This is a philosophy paper pre write. Here are the specific directions.
Here’s what you need to do:
1) Pick the ethical issue that appealed to you most in the class. Robot cars? Privacy? Algorithms and bias?
2) Figure out your thesis. The thesis in a philosophy paper tells me what you are arguing for. For the purposes of this assignment, think of stating your position in a couple of sentences. Keep the scope small — you’re not going to solve all of the problems of technology in five pages.
3) Refresh your memory on the readings that are relevant to your topic. Everyone should probably pop back to week 1 where we lay out the ethical theories, and then you should also re-read the material on your topic (robot cars, etc.)
One tip: If you had a four-paragraph paper you liked, start with that.
Once you’ve sat and thought and read a bit, then do the following.
First, free write a little bit. Think of this as sort of thinking aloud. Some of your ideas will probably arise naturally out of the discussions we’ve been having in the case study, but it might help to think of yourself as breaking the problem into parts: what’s the topic? what’s the ethical challenge? What roles and abilities do people have to respond to the challenge? Does everyone bear the same responsibility? What can people do practically? What philosophical theories seem to you to be relevant here? Are you evaluating the question from a utilitarian perspective? A Kantian perspective? Are you concerned with justice?
This should take you a couple of paragraphs to sort out. Don’t worry too much about the formality of this section; it should be grammatical and readable but it’s not a structured essay.
Second, put in the structure. Think of the framework of the Four Sentence paper. They Say/I say/One Might Object/I reply is just a pattern, after all, meant to teach you how to consider objections to your position and to put positions in dialogue with each other.
So if your Four Sentence Paper looked like this:
They say
I say, because
One might object that
I reply…
Your Only Sentences Paper might look like this:
Here’s my thesis.
Now, I lay out the ethical problem.
Some people might say that…
I say, because….
One might object
I reply, developing my view further
Here’s another objection
I reply that.
Conclusion
You get the idea. You have now a lot more freedom — you don’t need to start sentences with ‘one might object’ or ‘I reply’. The point of these writing assignments after all has been to train you to think as philosophers do — what’s the objection? How can I respond? how might someone object to that? (Philosophers are a lot of fun at Thanksgiving.)
Your outline is probably going to need between six and eight sections. How exactly you approach it is up to you.
What you turn in:
One document, consisting of:
Your free-writing/brainstorming paragraphs
The outline you’ve developed.
