Palpatine and Yoda
are arguing. In particular, they are arguing about whether technological
advancements have improved people’s epistemic condition.
Palpatine thinks
technological advancements and our access to the Internet have made us more
knowledgeable than ever before. He points to how much easier it is to learn new
things thanks to the Internet and argues that technology has made us
epistemically better off. We can know more, do more, and succeed more than
ever.
Yoda disagrees. He
argues that while our access to information has gone up, people don’t know
things as they used to, and, therefore, we are actually in a worse epistemic
condition than ever before—we might Google-know, but we don’t understand. This
is leading to more misinformation, more polarization, and more problems in our
world.
Who is right? Is
Palpatine correct that changes to how we access information have improved our
epistemic conditions? Or is Yoda correct that we are epistemically worse off
than our ancestors? Or is the right answer more nuanced, incorporating ideas
from both.
These are the
questions you should answer in this paper. You probably want the structure to
be something like this:
·
Begin by briefly describing the situation and stating your
final conclusion—aka telling your reader your thesis. (Your thesis can be
completely one-sided, like “Palpatine is totally right because…” or more
nuanced, like “Palpatine and Yoda are both a bit right, but Yoda is more
right,” etc.) You might also include a game plan.
·
Include a section where you define any key terms you will be
using. (For this one, you’ll definitely want to give enough of a definition of
knowledge for someone to understand it and—depending on what directions you
take—characterize the difference between understanding and other types of
knowledge.)
·
For the body of your paper, go into some detail about the reasons
Palpatine and Yoda give to support their views and why you think each one’s
arguments are good/bad. There are various ways this part can go— (1) you might
start with what one says, then say why they are wrong, then say what the other
says and explain why they are right or how they might respond to a potential
objection, (2) Talk about both views and then compare them and say whose is
better or (3) anything else that you think would work to prove your thesis is
the correct conclusion. (Class readings will also help with this bit.)
·
Finish up with a short conclusion summarizing the argument.
Remember—it is better
to cover a few things in a lot of depth than many things very briefly. There is
a LOT that could be covered in this paper so make sure to focus on just a few
of them.
