A Guide to Writing Philosophy Papers

   Adapted from Douglas W. Portmore’s ‘Tips on Writing a Philosophy Paper’, which is available here.

 

Contents   (To return to the contents, use the ‘back’ button on your browser.)

 

Why should you write a philosophy paper?

Step One: Do some careful reading – and then do some careful rereading

Step Two: What do you think?

Step Three: Make an outline

Step Four: Closely examine the arguments in your outline

Step Five: Write the paper

Step Six: Proofread your paper

Other guides to writing philosophy

 

 

WHY SHOULD YOU WRITE PHILOSOPHY PAPERS?

Well, you want to pass the course, don’t you? But seriously folks … We want you to write philosophy papers so that you can develop certain important and fundamental skills. For example, we want you to develop the following abilities: (1) the ability to comprehend, analyze, and clearly express complex philosophical arguments; (2) the ability to critically evaluate such arguments; (3) the ability to argue persuasively for your own views; and (4) the abilities to organize your thoughts and to articulate them clearly and concisely.

 

STEP ONE: DO SOME CAREFUL READING – AND THEN DO SOME CAREFUL REREADING

In order to write the paper for this class, you’ll need to be familiar only with the texts that I’ve assigned as part of the regular work for the course; you needn’t do any extra reading or any extra research. However, when it comes to preparing to write a paper, you should carefully reread, maybe two or three times, all of the course material that is relevant to the topic. Note that careful reading and rereading involves taking notes, analyzing certain key passages, recapitulating and questioning the central and important arguments, noticing certain connections (either between different texts or between different parts of the same text), and so on. Reading philosophy papers is not at all like reading the novels of John Grisham. Reading a philosophy paper requires thought, attention, care, and an engagement with the text.

 

STEP TWO: DETERMINE WHAT YOU THINK

During the course of your careful reading and rereading, you should develop your own take on the issue. For example, if you have to write about free will and determinism, you might find that you agree with compatibilism. This will mean that you disagree both with libertarianism and with hard determinism.

 

 

Developing a Thesis

·        Your thesis is a statement of your position on a given issue.

·        To develop your thesis, you should first decide what your position is on the topic you’ve been assigned. If you need help deciding what your position is, thoroughly review any relevant course materials. Those materials should contain any number of arguments on both sides of the issue. As you carefully analyze and evaluate those arguments, you should begin to develop your own opinion about and position on the issue.

·        It’s crucial that you settle on a thesis before you begin writing. Since your thesis is a statement of your position on the issue, it’s a statement of the claim for which you’ll be arguing. And everything you write should somehow contribute to the defense of your thesis. So if you don’t settle on a thesis at the beginning of the writing process, you might often become confused about what you should write since you might often become confused about what you’re arguing for.

·        Your thesis should narrow the focus of your paper. For instance, you might have to write about the problem of evil. You won’t be able to consider every important philosophical issue concerning the problem of evil in a paper that’s five to seven pages long. So your thesis should narrow your focus to something more manageable.

·        Your thesis should be substantive. The claim for which you argue should matter. It shouldn’t be a trivial claim – a claim with which everyone agrees – or an absurd claim – a claim that is so controversial that your arguments for it have virtually no chance of persuading anyone.

 

After you’ve determined that you agree with compatibilism, think about why you agree with it. To do this, find the arguments that philosophers give in favor of and in opposition to compatibilism. (You should have done this during the careful-reading-and-rereading stage.) Then jot down your ideas about why the arguments in favor of compatibilism are good, your ideas about why the arguments in opposition to compatibilism are not good, and any ideas that you might have for an argument of your own in favor of compatibilism. After you’ve done this, you should find that you have a nice stock of reasons for favoring compatibilism over both libertarianism and hard determinism. (Note: Don’t think that you must argue for any one particular thesis. I’m using compatibilism only as an example. The position for which you argue will not affect my assessment of your paper. Your paper will be evaluated not on the basis of the position you take but on the basis of the strength of your arguments. So adopt whatever position you believe is correct. This should make the task more interesting for you and will consequently increase your chances of writing a good paper.)

 

STEP THREE: MAKE AN OUTLINE

Before you start writing, it is important to make an outline. Making an outline will allow you to sort out the ideas you came up with in Step Two – making an outline will allow you to organize your ideas into a single coherent argument for your thesis and to map out the argumentative structure of your paper. Making an outline will also save you time in the long run – it will allow you to avoid delays or speed bumps that you might encounter if you were not to make an outline. Still, don’t expect your outline to allow you to avoid all delays. Even though your outline will be a good guide for writing the paper, it probably won’t be a perfect guide. Even your outline is subject to revision. Still, having an outline will certainly help you to write more efficiently.

 

STEP FOUR: CLOSELY EXAMINE THE ARGUMENTS IN YOUR OUTLINE

Now that you’ve settled on a thesis and organized your thoughts in an outline, you should take a small break. Afterwards, you’ll be able to look afresh on the outline, and reasons and arguments that once seemed utterly clear and convincing might seem less so. Once you’re refreshed, go over the reasons and arguments in your outline and look at them from the perspective of someone with the opposing viewpoint. Will she accept your premises? Will she accept your reasoning? How might she respond to your arguments? What objections might she raise? It’s often useful to seek out a constructive critic – either a friend, a parent, or me. Ask the critic what she thinks of your arguments. Try to respond to the criticisms she raises, and decide whether and how to include your responses in your paper. You might choose to respond to objections as they arise or, alternatively, you can respond to objections at the end of the paper.

 

STEP FIVE: WRITE THE PAPER

Write your paper following your outline. (For some writing tips, see the boxes below.) Write the introduction only after you’ve written everything else. (For a paper this short, you shouldn’t need a conclusion.) The introduction should contain only two things: (1) a clear statement of your thesis, and (2) a brief outline of the structure of your paper.

 

 

Arguing For Your Position

·        Support your views by presenting arguments in favor of them. A philosophy paper should persuade by means of rational argumentation. Writing a philosophy paper involves more than simply stating your opinions.

·        Defend your arguments against potential criticisms. That is, try to anticipate objections that might be raised against your arguments and then, in your paper, demonstrate both that you are aware of these potential objections and that you can respond to them.

·        Appeal to your reader’s intellect rather than to her emotions. Avoid the use of inflammatory language and name-calling. For instance, avoid statements such as, “Any doctor who would give a patient a lethal injection is mad.”

·        If your arguments are to be persuasive, they must not rest upon unsupported, contentious assumptions. Instead, they should ultimately rest upon assumptions that reasonable people should accept, even reasonable people with contrary points of view. For example, if you want to argue that abortion is morally wrong, you shouldn’t begin by assuming that fetuses have a right to life. Such an argument would probably not persuade anyone who is pro-choice; the view that fetuses have a right to life from the moment of conception is precisely what most pro-choice advocates contest. Of course, you can argue that fetuses have a right to life, but you shouldn’t just assume it. The point is to avoid making any assumptions that someone else might reject. You might even think of your paper as an attempt to persuade someone of the opposing view, and if you are to have any chance of persuading such a person, you must avoid simply assuming things with which they’ll disagree.

 

 

Arguing Against Someone Else’s Position

The following are two common strategies for arguing against a claim. You might find it useful to employ these strategies in your own paper.

·        Reductio ad absurdum: This strategy involves arguing against a claim by showing that it implies some absurdity. To illustrate, some people argue that since human beings and animals have different kinds of intelligence (perhaps humans are conscious while other animals aren’t) or different degrees of intelligence (perhaps humans are much more intelligent than other animals), human suffering is more significant from a moral point of view than is animal suffering. In response, one might argue that we should reject such an argument since it implies that the suffering of severely mentally handicapped infants (who are also much less intelligent than normal adult human beings) is less significant than the suffering of normal adult human beings, which is patently absurd.

·        Presenting a counterexample: Consider the claim that all cats have fur. We can provide a counterexample to this claim simply by pointing to a furless cat. Since the cat we point to has no fur, it is false that all cats have fur. Likewise, we can prove the adage “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” false with the following counterexample: Iraq is the enemy of the United States, and Iran is the enemy of Iraq. But Iran is not a friend of the United States.

 

 

Criticizing an Argument

Even if you plan to criticize an argument, state it first in a fair and sympathetic way, making clear why a reasonable person might be led to provide such an argument. In some cases, you might need to make charitable revisions to the argument. That is, arguments can have flaws that can easily be repaired. In such a case, you should explain how the argument can be revised and then focus your criticisms on this stronger, revised version of the argument. You shouldn’t attack your opponent’s weakest argument. Instead, you should present her strongest argument and then try to show that even that argument fails. Only then will you have convinced others to abandon the opposing view.

 

 

Writing Clearly

·        Refrain from using fancy words and super-long sentences. Being clear is far more important than making it seem as if you have a sophisticated writing style. Avoid using vocabulary that you don’t usually use in ordinary conversation. Too many students think that being philosophical involves being complex and obscure. Quite the opposite; philosophers strive to write clearly and in a way that allows others to easily understand their views.

·        Choose your words carefully. Ask yourself: Does what I’ve written express the thoughts that I want to express? Don’t leave something unclear and assume that your reader will be able to figure out what you mean. For instance, don’t write something like “Abortion is the same thing as murder.” Abortion and murder are not the same thing. (If abortion and murder were the same thing, then we could say that Ted Bundy performed many abortions.) Even though most people would understand that you mean to say that abortion is a form of murder, it is never a good idea to leave it up to your reader to figure out what you mean.

·        Avoid overstating what you have to say. Overstatement is common in everyday conversation but inappropriate in a philosophy paper. In ordinary conversation someone might say, “Everyone in the tropics is so relaxed.” But not everyone in the tropics is relaxed. So be especially careful when using words like ‘every’ and ‘all’.

·        Do not use words inappropriately. Example 1: “Rachels’ argument is false.” (Statements, claims, beliefs, etc. can all be true or false, but not arguments. Arguments are valid or invalid, good or bad.) Example 2: “The statement ‘All human lives are valuable’ infers that the lives of permanently unconscious humans are valuable.” (But to infer is to draw some conclusion from a set of statements or facts. And to draw a conclusion is a mental activity that is performed only by intelligent beings. Since statements are not intelligent beings, statements cannot perform the mental activity of inferring. Here, we must replace the word ‘infers’ with the word ‘implies’ or with the word ‘entails.’

·        Avoid being vague, or failing to clearly express what you mean. Example: “Abortion is not the best solution to an unwanted pregnancy.” Does this mean that although you think that abortion is morally permissible, you believe that it would be preferable for women with unwanted pregnancies to carry them to term and then put their unwanted children up for adoption? Or does this mean that you simply think that abortion is morally wrong?

·        Avoid being ambiguous, or using a word that has multiple meanings in a way that fails to specify which meaning is intended. Example: “A fetus is an innocent human.” By claiming that a fetus is a human, are you merely claiming that it is a member of the species Homo sapiens? Or are you claiming that it is a human in the morally relevant sense of that term?

 

 

Defining Terms

Define a term

·        if it is a technical term that a layperson might not recognize or understand,

·        if it is an ordinary word whose meaning is not sufficiently clear or precise, or

·        if it is an ordinary word that is going to be used to mean something other than what it ordinarily means.

Define technical terms like ‘intrinsic value,’ ‘libertarianism,’  ‘prima facie wrong,’ and ‘hedonism.’ You should also define words like ‘free will’ and, in some cases, ‘happiness.’ Although the latter are fairly ordinary words, they can have meanings that differ from their ordinary meanings or meanings that aren’t entirely clear to ordinary speakers of the language. Finally, if you’re going to use an ordinary word to mean something other than what it ordinarily means, you must make this clear to your reader. For instance, Peter Singer uses the word ‘person’ to mean any rational, self-conscious being. Thus, as Singer defines ‘person,’ non-humans can be persons. Of course, it may seem odd to call anything but a human being a person, but this is only because Singer doesn’t use ‘person’ to mean what it ordinarily means. There is nothing wrong with using an ordinary word in such a non-ordinary sense so long as you make it clear that you are doing so.

 

 

Excluding the Irrelevant

Here’s the general rule regarding what is relevant: If something provides neither support for your thesis nor necessary background information, it’s irrelevant. And if it’s irrelevant, it doesn’t belong in your paper! Even if some point is interesting or memorable, it really doesn’t belong in your paper unless it helps you defend your thesis.

Suppose that you are writing a paper on euthanasia and your thesis is that active euthanasia is never morally permissible. Now, one thing that would be relevant to such a paper is a definition of active euthanasia. Although a definition of euthanasia does not itself support any thesis, it is, in this case, necessary and useful background information. However, you shouldn’t discuss the public controversy over Dr. Kevorkian. Although such a discussion would probably be interesting, it is not relevant to your thesis – Dr. Kevorkian assisted many people in committing suicide but has never performed any acts of active euthanasia.

 

 

The Introduction

·        Get right down to business! Avoid exaggerated, rhetorical, and unnecessary introductory remarks. If, for instance, you’re writing a paper about abortion, you shouldn’t waste space with unnecessary comments about what an important and controversial issue abortion is. Your reader should already know this, and you need not tell your reader things that she should already know.

·        An introduction is best thought of as a reader’s guide to your paper. It should help make it easier for the reader to follow and understand your paper. Your introduction should provide the reader with a map of the structure of your paper, explaining the order in which you will argue for various points and then explaining how all those points come together in support of your thesis.

·        Your introduction must include a clear and explicit statement of what it is that you will be arguing for, that is, a clear and explicit statement of your thesis.

 

 

Your Audience

You should imagine that you are writing the paper, not for me, but for an intelligent layperson who knows almost nothing about philosophy. Pretend, for instance, that you’re writing the paper for a roommate who has never taken a philosophy course. This means that you should explain all technical terms and that you should use examples wherever this will help to illustrate your points. Of course, you’re actually writing the paper for me – I will read and grade your papers. So you may ask yourself, “Why do I have to explain terms that Tim is already familiar with?” The answer is that it’s part of your job to demonstrate that you understand the relevant material. And you can best do this by showing that you can explain what you’ve learned even to someone who knows virtually nothing about philosophy.

 

 

Quoting

Don’t rely too heavily on quotations as a means of making your points. Instead, explain things in your own words. The ability to explain someone else’s position in your own words demonstrates to the reader that you have a clear understanding of that person’s position. You will sometimes need to quote a particular author, but do so sparingly and only when necessary.

 

 

Plagiarism

If you are unclear about what constitutes academic dishonesty or about the possible repercussions of and penalties for acts of academic dishonesty, please consult page 36 of the Fall 2001 Schedule of Courses or page 486 of the California State University, Fresno 2001-2002 General Catalog. Moreover, I subscribe to and will enforce the Policies and Regulations of California State University, Fresno as they are stated on pages 483-486 of its 2001-2002 General Catalog.

 

 

Style and Layout

·        Be sure to proofread your paper for mistakes in grammar, spelling, and punctuation. You might even read your paper out loud to yourself. It’s surprising how useful this technique is in allowing you to discover mistakes in your writing.

·        The presentation of your paper should exhibit the pride you take in your work. Don’t turn in a bunch of crumbled or torn sheets of paper which you haven’t even bothered to staple together. Your paper should be neatly typed, double-spaced, in twelve-point font with one inch margins all around. And you should attach the pages of your paper with nothing more than a staple. It’s also a good idea to make and retain a photocopy of your paper.

·        If you quote or paraphrase the words of another, you must give that person credit. If the only source that you cite in your paper is our textbook, you can give an author the credit she’s due simply by including in parentheses her last name followed by the page number on which the quoted passage can be found. Here’s an example:

 

“Nothing in the world – indeed nothing even beyond

the world – can possibly be conceived which could be

called good without qualification except a good will” (Kant, 559).

 

If you are using sources other than our textbook (which you need not do), please see The Chicago Manual of Style for information on citing your sources and on constructing acceptable footnotes and endnotes.

·        There is nothing wrong with using the first person in your paper. In fact, a phrase like “I will argue...” is preferable to the verbose “The author will argue…” or “The author’s argument will be....”

 

 

Getting Help

There are many sources of help available to students writing philosophy papers. Unfortunately, few students take advantage of these resources. This is a shame, because those who seek help seem to get more out of the assignment while at the same time improving their grade.

Talking to me, either by visiting me during office hours or by participating in class discussions, is perhaps the best way to get help in writing your paper. It’s always a good idea to talk to me about your paper. Doing so will make you aware of the kinds of objections that can be raised against your views, and it will give you a chance to practice defending your position. And please be aware that I am always willing to talk to you about your paper, about the class, or about anything philosophical.

 

 

STEP SIX: PROOFREAD YOUR PAPER

After you finish writing the paper, take another break. Then return to the paper and proofread it. Make sure that your paper is coherent and well organized. Ask yourself

·        Does any paragraph or sentence seem out of place?

·        Does the argument proceed in a logical manner? (For example, if some paragraph is needed at or near the beginning of your paper, make sure that you haven’t put it at the end.)

·        Is any paragraph or sentence unnecessary?

·        Have I neglected anything that is necessary?

·        Do the points that I make in my outline come through clearly in the paper?

·        Given what I’ve written, is it clear what my overall argument is?

Also, make sure that you’ve phrased everything as clearly and precisely as you can. Don’t be afraid to rewrite sentences and restructure paragraphs for the sake of clarity or better organization. Remember to check your paper for spelling and grammatical errors.

 

 

OTHER GUIDES TO WRITING PHILOSOPHY

 

IN PRINT

 

·        Stephen M. Garrison, Anthony J. Graybosch, and Gregory M. Scott, The Philosophy Student Writer’s Manual (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1998).

·        A. P. Martinich, Philosophical Writing, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996).

·        Jay F. Rosenberg, The Practice of Philosophy: A Handbook for Beginners, 3rd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1995).

·        Zachery Seech, Writing Philosophy Papers, 2nd ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1997).

 

On The Web

 

Designed specifically for philosophy

 

·        A Guide to Writing Philosophy Essays

·        Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper

·        How to Get Better Grades for Your Philosophy Papers

·        How to Write a Philosophy Paper

 

 

General writing guides

 

·        The University of Victoria’s Hypertext Writer’s Guide

·        The National Writing Centers Association, contains a fairly comprehensive list of university on-line writing centers

·        Michael Harvey’s The Nuts and Bolts of College Writing

·        Writing at the University of Toronto

·        The University of St. Thomas’s Study Guides and Strategies

·        The Writing Center at Colorado State University

·        Charles Darling’s Guide to Grammar and Writing

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