Philosophy 310
Prof. Shari Stone
FINAL PAPER
The paper should be 5 to 6 pages, double-spaced. It is due Thursday, Dec 15, at 3 PM. You may email the paper to me with the subject-heading, “Final paper,” or bring a hard-copy to my office. If for any reason the paper is late, you should email me by the deadline and make arrangements with me for a late submission. (I’m not a hunter and can’t be hunting down late papers : )
Do your best to strive for the elements below. To earn the Writing Option, the final paper should also demonstrate a good effort to address my comments on the draft and prospectus.
A Clear Philosophical Project
The paper should be focused on a philosophical question that you can use one or more of the readings from our class to explore. (See the prospectus guidelines for sample questions.) The question and project of the paper should be clear by the first or second paragraph of the paper.
Sample introduction.
We often presume that responsible thinking should be “objective” and unemotional. Such calls for “objectivity” reflect legitimate concerns for us to rise above knee-jerk emotional responses and be accountable in our thinking to the broader community. At the same time, however, some feminist theorists argue that emotion plays an important role in responsible political thinking. This raises the question: How can we integrate emotion into our thinking about political issues while still being rigorous and publicly accountable? In this paper, I draw on Susan Griffin’s book, A Chorus of Stones, and Carol Cohn’s essay “War, Wimps, and Women.”to investigate how emotional engagement can contribute to responsible political thinking.
As you work on the paper, you should return to the introduction periodically and make sure that it reflects the direction of your research. If your focus has changed, then revise the introduction accordingly. If you want, you also can include in the introduction a discussion of why the issue is important to you, personally.
Focused and Organized Paragraphs
The main idea of each paragraph should be clear from the beginning of the paragraph. The rest of the paragraph should then support and develop that main idea. As you work on the paper, you should continually rethink and reconsider the most important and interesting ideas of the paper. Then make sure that each of these important ideas is the focus of a distinct paragraph.
Close Reading of the Texts
Make the most sense that you can of any texts that you engage. Close and careful engagement with the texts often can push you to more subtle and nuanced understanding of the issues. If you criticize a text, you should take particular care to demonstrate understanding of the text in its full depth before you criticize it. Otherwise you miss the opportunity to learn from the text and your criticism is weak.
Depth and Subtlety
Your task here is not to be a lawyer but a philosopher; not to “win your case” but to offer deeper understanding of the issues. Thus, do not oversimplify a problem in an effort to defend a thesis. Instead, address the factors that make your problem a complicated one. You likely will not provide a clear-cut answer to your question; however, your investigations should contribute to deeper understanding of the problem or more rigorous discussion of the issues.
Likewise, do not substitute dictionary definitions for philosophical exploration of concepts. In particular, if you address a concept that is central to a philosopher’s work–e.g. “justice,” “colonialism,” “feminism,” “myth,” “racism”– then you shouldn’t google a pat definition but rather should develop an understanding of that concept through a close reading of the text.
Clear and Precise Prose
Sentences should be clear and precise. Each sentence should express only one important idea. Also, whenever possible, use concrete subjects and active verbs.
For instance, this is abstract and weak: When absolute knowledge is assumed, no new learning is sought. This is concrete and stronger: When people assume that they have absolute knowledge, they do not seek to learn more.
References and Citations
When you cite readings from the course, only parenthetical citations are needed. The latter should include the author (if not already identified in the sentence) and the page number (from the edition assigned for the class). For instance:
Caldicott says that politically determined “permissible levels of radiation” have “take[n] on a kind of magical significance” (18).
“[T]o go for a walk with one’s eyes open is enough to demonstrate that humanity is divided into two classes of individuals” (Beauvoir, xx).
This class does not require outside research; however, if you dp consult any texts (including internet sources) that were not assigned for the class, then you must provide full bibliographical information for those texts at the end of the paper. Failure to do so constitutes plagiarism.
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