Writing for PHIL 323 – Environmental Ethics

Writing for PHIL 323 — Environmental Ethics

By Matt Zwolinski

The Assignments:

In every five-week cycle, there are 4-6 different reading assignments.

Pick three of those readings.

Look at the writing assignment questions associated with the three readings you have selected.

Pick the questions which most interest you, or about which you think you have the most interesting things to say.

Write three papers, based on those questions. Two papers will be one page in length, and the third will be 2-5 pages. Generally speaking, you’ll probably only be able to answer one question of a multi-part question in the one page paper. If the questions are closely related enough, you might be able to do more. You might be able to do more in the longer paper. It’s up to you. My only warning is that you shouldn’t try to answer too many questions in a short paper, since this might lead to your not having enough room to discuss the issue thoroughly.

See http://research.biology.arizona.edu/mosquito/willott/323/assign.html for more details.

The Mechanics:

Papers must be typed, double-spaced, single-sided, 12 point font (Preferably either Times or Palatino), with 1 inch margins all around. Skip the fancy cover pages. Just put your name, the date, and your email address in the top right corner.

I would prefer that you email your papers to me at mattz@u.arizona.edu. Send it as a Microsoft Word attachment, and name it in the following format:
filename = FirstInitial + LastName + AssignmentNumber
So, for example, my first assignment would be: MZWOLINSKI1

Papers are due at the beginning of class on the due date given in the syllabus. Do what you need to do to get it to me by then. If that means handing me an extra hard copy in class, so be it. You can also put a request in your email that I send you a note back to let you know that I received your paper. Whatever. Just make sure it’s in my email box or my hands by 11:00 AM.

The Guidelines:

Paper lengths given above are maximums. Do not exceed them. Part of learning to write well is learning to trim the excess verbiage from your papers. Just say enough to answer the question thoroughly. That said, you probably won’t be able to get away with writing too much less than the maximum if you want to say everything that ought to be said.

On a similar theme, don’t waste my time with fancy introductions ("Ever since the dawn of time, man has debated how we ought to treat the environment…") At this point, your philosophical writing should be ugly. Clarity is more valuable than style. So if it helps you be clear, just start your paper with your thesis statement ("In this paper I will argue that…"). You can use the first person in order to tell me what you’re going to try to say in your paper. Violate whatever rules your English teacher taught you as long as it helps you be clear in describing and making arguments.

Stick to the questions as they are given to you. I’ll be grading you on how well you respond to the question. If you answer a question I don’t ask — even if you do it very well — you will not receive a good grade.

Your main focus in these papers is the analysis and evaluation of arguments. There are two sorts of things you are going to be asked to do in these papers:

State the author’s position and/or his/her arguments for that position.
Critically evaluate the author’s position and/or his/her arguments for that position.

In evaluating your performance on these tasks, I’m going to ask myself the following sorts of questions: Does this person understand the author’s theoretical conclusions? Do they understand what the implications of that theoretical conclusion are? Do they understand the reasons the author gives for their conclusion, and the logical connections between the different steps of the author’s argument?

There are some things you need to do to accomplish the above tasks. I highly recommend that you look at the piece on arguing at the following URL: http://research.biology.arizona.edu/mosquito/willott/323/argument.html

That said, here are some more tips:

Define your terms. Philosophers often use words ("utilitarianism," "happiness," "rights") in a very specialized way. If the argument you are making or analyzing uses such a term, and there is reason to think your reader might not be familiar with the precise meaning you take that term to have, spell it out in your paper. It’s simple: "Peter Singer thinks we should treat animals according to the doctrine of utilitarianism. Utilitarianism is an ethical theory which holds that…"

Explain distinctions, don’t just describe them. If the author makes a key distinction in the course of her argument (for example, "When I say happiness, I don’t mean just a pleasant feeling, I mean a long-term, settled disposition to view one’s life in a positive light"), it will often be important for you to point that distinction out in the course of your paper. (But only if it plays a role in the author’s argument. If it isn’t necessary to the argument you’re evaluating, leave it out!) But it’s not enough to say what the distinction is. You also need to tell me why it’s important. This principle can be generalized: don’t tell me anything in your paper that you don’t need to analyze or criticize the argument you’re considering. If a distinction is important, you need to make it clear to your reader why it is important — that is, what role it plays in the argument.

Know the Difference between an argument and an explanation. Oftentimes you will be asked to provide an author’s argument for a particular conclusion — e.g., what is Peter Singer’s argument for the conclusion that all animals should be treated equally? In answering this sort of question, it is not enough to explain what the author’s conclusion is. Saying that Peter Singer means that all animals ought to be treated with equal consideration is just a way of elaborating on what it is he’s trying to convince us of — that is, his conclusion. When we ask for an argument, we want to know how he tries to convince us of that conclusion. What reasons does he give?

Read that last one again. It’s important.

Make sure you analyze the argument properly before you criticize it. Analyzing an argument involves first figuring out what the author’s conclusion is, and then figuring out what evidence he gives in order to convince us of that conclusion. The conclusion of an argument is the idea that the author is trying to convince you of. It will usually be controversial, or at least something that you might not accept immediately if you just read it for the first time. Once you’ve got the conclusion, go back and figure out what evidence the author provides. If you can’t find it right away, ask yourself what kind of evidence the author would have to provide in order for the conclusion to seem plausible. So if my conclusion is that all immigration ought to be stopped, you should look elsewhere in my paper to find the sorts of claims which would lend support to this conclusion — that immigration is a burden on the economy, or that it leads to higher crime rates, etc. Those claims might not be true. But if they were, they would lend support to my conclusion. Once you find the evidence I offer, you at least know what my argument is. It might not be a good one, but at least it’s an argument.

How do you criticize an argument? Suppose I offer the above-mentioned argument against immigration. I say that immigration causes crime, and that therefore, we ought to prohibit all further immigration in to the United States. How can you respond to this? As I see it, there are two general types of critical responses to arguments:

The "Oh Yeah?" Response: One way to criticize my argument is to challenge the truth of the evidence I offer. It might not be true that immigration causes crime. If not, then my argument doesn’t work, since it relies on a false premise.

The "So What?" Response: But maybe my premises are all true. Even so, you might question whether my conclusion follows logically from the truth of my premises. Even if immigration does cause crime, does it really mean that we should prohibit it? What if the crime is offset by other social benefits, etc? If my conclusion doesn’t follow from my premises (even if they are true), I have an invalid inference, and my argument doesn’t work.

Put things in your own words. Quotes in your papers are fine. But don’t over-use them. Part of what we’re testing you on is your ability to explain the author’s argument in your own words. If most of your paper is quotes, I can’t tell whether you’ve understood anything you’ve read. So when you do use quotes, explain them in your own words. (For example: "Singer says "blah blah." What he is saying here is that…")

Don’t plagiarize! When you quote someone, whether it be an article we read in class, or something you read on the internet or elsewhere, you need to cite your sources. I don’t care what method you use for this, just so long as it’s clear to me where the information is coming from. It’s your responsibility to know what plagiarism is. If you turn in a paper with improperly cited material, I will fail you.

Evaluate Arguments Honestly. Sometimes we will ask you to say whether an argument is good or bad, or whether you agree or disagree with an author’s conclusion. But that doesn’t just mean saying "I agree" or "I disagree." In philosophy, you need to support your opinions with arguments. So if you agree with an author, you need to say why. Same if you disagree. And part of saying why you agree (disagree) with someone is saying why you think the arguments which others have offered against your position is wrong. In other words, if you say you agree with Peter Singer that all animals are equal, you’d better say something about why those people who disagree with him are wrong. And if you disagree with Peter Singer, you should do your best to construct the strongest argument on his behalf, and then show why that is wrong. In philosophy, arguments are about getting at the truth, and we don’t do this by setting up bad versions of other people’s arguments and then showing why they’re wrong ("George Bush wants to kill all the poor people. That’s immoral"). We do it by constructing the most plausible position we can on behalf of our opponent and then arguing against that ("George Bush thinks welfare has the following problems. Those problems are serious indeed. But here’s why he is mistaken in his prescription…")

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