thought Experiments	Tutorial, Philosophy Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
3	Plato: Reality and the Forms	Tutorial, Philosophy Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
4	Knowledge I: Doubt, Reason, and Experience	Tutorial, Philosophy Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
5	Knowledge II: What Knowledge Is	Tutorial, Philosophy Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
6	The Mind-Body Problem	Tutorial, Philosophy Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
7	Personal Identity and Free Will	Tutorial, Philosophy Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
8	Midterm Review & Exam	Adaptive discussion, midterm exam	Discussion
9	Philosophy of Religion	Tutorial, Philosophy Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
10	Ethics I: Relativism, God, and Self-Interest	Tutorial, Philosophy Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
11	Ethics II: Utilitarianism	Tutorial, Philosophy Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
12	Ethics III: Kant, Virtue, and the Trolley Problem	Tutorial, Philosophy Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
13	Political Philosophy: The State, Justice, and Liberty	Tutorial, Philosophy Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
14	Philosophy Beyond Europe	Tutorial, Philosophy Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
15	Existentialism, the Meaning of Life, and the Course Synthesis	Tutorial, Philosophy Workshop, adaptive discussion, adaptive assignment, quiz	Discussion, assignment
16	Finals week (no module)	Final exam	None

What each week asks of you

Week 1. Workshop: Testing Six Definitions of a Good Friend. Discussion: Is the Examined Life Worth the Risk? Assignment: Examining a Definition and a Translated Line.
Week 2. Workshop: The Rowing Club and the Master List. Discussion: Imagined Cases and Fair Readings. Assignment: Shape First: Keying and Testing Arguments.
Week 3. Workshop: The Planetarium and the Sealed Dome. Discussion: Shadows, Forms, and What Is Real. Assignment: Reading the Cave: Mapping, Reconstructing, and Testing the Forms.
Week 4. Workshop: The Newsroom and the Perfect Fake. Discussion: Certainty, Reason, and Experience. Assignment: Reason or Experience: Sourcing and Testing Claims to Know.
Week 5. Workshop: Lucky Beliefs at the Museum Front Desk. Discussion: Right by Luck, or Really Knowing? Assignment: What Knowledge Needs: Testing a Definition with a Lucky Case.
Week 6. Workshop: The Library Help Desk and the Room of Rules. Discussion: Does Following a Program Add Up to a Mind? Assignment: Minds, Brains, and Programs: Testing Three Answers.
Week 7. Workshop: The Harbor Ferry and the Fog Crossing. Discussion: What Stays the Same, and What Makes a Choice Yours? Assignment: Same Self, Free Choice: Testing the Answers.
Week 8. Discussion: Which Line Matters Most, and Is the Wager a Good Bet? Then the midterm, taken on your own.
Week 9. Workshop: The Machine on the Beach. Discussion: Does Order or Evil Settle the Question? Assignment: Order, Evil, and Proof: Testing the Arguments about God.
Week 10. Workshop: The Community Garden and the Night Key. Discussion: Why Be Moral When No One Is Watching? Assignment: Where Morality Comes From: Testing Three Challenges.
Week 11. Workshop: The Swim Club and the Crowded Bank. Discussion: Must You Do the Most Good? Assignment: The Greatest Happiness, Tested.
Week 12. Workshop: The Quarry Cart and the Walkway. Discussion: Duty, Character, or the Count? Assignment: Duty, Character, and the Trolley: Testing the Theories.
Week 13. Workshop: The Hillside Garden and the Plot Draw. Discussion: Would You Plug In, and Did You Ever Agree? Assignment: Who May Rule, and How Far?
Week 14. Workshop: The Mended Canoe and the Paddler. Discussion: What Makes You You, and Who Made You? Assignment: Four Traditions in Their Own Terms.
Week 15. Workshop: The Lighthouse Keeper's Stair. Discussion: What Is It All For? Assignment: What Is It All For? Meaning, the Absurd, and a Position of Your Own. The week closes the course: the fifteen thought experiments read again, and a reasoned position on one question defended against its strongest objection.

The midterm and the final

The midterm in Week 8 covers Objectives 1 to 4 as taught in Weeks 1 to 7. Week 8 itself reviews those weeks by the one distinction each topic asks for: valid against sound, deductive against inductive, rationalism against empiricism, a priori against a posteriori, belief against knowledge, dualism against physicalism, and determinism against fatalism. Its one piece of new material, Pascal's wager from the Pensées (published after Pascal's death, in 1670), is an argument about what to believe, not a proof that God exists. It is worked in that week's chapter, practice set, and discussion, and returns in Week 9.

The final in Week 16 is cumulative and draws on all nine course objectives. It gives the most weight to the second half of the course, Objectives 6 to 9 (ethics, political philosophy, philosophy beyond Europe, and existentialism and the meaning of life with the course synthesis), while still drawing on every first-half objective, Objectives 1 to 5. Both exams come with a study guide, a practice exam, and an exam-prep tutorial you work with your chatbot. Both are auto-graded, so every item is multiple choice, multiple answer, matching, or true/false, with no essay, and any table an item uses is small and described in words. No exam item keys an answer to an open question: items key the definitions of the course's distinctions, an argument's validity and form, each position's central claim, and who wrote, said, or devised what.

Attendance and Participation

This course meets in person twice a week. Come to class having opened the week's overview page and read the chapter, because class time builds on that reading with arguments, counterexamples, and objections. Your participation also shows in your weekly work: the tutorial, the Philosophy Workshop, the discussion, the assignment, and the quiz. Each week builds on the ones before it (you cannot test Descartes' argument until you can put an argument in standard form and judge its validity), so falling a week behind is the most common reason a grade slips. Keep to the weekly rhythm, and talk to your instructor the moment a week stalls. If you must miss class, follow the week's module from its overview page so you stay on pace.

Late Work

Late work loses 10% of the item's credit for each day it is late. If something serious comes up, such as an illness or a family emergency, contact your instructor before the due date whenever you can so the two of you can agree on a fair plan. The penalty exists to keep the course moving, not to punish genuine hardship.

Academic Integrity

The work you submit must be your own, and you are bound by your institution's academic integrity standard. Do not copy another student's work, do not submit work you did not do, and do not misrepresent how a piece of work was produced. In a course built on arguments and texts, integrity also means honest sourcing: every quotation you use is checked word for word against the verified text and names its translator, every view, work, and thought experiment is credited to the philosopher it belongs to, and every paraphrase is marked as one. Three violations matter most in this course: inventing a quotation, a work, a view, or a source, or crediting one to a real philosopher, including one a chatbot supplied; fabricating or doctoring a chatbot conversation or its share link; and using AI on the quizzes, the midterm, or the final. Violations are handled under your institution's academic integrity process and may result in no credit for the item.

Your own views

Philosophy asks you to take positions on hard questions, and some of them touch beliefs people hold deeply. You are graded on how well you reason, never on which side you take. When a week asks for a position, you argue about how strong an argument is; you never have to disclose your own religious, moral, or political commitments. Treat classmates' views the same way: state them in their strongest form before you answer them, and leave out names and identifying details when you draw on your own life.

Accessibility and Disability

This course is designed to reflect universal-design principles and offers multiple means of representation, engagement, and expression. If you have a disability and need an accommodation, contact your institution's disability services office to arrange it, and let your instructor know so it can be put in place promptly. If any material is hard to use with your assistive technology, tell your instructor and an equivalent version will be provided. Every table, argument, and diagram in the course, including any that a quiz or exam item refers to, is described in words as well as shown. This course is not yet accessibility-certified, and your feedback helps improve it. The course page Accessibility & Inclusion in Module 0 explains how the course offers multiple modes, how to turn on captions, and how to request an accommodation.

AI-Use Policy

This course uses an AI chatbot as a sparring partner, and then asks you to check its claims and correct its work by hand. Use any one of the approved chatbots: Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT, Grok, or Microsoft Copilot. Your instructor may edit this list. Free tiers are fine, and Copilot is often included with a campus Microsoft 365 account.

AI may be used on these activities:

Lecture tutorials (completed with a chatbot). Each week you work the tutorial in a conversation with an approved chatbot, then submit the conversation share link and your completion summary.
Practice sets (ungraded). You work the practice exercises with a chatbot coach that asks questions and offers hints.
Adaptive discussions (completed with a chatbot). You hold a real-time dialogue with an approved chatbot, then post the AI's summary with the conversation share link. This version does not require replies to classmates.
Adaptive assignments (AI-coached). You do your own work first, then work it through with a chatbot coach that scores it against the assignment's scoring criteria, and submit the self-scored report, your revised work, and the conversation share link. You remain the author: the coach asks questions and checks your reasoning; it does not write your argument for you.
Philosophy Workshops (a pair-consult step and a required AI-critique step). After your own reconstruction, you ask your chatbot to reconstruct the same argument, and you check every quotation word for word against the verified text and every attribution against the pinned record before trusting any of it. Then you catch and correct one of its slips by hand, such as a quotation misattributed or invented; one translator's wording presented as the philosopher's own words; a work's author or date wrong; an invalid argument called valid, or a valid one called sound without checking its premises; a position weakened into one its defenders would not recognize; a thought experiment credited to the wrong philosopher; "I think, therefore I am" placed in the Meditations; one tradition presented as the whole of philosophy; or a verdict announced on a question that is still open.
Exam-prep tutorials and studying. Use AI freely to review, to check your understanding, and to prepare for the exams.

AI may not be used on the quizzes, the midterm, and the final. These are closed to AI and must be entirely your own work, because they confirm that you personally can identify an argument's premises and conclusion, judge its validity, state each position accurately, and match a thinker, a work, a thought experiment, or a concept to its source.

A chatbot is not a source. It can explain a term or quiz you on a distinction, but it often sounds most confident where it is least reliable. It may reword a quotation or invent one, credit a thought experiment to the wrong philosopher, give a work the wrong date, call an invalid argument valid, or tell you the answer to a question philosophers still argue about. Every quotation it offers you check word for word against the verified text, and every attribution you check against the pinned record before you use it.

If your instructor publishes a traditional alternative. A traditional discussion is your own post and your own replies to classmates; a traditional assignment is your own submitted work, graded by your instructor. Both are designed to be completed without AI: you do the reconstruction, the evaluation, and the writing yourself.

Disclosure. The share link documents your AI use on the AI-based activities, so they need no separate note. For any other graded work where AI help is allowed, add one line naming the tool and how you used it.

BYO-AI Access: equity, cost, and privacy

Equity and a non-AI route. You never have to create an account with a chatbot company to complete this course or to reach any grade in it. Every AI-based activity in this course carries an Equivalent route (no AI required) on its own page. It assesses the same objectives, for the same credit, against the same rubric. Take it whenever you like, for any reason or none; you do not have to ask permission, explain, or arrange it in advance.
Cost. A free tier of any approved chatbot covers everything in this course. No graded work depends on a paid subscription.
Privacy. Before you start, read what your chosen chatbot keeps of your conversations and how it uses them. Never paste personal information you would not want stored, and never paste a classmate's name or post or anyone else's private details: the course's arguments and thought experiments are all a chatbot needs to see. Remember that a share link lets anyone who has it read that conversation.

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