Monday,
May 12 (Section 4)
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.
2.
Is proof or evidence is necessary or desirable or
relevant for belief in God?
3.
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).
4.
Hume’s argument against believing reports of miracles.
5.
Does the US war against Iraq satisfy the criteria for a
just war?
6.
In what sense are “all men (sic) . . . created equal”?
7.
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?
8.
Is it helpful to think of the legitimacy of government
as arising from a social contract of some kind?
9.
Which version of social contract theory is best:
Hobbes’ or Locke’s or Rawls’?
10. Locke’s
justification of private property.
11. Is
Tawney right to say that equality of opportunity is possible only if we have “a
high degree of practical equality”?
12. Is
Hayek right to say that equality of opportunity is impossible in a free
society?
13. 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