ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY INSTRUCTIONS
The paper should be between 3000 and 5000 words, double-spaced, and typed in 12-point font. Times New Roman
APA In-text citation format including book page
Use only academic sources
The book “Principles of Moral Philosophy CLASSIC AND CONTEMPORARY APPROACHES” by Steven M. Cahn, Andrew T. Forcehimes. Must be used as one of your sources.
Avoid using Wikipedia or other informal websites.
Please check the essay for grammatical mistakes thoroughly.
Avoid plagiarism. Use your own words. Do your best to paraphrase. If a quote must be used within the essay, must apply the APA citation appropriately and accurately.
Essay Outline
Interesting hook.
Interesting introduction.
Please carefully follow the example of the outline, including in these instructions, to develop the essay.
The thesis must be clear and precise. Why existentialism is a better theory than essentialism, followed by clear and well support premises.
3 Page
In the background, explain the existentialism theory.
Talk about atheist existentialists (Heidegger and French existentialists) and Christian existentialists (Jaspers and Gabriel Marcel both Catholic).
3 Page
1.-) Make the counterargument clear and easy to follow by the reader.
2.-) Why existentialism is different and better than essentialism contrasting them.
2 Page
Write an exciting conclusion that describes the essential points of the essay rather than a simple summary of the facts.
2 Page
OUTLINE SAMPLE TO FOLLOW
Longer Writing Assignment Draft Instructions
General Instructions:
For this paper draft assignment, you will choose one of the readings from the course out of the Cahn text. For the reading you choose, you should outline the main position in the paper and formulate a response to the position and the argument(s) the author uses in the paper. Your paper should be between 3000 and 5000 words, double-spaced, and typed in 12-point font.
Important Points to Consider:
Every philosophy paper is an argumentative essay and yours should be one as well. The first thing you should do in your paper is make sure that you have understood the paper you are writing about (the “target paper”). Understanding the target paper amounts to understanding the argument(s) in the target paper. This will probably be the most difficult part of writing your paper – it is not easy to understand an argument, especially if it is complex. Some people start this process by writing an outline of the target paper, which is a good strategy. Once you think you know what the author is saying and what the argument is, then you are ready to start writing about the target paper.
I typically begin writing philosophy papers by outlining the argument I’m discussing, and then “fleshing out” the paper from there. Let me explain. Arguments are given in premise/conclusion form but often times they don’t end up in “standard form” in our papers. So, let’s say I’m writing about Protagoras’s relativism. Protagoras didn’t write in “standard” premise/conclusion form (formal logic having not been invented yet), so I have to put his arguments in this form. I read Protagoras, then summarize his view (Examples are purple in what follows):
Main Point: Protagoras endorsed a variety of relativism that threatened to abolish any form of concentrated moral authority whatsoever. Many people think that Protagorean relativism is obviously or unquestionably correct to the point of unassailability.
Then, since I know that I’ll have to explain what I’m talking about to the reader, I identify any background assumptions or things I had to learn to understand the argument I’m discussing:
Protagoras held, famously, the Measure Doctrine (MD):
(MD): humans determine what is the case for humans; they do not discover what is given by the world prior to their interaction with it.
“A human being is the measure of what is, that it is, and of what is not, that it is not.” (Protagoras, XII)
In this case, I need to explain the “measure doctrine” because it’s essential to my paper. I cannot expect the reader to know about this, and even if they did, I should be clear about what I mean when I discuss the “measure doctrine.” So, I define it and give a quotation that supports my definition. I cite my quotation, as always.
Perhaps I need to distinguish this definition from other important candidate definitions or perhaps there is another idea that is close to the idea I want to discuss. I might make a distinction:
Notice that the position of Protagoras here is different from those of the early atomists: Protagoras will not allow that there is a reality standing behind appearances. Rather, appearances are reality. What appears to me to be so, is so, for me; and there is no reason to doubt either the reality of what appears to me or my ability to know that reality directly.
This explains that there is an important position that is near to the position I am discussing, but I understand the difference and take care to point it out to the reader. I might give an example if I
think the distinction is unclear or difficult to grasp. I don’t do that here because I think the distinction is straightforward.
Now, I take what I have so far (notice I still haven’t discussed the argument proper yet) and start to outline the argument:
We can see the power of this position when we extend it to an argument like CPA to yield an argument for Protagorean relativism.
Argument for Protagorean Relativism (APR):
1. If S1 perceives some action x to be F (e.g. euthanasia to be morally permissible) and S2 perceives that same x to be not-F (euthanasia to be morally impermissible), then neither F nor not-F is a property of x in itself.
2. It often happens in perception that S1 perceives x to be F and S2 perceives x to be not-F.
3. Hence, moral qualities are not in actions themselves.
Now, this is the argument in my paper that I am going to discuss. It is in “standard form” as it has numbered premises and conclusions (1-3). I use a lot of acronyms because I don’t like writing out complex phrases over and over again, but I always indicate what the acronyms mean when I first introduce them. I also use some technical formalisms, but you needn’t do this – this is a function of your comfort with formalisms.
The advantage of such formulations is that the reader knows exactly what I take the argument to be and what I think Protagoras thinks it shows. This should go a long way toward clearing up confusion. Next, I will discuss the plausibility of each of the premises and conclusion.
APR-2 seems almost undeniable. People have moral disagreements. But this doesn’t simply echo the sentiments of the atomists that what exists in reality differs from convention. Protagoras’s MD holds that what is right for the Persians differs from what is right for the Greeks (for example).
I should discuss every premise and conclusion, but the order I choose here simply depends on how I think the argument is best viewed – this is my discretion as an author. Notice again, I’m using acronyms but you don’t have to unless you feel it helps. Now, I’m going to expand on what I’ve said so far:
Protagoras has extended the atomistic conventionality of perception argument in three ways.
First, concerning the notion of perception: it is easy to slide from speaking of narrow sense perception to a more intellectual form of perceptual judgment. E.g., “She perceived blue” to “He perceived the discomfort in the room.” It is not immediately obvious that we perceive in every case the moral disagreements that we take ourselves to perceive (how widespread is our disagreement?).
Second, even if we assent to APR-2, it doesn’t give us reason to think that morality is relative. In other words, how do we move from the fact of moral disagreement to the rejection of traditional morality, which holds that some actions are right or wrong independently of and prior to our judgments about them? It is not clear.
Third, Protagoras does not deny the reality of perceptual or moral qualities. Instead, he holds that they are really real – it is just that they depend for their existence on our judgments. If we understand MD to be completely unrestricted, then what holds for perceptual and moral qualities holds for qualities generally.
Now, this is a good start to my paper and will serve me well going forward. I don’t have all of the details yet, but the basic structure is coming into focus. But wait, there is something I mentioned above that is not yet explained. Did you see it? Let’s look again:
Protagoras has extended the atomistic conventionality of perception argument in three ways.
What is the “atomistic conventionality of perception argument”? I didn’t explain it but I rely on it in my paper. I need to explain that further, so I’m now going to write a bit about that loosely:
Fifth-century atomists like Leucippus and Democritus held views akin to Parmenides in the sense that they all agreed with him in maintaining that the world described by science and philosophy differs sharply from the world of common sense and sense experience. They also seem keen to explain why there should be such a great divergence between what we sense and what we come to believe about the world behind our image of it.
Atomism is the alternative to Parmenidean monism: although the phenomenal world does not represent the world as it is in itself, there are good reasons why the world should appear as it does. The phenomenal world results from the imperceptible interactions of tiny atoms swirling in the void.
Democritus agrees with Parmenides on a priori grounds that it is not possible for there to be generation ex nihilo. Whatever comes into existence comes from something already existing; and whatever goes out of existence resolves into something, not nothing.
At the bottom of existence are tiny atoms (atomos = undivided, indivisible) which never come into or go out of existence and are also indivisible.
There are atoms and there is void. If change and generation are genuine, then there must be non-being, in the sense that it must be possible to say that this is not that. Then there must be non-being, which is the void.
Because atoms have size, shape, and weight in terms of which observations at the macrolevel might be explained. For example, bitterness might be a function of a prevalence of sharp atoms in some kinds of food, or sweetness due to a preponderance of smooth and silky spherical atoms in others.
The result: the world as it is is divorced from common sense experience, at least the world as it is experienced is grounded in (and explained by) a world of atoms which are inaccessible to sense experience. Our experiences are coherent and explicable.
This doesn’t really address Parmenides, though. Why?
1. Nowhere do the atomists directly refute Parmenides. Parmenides gave an argument for thinking that it is not possible to think of what is not; nothing in the atomistic response addresses this argument directly.
2. Democritus has conceded too much by holding that there is only one kind of change. In holding that it is possible to conceive of alteration only if it is possible to conceive of generation, Parmenides wants to reduce all instances of alteration to generation. By reducing all generation to qualitative change, we haven’t seen this to be false.
Democritus seeks to shore up this second point. He distinguishes between “bastard” judgments of the senses and another form of judgment not based in sense experience but the workings of reason.
The result is that Democritus seems unmoved by the empirical data most contemporary atomists cling to. He understands atomism to render much of sensory data non-objective and merely conventional. In reality, according to Democritus, there are only atoms and the void. Whatever else exists does so only by convention, as a sort of convenient fiction. Things like color, flavor, temperature and the like are mere convention.
In drawing this contrast between what really exists and what exists by convention, we have a powerful argument. This is the Conventionality of Perception Argument.
Conventionality of Perception Argument (CPA):
1. If S1 perceives some object x to be F (e.g. a bucket of water to be warm) and S2 perceives the same x to be not-F (that is, the same bucket of water to be cool), then neither F nor not-F is a property of x in itself.
2. It often happens in perception that S1 perceives x to be F and S2 perceives x to be not-F.
3. Hence, perceptual qualities are not in objects themselves.
To Do: Why would someone think that CPA-2 is true?
Additionally, it seems that something like naïve realism is true.
Naïve realism: the view that sensory qualities are intrinsic properties of perceived objects.
But, this is what CPA is attacking.
To Do: If CPA-1 is true, then naïve realism is false. Why?
To Do: If CPA-1 is true and CPA-2 is true, then CPA-3 is also true. Why would someone think that CPA-1 is true?
Problems for the naïve realist: Suppose that a pool seems cool to S1 and warm to S2. Here are our options:
1. S1 is right and S2 is wrong.
2. S1 is wrong and S2 is right.
3. They are both right.
4. They are both wrong.
(1) and (2) seem arbitrary – nothing gives us any reason to suppose that either enjoys some privileged position here. (4) also seems incorrect from the standpoint of the naïve realist. (3) is the only acceptable option but (3) raises a problem: how can the pool be in itself both warm and not-warm and cool and not-cool? This is a contradiction (twice over).
Response: neither S1 nor S2 is absolutely or objectively wrong or right: both are right as far as each is concerned.
Problem: This is Democritus’ point – each is correct only as far as things seem, not as far as how things are in fact, in themselves, independent of and prior to our experiences.
If it now turns out that each perceiver is an authority over how things appear, and it is not possible for the objects of perception to be objectively, in themselves, as they appear, then naïve realism must be false.
It will not be the case that tings in the perceptual realm are in reality any one way rather than another. Things are hot and cold only by convention.
Similar remarks apply to colors: In varying conditions of lighting and with differences among perceivers, one and the same object will seem blue to one perceiver and purple to another.
If one responds by saying that one person is mistaken because one perceiver is abnormal or defective, then Democritus will respond that this discussion of normalcy is already talk of conventional norms and this just shows that naïve realism is false.
This is just to say that given CPA-1, CPA-3 follows. Hence, we are wrong to invest too much significance into our “bastard” judgments. They tell us how the world seems, but not how the world is. The world is just atoms in the void.
Atomism preserves some elements of the manifest image but undermines others. There is change and plurality, but all change is merely alteration and not generation; all plurality is a plurality of atoms in the void.
We perceive the world; but our perceptions only yield “bastard” judgments that cut us off from reality – atoms in the void.
But, reason can uncover what is the case.
To what extent does the relativity of perception argument represent an attempt on the part of the mind to undermine the reliability of sense perception as such?
Recall that I’m only interested in the Conventionality of Perception Argument (CPA) here and just interested in it because it helps with my discussion of Protagorean Relativism. So, I’ve written too much and not all of this will end up in my paper. I need to edit – this is okay! I’d rather have too much written than not enough.
Also notice that I have a lot of notes to myself about what I should do. That is, I know when I’m drafting my paper that not every avenue will be pursued and not every point discussed. I know where I can expand my paper and just make a note of it (I use “to do” in my drafts). I also put questions to answer in my draft – maybe there are good ideas there that can be used in another paper.
Now, I am going to go back to Protagoras’s argument. I need to make a distinction between different formulations of the Measure Doctrine (MD):
There seem to be two formulations of MD:
MDPOS:
For any arbitrary proposition p, if S believes p, then p is true for S.
MDNEG: For any arbitrary proposition p, if S1 believes p and S2 believes not-p, then there is no fact of the matter as to whether S1 or S2 is correct.
Again, I’m being technical and using some formalisms but you can get the idea. I’m trying to anticipate two (or more) ways of interpreting what I’ve said (and what Protagoras has said). Now, I’m going to talk about these formulations:
MDPOS seems hard to believe. If you think that 2+3=4, then you are just wrong.
If “true for S” means “is believed to be true by S,” then MDPOS is obviously true but not very informative. It just means that if S believes p, then S believes p.
We might seek to restrict the range of propositions under MDPOS such that it doesn’t concern mathematics or empirically decidable matters, but morality. When we have disagreements in some domain, then there is no fact of the matter as to who is right or wrong. This is a restricted version of the negative formulation of MD.
Now, I’ve outlined the argument and formulated its implications. I’ve also provided a lot of definitions and background (I’m at ~1500 words so far). This is just a draft, so it’s a bit messy. This is okay! I’m just getting the shape of the paper in focus now. But also notice that this last section is more about what I think than what Protagoras thinks. I’ve told the reader what Protagoras thinks, but now I’m telling the reader why I don’t think this particular formulation of the Measure Doctrine is very plausible. I’m going to have to do more work here, but I have it down in written form now.
Next, I’m going to dig a bit more into my argument against this version of MD.
Two things to say:
First, this is not what Protagoras thinks.
Second, when we offer such a restriction, we incur an obligation to offer a principled reason to endorse it. This reason needs to show why we are justified in thinking that relativism should be rejected as a general doctrine, even while it is reserved in some fields of inquiry. It’s not clear how to do this.
Now, this is where my paper really gets going. I’m going to have to tell the reader how problematic each of these points are and that will take some time and creativity on my behalf. But the important lesson here is that I have written about 1500 words just setting up the paper. I cannot say anything about what I think until I have all of these pieces in place, as it were.
This is how you should start your paper draft. I’m not looking for perfection or even a paper that has a finished form or content. I’m just looking to see what you are planning on doing and I’ll give you comments on that. In fact, your response to the argument is not as important as setting up the argument correctly at this point. I want to see that you have set yourself up for success, and to give you guidance on how to improve what you have so far. The more you give me in the draft, the more I can give you back in comments.
