Due:
Friday, December 13
Basic
assignment: Write a 3-5 page (typed, double-spaced) paper explaining and
supporting your position on some issue raised by one or more of the writers we
have read since Plato.
Some
guidelines:
1. Your paper should
contain your thoughts and opinions, not just a summary of Descartes or Hume (or
whoever). Tell me what you
think, not just what other people have said.
2. Do, however, address the position and/or the arguments of at least one of the philosophers we have studied. Give references to the text to support your interpretation of their views.
3. Be sure that the
question or issue your paper is addressing is clear and well focused.
4. Be sure that you have
provided a clear statement of your position on that issue (or your answer to
that question).
5. In
addition to explaining what you think, your paper should contain reasons
why you take the position you do.
Your main job is to explain why a reasonable person should agree with
the opinion or position you are expressing.
6. Include
in your paper at least one statement of an objection to your view and a reply
to that objection. How might someone
who disagreed with you criticize your argument? And how can you respond to that criticism?
7. You
are not required (or encouraged) to consult any other sources besides those
already assigned for class reading. If
you do use any other sources, give them credit for whatever you take from them:
list them in a bibliography at the end of your paper and give specific
references for any ideas you have borrowed.
Some possible topics:
1. One
or more of the arguments we have encountered for or against the existence of
God. (These include Descartes’ argument in Meditation 3, his ‘ontological
argument’ in Meditation 5, Cleanthes’ argument from design, Demea’s a priori
argument, Philo’s argument from misery.)
2. Is
proof or evidence is necessary or desirable or relevant for belief in God.
3. Is
Descartes, as many have said, caught in a vicious circle in his reasoning in
the Meditations?
4. Whether
Descartes is right to claim that the human soul (or mind) is distinct from the
human body (or whether his arguments for this claim are any good).
5. Whether
Descartes has succeeded in showing that the senses are not a good source of
knowledge.
6. One
or more of Hume’s arguments against immortality or against believing reports of
miracles.
7. In
what sense are “all men (sic) . . . created equal”?
8. Is
Hobbes right to say that people are roughly equal in ability? Is he right to argue that this natural
equality should lead us to acknowledge equal rights?
9. Is
Rousseau right to insist that women and men are so different that they should
have different and unequal roles in society?
10. Is
Tawney right to say that equality of opportunity is possible only if we have “a
high degree of practical equality”?
11. Is
Hayek right to say that equality of opportunity is impossible in a free
society?
12. Whether
Rawls or Nozick or Walzer has the best account of what justice requires. Or:
Argue for or against some specific element of one of their accounts