paper topics: Any paper you write for this course will have two primary goals: to explain and critique a particular argument for a particular conclusion.  So any paper topic you choose for this course should have the following form:

        “Explain and critique [name of philosopher]’s argument in defense of [the philosopher's substantive conclusion]"

For example:

        "Explain and critique Marquis' argument in defense of the claim that abortion is seriously immoral."

        "Explain and critique Thomson's argument in defense of the claim that abortion is morally permissible."

You are welcome to make use of additional readings in writing your papers, but you need not do so.  If you do use any outside sources, however, you must make this fact clear in the paper and cite the sources.  Note that the suggested page length for these papers (approx. 7-8 pp.) is intended as a guideline, not as an absolute requirement.  It is possible for a concise and cogent paper to be fully satisfactory and fall below these limits.  Such a paper will not be penalized for being short.  However, a paper that is shorter than the suggested length and that does not go into sufficient detail will be penalized for such failure.  Similarly, a paper that goes over the page limits because it contains more or more complex ideas than can be clearly presented within the page limits will not be penalized simply for being long.  If the extra pages are of high quality, the paper will receive whatever grade corresponds to that quality.  However, a paper that goes over the page limits simply because it is too wordy or redundant will be penalized for those qualities.  In general, it should be possible to write a perfectly acceptable paper within these page limits, and most good papers will fall roughly into this range, but you should not attempt to force a paper to fit the suggested page limits if doing so will make it worse.

explaining:  The purpose of this portion of the paper is to provide the reader with a clear and fair presentation of the position that a given author has taken.  Two analogies might be useful in thinking about what a paper needs to accomplish in this section: (1) suppose that a (reasonably intelligent) friend has an interest in the issue that an author is discussing, but has not read the article.  The friend asks you what the author said.  Presumably, you would not try to provide a sentence-by-sentence summary.  Rather, you would try to identify the core issues and make them clear.  And even if you disagreed with the author, you would not start out by attacking the article.  You’d first have to explain it.  (2) imagine that the author’s argument is being put on trial.  Presumably, even if the argument is going to be subject to a vigorous cross-examination, you would first give the author a chance to state his or her position as forcefully as possible.

The explaining portion of the paper involves two distinct tasks:

(1) explaining what the author’s conclusion is.  This task is fairly straightforward.  You should be careful to state the particular issue that the author is discussing and the particular position that the author is taking on it.  If there are qualifications or limits to the conclusion that the author is defending, that should made clear as well.

(2) explaining the argument that the author provides in defense of the conclusion.  This task itself involves two distinct tasks.

(a) The first task is to identify the premises or assumptions that the author is making.  If, for example, the authors provide examples of particular cases in which they think the reader will agree with them about whether or not it would be permissible to do a given action, and if they then use some of these cases as support for their conclusion, then the paper should provide a clear explanation of what the cases involve and what the authors's assessment of them is.  If the authors appeals to a more general principle that they presume the reader will accept, then the paper should provide a clear explanation of the principle and the apparent sources of its appeal.

(b) The second task is to explain why the author believes that the conclusion follows from these premises.  If the author makes use of an analogy, for example, the paper should explain why the author believes that the two cases are analogous.  If the argument works by process of elimination, the paper should explain why the author thinks that all the possibilities have been successfully identified, and why all the alternative possibilities have been successfully eliminated.

critiquing: The purpose of this portion of the paper is to provide the reader with a critical assessment of the author(s)’s argument(s).  This involves subjecting the author's argument to objections and then considering to what extent the author could successfully respond to them.  A successful critical assessment must present some objections to the argument and consider at least some responses to at least some of them that the author might give.  It must then give the reader some conclusion about whether or not the objections are strong enough to warrant rejecting the argument.

It is crucial to note that “critiquing” does not mean the same thing as “disagreeing with”.  You are free to agree with the author’s argument, disagree with it, or stake out a position somewhere in between.  Think, again, of the two analogies offered above: (1) if your friend asked whether you were convinced by the argument, you would not feel compelled to insist that the argument was either a complete success or a complete failure.  You would simply try to be honest about what you found convincing and what you found unconvincing.  (2) if the author were on trial and we were trying to reach a verdict, we would want to be free to conclude that the argument was a success on some counts and a failure on others.  In general, the critical assessment should simply try to explain and justify to the reader what your response to the philosopher’s argument is.

It is also important to emphasize that the focus of the critical assessment should be on the author’s argument, not on the conclusion of the argument itself.  In writing on whether or not a particular argument succeeds in showing that punishment is morally permissible, for example, the paper should focus on whether that argument itself succeeds, not on whether or not punishment is, in fact, morally permissible.

organization: the paper should be clearly organized, with an introduction, a body, and a conclusion.  The introduction should identify the topic to be discussed, and should do at least something to draw the reader into the paper.  The body of the paper can be organized in a number of ways; what is important is not what form of organization it has, but that it have some discernible and consistent form of organization.  For example, a paper might first explain an argument, then offer three objections, then offer some responses to them.  Or it might go: argument, objection one, response one, objection two, response two, etc.  A paper might also divide the explanation of the argument into parts, something like this: explanation of first part of argument, objection(s) and response(s) to this, explanation of second part of argument, objections(s) and response(s) to this.  Choose the form of organization that seems best suited to your topic and to what you want to say about it.  The conclusion should direct the reader’s attention to at least some feature of the critical assessment that has been offered and should do something to wrap up the discussion that does not simply involve summarizing what has been said.

A few additional points about the writing of the paper: when you attribute certain specific claims to a given author, you must provide textual support for the claims.  It is not necessary to provide direct quotes in each instance, and, in general, a clear and concise paraphrase is preferable to depending too heavily on direct quotation.  But even if you are not quoting directly, you should refer to the page in the reading where the author makes the claim you are describing or summarizing.  It is not necessary to use a footnote form, and you need not cite the article by its full title, source, year, etc.  It is sufficient to insert a page number in parentheses at the end of the sentence.

evaluation: evaluating a philosophy paper is not an exact science.  Nonetheless, I can provide some rough descriptions of different levels of papers to give you an idea of the sort of standards that I will attempt to apply:

paper provides poor to mediocre summary of the argument and no critical assessment
        grade: D to C- depending on quality of presentation of argument

paper provides good to very good explanation of the argument but no critical assessment
        grade: C to C+ depending on quality of the explanation of argument (in some exceptional cases, the grade could be a bit
        higher if the explanation seems  particularly insightful; but, in general, a paper that does not present a critical assessment
        of the argument will get no higher than a C+)

paper provides a good to very good explanation of the argument and presents some objections to it, but does not consider any responses to the objections and does not help the reader to assess the merits of the objections
        grade: B- to B+ depending on quality of the explanation of the argument and on  the strength and originality of the
        objections (in some exceptional cases, the grade  could be a bit higher if, for example, one of the objections seems
        particularly  acute).  In general, a paper that only repeats critical points that have been covered  in class is unlikely to be
        higher than a B+, though, again, in some exceptional  cases, the quality of the work may in part make up for lack of
        originality.

paper provides a solid explanation of the argument, presents some objections to it, does at least something to consider how the author might respond to at least some of these objections, and provides the reader with reasons to either accept or reject the objections.
        grade: B+ to A depending on quality and originality of the objections and of the discussion of them

paper provides very good objections to the argument, but fails to provide a good enough explanation of the argument itself
        grade: B- to B+ depending on quality of the objections (in some exceptional cases,  the grade could be a bit higher; but in
        general, a paper that jumps in with  objections to an argument before the argument itself has been adequately presented
        will not be higher than a B+ even if the objections themselves are quite strong).