BA Politics, Philosophy and Economics / Course details

The course unit will be organised around a theme that is relevant to each of the three PPE disciplines. Possible themes include climate change, welfare, family, healthcare, education, justice, liberty, etc. Students will participate in lectures, tutorials, and group work to better understand and critically engage with questions of interdisciplinary interest. 

The course unit aims to… 
- … introduce students to the ways in which politics, philosophy, and economics can productively interact with particular focus on a topic* that is of 
interdisciplinary interest within politics, philosophy, and economics; 
- … develop students' 
powers of critical inquiry, analysis, and evaluation, and improve their ability to reason both independently and as part of a group; 
- … foster a community of learners, encouraging peer to peer learning and supporting and valuing students as partners and as members of our 
broader academic community. 
 

By the end of this course students will be able to… 
- … demonstrate understanding of the ways in which politics, philosophy, and economics overlap and interrelate; 
- … analyse and evaluate competing positions within a specific area of interdisciplinary debate; 
- … present and defend their opinions through reasoned argument and by appeal to relevant evidence; 
- … communicate ideas and arguments to others in a clear and convincing way, both orally and in writing. 
 

The course unit will be organised around a theme that is relevant to each of the three PPE disciplines. Possible themes include climate change, welfare, family, healthcare, education, justice, liberty, etc. Students will participate in lectures, tutorials, and group work to better understand and critically engage with questions of interdisciplinary interest. 

This unit will be taught through lectures, tutorials, and group supervision meetings. Relevant learning material will be distributed through Blackboard.

Lectures will have involve interactive discussion with students, and will enhance the students’ general understanding of a particular sub-topic. There will be two lectures for each discipline.

Tutorials will be discussion-based, and will require students to prepare by reading relevant texts and answering questions about them. The tutorial preparation and discussion will improve the students’ capacity to reason and argue. There will be one tutorial per discipline.

Group supervision meetings will involve the supervisor meeting groups of around six students. They will focus on the form and content of the students summative assessments. There will be four supervision meetings – two devoted to the group presentation, two devoted to the debate assessment.

Group Presentation (30%)
Students will be put into groups of around six, and will be given an interdisciplinary question to research. Students must submit a 15-20 minute presentation recording in which they demonstrate interdisciplinary knowledge of the topic, and offer a reasoned argument in response to the question.

Group Debate (50%)
Continuing in the groups assigned for the presentation, students will now be paired with another group on the course. Students will have to prepare for a ‘debate’ with that other group. Each pair of groups will be told which side of a particular debate they must defend. Each group will collectively present a case for their specified position in a 10-15 minute recording. They will then have a few days to produce an 8-10 minute recorded response to the group with whom they have been paired. They will then have to produce a 3-5 minute recording in which they come to a conclusion, including what they take themselves to have learnt from the other group’s contributions.

Written Reports (2 x 10%)
Individually, students must submit 2 x 500 word written reports reflecting on your group work (one report for the presentation, one for the debate assessment).
 

The group supervisor can offer feedback prior to the submission of the presentation recording and the debate recordings.

Students will be expected to give each other feedback during the process.

Written feedback (plus marks) will given by the course convener on both the presentation and the debate recordings.

Particular readings will depend on the precise theme of the course, but whatever the 
theme students will benefit from reading the following general texts:
Gaus, G. and 
Thrasher, J. 2008. Politics, Philosophy, and Economics: An Introduction. Princeton, NJ: 
Princeton University Press.
Anomaly, J., Brennan, G., Munger, M.C., and Sayre-McCord, 
G. 2015. Philosophy, Politics, and Economics: An Anthology. Oxford: Oxford University 
Press.
 

Only available to students on the PPE degree programme.