Essay Writing Guidelines

The basic rule of writing for a philosophy class is to take a position and support it with arguments. This means taking a position that can be supported. Leave your usual way of thinking at the door. You don't have to agree with anyone else. You do have to be able to support what you say with evidence and argument.

Mastery

Philosophy papers are graded on how great an understanding of the selected topic is demonstrated in them. If your paper demonstrates that you understand your topic well, you get a good grade. If it doesn't, you don't. You can't master a whole field in a few weeks, but you can master some tiny part of it

* Pick the topic you're most interested in.
* Take time to narrow down the area you will write on.
* Read everything in the text to do with that narrow area.
* Identify the main positions and ideas in that area and restate them in your
own words.
* Illustrate each important idea with an example you make up yourself.
* For each position, describe life in a world in which that position is true
* Identify the main arguments in your area.
* Restate each argument in your own words, writing as though you believed it
to be true.
* Try to come up with other possible positions in the area,
* Make up your own ways of engaging the topic.
* Repeat as necessary.

Hey, Don’t!

DON'T make claims without also providing arguments in support of those claims . Arguments are the bread-and-butter of philosophy, so it's vital to get them right. Arguments consist of one or more premises and a conclusion . A conclusion is some statement that the person giving the argument wants her audience to think is true. This is usually something that people disagree about. The premises are statements which, taken all together, are supposed to make it impossible for the conclusion to be false. These are usually things that the arguer and her audience already agree are true. If the intended audience might not accept some particular premise, then it probably needs an argument of its own. The presentation of your argument should say that an argument is just a very clear statement of the reasons why you think some claim you are making is true and how those reasons do so. A way to make things clear is to write down the claim you want to prove, followed by a numbered list of the reasons you think it is true.

DON'T appeal to authority (just because someone's said x doesn't mean x is true.

DON'T use complicated or arcane language when you can think of simple ways to say the same thing. The best rule is to make your language as simple as possible without obscuring any important points. Use a lot of short sentences instead of a few big ones. The complexity of your subject will make your paper complicated enough.

DON'T use worn-out clichés or empty phrases instead of arguments. If you can't support the point you want to make without resorting to clichés or other empty rhetoric, then that point is probably wrong.

DON'T assume that because you're used to thinking of two things as associated with each other that they have to be associated.

DON'T use definitions taken from a dictionary. Dictionaries usually contain the most common, everyday meanings of words. Stay out of the dictionary, at least where important philosophical terms are concerned. Instead, try to figure out what the author means by that particular word, not what other people think it means.

DON'T distort the meaning of any quote you use. (This is a very easy mistake to make!) Make sure that what you say a quote means really is what that piece of text means. Try to put what the author says into your own words, line by line, sentence by sentence. Whatever you do, don't say "he thinks such-and-such" and then throw in a quote where he mentions the general topic that "such-and-such" is about. This is asking for trouble. Derive your views about what people think from the actual meanings of the words they actually write, not from what you already think or what other people say about them.

DON'T rely on technical or obscure language without defining your terms Yes, I know you know what those words means, but the reader might not. Or he might think they mean different things. Either way, be careful with your use of even everyday language. If part of your argument hangs on the meaning of a particular term or terms, or you use terms that other people might use differently, make sure you spell out what you think that term means.

DON'T criticize a position without explaining that position first.

DON'T use quotations without explaining what the quote means in your own words. The assignment is asking what you think about your topic, not just repeat what the author has said. If you don't explain the quote, then you haven't shown that you understand it. Try putting the point in your own words first, and then see if you need the quote after all.

DON'T use your own opinions as the standard of what's true and false, logical and illogical. Try to seriously consider positions that contradict your own. If you can't even think about any position that differs from your own, choose a different topic.

DON'T leave gaps. If one thing you say is supposed to follow logically from another thing you say, make sure it's clear how it's supposed to follow. It's a matter of judgment as to how many of the intermediate steps you need to fill in. Generally, you need to fill in enough that the average reader can follow your argument. If a step is particularly important, it's probably best to make the implications clear. Very important steps should be explained in detail, with explicit arguments and examples. If you can't say just how one thing follows from the other, then it probably doesn't follow, and you should change your thesis.

DON'T leave your reader hanging Don't make a grand point that (you think) refutes your opponent without also showing how it refutes him.

DON'T use impertinent arguments. An argument is "impertinent" if it is not relevant to the precise issue under discussion.

DON'T jump to conclusions. Jumping to conclusions means taking one possible position and assuming it's the correct one without thoroughly considering other possibilities.. Always be ready to change your mind.

DON'T leave out important details. Philosophical questions often turn on the precise details of a situation. Thus a vague "overview" of a topic is usually not enough to earn any credit.

DON'T have things in your paper that are not needed. You only need to include material that directly or indirectly supports your thesis.

DON'T repeat yourself if you can possibly help it. If you find you have to repeat yourself, maybe you should reorganize your paper.

DON'T make sweeping claims unless you can support them with evidence and argument. Limit the claims you make to precisely what you can suppor

DON'T skate lightly over several topics. The aim of philosophical writing is not to mention as many topics as possible but to establish some particular claim by argument and evidence. Thus it's not necessary to cover a lot of ground, but it is vital that the ground you do cover is dealt with in sufficient detail that the significant issues are made clear.

DON'T set up straw man arguments that are easy to knock down. A "straw man" is a fake version of somebody's real argument that's constructed to look like the real argument and to be easy to refute. The best defense against straw men is charity. That means make the arguments against your point as strong as they possibly can be and then do your best to knock them down. You should also read the people you're criticizing very carefully.

DON'T put more than one sub-topic in a paragraph. Generally, you should have one topic per paragraph. If you have more than one topic in a paragraph they should probably be put into separate paragraphs. This will also help you organize your thoughts.

DON'T make claims without supporting them. To "support" something means to give the reader some reason to think that is true. This would be argument, or textual evidence, or both.

Argument: an arrangement of established facts (the "premises") intended to give the reader good reason to believe that some further fact (the "conclusion") is true.

Generally, the premises of an argument will be things that all sides of a disagreement already agree to be true. If you have a premise that doesn't fall into this category, then you need to support it.

Generally any significant, non-obvious or controversial claim will need to be supported with argument and textual evidence, even if the assignment asks for your opinion.

"Your opinion" means "what decision you come to after weighing all the arguments and evidence presented in this class" not "whatever you happen to think irrespective of this material."

Remember that the definition of an "F" paper is "any paper that could have been written by an intelligent person who did not participate in this class." Writing that does not respond to the class materials and lectures is generally not worth any credit.

DON'T leave crucial words or concepts undefined. If you make heavy use of a term that most people aren't familiar with, take the time to give a definition of it in your own words. If you can't give a definition in your own words, then you probably don't understand the concept.

DON'T start with a conclusion and look around for stuff that supports it.

DON'T leave out descriptions of significant differences. Sometimes, the difference between two things might be very clear in a writers mind but totally missing from the page. The writer may be so used to thinking of these two things as different that she assumes that the reader will think so too. If someone else might think the two things are the same, or other people don't know what the difference is, you need to explain it. If the difference is significant, you need to make clear how it is significant.

DON'T worry about being wrong. The goal in a philosophy class is to train you to come up with your own positions and defend them properly, not to get you to "understand" some pre-determined "right answer." Your job is working out what you think about some of these issues as well as you can. (If you suddenly realize your thesis is wrong, just reverse it)

DON'T wait until the last minute to start writing.

DON'T ever be afraid to ask for help. Getting help is a mark of a good student.

SECTION 3: Interpreting the Prompt

The prompt is that paragraph of instructions and or questions that an instructor gives you as a possible essay topic. Your job is to write a unified essay that addresses every issue raised in the prompt. If the prompt contains a bunch of separate questions you have to figure out how they all hang together, and then write a paper that hangs together also.

Whatever the prompt says, you have to write a paper that makes a claim and supports it with reasons. Treat the prompt as a bunch of hints on how to do that.

Once you've figured out what the assignment asks for, try to figure out what it would take to do it really well.

Write a PROMPT SHEET, a piece of paper with the prompt written at the top and your comments, ideas and questions scribbled below it. Most important, write down what the prompt means in your own words .

When a prompt asks multiple questions, there are two errors that students can fall into. First, a student can write a paper that addresses only some of those questions. Second, a student can answer all the questions, but separately, as though they had nothing to do with each other. The first error results in incomplete papers, the second in disjointed papers. Both errors may lead students to disregard important points. (Treating a prompt as a series of independent questions is not a bad way to start the writing process, since it's an easy way to start thinking about the issues involved.) Take the time to make sure you understand what each question is actually asking. It's also a good idea to ask yourself what the instructor is trying to get at with this prompt. Sometimes a good answer will require you to refer material that isn't even mentioned in the prompt.

The basic question here is "what do I have to prove in order to meet this assignment?" Eventually, you could surround the prompt with a cluster of scribbled questions and comments. When you're reasonably sure that you can't add anything useful to these notes is a good time to check in with your instructor or T/A to make sure you're on the right track. (You should note however that doing everything the instructor says is not necessarily enough to guarantee a good grade it's the stuff you come up with for yourself that gets you the grade.)

EXAMPLE: "Give Plato's argument for a tripartite nature of the soul. Do you agree? Explain."

The first question to ask is what the instructor really wants here. Given that this prompt is given in the context of a philosophy class, she must want you to do philosophy, which means that, sooner or later, you're going to have to make a claim and support it with your own arguments. At this point, however, you don't need to worry about what claim you're going to make, just ask yourself what this claim is going to be about. You may think that it's going to be about the soul, but you'd be wrong.

What would your paper be like if you first wrote about Plato's argument and then gave your own opinion about the soul? You'd have two separate papers, each having nothing to do with the other, except that their pages are stapled together. Remember that a paper is supposed to present a single idea, so you must unify the paper by connecting your ideas with Plato's. In philosophy, the obvious way to do so is by deciding who's right about the soul, and the only way to do that is by engaging Plato's reasons for thinking what he does and so your claim, whatever it turns out to be, will be about Plato's argument, not simply the soul itself.

Pre-Writing

When you've figured out what the prompt means it's time to start pre-writing (gathering ideas, quotations, etc.) The following techniques might seem like a lot of work, but if you do them well you’ll save TONS of time once you start actually writing because you’ll have everything all worked out in advance. Trust me – there’s nothing worse than thinking you’ll wing it, getting half-way through a paper and realizing you have no clue what you’re talking about. This will prevent that from happening.

Techniques:

QUOTE SHEET: copy out a key quotation from the text onto a blank piece of paper and then do your best to say exactly what that quote means in your own words. Do this for any quotes you think are crucial for the topic you're thinking of writing about.

DEFINITION SHEET: Take an important word and try to define the concept it represents in your own words. Ignore the dictionary. You should do this for any word you're not sure about, or which you think is important to the argument. Use your own words to describe what you think the author means by the word.

ARGUMENT SHEET: Take an important or controversial claim the author makes and write it down together with the reasons that are supposed to support it. An argument sheet should be your best effort to get one argument as clear as you can. Lay it out in numbered premises above a conclusion and use your own words. Try to figure out what's been left out or taken for granted. Weaknesses can be hidden in unstated premises and unexamined assumptions. Make the argument as strong as you can, even if you intend to refute it eventually. This is a REALLY important and useful step.

EXAMPLE SHEET: Make up your own example to clarify some complicated concept or argument. more

COGNITIVE MAP: Write down the names of important concepts and connect the names with lines to show how they're related.

Spread your sheets and stuff out on a table and think about different ways of putting them together. Look for gaps; is anything missing? Or contradictions; does any sheet say (or imply) the opposite of any other sheet? Gaps and contradictions are important. They can expose ideas that won't be obvious to other people, ideas that could be relevant to your topic. They could even give you an idea for a thesis.

Your pre-writing exercises needn't be done in any particular order. Just do what you want to. They don't have to be finished to be useful, and you can always come back to change things. If you get stuck, they help you get unstuck.

Writing

Once you’ve done your pre-writing, step back and let your mind wander through the ideas and arguments. Mull things over and let yourself react to the research you've done. What ideas come into your head when you think about this stuff? Coming up with a thesis is crucial to the writing process. Everything else can be done in whatever way works best for you, so you can skip some of the other steps, but writing without a thesis isn't really writing.

1. Come up with a thesis , a specific claim your paper will make and support. There's no easy way to come up with a thesis. The basic idea is to look at your notes and decide for yourself, strictly on the basis of the logic of the arguments what the “truth” is. Think about what you want to say. If you can't quite get it clear, you could do a THESIS SHEET on which you write a possible thesis, comment on it, and try to improve it. Try various ideas out for size. Take a position and look for stuff in your notes that contradicts it. When you find a contradiction, try to defend your tentative idea against it. When you've found an idea that you can reasonably defend, you've got a thesis. Coming up with a thesis can be hard, but don't start writing without one.
2. Sort out everything you need to support that thesis.
3. Arrange the supporting materials so that logically connected things are
together.
4. Do an argument sheet for your thesis.
5. Sketch out an outline of the paper. An outline is simply a list of things you
will say in the order in which you will say them.
The basic rules are:
 If the reader needs to know A in order to understand or agree with B, then A should come before B.
 If A and B are closely related, The parts of the paper that deal with them should be close together.
 If a premise of one argument needs it's own argument, that argument should be right by that premise.
 Definitions come before explanations.
 Explanations come before arguments.
 Positions should be explained before they are criticized.

6. Add a brief introduction that says what you want to prove and how you plan to do it. I like to see introductions that let me know what the writer wants to prove, and give me some idea of how she is going to set about proving it. All an introduction really needs is a thesis statement and short list of the main topics in the paper. Some writers make the introduction the last thing they do.

Re-Writing

Re-writing is what you do when there's problems with your draft and you need to fix it. more

1. Start with a clean sheet and rewrite the whole paper. more
2. Fix the BIGGEST problems and ignore the little ones. more
3. Do more pre -writing, as necessary. more
4. If your thesis was badly wrong, you can reverse it. more
5. If you can't fix the problem, try to figure out why you can't fix it.

Post-writing

1. Read your paper aloud all the way through, and listen to yourself as you
do it. READING ALOUD can really help your writing. You can read aloud to yourself, to an audience or even to your cat. If something sounds awkward or mysterious when you read it aloud (remember to project your voice, don't mumble!) then it probably reads awkward or mysterious as well. The wording you should use in your paper is the same wording you would use to explain your ideas in a conversation with a reasonably intelligent but uninformed fellow student.
2. Have another student read your paper and tell you what she thinks it means. Remember that the other student may not understand the topic as well as you do. The point is to see what your paper looks like to someone who's not yet familiar with the topic. If she reads the paper and then tells you that it means something other than what you wanted it to say, then you may have to rewrite parts to rule-out erroneous interpretations. (Note: This is NOT peer editing – it’s more about getting a second opinion to see if you’re on the right track.)

If your paper sounds as if it were written for a third-grade audience, then you've probably achieved the right sort of clarity.

Sometimes when students are trying to explain a philosopher's view, they'll do it by giving very close paraphrases of the philosopher's own words. They'll change some words, omit others, but generally stay very close to the original text. For instance, Hume begins his Treatise of Human Nature as follows:

All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, which I shall call impressions and ideas. The difference betwixt these consists in the degrees of force and liveliness, with which they strike upon the mind, and make their way into our thought or consciousness. Those perceptions, which enter with most force and violence, we may name impressions; and under this name I comprehend all our sensations, passions, and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul. By ideas I mean the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning.

Here's an example of how you don't want to paraphrase:

Hume says all perceptions of the mind are resolved into two kinds, impressions and ideas. The difference is in how much force and liveliness they have in our thoughts and consciousness. The perceptions with the most force and violence are impressions. These are sensations, passions, and emotions. Ideas are the faint images of our thinking and reasoning.

There are two main problems with paraphrases of this sort. In the first place, it's done rather mechanically, so it doesn't show that the author understands the text. In the second place, since the author hasn't figured out what the text means well enough to express it in his own words, there's a danger that his paraphrase may inadvertently change the meaning of the text. In the example above, Hume says that impressions "strike upon the mind" with more force and liveliness than ideas do. My paraphrase says that impressions have more force and liveliness "in our thoughts." It's not clear whether these are the same thing. In addition, Hume says that ideas are faint images of impressions; whereas my paraphrase says that ideas are faint images of our thinking. These are not the same. So the author of the paraphrase appears not to have understood what Hume was saying in the original passage.

A much better way of explaining what Hume says here would be the following:

Hume says that there are two kinds of 'perceptions,' or mental states. He calls these impressions and ideas. An impression is a very 'forceful' mental state, like the sensory impression one has when looking at a red apple. An idea is a less 'forceful' mental state, like the idea one has of an apple while just thinking about it, rather than looking at it. It is not so clear what Hume means here by 'forceful.' He might mean...

Anticipate objections

Try to anticipate objections to your view and respond to them. For instance, if you object to some philosopher's view, don't assume he would immediately admit defeat. Imagine what his comeback might be. How would you handle that comeback?

Don't be afraid of mentioning objections to your own thesis. It is better to bring up an objection yourself than to hope your reader won't think of it. Explain how you think these objections can be countered or overcome. Of course, there's often no way to deal with all the objections someone might raise; so concentrate on the ones that seem strongest or most pressing.

Your paper doesn't always have to provide a definite solution to a problem, or a straight yes or no answer to a question. Many excellent philosophy papers don't offer straight yes or no answers. Sometimes they argue that the question needs to be clarified, or that certain further questions need to be raised. Sometimes they argue that certain assumptions of the question need to be challenged. Sometimes they argue that certain answers to the question are too easy, that is, they won't work. Hence, if these papers are right, the question will be harder to answer than we might previously have thought. These are all important and philosophically valuable results.

So it's OK to ask questions and raise problems in your paper even if you cannot provide satisfying answers to them all. You can leave some questions unanswered at the end of the paper. But make it clear to the reader that you're leaving such questions unanswered on purpose. And you should say something about how the question might be answered, and about what makes the question interesting and relevant to the issue at hand.

If something in a view you're examining is unclear to you, don't gloss it over. Call attention to the unclarity. Suggest several different ways of understanding the view. Explain why it's not clear which of these interpretations is correct.

Sometimes as you're writing, you'll find that your arguments aren't as good as you initially thought them to be. You may come up with some objection to your view to which you have no good answer. Don't panic. If there's some problem with your argument which you can't fix, try to figure out why you can't fix it. It's okay to change your thesis to one you can defend. For example, instead of writing a paper which provides a totally solid defense of view P, you can instead change tactics and write a paper which goes like this:

One philosophical view says that P. This is a plausible view, for the following reasons...
However, there are some reasons to be doubtful whether P. One of these reasons is X. X poses a problem for the view that P because...
It is not clear how the defender of P can overcome this objection.

Now you've written a complete draft of your paper. Set the draft aside for a day or two.

Then come back to the draft and re-read it. As you read each sentence, say things like this to yourself:

"Does this really make sense?" "That's totally unclear!" "That sounds pretentious." "What does that mean?" "What's the connection between these two sentences?" "Am I just repeating myself here?" and so on.

Beginning your paper

We recommend that most philosophy papers have the following kind of structure:

I. Introduction.

1. Introduce the topic as stated in the assignment.

2. Briefly state the thesis that the paper will defend.

3. Briefly outline the argument that will support the thesis, discuss the position
being presented, or the issues that the paper will discuss, and state the plan for the paper.

II. Exposition.

1. Explain the argument(s) regarding the topic(s) stated in I, supporting all
important attributions with quotes, paraphrases, and citations from the text.

2. Make each step of the argument(s) as clear as possible.

III. Critical Evaluation.

1. Enumerate the problems with the arguments that you laid out in II. Explain
and support with textual references.

IV. Conclusion.

1. Restate the thesis of the paper.

2. Restate the basic issues that you explained in II.

3. Restate the criticisms that you explained and defended in III.


Thesis:

Every philosophy paper should contain a clearly articulated thesis. Your thesis is the central or overall claim that you are arguing for.

Choose a thesis that is worth the effort you will put into arguing for it. A thesis that no reasonable person would challenge will be uninteresting. You don't want to present iron-clad arguments for a trivial position no one cares about. On the other hand, you shouldn't choose an overly ambitious thesis that you won't be able to defend adequately in the space allotted. Your thesis should be controversial. There should be some decent arguments both for it and against it. Your thesis should also be about something you are interested in studying because you want to understand it better. Finally, your thesis must be specific and tightly enough focused that you can do a thorough job presenting arguments to support it, considering counterarguments against it, and responding to those counterarguments. Your thesis will clearly state the position that you are going to endorse in a philosophical debate. "I will argue that Aristotle's moral theory fails because it does not provide an adequate account of specific moral actions," is an example of a thesis for a paper assignment that asks you to present and critically evaluate Aristotle's moral theory.

As you write the body of your paper you may discover that you are having trouble constructing good arguments to support your thesis. If so, then you either need to work harder on developing supporting arguments, or else modify your thesis so that it becomes easier to defend. Part of the learning process at work in writing your paper is coming to change your mind about your topic by broadening your knowledge. If it slowly dawns on you that the thesis you originally formulated is indefensible, then abandon it and pick a new thesis. Settling on a thesis is often more like discovering an attractive new building you haven't noticed before than attempting to buttress an old, familiar building that is falling apart.

Introduction.

A good introduction is necessary for getting your paper off on the right foot. In the introductory paragraph you should first introduce the topic you will discuss, and briefly explain why it is an important subject. You should not begin with trite, verbal padding like: "For centuries philosophers have pondered the controversial philosophical question of such and such." Do not waste space stating the obvious. The introductory paragraph of the thesis defense paper is not a historical overview. All you need to do in the introductory paragraph is: (1) briefly explain what the topic of your paper is, (2) briefly explain why that subject is worth discussing, (3) explicitly state your thesis and (4) briefly (!) state the two or three main reasons (which you will expound on at length in the body of your paper) which support your thesis. As a general rule, your introductory paragraph should be no longer than half a page.

To summarize, then, in your introductory paragraph you should:

* state what the topic of your paper is
* briefly explain why that topic is important and worth addressing
* state exactly what your thesis is

Sections II and III should not be intermingled. While it may seem intuitive to criticize a point in an argument immediately after you have explained it, the reader is probably not clear at this point on the overall structure or goal of the argument. Be sure you have sufficiently explained the whole argument before evaluating it. And make sure it is clear to your reader at every point whether you are presenting or critically evaluating the argument.

A word about paragraphs:

A. All paragraphs should have a sentence that relates clearly to the thesis of the paper. Usually this sentence comes at the beginning of the paragraph where it can help the reader understand how the point being made fits into the purpose of the paper. The rest of the paragraph should support this sentence with explanations, quotes, and citations from the text.

B. If you are going to make a new point, then start a new paragraph. Be careful about jumping too quickly from one point to the next or mixing too many issues together. Any new or different topics should be gathered together by topic and put into another paragraphs. Each paragraph should have cohesive unity that resembles a well-written paper.

C. Use transitions to make it clear to your reader how a paragraph is related to the previous or next paragraph. Connect your paragraphs in a logical way, even if that means saying in the first sentence of a paragraph something like "Having discussed X, I will now consider Y." "Now that we have seen what the faculty of the will is for Kant, the next issue that needs to be addressed is what conditions make a will good instead of bad," is an example of a transition sentence that clarifies the connection between the issues being discussed in the adjacent paragraphs and helps the reader see the development of points in the paper.

A word about citations:

The easiest method of citation is the Modern Language Association's (MLA) parenthetical documentation. The principle behind this method is to cite sources in parentheses immediately after quotes or paraphrases and include only the information that is necessary to identify the source to the reader in the works cited page.

If the author is mentioned in the sentence and only one source from that author is being used, all that is needed is the page number in parentheses. For example:

Hume (87) presents an argument that...

Using this method obviates the need for most endnotes and footnotes. The only notes needed are commentary notes by the author--and go sparingly on those.

All the works used in the paper are listed in a works cited page at the end of the paper.

Make the structure of your paper obvious

You should make the structure of your paper obvious to the reader. Your reader shouldn't have to exert any effort to figure it out. Beat him over the head with it.

How can you do this?

First of all, use connective words, like:

* because, since, given this argument
* thus, therefore, hence, it follows that, consequently
* nevertheless, however, but
* in the first case, on the other hand

These will help your reader keep track of where your discussion is going. Be sure you use these words correctly! If you say "P. Thus Q." then you are claiming that P is a good reason to accept Q. You had better be right. If you aren't, we'll complain. Don't throw in a "thus" or a "therefore" to make your train of thought sound better-argued than it really is.

Another way you can help make the structure of your paper obvious is by telling the reader what you've done so far and what you're going to do next. You can say things like:

* I will begin by...
* Before I say what is wrong with this argument, I want to...
* These passages suggest that...
* I will now defend this claim...
* Further support for this claim comes from...
* For example...

These signposts really make a big difference.

EXAMPLES:

...We've just seen how X says that P. I will now present two arguments that not-P. My first argument is...
My second argument that not-P is...
X might respond to my arguments in several ways. For instance, he could say that...
However this response fails, because...
Another way that X might respond to my arguments is by claiming that...
This response also fails, because...
So we have seen that none of X's replies to my argument that not-P succeed. Hence, we should reject X's claim that P.

I will argue for the view that Q.
There are three reasons to believe Q. Firstly...
Secondly...
Thirdly...
The strongest objection to Q says...
However, this objection does not succeed, for the following reason...

A final thing: make it explicit when you're reporting your own view and when you're reporting the views of some philosopher you're discussing. The reader should never be in doubt about whose claims you're presenting in a given paragraph.

You can't make the structure of your paper obvious if you don't know what the structure of your paper is, or if your paper has no structure. That's why making an outline is so important.


Conclusion

Having carefully and methodically led your reader through each progressive step of your argument in the body of your paper, you must complete your chain of reasoning with the final link: your conclusion. Now the ultimate conclusion of your argument is the thesis you said you would argue for at the beginning of your paper in the introductory paragraph. So the simplest way to write the concluding paragraph is to summarize your argument. Since you have included a discussion of the criticisms of your argument, you can briefly review the most weighty objections and then make an overall evaluation of the success of your argument.

Merely summarizing what you have already argued, however, is not a very interesting way to end your paper. A more interesting concluding paragraph might explain what further implications have arisen from your argument. In this way you can point to a new but related issue which the investigation of your topic has generated. Or perhaps your inquiry has uncovered an interesting question worth thinking about, but which you didn't have room to discuss at length in your paper. You might reflect briefly about such a question in the concluding paragraph.

Another way to end your paper is to explain why your discoveries are important. You should already have said something about why your topic is worth discussing in the introductory paragraph, but the importance of your results cannot be fully appreciated until after you have worked through each argument and counterargument step by step.

Remember, this is an argumentative essay on a controversial, philosophical topic; it is not a geometrical demonstration. Consequently, do NOT write: "Thus I have conclusively proven that such and such." Instead, weigh the results of your inquiry, judiciously taking into account the arguments, counterarguments, and replies to those counterarguments, and write something more like: "I have argued that the weight of evidence seems to support my thesis that so and so." As always, don't claim to have shown more than you really have.

Note: Your conclusion should contain no surprises. That is, try to avoid bringing up new issues, new criticisms, or different comments that belonged in the exposition or critical evaluation section. Students often make very interesting suggestions about what is wrong with the philosopher's position in the last few sentences of the paper without spelling out the details. Such comments belong in the body of the paper.


How You'll Be Graded

You'll be graded on three basic criteria:

1. How well do you understand the issues you're writing about?
2. How good are the arguments you offer?
3. Is your writing clear and well-organized?

We do not judge your paper by whether we agree with its conclusion. In fact, we may not agree amongst ourselves about what the correct conclusion is. But we will have no trouble agreeing about whether you do a good job arguing for your conclusion.

More specifically, we'll be asking questions like these:

✫ Do you clearly state what you're trying to accomplish in your paper? Is it obvious to the reader what your main thesis is?

✫ Do you offer supporting arguments for the claims you make? Is it obvious to the reader what these arguments are?

✫ Is the structure of your paper clear? For instance, is it clear what parts of your paper are expository, and what parts are your own positive contribution?

✫ Is your prose simple, easy to read, and easy to understand?

✫ Do you illustrate your claims with good examples? Do you explain your central notions? Do you say exactly what you mean?

✫ Do you present other philosophers' views accurately and charitably?

The most common comments on students' philosophy papers most often are these:

? "Explain this claim" or "What do you mean by this?" or "I don't understand what you're saying here"
 "This passage is unclear (or awkward, or otherwise hard to read)" "Too complicated" "Too hard to follow" "Simplify"
 "Why do you think this?" "This needs more support" "Why should we believe this?" "Explain why this is a reason to believe P" "Explain why this follows from what you said before"
 "Not really relevant"
 "Give an example?"

Your paper should do some philosophical work

A kind of complaint that is common in undergraduate philosophy papers goes like this:

Philosopher X assumes A and argues from there to B. B seems unattractive to me. Philosopher X just assumes A and doesn't give any argument for it. I don't think A is true. So I can just reject A and thereby avoid B.

This line of thought may very well be correct. And the student may very well be right that Philosopher X should have given more argument for A. But the student hasn't really philosophically engaged with Philosopher X's view in an interesting way. He hasn't really done much philosophical work. It was clear from the outset that Philosopher X was assuming A, and that if you don't want to make that assumption, you don't need to accept X's conclusion. If this is all you do in your paper, it won't be a strong paper and it will get a mediocre grade, even if it's well-written.

Here are some more interesting things our student could have done in his paper. He could have argued that B doesn't really follow from A, after all. Or he could have presented reasons for thinking that A is false. Or he could have argued that assuming A is an illegitimate move to make in a debate about whether B is true. Or something else of that sort. These would be more interesting and satisfying ways of engaging with Philosopher X's view.