Write an essay (of roughly 600-900 words) on a topic appearing in your reading so far. The point of this paper is to give you a chance to explore further an issue of interest to you and to provide a basis for me to evaluate both your understanding of the material we’ve read and the depth of your thinking about a philosophical issue.

Your essay should include the following elements:

The first of these should be an exposition of a short passage or of a few related brief passages. The objection may also take the form of an exposition of something in your reading, but it may be one of your own or one you can imagine being offered. That is, you may report an objection or speak for yourself, but it is also quite acceptable to present an objection that you can imagine but that is neither you own nor found in the reading.

Your writing assignments and our discussions are possible sources of topics for this paper, but don’t feel limited to them. Do be careful to keep whatever topic you choose fairly narrow; this is a short paper and it will be easier to achieve the depth of thought and clarity of writing I will be looking for if you do not attempt to cover too much ground.

Be careful also not to attempt to give an exposition of someone’s views by paraphrasing, or even summarizing in a way that merely follows the order of the text; you do not have enough space in this short paper to do that effectively. Instead think through what is said and design description of that to suit the topic you are addressing and the space you have available. And be sure to give a full reference for the passage you discuss.

I tend to think of the objection and your evaluation of the two sides as at least as important as the exposition of the passage, so be sure to give them significant attention. In particular, don’t make them just brief comments in a concluding paragraph.

You should make clear the specific location of any passage or passages you discuss (using a bibliographic citation, page references, and perhaps brief quotations), and you should do the same for the objection if you have found that in something you read. If you have devised the objection by modifying something you have read, you should cite that source, too, indicating why you are citing it (e.g., by saying something like ‘This argument is suggested by … though it is different from the argument offered there’). The general idea is to enable a reader to locate the context of any textual material you have in mind. It doesn't matter what specific form you use to provide this information, but what you provide should be enough for a reader who knows nothing about this course.

While I’d be happy to accept this paper in hard copy, it is more convenient for me to receive work electronically; and, since I haven’t set up the course Canvas site for assignments, that means using e-mail—my address is helmang@wabash.edu. A short assignment like this could itself be the content of an e-mail message, but I’m also happy to get e-mail attachments.