Pick a short passage in some of the reading this week, give a brief account of its content, and comment on it. The passage might be anything from a single sentence to half a page or so, and I’m not expecting your discussion of it to be more than a page in length.

Your account will be too short to say everything that might be said about even a very short passage. In choosing what you do say, you should focus on the kind of questions that we tend to focus on in discussion—e.g., what seems to be meant by some claim? and on what does a claim seem to be based (i.e., what are the reasons that seem to intended to justify it)?

Your comment on the passage may take a number of different forms. A natural one, which will also anticipate the sort of things you will be asked to do in the papers you write is either to consider an objection (yours or one you can imagine) to the main point of the passage or to offer an argument in support of the main point that goes beyond the reasons described in your account of the passage.

I’ll give you feedback on these, but I won’t grade them: I merely ask that you make a serious effort. While I’d be happy to accept your assignment on paper, it is more convenient for me to receive work electronically. Since I haven’t set up the course Moodle site for assignments, that means using e-mail. 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.