Recommendations on Composing a Philosophy Paper

Philosophical writing is different through the writing you will be expected doing in other courses. The majority of the methods described below will even last well whenever composing for any other courses, but do not immediately assume which they all will. Nor should you assume that each writing guideline you have been written by other instructors is very important when you are composing a philosophy paper. Some of these instructions are regularly violated in good philosophical prose (e.g., begin to see the instructions on sentence structure, below).

  • A philosophy paper consist of the defense that is reasoned of claim

    • Your paper must offer a disagreement. It can not consist when you look at the simple report of the viewpoints, nor in only report regarding the viewpoints regarding the philosophers we discuss. You need to protect the claims you create. You need to provide reasons why you should think them.

    There are a number of things you may try to do in your paper. You will frequently start with placing some argument or thesis on the table for consideration. Then you definitely’ll carry on to accomplish 1 or 2 regarding the after:

  • Criticize that argument or thesis
  • Offer counter-examples to your thesis
  • Protect the argument or thesis against another person’s critique
  • Offer reasons to think the thesis
  • Offer examples that really help explain the thesis, or that assist to really make the thesis more plausible
  • Argue that particular philosophers are dedicated to the thesis by their other views, though they don’t turn out and explicitly endorse the thesis
  • Discuss exactly exactly what consequences the thesis could have, if it had been real
  • Revise the thesis into the light of some objection

    • You will conclude by saying the upshot of one’s conversation. (By way of example, should we accept the thesis?