Format your paper with 1-inch margins, a standard 12-point font (such as Times New Roman or Calibri), and double-spaced text. No bibliography is required for this paper, since you will be citing only the readings from class. Do not draw on any outside philosophy sources such as commentaries on the topics (especially NO INTERNET RESOURCES); use only the readings and your notes from class (the notes I provide in the class also count as your notes—so feel free to use them as resources). Drawing on outside sources, except as examples to illustrate a point, will count against your grade. And using any outside philosophy resource from the internet will result in an F.
Style: Write your paper for the following intended audience: a group of smart undergraduates (like yourselves!), who have not read any of the texts for our class, but who are, nonetheless, exclusively interested in the answers to the questions of the prompt that you have chosen. You want to make your points clear to this specific group! So, you will need to be constantly asking yourself the following question: what more-what background information, what examples and illustrations, what connections to other ideas-do I need to tell my audience in order to make my answers to the questions in the prompt clear to this audience. To just tick through the questions with 1-2 sentence answers to each won’t be enough. But also filling the paper with information that is not relevant to understanding the answers to the specific questions of the prompt will also be unhelpful. So, stay attuned to what else your reader may need to know as relevant background and aid to understanding.
Why God is not a Deceiver
In the fourth Meditation, Descartes develops an argument for the claim that God (i.e., an all-powerful and all-knowing being) is not a deceiver. This argument is developed as a response to an argument that God is a deceiver. What is this argument? And what is Descartes’s response to it, which shows that the argument is not convincing, since there is a way to account for all the facts in a way that preserves God’s good will? Finally, after articulating all this, what is your take on it?
Does it seem convincing to you? Or is there something that Descartes’s response does not take into account?
