University of California Los Angeles What Does The Council of Pecans Mean Questions

Question for Consideration Assignment Instructions
The QFC assignment is a way to generate discussion between prepared students while also
providing an objective means of tracking participation.
NOTE: Rather than doing one per class, each student will submit one each week. If your last
name begins with a letter A-M, you will submit on the first day of class that week, and if your
last name begins with N-Z, you will submit on the second day. Then, around week 5 or 6, we
will switch. There will be two weeks where the second lecture day is either cancelled or filled
with non-readings, so there will be no reading questions those weeks.
Directions: These need to be typed documents (word doc or pdf, not pages, please) that you
submit on Canvas by noon of the day the reading is due. You also need to have these accessible
to you during the class (either by printing or on your phone/laptop/ipad, etc) since we will use
them in class. They that should include 4 components:
1) Include a quote from the text AND Provide context for the quote:
Pick a quote/passage from one text you have read for class and type it into the document.
Do not pick short-ish quotes (like, part of a sentence). You need to capture the full
thought or a significant portion of it. So, no full paragraphs and no partial sentences. Try
to pick quotes that:
– Seem significant to a part of the argument
– Help illuminate something about the author’s position, assumptions, etc.
– Have key terms and philosophical concepts that are important for the
argument
– Etc.
1. For the context: you basically need to describe what is happening around the quote and
how the quote fits into the general claims/argument. Careful attention to the surrounding
statements is likely to provide you with important information about the meaning and
significance of the passage and will help you perform better on this assignment.
See the example for more detail.
2) Your philosophical question:
Type out a question about the chosen passage and its context.
What makes a good question? Well, if you can provide a quick yes or no response, or if
you can answer the question by appealing solely to examination of empirical evidence
(e.g., observing the color of litmus paper after you dip it in a liquid), you have not asked a
philosophical question. Among other things, philosophical questions “are questions
whose answers are in principle open to informed, rational, and honest disagreement”
(Floridi 2013). Here are some examples of different types of philosophical questions.
3) Reason for asking this question:
Provide a reason why this question was raised for you/why you are raising this question
of the text. Good reasons do not include “Because it was interesting” or “because I don’t
understand.” They should instead include reasons that have to do with why the question
itself is important, how the answer to the question might impact argument reception or
clarity, why the answer to the question is significant for and might alter the author’s
point, etc. Among other things, you should clarify why it is important to at least try to
find a plausible answer to the question (e.g., What issues must be considered as we
attempt to answer the question? What might be the implications of answering the
question one way or the other? Who might be benefited or harmed, and in what ways, if
the answer is taken seriously and, say, used to guide the development of public policies
and practices?)
Grading Rubric for QFCs
Quote and Context of
Quote
.5 Point
You have a quote, but
no clear context is
given.
Question about the
selected passage
You have a question.
Reason for asking the
question
Present, but either (a)
not clearly connected
to the question or (b)
not directly relevant
to the reading
3/4 Points
You chose a quote
that is clear,
understandable, and
relevant to the
philosophical
argument, and decent
but insufficient
context about how
the quote fits with the
rest of the material
Question is clear,
understandable, and
relevant to the
philosophical
argument/text
Clear,
understandable, and
relevant to the
philosophical
argument
1 Points
Very good choice of
clearly identifiable
quotation with some
good philosophical
significance for the
argument and the
context clearly
articulates the role of
this quote in the
overall argument
Question is
thoughtful and helps
advance
understanding of
some complexity,
author’s argument, or
points directly to
philosophical
significance
Clear and reflective;
demonstrates an
appreciation of why
the question is
philosophical and
what type of
philosophical
question it is;
addresses complexity
and points to
philosophical
significance
Sample Question for Consideration
Part 1: Selected Passage
“One of the main contributions of poststructuralist philosophy has been to expose as illusory this
metaphysic of a unified self-making subjectivity, which posts the subject as an autonomous
origin or an underlying substance to which attributes of gender, nationality, family role,
intellectual disposition, and so on might attach. Conceiving the subject in this fashion implies
conceiving consciousness as outside of and prior to language and the context of social
interaction, which the subject enters…The self is a product of social processes, not their origin”
(Iris Marion Young, “The Five Faces of Oppression,” 45).
This passage comes from a section in the text where Young is defining what groups are. At this
point in her argument, she is talking about how individuals relate to groups. Just before this
passage she discusses how groups constitute individuals rather than the other way around. In the
section following this passage, she goes on to argue that the identity of individuals comes about
as a result of the relations between that person and others.
Part 2: My Question
In this article Young says several times that oppression in the condition of groups. How does her
concept of identity—identity as something that isn’t unified or autonomous or in existence prior
to the existence of groups—support her claim that oppression isn’t a condition of individuals? If
people don’t have fixed individual identities and the notion of such an identity is an illusion, is
the harm of oppression the fact that people are treated as though they members of certain groups
when they actually aren’t? Does this mean that we should get rid of the notion of groups
entirely? Is grouping people at all always a risk for causing oppression?
Part 3: My Reason for Asking
So much of philosophy and the way we talk about identity colloquially, especially in
contemporary American society, makes it seem like individuals are completely autonomous
beings who have free will. In this conception of the individual, we choose what groups we’re
part of and if other group us in a way that we don’t like, it’s either our fault (we didn’t properly
represent ourselves to others) or we have no choice because we are “obviously” a member of
certain groups—like women, men, Asians, etc. Young seems to be claiming the opposite about
individuals, but strikes me as unintuitive given the way we usually talk about identity. If she’s
right about how identity is formed, then we’d need to change how we understand the ways that
oppression affects individuals. In addition to this, it would cause us to call into question the very
idea that individuals can exist prior to their relations to others or to groups. It also calls into
question the value of groups and instead points to some of the potential dangers of using groups
to talk about identity.