The paper should be typed double-spaced.

The paper should be between 10 and 15 pages in length. . (And . . . one-inch margins, 10 or 12-point type, no weird fonts, etc. Somewhere in the neighborhood of 4500 words would be in the right ballpark.)

Due date: Monday, November 20. Late papers will be dropped one notch (e.g. from a B to a B-) for every week day they are late.

(1) The paper should have a thesis or main point. The thesis should either concern the proper interpretation of one of the thinkers we have studied (e.g. what exactly is Dennett's interpretation of freedom? What are the different varieties of "functionalism" and how do their differences affect functionalism's plausibility?), or the relation between two or more thinkers on a particular point (e.g. Kim and Yablo on whether there is a "causal exclusion problem" for nonreductionist materialism), or an evaluation of one or more of the arguments employed by our philosophers (e.g. does the "homunculi-headed robot" argument successfully refute functionalism?  Are qualia an insurmountable problem for materialist theories of the mind?). Most likely, the paper will have to involve both interpretation and evaluation to some degree: one way of defending an interpretation of a philosopher’s argument is to argue that it is less vulnerable to criticism than alternative interpretations; conversely, criticisms of a philosopher’s arguments are of little interest unless you show that your interpretation of the argument you are criticizing is plausible.

(2) Argument. Your paper needs to be more than an autobiographical account of your experience in reading the material. You need to offer reasons for your position or against the one you are attacking. One very good strategy students often do not use enough is to think of possible objections to your view and respond to them. In addition, if you are criticizing someone else’s work, it is a very good idea to discuss how you think the writer would defend his or her position against your criticisms. This helps to deepen your argument. Contrary to what some students fear, it also makes your argument more persuasive. People sometimes worry that raising objections to their own view, or supplying responses an opponent might make, just needlessly makes trouble for their thesis. But a sophisticated reader will be thinking of objections to your view while reading your paper; such a reader will be helped if you show how you would deal with these objections. (It may also help to keep in mind that the goal of these papers is to work out a position as carefully and completely as you can; it is more a search for the truth than an attempt to persuade. The more objections you consider and respond to, and the more fair you are to your opposition, the more cogent and thoughtful your own view is likely to be.)

(3) Clarity is vitally important: you need to write carefully and organize your paper very explicitly. If necessary, you should ruthlessly sacrifice elegance of style in favor of glaringly obvious signposting: for example, "The second argument against the identity theory is that it leads to 'species chauvinism'." That's not a great sentence, but it gets the point across clearly.

(4) It is important that you attend carefully, accurately, and in detail to the reading. The more intensively you study a limited amount of material, the better the paper is likely to be. (This is not to say that you cannot offer generalizations about the reading, or comparisons of some readings with others or with other sources. On the contrary, such points can be very useful and illuminating. But any such general claims should be backed up with very specific references to the detail of the readings. The thing to avoid is vague generalities.)

(1) I expect you to use the library for help in your investigation of the issues we have discussed, including such resources as the Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Macmillan, 1967) and the more recent Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The latter is available in the library; there's also a very cool online version, though I think you may need to be in the library to use it -- you could check with a reference librarian. You may also find helpful such standard collections on the philosophy of mind as those edited by Block, by Rosenthal, and by Lycan, and such philosophy-of-mind-oriented resources as Guttenplan, ed., A Companion to the Philosophy of Mind, or the MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences. There are also extremely useful online resources, including the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. A very useful resource for finding journal literature, often with full-text online access, is the Philosopher's Index, available from the library's web site. Other useful philosophy resources available through the library web site include Poiesis and JSTOR. Do keep in mind, though, that the paper is not primarily a research paper; its goal is not to present a description or summary of what a number of sources say about a topic. The goal is for you to work out your own view about a matter that interests you, and to argue for that view as persuasively as you can. If you use secondary sources, properly cited, keep in mind that what is of interest is not the views they hold but rather the arguments they offer for them. There’s really no such thing as an "authority" on controversial philosophical issues; appeals to authority therefore carry no weight at all. That Dennett says there’s no such thing as qualia is, by itself, of no interest; what is interesting are the reasons he offers for this view.

(2) It’s a good idea to jot down ideas, questions, and criticisms of the philosophers we are studying as you go. This will help you master the material, will help you understand and contribute to class discussion, and (the reason I mention it here) will give you a good starting point for the paper. The very first draft of the paper can be fairly impressionistic and stream-of-consciousness; sometimes it is helpful in getting started to just sit down and start writing, even if you have no very clear idea of where the paper is going. BUT, by the time you turn in the paper, it should be well-organized and clearly presented; it should be clear from the outset where the paper is going and how it will get there.

(3) Academic integrity is taken very seriously at Trinity (as elsewhere). Be very careful not to plagiarize, not to treat someone else's words or ideas as your own. Make sure you don’t inadvertently violate Trinity’s policy on academic integrity. Copying an entire paper of course is plagiarism--but so is copying or closely paraphrasing a single sentence. If someone else makes a point in a particularly elegant or entertaining way it is all right to make use of their words, but only if you enclose them in quotation marks and give a complete reference indicating where they came from. If I suspect plagiarism, I will strictly follow the University policy on academic integrity (or the Honor Code, whichever applies to a particular student).