From the syllabus:
A literature review is due Monday, October 24. This will count 15% of the final grade. Each member of the class will select a specific topic in the philosophy of mind, and will prepare a review of the literature on that topic to be posted to the TLEARN site for the class. The review will include an annotated bibliography including both book and journal sources. (Journals with full-text online access are fine but don't limit yourself to those.) It will also include a concise (4-5 pages) summary of some of the main interpretive debates and positions discussed in the literature. Topics will be chosen from a list I will distribute. (If you want to do something not on the list, you must clear the topic with me beforehand.) Each class member must select a different topic (first come, first served). Bibliographic references should be in MLA format; the library has a handy summary at http://lib.trinity.edu/research/citing/MLACitationStyle7thedition.pdf. The literature review must be turned in electronically; whether you also give me a hard copy is up to you.
Additional Information:
The literature review is to consists of two parts.
1. An annotated bibliography, consisting of a minimum of eight items. At least
five of the items must be articles from refereed, scholarly journals. (The other
three may be book chapters.) The bibliography should not include encyclopedia
entries or web sites (although it may include articles in scholarly journals
that are available online). This is to be a selective bibliography: the idea is not that these will be the only eight pieces you have looked at, but rather that they will have been selected from a larger body of material because of their usefulness.
How should you narrow your list of references? Here are some criteria.
(a) Articles in more influential journals should take priority over articles in less influential journals. Among the better journals that include articles in the philosophy of mind are: American Philosophical Quarterly, Analysis, Journal of Philosophy, Mind, Mind and Language, Minds and Machines, Nous, Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Review, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. As a rule of thumb, the more regional-sounding the title of a journal is, the less important it is likely to be. For instance, although the Southern Journal of Philosophy does publish good articles, in general their standards are lower than those of the journals listed above. (But there are exceptions: The Pacific Philosophical Quarterly is generally good, and Midwest Studies in Philosophy often publishes articles that are not just good but important.)
(b) Articles by philosophers who have been influential in the field should take priority over articles by less well-known philosophers. If you find something precisely on your topic by someone who isn't well known (as far as you are aware), and it seems well-written and helpful, by all means include it. But the philosophers who are better known got that way for a reason, so their writings are more likely to be important and useful. (Of course when you are just finding your way into the literature, you won't already know who is well-known and well-regarded. You will gradually figure this out by seeing which people and articles get cited the most often by others. As a rule of thumb, philosophers at places like Harvard or Princeton or Stanford are likely to be better known and better regarded than those at schools you haven't heard of, though of course there can be good people anywhere.)
(c) Articles published within the last few decades are more likely to be important to current discussion of the issues. You should try to include some articles from the last few years, and most of your selections should be from at least the last twenty or thirty years. A classic article or two from the sixties or seventies would be OK if it has been very influential; anything earlier than that is not likely to be terribly useful for this assignment.
Each entry should be accompanied by a paragraph or two including a description of the
main theses and arguments of the article or chapter. The paragraph may also include notes on
such additional matters as how technical or difficult the article is, how it
relates to your other entries, and how persuasive you found it.
2. The second part of the project is an overview of the literature you have selected. This is not to be an argumentative essay in which you defend a view of your own, but neither is it to be a simple cut-and-paste job. Rather, the idea is to distill from the readings an overview of the main contested issues relevant to your topic; the main positions taken by scholars on these issues; and some of the main considerations offered in defense of these positions.
More colloquially, the idea is to determine the state of intellectual play on
your issue: who the main players are, what positions they are defending, and
what their strategies for defending these views are. You could think of it as
describing the intellectual lay of the land around your topic. If you cite
sources in addition to those in the annotated bibliography (for instance, the
encyclopedia entries you consulted), include them in a list of additional
references.
Mini-Deadlines
I would like you to turn in preparatory work for the literature review over a period of weeks. More specifically, I would like you to do the following things by the following dates.
Monday, September 12: By this date, you should have selected and received approval for a topic. (Keep in mind that the sooner you request a topic, the more likely you are to get the topic you want.)
Monday, September 19: By this date, you should have looked for articles germane to your topic in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2nd edition. You may also want to consult the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy -- not available online, but the library has both a hard copy and a CD-ROM version. These articles should give you an overview of your topic, some idea of the major philosophers who have written on the topic, and some important references that may provide a starting point for your bibliography. Turn in a summary of which entries you looked at, an overview of the main issues relevant to your topic, what search terms they suggest for your further research, and a list of items from the bibliographies of the entries that look worth considering for your own bibliography.
Monday, September 26: By this date, you should have searched the Philosophers' Index (available from the Databases section of the library's web site) for articles relevant to your topic, and found 10-15 articles which seem worth a further look. Turn in a page or two describing what searches you did, and a list of the 10-15 items you will investigate further. Note that if you find items that look valuable in journals our library neither owns nor has online access to, you can request copies via interlibrary loan.
Monday, October 3: By this date, you should have searched PhilPapers for literature on your topic. Turn in a list of 5-10 additional items you found there that seem worth a further look.
Monday, October 10: By this date, you should have searched the Philosophy Documentation Center (available via the "Poiesis" link in the Databases section of the library's web site) for literature on your topic. Turn in a page or two describing how you searched this index, and a list of 5-10 additional items you found there that seem worth a further look.
Monday, October 24: Final due date for the completed assignment.
(Note that all the resources linked here, except the Stanford Encyclopedia, are proprietary resources that the library pays for access to. I've tried to provide links to these, but if any of my links don't work, you can access these resources directly from the library home page, under "Articles and More.")