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1000-Word Philosophy: An Introductory Anthology

Philosophy, One Thousand Words at a Time

How to Write a Philosophical Essay

Authors: The Editors of 1000-Word Philosophy [1] Category: Student Resources Word Count: 998

If you want to convince someone of a philosophical thesis, such as that God exists , that abortion is morally acceptable , or that we have free will , you can write a philosophy essay. [2]

Philosophy essays are different from essays in many other fields, but with planning and practice, anyone can write a good one. This essay provides some basic instructions. [3]

1. Planning

Typically, your purpose in writing an essay will be to argue for a certain thesis, i.e., to support a conclusion about a philosophical claim, argument, or theory. [4] You may also be asked to carefully explain someone else’s essay or argument. [5]

To begin, select a topic. Most instructors will be happy to discuss your topic with you before you start writing. Sometimes instructors give specific prompts with topics to choose from.

It’s generally best to select a topic that you’re interested in; you’ll put more energy into writing it. Your topic will determine what kind of research or preparation you need to do before writing, although in undergraduate philosophy courses, you usually don’t need to do outside research. [6]

Essays that defend or attack entire theories tend to be longer, and are more difficult to write convincingly, than essays that defend or attack particular arguments or objections: narrower is usually better than broader.

After selecting a topic, complete these steps:

• Ensure that you understand the relevant issues and arguments. Usually, it’s enough to carefully read and take notes on the assigned readings on your essay’s topic.
• Choose an initial thesis. Generally, you should choose a thesis that’s interesting, but not extremely controversial. [7] You don’t have to choose a thesis that you agree with, but it can help. (As you plan and write, you may decide to revise your thesis. This may require revising the rest of your essay, but sometimes that’s necessary, if you realize you want to defend a different thesis than the one you initially chose.)
• Ensure that your thesis is a philosophical thesis. Natural-scientific or social-scientific claims, such as that global warming is occurring or that people like to hang out with their friends , are not philosophical theses. [8] Philosophical theses are typically defended using careful reasoning, and not primarily by citing scientific observations.

Instructors will usually not ask you to come up with some argument that no philosopher has discovered before. But if your essay ignores what the assigned readings say, that suggests that you haven’t learned from those readings.

2. Structure

Develop an outline, rather than immediately launching into writing the whole essay; this helps with organizing the sections of your essay.

Your structure will probably look something like the following, but follow your assignment’s directions carefully. [9]

2.1. Introduction and Thesis

Write a short introductory paragraph that includes your thesis statement (e.g., “I will argue that eating meat is morally wrong”). The thesis statement is not a preview nor a plan; it’s not “I will consider whether eating meat is morally wrong.”

If your thesis statement is difficult to condense into one sentence, then it’s likely that you’re trying to argue for more than one thesis. [10]

2.2. Arguments

Include at least one paragraph that presents and explains an argument. It should be totally clear what reasons or evidence you’re offering to support your thesis.

In most essays for philosophy courses, you only need one central argument for your thesis. It’s better to present one argument and defend it well than present many arguments in superficial and incomplete ways.

2.3. Objection

Unless the essay must be extremely short, raise an objection to your argument. [11] Be clear exactly which part of the other argument (a premise, or the form) is being questioned or denied and why. [12]

It’s usually best to choose either one of the most common or one of the best objections. Imagine what a smart person who disagreed with you would say in response to your arguments, and respond to them.

Offer your own reply to any objections you considered. If you don’t have a convincing reply to the objection, you might want to go back and change your thesis to something more defensible.

2.5. Additional Objections and Replies

If you have space, you might consider and respond to the second-best or second-most-common objection to your argument, and so on.

2.6. Conclusion

To conclude, offer a paragraph summarizing what you did. Don’t include any new or controversial claims here, and don’t claim that you did more than you actually accomplished. There should be no surprises at the end of a philosophy essay.

Make your writing extremely clear and straightforward. Use simple sentences and don’t worry if they seem boring: this improves readability. [13] Every sentence should contribute in an obvious way towards supporting your thesis. If a claim might be confusing, state it in more than one way and then choose the best version.

To check for readability, you might read the essay aloud to an audience. Don’t try to make your writing entertaining: in philosophy, clear arguments are fun in themselves.

Concerning objections, treat those who disagree with you charitably. Make it seem as if you think they’re smart, careful, and nice, which is why you are responding to them.

Your readers, if they’re typical philosophers, will be looking for any possible way to object to what you say. Try to make your arguments “airtight.”

4. Citations

If your instructor tells you to use a certain citation style, use it. No citation style is universally accepted in philosophy. [14]

You usually don’t need to directly quote anyone. [15] You can paraphrase other authors; where you do, cite them.

Don’t plagiarize . [16] Most institutions impose severe penalties for academic dishonesty.

5. Conclusion

A well-written philosophy essay can help people gain a new perspective on some important issue; it might even change their minds. [17] And engaging in the process of writing a philosophical essay is one of the best ways to develop, understand, test, and sometimes change, your own philosophical views. They are well worth the time and effort.

[1] Primary author: Thomas Metcalf. Contributing authors: Chelsea Haramia, Dan Lowe, Nathan Nobis, Kristin Seemuth Whaley.

[2] You can also do some kind of oral presentation, either “live” in person or recorded on video. An effective presentation, however, requires the type of planning and preparation that’s needed to develop an effective philosophy paper: indeed, you may have to first write a paper and then use it as something like a script for your presentation. Some parts of the paper, e.g., section headings, statements of arguments, key quotes, and so on, you may want to use as visual aids in your presentation to help your audience better follow along and understand.

[3] Many of these recommendations are, however, based on the material in Horban (1993), Huemer (n.d.), Pryor (n.d.), and Rippon (2008). There is very little published research to cite about the claims in this essay, because these claims are typically justified by instructors’ experience, not, say, controlled experiments on different approaches to teaching philosophical writing. Therefore, the guidance offered here has been vetted by many professional philosophers with a collective hundreds of hours of undergraduate teaching experience and further collective hundreds of hours of taking philosophy courses. The editors of 1000-Word Philosophy also collectively have thousands of hours of experience in writing philosophy essays.

[4] For more about the areas of philosophy, see What is Philosophy? by Thomas Metcalf.

[5] For an explanation of what is meant by an “argument” in philosophy, see Arguments: Why Do You Believe What You Believe? by Thomas Metcalf.

[6] Outside research is sometimes discouraged, and even prohibited, for philosophy papers in introductory courses because a common goal of a philosophy paper is not to report on a number of views on a philosophical issue—so philosophy papers usually are not “research reports”—but to rather engage a specific argument or claim or theory, in a more narrow and focused way, and show that you understand the issue and have engaged in critically. If a paper engages in too much reporting of outside research, that can get in the way of this critical evaluation task.

[7] There are two reasons to avoid extremely controversial theses. First, such theses are usually more difficult to defend adequately. Second, you might offend your instructor, who might (fairly or not) give you a worse grade. So, for example, you might argue that abortion is usually permissible, or usually wrong, but you probably shouldn’t argue that anyone who has ever said the word ‘abortion’ should be tortured to death, and you probably shouldn’t argue that anyone who’s ever pregnant should immediately be forced to abort the pregnancy, because both of these claims are extremely implausible and so it’s very unlikely that good arguments could be developed for them. But theses that are controversial without being implausible can be interesting for both you and the instructor, depending on how you develop and defend your argument or arguments for that thesis.

[8] Whether a thesis is philosophical mostly depends on whether it is a lot like theses that have been defended in important works of philosophy. That means it would be a thesis about metaphysics, epistemology, value theory, logic, history of philosophy, or something therein. For more information, see Philosophy and Its Contrast with Science and What is Philosophy? both by Thomas Metcalf.

[9] Also, read the grading rubric, if it’s available. If your course uses an online learning environment, such as Canvas, Moodle, or Schoology, then the rubric will often be visible as attached to the assignment itself. The rubric is a breakdown of the different requirements of the essay and how each is weighted and evaluated by the instructor. So, for example, if some requirement has a relatively high weight, you should put more effort into doing a good job. Similarly, some requirement might explicitly mention some step for the assignment that you need to complete in order to get full credit.

[10] In some academic fields, a “thesis” or “thesis statement” is considered both your conclusion and a statement of the basic support you will give for that conclusion. In philosophy, your thesis is usually just that conclusion: e..g, “Eating meat is wrong,” “God exists,” “Nobody has free will,” and so on: the support given for that conclusion is the support for your thesis.

[11] To be especially clear, this should be an objection to the argument given for your thesis or conclusion, not an objection to your thesis or conclusion itself. This is because you don’t want to give an argument and then have an objection that does not engage that argument, but instead engages something else, since that won’t help your reader or audience better understand and evaluate that argument.

[12] For more information about premises, forms, and objections, see Arguments: Why do You Believe What You Believe? by Thomas Metcalf.

[13] For a philosophical argument in favor of clear philosophical writing, and guidance on producing such writing, see Fischer and Nobis (2019).

[14] The most common styles in philosophy are APA (Purdue Online Writing Lab, n.d.a) and Chicago (Purdue Online Writing Lab, n.d.b.).

[15] You might choose to directly quote someone when it’s very important that the reader know that the quoted author actually said what you claim they said. For example, if you’re discussing some author who made some startling claim, you can directly quote them to show that they really said that. You might also directly quote someone when they presented some information or argument in a very concise, well-stated way, such that paraphrasing it would take up more space than simply quoting them would.

[16] Plagiarism, in general, occurs when someone submits written or spoken work that is largely copied, in style, substance, or both, from some other author’s work, and does not attribute it to that author. However, your institution or instructor may define “plagiarism” somewhat differently, so you should check with their definitions. When in doubt, check with your instructor first.

[17] These are instructions for relatively short, introductory-level philosophy essays. For more guidance, there are many useful philosophy-writing guides online to consult, e.g.: Horban (1993); Huemer (n.d.); Pryor (n.d.); Rippon (2008); Weinberg (2019).

Fischer, Bob and Nobis, Nathan. (2019, June 4). Why writing better will make you a better person. The Chronicle of Higher Education . 

Horban, Peter. (1993). Writing a philosophy paper. Simon Fraser University Department of Philosophy . 

Huemer, Michael. (N.d.). A guide to writing. Owl232.net .

Pryor, Jim. (N.d.). Guidelines on writing a philosophy paper. Jimpryor.net .

Purdue Online Writing Lab. (N.d.a.). General format. Purdue Online Writing Lab . 

Purdue Online Writing Lab. (N.d.b.). General format. Purdue Online Writing Lab .

Rippon, Simon. (2008). A brief guide to writing the philosophy paper. Harvard College Writing Center .

Weinberg, Justin. (2019, January 15). How to write a philosophy paper: Online guides. Daily Nous .

Related Essays

Arguments: Why do You Believe What You Believe? by Thomas Metcalf

Philosophy and its Contrast with Science by Thomas Metcalf

What is Philosophy? By Thomas Metcalf

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We cover any type of philosophy paper

EssayService helps students with all types of philosophy papers. From a simple paper to a tough essay, our service can help in many ways.

Students may ask us for philosophy paper help on the topic of dialectics. Dialectics is a method used to draw conclusions, using contradictory statements to determine truth. This portion of philosophy can be tricky for students to understand. On EssayService, we help students who need to write papers about dialectics and feel stuck.

Another difficult topic for philosophy students is the topic of dogmatism. Dogmatism was initially introduced by the Greek philosopher Pyrrho. The concept refers to unfounded positiveness in matters of opinion or a person who avoids other beliefs, ideas, or behaviors. EssayService can help students with this tricky topic.

Choose an expert philosophy essay writer to help you write a paper on Eclectism. This topic, originally introduced in the second century BC, is defined as the construction of a system thought by combining elements of established systems of a previous age. This theory can be applied to many different modern practices.

We also offer philosophy essay writing help in the field of metaphysics. Metaphysics is one of the four main branches of modern philosophy. Understanding metaphysics can be difficult for students. Metaphysics refers to the fundamental nature of reality, our existence, the objects around us, space and time, and probability.

We also help with philosophy papers on the topic of hermeneutics. This branch of philosophy deals with the theory and methodology behind interpretation, such as literature and biblical texts. Students feeling stressed about writing a paper on hermeneutics can get help with EssayService from our knowledgeable team of top writers.

Our expert writers can also provide help with assignments in the field of Sophistry. Sophistry can be defined as “in wisdom only”. This means that the reasoning of an argument may seem to be correct, but may also contain a logical error. Our help can help students understand this topic and create a winning paper to submit.

Our cooperation: the process

Getting your philosophy paper with us requires minimum effort and minimum time. Take a look at the three-step procedure described below to know the exact steps of our cooperation.

1. Share your requirements

When asking for philosophy paper writing service, it is important to identify exactly the type of help you need. Share the word count, the reference style, and the deadline. Attach any useful notes or your previous writing so that the expert mimics your style.

2. Select your expert

Next, choose one writer amongst those bidding on your order to receive high-quality philosophy help. We suggest you look at their bios and text them directly. If you still can't make the choice, contact our 24/7 support team.

3. Get the results

Last but not least, get what you came here for your philosophy paper. See if the expert fulfilled your expectations, rate their work, and release the payment. Want to see changes? Contact your writer they will be done in a heartbeat.

How much time will it take to do my request?

Will my philosophy paper be unique, who will be responsible for writing my work, why should i get my papers from you, is it legal for me to ask for philosophy paper help, are free revisions included in the price, philosophy essay writing service tailored to your requirements.

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Having helped thousands of students from academic institutions around the world, we know how important it is to have a deep pool of vetted professionals from different subject backgrounds. Our team members have had their degrees certified and have then taken tests and completed mock orders to prove their professionalism and consistency. For that reason, you can trust us with even the most complex papers from niche subject areas such as philosophy. Here are some of the things we offer:

‍ The referencing style of your choice - We can provide referencing in the style of your choice, whether that be MLA, APA, Harvard, or a lesser-known style.

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Professional service coming to your rescue

Being faced with many assignments at once may sometimes be stressful and overwhelming. That is why we offer our services to anyone who needs help with their university work. Our professionals vary in specializations, so you will always find the exact help you need for your work. With EssayService, stressful situations become easy and all deadlines are met.

Our academic professionals are here to help and guide you through your writing as well as completely take over your tasks and do them from scratch, guaranteeing originality. All you need to do is to choose an expert who suits you the best and start the hassle-free journey on our philosophy paper writing service. With the experience we have on the market, we ensure you that your papers will be authentic and top-scoring.

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As a student, you may face various challenges during your academic journey. However, even the most daunting situation can be resolved with professional help from EssayService. Let's explore who could benefit from our support.

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Philosophy paper writer – expert writing services for philosophical essays.

Step into the captivating world of philosophy with Writology.com, your guiding light through intricate arguments and deep reflections. Browse our website and realize the full potential of the treasure trove of scholarly excellence and profound thoughts that you can take advantage of while using our philosophy writing service.

But why the intense focus on the philosophical field? The secret to its charm and age-long commitment to the discipline are the complex questions philosophy presents. A brilliantly written philosophy essay can put the reader right in the middle of the discourse, making them a part of the discourse, a participant in the everlasting conversation led by the most insightful minds of humanity.

A skillful philosophy paper writer can create a bridge that connects abstract thoughts to concrete understanding and serves as a guide for the reader to cross it. That is no small feat. At Writology.com, we appreciate this transformative power of philosophy and offer our assistance to all those who seek help in the monumental endeavor of writing philosophy papers.

Choosing Excellence: Explore the Writology’s Commitments

In today’s diverse and competitive academic landscape, the right writing partner can be the difference between success and mediocrity. At Writology.com, we pride ourselves on offering not only the benefits of a top writing service but also the commitment to being at your side every step of the way. Here are some of the benefits you’ll enjoy when opting for us.

• Expertise Across All Borders. No matter which philosophy essay writer works on your assignment, they will surely know all the intricacies of the US/UK English and the educational frameworks of the respective regions. Such a skill set ensures that every essay is perfectly adapted to a specific academic environment.
• Consistent Style. Enjoy a specific expert’s writing and work ethic? You have the freedom to work with the same philosophy paper writer again. That way you can get the consistency of the style and voice in all your assignments you order from us.
• Top Writers. Our philosophy experts are among the leading ones in the field. With a proven excellence streak, their creations are enlightening, persuasive, and masterfully crafted.
• Quality, Assured. We’ve set up a rigorous hiring process and quality control to ensure that you get only the best results out of your experience with us.
• Wallet-Friendly. Quality doesn’t always mean enormous prices. We’ve designed a pricing structure that allows every student to ask for help without a second thought.
• On-time Delivery. Your deadlines are the key to our work ethic. We make sure that every paper is ready to go exactly when you need it.
• Genuine Texts. Authenticity is paramount to our writers’ process. Your essays are crafted from scratch and closely follow your guidelines.
• Data Safety. Choosing us means your personal data remains confidential at all times. No third party has access to it.
• Free revision. Your satisfaction with the final result is our priority. If you need adjustments to be made, let us know within 48 hours of the deadline (even longer with the extra packages).
• Money-back guarantee. While our papers often serve as an example of perfection, we can’t avoid an exception or two that supports the rule. For such rare situations, we offer a money-back guarantee.

Why Choose Our Philosophy Paper Writing Service: An Enlightened Decision

Your academic journey deserves more than a simply decent assignment. Infuse it with the vision, expertise, and skill of our philosophy paper writer, and enjoy your student life to the fullest. Let us be your guiding hand, making sure that you don’t get stuck on your path.

Journey Through Thought: Philosophy Assignments Tailored to Your Needs

The study of philosophy is an invitation to explore life’s greatest questions: Who are we? What is our purpose? How should we live? These questions find new and unique interpretations with different generations, cultures, and individual thinkers. At Writology.com, we offer a variety of philosophical essays that can cater to a vast array of your assignment needs.

Philosophical Argument Essay

A philosophical argument essay is not a mere presentation of facts but rather an art form in its own right. Working on a philosophical argument, you need to string together reason, evidence, and logic to present a solid case for your point of view. At our company, we have writers who are skilled in developing arguments that are both compelling and thought-provoking. Thanks to their mastery and experience, they ensure that every premise presented supports the conclusion, guiding the reader through a journey of intellectual discovery.

Philosophy of Life Essay

Life experiences, mysteries, and intricacies often push people to reflect on their personal beliefs and values. Our philosophy of life essays offer introspection, connecting personal experiences to universal philosophical themes. We help craft narratives that resonate with readers, making them reflect on and understand the myriad ways in which philosophy weaves through with daily life.

Ethical Dilemma Essay

At its core, ethics is the study of what’s right and wrong. There are numerous ethical dilemmas that have become everyday questions for some students and a fleeting thought for others. Yet, all of them still present their thoughts in writing when they have a task to submit an ethical dilemma essay. At Writology.com, Each and every philosophy paper writer dives deep into such scenarios, working out how personal beliefs might go against philosophical principles and presenting arguments that highlight the complexities of moral decision-making.

Comparative Philosophy Essay

The beauty of philosophy lies in its diversity. Different thinkers, schools of thought, and cultural philosophies offer diverse and innumerable insights into life’s essential questions. Our comparative philosophy essays aim to explore these varied perspectives, seeking common points, understanding differences, and presenting an all-encompassing view of philosophical themes.

Beyond these types of assignments, we believe in constant education and enlightenment. As philosophical discourse grows, so does the depth of our knowledge and the mastery of our philosophy paper writers. Whether you need to explore a specific philosophical school, ruminate on contemporary issues, or dive deep into ancient wisdom, our writing team can dive in with you and follow your instructions to the end.

Minds At Work: Meet The Team That Gets You to The Top

Every philosophical paper has a genius behind it. At our company, that genius is our seasoned writing team. But what makes them so valuable to your academic journey?

• Diverse expertise. From the Socratic dialogues of ancient Greece to the mastery of the modern world, our experts are familiar with all.
• Practical theorists. Many of our writers live in the fascinating plain between academia and the real world. This variety of experiences brings fullness to your papers, mixing theory with practical insights.
• Always in the know. As philosophy evolves, so do our experts. Their commitment to continuous learning ensures that your essays are not just informed but also innovative.
• Commitment to ethics. For every philosophy paper writer on our team, ethics isn’t just a subject—it’s a way of life. Every piece they come up with is rooted in authenticity and intellectual honesty.

To put it briefly, our writing team is the solid foundation for our academic pursuits, turning each assignment into an academic masterpiece.

Find the Best Value: The Balance Behind Our Quality/Affordability Ratio

Navigating the academic world can be both exciting and expensive. That’s why at Writology, we’ve thought out our pricing to make sure every cent you invest with us gets reflected in the text. Let’s unpack the features of our pricing approach.

Unpacking the price factors

Your essay’s length, urgency, and academic level shape its cost. Understandably, complex philosophical analysis for a master’s level within a short deadline demands more resources compared to a standard college essay with a longer timeframe.

Choose Your Package:

• Standard. Your task will be assigned to the most suitable philosophy paper writer available at the time. Trust us that the quality standard remains high.
• Premium. For those tight on time, this option puts your paper at the top of our priority list. With a price increase of just 10%, ensure that your urgency is known to all.
• Superior. If you accept nothing less than excellence, this is the option for you. With a slight 15% addition, get our best-of-the-best writers to work on your assignment.

Remember, our prices are competitive, but we never compromise on quality. The extra packages and perks we offer only contribute to the variety of choices you have when opting for our help.

Discounts & Promotions

While specific offers can vary, we always have helpful discounts and promotions in place. We value both our loyal customers and new clients. Therefore, always be on the lookout for the opportunity to save with us.

The Writology.com Way: 4 Easy Steps to Success

When typing in the search bar “who can write my philosophy paper for me?” students are not just looking for a helpful and knowledgeable philosophy paper writer. They’re looking for a smooth and stress-free experience that is user-friendly in its nature. At our company, we’ve made it as easy as it gets. Here’s how:

• Cover the basics first. Begin by filling out our detailed yet user-friendly form. Tell us about your topic (if you have a specific one), deadline, number of pages, and any instructions you have for your expert. The more details, the better for you, the paper, and your philosophy paper writer.
• Start off the writer search. Once the form is completed, make your payment using a suitable option. As soon as that’s done, we’ll start looking for the perfect match writer for you.
• Keep the dialogue going. Don’t hesitate to reach out to your writer! Communication is crucial, and we encourage you to provide feedback, notes, and stay updated on the writing process, so the final assignment captures your vision perfectly.
• Receive your paper. Having completed the first three steps, wait for the end of your deadline and download the final version of your paper. Review the finished text to make sure it perfectly meets your expectations.

Remember, Writology.com can be the perfect solution to your “write my philosophy paper” query. By choosing us, you don’t just get a finished paper, you get a dependable ally for your academic journey.

Facts and Statistics about Philosophy Writing

• Origins of Western Philosophy: Philosophy’s written journey unfurls from ancient Greece, where visionaries like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle laid the bedrock of Western thought. With seminal works such as Plato’s engaging “Republic” and Aristotle’s thought-provoking “Nicomachean Ethics,” these minds set the tone for millennia of intellectual pursuits. – Source: Kenny, A. (2004). A New History of Western Philosophy. Oxford University Press.
• Global Reach: The philosophical pulse isn’t exclusive to the West. From the intricate musings of China’s Confucianism and Daoism to India’s diverse Vedanta and Buddhism, our planet brims with an array of philosophical gems, each etched with unique strokes of wisdom. – Source: Black, B. (2011). Philosophy in the Indian Subcontinent. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Growth in Academic Publishing: The past century has seen an explosion in the dissemination of philosophical ideas. A glimpse into The Philosopher’s Index shows a robust collection of over half a million philosophical publications between 1902 and 2022, a clear indicator of the discipline’s thriving scholarship. – Source: The Philosopher’s Index statistics (as of 2022).
• Prominent Journals: The storied pages of journals like “Mind,” active since 1876, have become a touchstone in the philosophical world. Others, including “The Journal of Philosophy,” “Philosophical Review,” and “Ethics,” have etched their legacy with in-depth explorations and debates. – Source: The American Philosophical Association journal rankings.
• Digital Impact: Philosophy hasn’t been immune to the digital wave. Platforms such as the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy have made erudite insights accessible at the click of a button. For instance, by early 2022, the Stanford Encyclopedia was home to an impressive cache of over 1,700 expertly curated articles. – Source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy website metrics (as of January 2022).

Philosophy writing, both ancient and contemporary, stands as a testament to humanity’s enduring quest for understanding and meaning. Its rich history and continuous evolution underscore its importance in shaping critical thought and societal values.

Dawn to Dusk and Beyond: Our Commitment to Round-the-Clock Support

Just as the realm of philosophy knows no boundaries, our support service transcends regular office hours. Whenever you need us, we are here for you.

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Our support team is ever-vigilant. Be it a Sunday morning or a holiday night, our staff remains accessible to clear your path to academic success. Click here to get in touch or drop us a message at [email protected] . Let’s craft a narrative that resonates, captivates, and inspires.

Client Feedback and Reviews

To foster a community of continuous improvement, we value and encourage feedback from our clients. Their reviews help us to refine our services further, aiming to exceed expectations with each new project.

Journey to Enlightenment: Let Us Be Your Philosophical Guide

The pursuit of a degree in philosophy can be a life-long intellectual journey, an exploration of the deepest recesses of human thought. And just as every adventurer needs a guide, every student needs a dependable writing partner to put vague or nascent ideas in perfect words. The team of Writology.com, can be that guiding hand, making sure that your path to the philosophical realm is full of wonder and challenging exploration.

Let us embark together on an odyssey where ancient wisdom meets modern insights. Endeavor to be the captain of your ship, seeking the treasure of knowledge in the depth of the ocean of ideas. Let us be your anchor in its glorious vastness. Your philosophical journey of a lifetime awaits. All you have to do is go on board.

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Are you struggling to keep on top of writing your philosophy essays? Wish you had more time to do the reading rather than writing another philosophy assignment? Feel you would do better if you could just concentrate on one thing? At ACAD WRITE we know exactly what you’re going through. That’s why we created our philosophy paper writing service so you don’t have to go through it. We enable you to concentrate on what you need while we get on with your philosophy written assignment.

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As we know, philosophy is one of the most demanding subjects. It requires a high level of concentration and you need time to absorb complicated abstract ideas. You also need time to observe philosophical principles in practice. Not having that time to process fundamental philosophical concepts and theories could compromise your studies. In the words of Thales, ‘time is the wisest because it discovers everything.’ Deciding to delegate one of your philosophy writing assignments to us at ACAD WRITE is, we would say, a wise choice. As Aristotle said, ‘choice not chance determines your destiny.’ When you buy custom philosophy essays from ACAD WRITE, one of the leading philosophy paper writing services, you buy yourself time; much needed time to apply yourself more effectively to other tasks.

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All correspondence between you and ACAD WRITE is carried out in the strictest confidence. You and your designated expert writer communicate using our anonymised, SSL-secured, communication system called  ACAD office . You are able to conference call your expert as well as exchange data via this platform. From the very start you have complete control over the assignment in terms of briefing your expert, commenting on drafts and giving feedback on the final version. At ACAD WRITE we operate at your pace. Our writers are used to working with clients who are on tight deadlines. They are also used to receiving feedback and are highly skilled at revising drafts according to your wishes. We pride ourselves on employing writers who are disciplined, highly organized and deliver a prompt and efficient service. We also provide you with a second subject expert author to review the final essay. This ensures that the final draft has met the objectives of the brief and maintained the exceptional quality that is expected of ACAD WRITE authors. In addition, we proofread your essay so your work is error-free and coherent. Using our special plagiarism check we also ensure that your custom-written essay is 100% original. Our philosophy paper writing service is  quality guaranteed .

As a scientific author, Dr. Bettina Küpper-Latusek has supervised a multitude of projects and publications. She is the quality manager and ombudswoman for the departments of philosophy and political science. Influenced by her master’s degree in political science and her doctorate in philosophy , Dr. Küpper-Latusek likes to deal with interdisciplinary questions. As a practicing philosopher, she is furthermore active in specialist and management coaching and has been writing for various newsletters for many years. She also has many years’ experience as a lecturer in the fields of social sciences, business and economics. Her academic focus, however, lies on political sciences and philosophy.

Küpper-Latusek, B. (2013). Überlegungen zu Immanuel Kant: Über ein vermeintes Recht aus Menschenliebe zu lügen. München. Küpper-Latusek, B. (2013). Ist es wirklich „der“ Gott oder doch „der, die, das“ Gott: Zu einer (fast) aktuellen Diskussion über das Gottesbild. München. Küpper-Latusek, B. (2001). Weisheit ist weiblich – die weiblichen Hypostasen in der Gnosis. Ravensburg: Grin Verlag. Küpper-Latusek, B. (1991). Politische Partizipation der Frauen in Ägypten zwischen Verfassung und Scharia. Köln.

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A Guide to Writing Philosophy Papers

In some respects, writing an undergraduate-level philosophy paper is not unlike writing an undergraduate-level paper in any of the other humanities or social sciences.  In fact, one could argue that philosophical writing should act as a model for writing in other disciplines.  This is because one of the central aims of western philosophy, since its inception in Ancient Greece, almost two and a half millennia ago, has been to lay bare the structure of all forms of argument, and most undergraduate writing, in any subject, requires the use of argument to defend claims.  However, there are also important differences between the writing styles appropriate to philosophical papers and papers in other subjects.  Most notably, philosophy papers usually focus more on logical structure than on content: the point is not to synopsize exhaustive literature reviews, but, rather, to focus as much as possible on relatively narrow sets of claims, and investigate their logical inter-relations.  Philosophers are less interested in exhaustive cataloging of the latest information on a topic, than in the relations of logical, argumentative support that well-established claims bear to each other, and to certain enduring, controversial claims, like the claim that God exists.

In the following, I provide a four-part guide to writing an undergraduate-level philosophy paper.  First, I explain what philosophical  arguments  are, and how they can be evaluated.  The point of any philosophy paper is to formulate and/or evaluate philosophical arguments, so this brief, rudimentary discussion is essential as a starting point.  Second, I explain the structure and style appropriate for a philosophy paper.  Third, I give students some ideas about how to choose a topic and formulate a writing plan appropriate to a philosophy paper.  Fourth, and finally, I provide a short primer on logic, which can help students formulate and evaluate philosophical arguments.

Before proceeding, let me remark about the scope of this guide.  Although it is intended as a guide to writing philosophy papers for any philosophy WID class, many philosophy instructors would disagree with at least some part of what follows.  Western philosophy has been dominated by two divergent traditions for the last two hundred years or so: the “continental” tradition and the “analytic” or “Anglo-American” tradition.  The former is associated primarily with philosophers from continental Europe, especially Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Foucault.  The latter is associated primarily with philosophers who worked in the UK and the US (though many of its most prominent representatives are German natives).  Frege, Russell, Carnap, Austin, Grice, Strawson, and Quine, are among the most famous figures associated with this tradition.  Although it is difficult to briefly characterize the difference between these two traditions, roughly speaking, while the analytic tradition takes logic, mathematics, and science as models for doing philosophy, the continental tradition is more literary and impressionistic in its approach to philosophical problems.  I am trained in the analytic tradition, and the following writing guidelines reflect this.  Thus, before using this as a guide to your philosophical writing, make sure that your class and instructor are in the analytic tradition.  Although much of the advice I offer below is, I hope, relevant to classes in the continental tradition, it might also seriously misrepresent philosophical writing as understood from the continental perspective.

Even within the analytic tradition, there can be substantive disagreements about student writing.  For example, a colleague who works in the analytic tradition read an earlier draft of this guide and was, for the most part, impressed; however, he disagreed with my view that external sources are better paraphrased than directly cited.  Although I think most instructors working in the analytic tradition would agree with most of the guidelines I provide below, you should have your instructor skim them to make sure that he or she does not take exception to any of them.  As a guide to an initial, rough, paper draft, the following is, I think, an invaluable resource.  Subsequent drafts should incorporate specific comments from the instructor whose class you are taking.  

1. Philosophical Arguments

Understanding Arguments

The point of a philosophical paper is to make and evaluate philosophical arguments.  ‘Argument’ is a term of art in philosophy.  It means more than a mere dispute.  An argument, as philosophers use this term, is a set of claims, that is, a set of declarative sentences (sentences which can be true or false).  One of the claims is the conclusion of the argument: that which the argument attempts to prove.  The other claims are the premises of the argument: the reasons that are given in support of the conclusion.  The conclusion is a relatively controversial claim that the author aims to establish on the basis of relatively uncontroversial premises.  For example, St. Thomas Aquinas, the great medieval philosopher and theologian, famously provides five ways to prove the existence of God.  The conclusion of Aquinas’s arguments is that God exists – a controversial claim.  He tries to establish this conclusion on the basis of less controversial premises, e.g., that objects are in motion, that anything in motion must have been put in motion by a different thing already in motion, and that this chain of causes must begin at some point.

Because the construction and evaluation of arguments is the point of a philosophy paper, clarity, precision, and organization are of paramount importance.  One cannot determine whether or not some set of premises supports a conclusion unless both premises and conclusion are formulated clearly and precisely.  For example, consider the following argument: “Laws can be repealed by the legislature.  Gravity is a law.  Therefore, gravity can be repealed by the legislature.”   On one level, this argument appears to make sense: it appears to have the same form as many sound arguments, like, “Beverages can be warmed in the microwave.  Tea is a beverage.  Therefore, tea can be warmed in the microwave.”  However, there is obviously something wrong with the first argument.  The problem is that the world “law” is used in two different senses: in the first premise and the conclusion, it means roughly the same as “social rule enacted by political means”, while in the second premise, it means roughly the same as “natural law”.  Because the word “law”, as it is used in the second premise, means something entirely different from its use in the conclusion, the premise is of no relevance to the conclusion, and so, provides no logical support for it.  This shows why it is so important to be as precise and clear as possible in philosophical writing.  Words often mean different things in different contexts, and, unless their meaning is made as clear and precise as possible, it is impossible to tell whether or not the claims words are used to formulate support each other.

Organization is important to make clear the complex logical relations that different claims bear to each other.  Consider Aquinas’s First Way to prove the existence of God, to which I allude above.  The conclusion is that God exists.  The premises are that objects are in motion, that objects can be put in motion only by other objects already in motion, that there is a chain of causes extending into the past, and that if this chain of causes were infinite then there would be no motion.  But how, exactly, do these premises conspire to establish the conclusion that God exists?  The key to answering this question is appreciating the structure or organization of the argument.  The structure of philosophical arguments can often be captured in a kind of flow-chart diagram.  Each ‘node’ is a claim (premise or conclusion), and links between nodes represent logical support.  So, for example, in Aquinas’s First Way, the node which represents the premise that objects are in motion does not link directly to the node which represents the conclusion: how can the claim that objects are in motion, alone, give sufficient logical support for the claim that God exists?  After all, atheists acknowledge that objects are in motion, yet deny that God exists.

The structure of Aquinas’s First Way to prove the existence of God is approximated in the following diagram.

Note that the claim that objects are in motion (premise 1) must be joined with the claim that objects in motion are put in motion by other objects already in motion (premise 2), in order to support the claim that there is a causal chain of objects in motion extending into the past (premise 3), which constitutes the “sub-conclusion” of this “sub-argument”.  Premise 3 must then be joined with premise 5 – the claim that this causal chain begins at some point – in order to support the claim that there is a first cause responsible for all the motion in the world, identified by Aquinas as God (premise 6).  But premise 5 is not obvious on its own.  It needs support from still other premises.  For example, Aquinas claims that if there were no start to this chain of causes, none of the subsequent causes would occur (premise 4).  Together with premise 1, premise 4 then supports premise 5, which, together with premises 3 and 6, supports the claim that there must be a first cause, namely, God (C).  So premise 5 is another “sub-conclusion” of a “sub-argument”, which supports the ultimate conclusion (C).

The lesson from this example is that different claims have complicated relations of support to each other.  Some premises support the conclusion only when conjoined with other premises.  And other premises are like “sub-conclusions”, which must be supported by still other premises in “sub-arguments”, before they can be used to help establish the ultimate conclusion.  Since the goal of writing an undergraduate philosophy paper is to formulate and evaluate arguments, organization is crucial.  The author must make clear for the reader not just what the different premises and conclusions claim, but, also, how they relate to each other, that is, in what way they support each other.

Evaluating Arguments

There are only two ways that any argument can go wrong.  An argument is good when its premises count as good reasons for its conclusion.  What makes a premise a good reason for a conclusion?  First, the premise must be true, or at least more plausible than the conclusion.  For example, suppose I argue for the conclusion that Washington DC is likely the next home of the Stanley Cup champions on the basis of the following premises: the Bruins are likely the next Stanley Cup Champions, and they are based in Washington DC.  This argument fails because at least one of its premises is false: the Bruins are based in Boston, not Washington DC.  However, sometimes even true premises fail to qualify as good reasons for a conclusion.  For example, suppose I argue for the conclusion that Washington DC is likely the next home of the Stanley Cup champions on the basis of the following premises: the Redskins are likely the next Superbowl Champions, and they are based in Washington DC.  Here, the latter premise is true, and the previous premise may very well be true.  However, the argument is still bad.  The reason is that, even if these premises are true, they do not support the conclusion.  The claims that the Redskins are likely the next Superbowl Champions and that the Redskins are based in Washington DC, are  irrelevant  to the conclusion: the claim that Washington DC is likely the next home of the Stanley Cup champions.  So, there are two ways any argument can go wrong: either the premises it offers in support of its conclusion are false or implausible, or, even if they are true, they fail to support the conclusion because, for example, they are irrelevant to the conclusion.

Any philosophical writer must constantly keep these two potential pitfalls of argumentation in mind, both in formulating her own arguments and in evaluating the arguments of others.  Undergraduate philosophy papers are often devoted exclusively to evaluating the arguments of well-known philosophers.  Such critical papers must be guided by four basic questions: (1) What, precisely, do the premises and conclusion claim? (2) How, precisely, are the premises supposed to support the conclusion, i.e., what is the organization/structure of the argument? (3) Are the premises true/plausible? (4) Do the premises provide adequate support for the conclusion?  Note that philosophical critiques of arguments seldom attack the conclusion directly.  Rather, the conclusion is undermined by showing the premises to be false or implausible, or by showing that the premises, even if true, do not provide adequate support for the conclusion.  Conclusions are attacked directly only on the grounds of imprecision or lack of clarity.

Despite the fact that arguments can be criticized on the grounds that their premises are false or implausible, most philosophical writing is focused not on determining the truth of premises, but, rather, on determining whether or not premises provide strong enough support for conclusions.  There are three reasons for this.  First, the most enduring philosophical arguments take as little for granted as possible: they rely on premises that are maximally uncontroversial – likely to be accepted by everyone – in order to prove conclusions that are controversial.  Second, most philosophers have a strong background in logic.  Logic is the science of argument: it aims to identify what all good arguments have in common and what all bad arguments have in common.  But logic can be used only to evaluate the support that premises provide for a conclusion, never the truth or plausibility of the premises themselves.  Any argument must take some claims as unargued starting points; otherwise, the argument could never get off the ground, as any premise would require a prior argument to be established.  But logic can evaluate only arguments, so it cannot be used to evaluate the unargued starting premises with which any argument must begin.  Third, the premises upon which many arguments depend often depend on observation, either in everyday life, or in specialized, scientific contexts such as experiments.  But philosophers are not, for the most part, trained in experimental methodologies.  They are trained in determining what follows logically from experimental results established in science or from common, everyday observations.

I discuss strategies for evaluating and formulating philosophical arguments in more detail below, in section 4.  Now I turn to the structure and style appropriate for a philosophy paper.  

2. Appropriate Structure and Style for a Philosophy Paper

Organizing the Paper

Although the philosophical canon includes a wide variety of styles and structures, including argumentative essays, axiomatically-organized systems of propositions, dialogs, confessions, meditations, historical narratives, and collections of aphorisms, most of these styles and structures are inappropriate for the novice, undergraduate, philosophical writer.  Because the main concern of undergraduate philosophical writing is the formulation and evaluation of arguments, style and structure must be chosen with these goals in mind.  As we have seen, precision, clarity, and organization are key to the understanding, formulation, and evaluation of arguments.  If one’s language is not clear and precise, it is impossible to know what claims are being made, and therefore, impossible to determine their logical inter-relations.  If one’s arguments are not clearly organized, it is difficult to determine how the different premises of an argument conspire to support its conclusion.  As we saw above, with the example of Aquinas’ First Way to prove the existence of God, arguments are often composed of “sub-arguments” defending “sub-conclusions” that constitute premises in overall arguments.  Unless such logical structure is perspicuously represented in a philosophy paper, the reader will lose track of the relevance that different claims bear to each other, and the paper will fail to enlighten the reader.

The best way to impose clarity and structure on a philosophy paper is to begin with a brief, clear, and concise introduction, outlining the organization of the rest of the paper.  This introduction should be treated as a “map” of the rest of the paper that will prepare the reader for what is to follow.  Alternatively, one may think of it as a “contract” with the reader: the author promises to discuss such and such related claims, in such and such an order.  The introduction should make clear the logical inter-relations between the different claims that the paper will defend, and the order in which the claims will be discussed.  With such an outline in hand, the writer can then organize the rest of the paper into numbered, sub-titled sub-sections, each devoted to the different parts of her argument, in the order outlined in the introduction.  This helps maintain focus and clarity throughout the paper for the reader.

One of the greatest pitfalls in philosophical writing is distraction by tangential topics.  Philosophical themes are extremely broad, and many of them are relevant to almost anything.  So it is very tempting for a novice philosophical writer (and even for seasoned veterans) to stray from her original topic in the course of writing the paper.  This throws the writer’s main goal – that of clearly articulating an argument capable of convincing a reader – into jeopardy; however, this danger can be avoided if the writer makes clear in the introduction exactly what components of a topic, and in what order, she intends to discuss and why, and then uses this to organize the rest of the paper.  If the writer does this, readers should know exactly “where they are” in the overall argument, at any point in the paper, simply by noting the number and title of the sub-section they are reading, and referring to the introduction to understand its role in the paper’s overall argument.

A good introduction to a 10-page philosophy paper should take up no more than two-thirds of a page.  It should accomplish three main objectives: (1) setting up the context for the paper, i.e., which philosophical debate or topic is the focus, (2) expressing the thesis of the paper, i.e., the conclusion it aims to defend, and (3) explaining, in broad terms, how the paper aims to defend this conclusion, i.e., what are the components of the argument, and in what order they will be discussed.  The first objective, setting up the context, often requires reference to historically important philosophers known for defending claims related to the thesis of the paper.  The components of the argument might include, first, an overview of how others have argued for or against the thesis, then a few sections on different assumptions made in these arguments, then a section in which the author provides her own argument for the thesis, and then a conclusion.

Consider the following example of an introduction to a paper about Aquinas’ First Way to prove the existence of God.

Aquinas, famously, provides five arguments for the existence of God.  In the following, I focus on his First Way to prove the existence of God: the argument from motion.  The claim that there can be no causal chains extending infinitely into the past plays a crucial role in this argument.  In this paper, I argue against this claim, thereby undermining Aquinas’s First Way to prove the existence of God.  First, I explain Aquinas’s argument, and the role that the claim about infinite causal chains plays in it.  Second, I explain Aquinas’s defense of this claim.  Third, I raise three objections to this defense.  I conclude by drawing some broader lessons for the question of God’s existence.

Notice that, despite its brevity, this introduction is very specific and clear regarding what the author intends to accomplish in the paper.  The thesis is stated clearly and concisely.  Brief reference to Aquinas, his five proofs for the existence of God, and the specific proof on which the paper focuses provide necessary context.  Specificity and clarity are aided further with the use of numbering.  The reader knows to expect four sections following the introduction, and she knows exactly what each section will try to accomplish, and its role in the overall project of the paper.  She knows to expect three objections to the argument that is the main target of the paper, in the third section after the introduction.  And the writer can now easily structure the paper into five, numbered sub-sections (including the introduction), with appropriate titles, meant to periodically remind the reader of where she is in the overall argument.

When the writer starts with such a well-defined structure, it is relatively easy to avoid the pitfall of tangential distractions.  Beginning with such an introduction is not meant to be unreasonably constraining.  In the course of writing the paper, an author might revise her thinking about the topic, and be forced to reconceptualize the paper.  She would then have to begin by revising the introduction, and, consequently, the organization of the paper.  This is a natural part of paper revision.  So, the introduction should not be treated as though it were written in stone.  In early drafts, the introduction should serve as a provisional source of constraint for organizing one’s thoughts about the topic.  As one’s thoughts evolve, the introduction can be rewritten, and the paper reorganized, to reflect this.  But beginning with an introduction that specifies the organization of the paper in substantial detail serves as an important constraint on one’s writing and thinking, insuring that one’s topic is investigated systematically.

1. Plain Language for a Non-Specialist Audience: Much canonical philosophy is opaque and difficult to understand for the novice.  A common reaction to this in undergraduate writing is the use of obscure “academic-sounding” language, of which students have only minimal mastery, in an attempt to sound intelligent and equal to the task of explaining and criticizing canonical philosophical arguments.  This must be avoided at all costs.  Good philosophy papers must employ clear,  plain  language, in short sentences and short, well-organized paragraphs.  It is impossible to evaluate the cogency of arguments unless they are expressed in terms that are easily understood.  Students must not assume that instructors know in what senses they intend esoteric, philosophical vocabulary, nor what lessons they have drawn from the sources they have been reading.  Unless a student can express and defend claims using words with which they, and any educated layperson are familiar, it is doubtful that they fully understand these claims.  Students should write for an imagined audience composed of family members, friends and acquaintances.  They should use words that any educated, non-specialist would understand in order to explain the more opaque canonical arguments their papers discuss, and in order to formulate their own responses to these arguments.  This attitude both insures that the language students use is clear and precise, and shows the instructor the degree to which students have understood the more opaque canonical arguments they discuss.

2. Illustration with Examples: One of the most important components of a good undergraduate philosophy paper is the copious use of concrete, everyday examples to illustrate abstract and sometimes obscure philosophical points.  For example, the claim that a moving object must be put in motion by a different object already in motion is one of the key assumptions of Aquinas’s first argument for the existence of God.  But this is a fairly abstract and potentially confusing way of expressing a familiar fact.  Such abstract and potentially obscure means of expression are inevitable in philosophy because philosophers aim to defend maximally general conclusions: claims that are true in all circumstances, everywhere and always.  In order to defend such general claims, familiar observations must be couched in the most general terms possible, and this often invites obscurity.  Undergraduate philosophical writers must clarify such potentially confusing language by appeal to concrete, everyday examples.

For example, Aquinas’ claim about the causes of motion is actually a claim about the causes of  any  change in any object, including what we typically call “motion,” like a rolling ball, and other changes, like the rising temperature in a heated pan of water.  A student should make this clear by illustrating Aquinas’s claim with such everyday examples.  For example, one might write something like, “Aquinas claims that every moving or changing object is caused to move or change by a different object that is already in motion or changing.  For example, a rolling ball is caused to move by a kick from a swinging foot, or a boiling pan of water is caused to boil by a flame giving off heat.”  Such illustration of abstract philosophical principles with concrete, everyday examples serves two extremely important functions.  First, it makes one’s exposition and evaluation of others’ arguments clear and tangible for the reader.  Second, it shows one’s instructor that one has understood obscure yet crucial philosophical assumptions in one’s own terms.

3. The Principle of Charity: The point of any work of philosophy, from the most canonical treatise to the humblest undergraduate effort, is to determine which claims are supported by the best reasons.  The point is not to persuade some particular audience of some claim using rhetoric.  Philosophers always aim at identifying the best possible reasons to believe some claim.  For this reason, when criticizing the arguments of others, philosophical writers should adhere to a principle of extreme charity.  They should interpret arguments with which they disagree in the most favorable terms possible.  Only then can they be sure that they have done their utmost to identify the truth of the matter.  Criticism is inevitable in an undergraduate philosophy paper.  In order to responsibly defend some conclusion, the student must give a thorough overview of what others have said about it, criticizing those with whom she disagrees.  But students must bend over backwards to insure that these criticisms are fair.  Since her goal is to arrive at the truth of the matter, a student author must not stack the deck against those with whom she disagrees.  She must empathize with her antagonists; appreciating as deeply as possible the reasons why they disagree with the conclusion she defends.  This puts the student author in a position to criticize those with whom she disagrees fairly and responsibly.

Consider, once more, Aquinas’s First Way to prove the existence of God.  It is relatively easy to criticize this argument by appeal to modern physics.  Aquinas assumes that every object in motion must have been put into motion by another object already in motion.  But he was working with pre-Newtonian physics.  According to post-Newtonian physics, an object can be in uniform motion without being acted upon by an outside force.  So, technically, Aquinas’s premise is false.  However, this is a nit-picky point that is unfair to Aquinas, and misses the spirit of his argument.  Aquinas’s argument from motion can easily be rephrased as an argument from acceleration to make it compatible with post-Newtonian physics.  Even if uniform motion does not require an external force, acceleration does, and once Aquinas’ premise is rephrased to respect this, the rest of the argument proceeds as before.  Anyone seeking to criticize Aquinas’s argument is well served by considering the most charitable possible interpretation.  If fatal flaws remain even after one has bent over backwards to accommodate Aquinas’s ignorance of later developments in physics, etc., one’s critique of his argument is more effective.

4. Self-Criticism: There is another implication of the philosopher’s commitment to discovering the claims that are supported by the best reasons, as opposed to just winning arguments.  Works of philosophy must include self-criticism.  The responsible philosophical author is always cognizant of potential pitfalls in her own arguments, and possible responses by antagonists she criticizes.  In the course of criticizing an opposing view on some matter, a philosophical writer must always consider how her target might respond.  In the course of defending some claim, a philosophical writer must always anticipate and respond to possible objections.  Papers by professional philosophers often include whole sections devoted entirely to possible objections to the theses they defend.  It is a good idea for undergraduate philosophical writers to follow this example: often, it is useful for the penultimate section of a paper to address possible criticisms of or responses to the arguments provided earlier in the paper.  Not only does this constitute a fair and responsible way of writing philosophy, it helps the student think about her own views critically, improving the final product.

5. Undermining an Argument Vs. Criticizing a Conclusion: Suppose I raise some insurmountable problems for Aquinas’s first argument for the existence of God.  It is important to keep in mind that this is not the same as arguing against the existence of God.  Just because one argument for the existence of God fails, does not mean that there are not other arguments for the existence of God that succeed.  Students should not think that criticizing an argument requires disagreeing with its conclusion.  Some of the greatest critics of certain arguments for the existence of God were themselves theists.  In fact, if you agree with the conclusion of a bad argument, it makes sense to criticize the argument, showing where it is weak; this can help you construct an alternative argument that avoids this problem.    Criticizing an argument is never the same as arguing against its conclusion.  To criticize an argument is to show that its premises do not provide adequate support for its conclusion, not to show that its conclusion is false.  In order to do the latter, one must provide a new argument that supports the claim that the conclusion is false.  For example, in order to show that God does not exist, it is not enough to show that no arguments for God’s existence are sound; one must also provide positive reasons to deny God’s existence.

An analogy to criminal trials makes this distinction clear.  The goal of the prosecution in a criminal trial is to prove that the defendant is guilty.  They must construct an argument that provides good reasons for this conclusion.  However, the goal of the defense in a criminal trial is  not  to prove that the defendant is innocent.  Rather, the defense aims to criticize the prosecution’s argument, to show that the reasons provided by the prosecution for the conclusion that the defendant is guilty are not strong enough to support this conclusion, because there remains a reasonable doubt that this conclusion is true.  The difference between the tasks of the prosecution and the defense in a criminal trial parallels the distinction between arguing against (or for) a conclusion, and merely criticizing an argument for a conclusion.  Students should keep this distinction in mind when writing philosophy papers.  When they are defending any conclusion, e.g., that God exists or that God does not exist, they must provide arguments for this conclusion, much as the prosecution must provide evidence and reasons that prove the defendant guilty.  When students are criticizing an argument, they are not defending the denial of the argument’s conclusion.  Rather, like the defense in a criminal trial, they are merely undermining the reasons given for the conclusion.

6. References: Undergraduate philosophy papers must be grounded in relevant and reputable philosophical literature.  Attributing claims to others, including canonical philosophers or discussions of them in the secondary literature, must be supported by references to appropriate sources.  However, direct quotation should, on balance, be avoided.  Instructors are interested in whether or not students understand difficult philosophical concepts and claims in their own terms.  For this reason, paraphrase is usually the best way to cite a source.  Using one’s own words to express a point one has read elsewhere, however, does not excuse one from referring to one’s source.  Any time a substantial claim is attributed to another person, whether or not one uses the person’s own words, the source should be referenced.  There are occasions when direct quotations are appropriate, for example, when one is defending a controversial interpretation of some philosopher’s argument, and the precise wording of her claims is important.

It is important for a student author to get a sense of what the recent philosophical conversation about a specific topic has been.  Otherwise, she has no way of knowing how to contribute to it. There are many ways for a student to explore the philosophical literature relevant to a topic she has chosen.  It is advisable to begin with readings assigned for class.  Textbooks, most recent philosophical journal articles, and recent secondary literature usually include detailed lists of references, which provide a useful guide to the relevant literature.  Works cited in multiple places are particularly good sources for students to consult. The Philosopher’s Index and the Stanford Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy are good on-line starting points for exploring the philosophical literature. These sources provide references to recent articles written about most philosophical topics.  Students may also want to explore less specialized internet-based resources, like Google Scholar.  However, one must be careful with on-line content.  Many web-based resources are not subject to appropriate professional review, and are therefore unreliable. Students must insure that the claims they make are supported by recent, reputable philosophical literature.  Simply asking one’s instructor can assuage any worries about whether or not a paper draft meets this standard.

As for citation format, philosophers are generally flexible: some journals require Chicago Style formatting, while others require MLA style.  Most instructors will accept any style as long as it is used correctly and consistently.  So students should consult their instructors about which citation format to follow.  Non-standard sources like websites and lecture notes should also be cited in a format that instructors approve.

7. The First Person Pronoun: In high school composition classes, students are often taught to avoid using the first-person pronoun, “I”.  The reasoning behind this is that use of “I” tends to encourage the expression of subjective opinions, whereas the goal of much essay writing is to provide an objective defense of some thesis.  However, this rule of thumb is an overly blunt instrument.  Certain uses of the “I” are typical of academic, philosophical writing.  For example, authors often express their plans for a paper, e.g., the thesis they intend to defend, using the first-person pronoun, as I did in the sample introduction provided above.  As long as the “I” is used in the context of laying out one’s intended plan for the paper, or circumscribing the scope of one’s claims, it is entirely appropriate.  For example, it is entirely legitimate to write, “In the following,  I  defend Aquinas’s Fifth Way to prove the existence of God against a common criticism.  However, space limitations preclude  me  from considering every version of this criticism, so  I  focus exclusively on Hume’s.”  The spirit behind the “anti-‘I’” rule must, however, be respected.  Students must avoid expressing subjective opinions.  Expressions like “I feel that …”, or “It seems to me that …”, or “In my experience…” should be avoided.  The point of a philosophy paper is to defend a thesis by appeal to objective reasons, that is, reasons that  any  reasonable person should accept.

8. The Present Tense: Another stylistic feature that is typical of philosophical writing is the almost exclusive use of the present tense.  Tense consistency is often a challenge for undergraduate writers: often past, present, and future tenses are used within the same sentence or paragraph.  This must be avoided.  In philosophy papers, the rule of thumb is: always use the present tense, even when discussing arguments proposed by philosophers in the past.  The fact that some argument, for the existence of God for example, was first proposed in the past is irrelevant for philosophical purposes.  Arguments are treated as timeless contributions to the philosophical conversation, and students should treat canonical arguments as though they still constitute persuasive reasons for believing some claim.  Thus, in the introduction provided as an example above, I write, “Aquinas, famously,  provides  five arguments for the existence of God.”  The present tense should always be used when explaining any philosopher’s argument, any reason he or she provides for accepting some conclusion.  This simple rule also insures tense consistency.  In the rare circumstance in which some kind of historical context must be provided, e.g., a discussion of Descartes’ education by Jesuits, the past tense may be appropriate.  But such circumstances are exceptional because philosophy papers focus on the timeless arguments that have been provided in defense of claims that are still controversial, not on the historical details or biographies that led particular philosophers to formulate these arguments.

9. Repeating Words vs. Using Synonyms: Another rule-of-thumb often promulgated in high school composition classes prescribes the use of synonyms over repetition of the same word.  The motivation for this is clear: when students are forced to avoid repeating words, they must search for synonyms and this helps expand their vocabulary.  However, by the time a student enrolls in a University-level philosophy course, her vocabulary should be sufficiently developed.  Philosophy instructors value  clarity  and  precision  far above conspicuous displays of vocabulary.  This is because, as we saw above, the soundness of an argument often depends on the precise meanings of the terms with which it is expressed.  The meanings of so-called “synonyms” often vary in very subtle, nuanced ways.  And these variations in meaning are often very significant in the context of philosophical arguments.  Consider for example the words “liberty” and “freedom”.  In some contexts, these words are interchangeable; they constitute synonyms.  However, there are many philosophical contexts in which these words are not interchangeable.  For example, the question of whether or not our decisions are free, or determined by our genetic endowment and environmental influences is a perennial philosophical puzzle.  However, “freedom of the will” cannot be paraphrased as “liberty of the will”.  The reason is that “liberty” has certain connotations which restrict its use to political contexts, while “freedom” can be used to characterize both political freedom, and freedom from natural constraints, like one’s genetic endowment, as well.  Substituting the word “freedom” with the word “liberty” in a philosophy paper would only compromise clarity: the reader would not know whether freedom from political or from natural constraints was at issue.  For this reason, it is best to repeat precisely the same terms for the same key concepts throughout a philosophy paper.  

3. Strategies for Choosing a Topic and Formulating Arguments

Philosophical creativity and imagination, like their scientific or artistic counterparts, are mysterious.  It is difficult to formulate rules for coming up with topics and arguments for philosophy papers.  Different individuals will succeed at this task in different ways.  Here, I discuss three broad strategies for conceiving and composing an undergraduate philosophy paper; however, this list is not meant to be exhaustive.  Philosophy papers can be characterized as (1) narrow focus papers, (2) broad focus papers, and (3) application papers.

Narrow Focus Papers

The narrow focus strategy is perhaps the most straightforward strategy for composing a philosophy paper.  The point of such a paper is to focus as much as possible on a specific argument by a specific philosopher and to discuss the strengths and weakness of this specific argument.  One begins by correctly explaining the target argument.  Then one raises objections, either by showing that one or more of the premises is false or implausible, or by showing that the premises, even if true, fail to support the conclusion.  One then considers how the author of argument might respond to these criticisms, and ends by replying to these responses.  In the course of writing such a focused, critical analysis, the student should include a survey of other criticisms that have been raised, and make clear how her criticism is unique.

Such papers can be extremely narrow.  For example, they might focus on just one premise, or sub-argument of a larger argument.  The introduction provided as an example above focuses just on Aquinas’ argument that there can be no causal chains extending infinitely into the past.  The focus is on just one crucial sub-argument of one of Aquinas’s five arguments for the existence of God.  Another possibility is to look at some historical debate about a particular premise of some canonical argument, and contribute to it.  For example, one might consider one objection of an early critic of Aquinas’s arguments, imagine how Aquinas might reply to this objection, and then raise an improved objection of one’s own, for which this reply does not work.  Or one might look at a classic criticism of some premise Aquinas uses in an argument, and offer a novel response on behalf of Aquinas.

Another kind of narrow focus paper concerns philosophical definitions.  One of the principal projects of canonical philosophy, since Plato, has been the attempt to define philosophically important concepts, such as TRUTH, JUSTICE, and KNOWLEDGE.  This has given rise to an important kind of philosophical debate.  Philosophical definitions provide necessary and sufficient conditions for something to count as an example of some concept.  For example, one classical definition of knowledge states that for a person to know some claim, the person must believe the claim; she must have good reasons for believing it, and the claim must be true.  This definition claims that belief, truth and justification are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for knowledge.  However, one of the classic papers of Twentieth Century philosophy raises a counterexample to this definition: an example of a justified true belief that, intuitively, should not count as knowledge.  This counterexample shows that belief, truth and justification are not sufficient for knowledge, contrary to the classical definition.  This has spawned a cottage industry, involving attempts to modify the definition of knowledge to accommodate the counterexample, followed by new counterexamples to these new definitions.  Such give-and-take about the meanings of important philosophical concepts is typical of much academic philosophy.  It also constitutes a great strategy for composing a narrow focus, undergraduate philosophy paper: identify some classic philosophical definition of a philosophically important concept, raise a counter-example to the definition, and then consider ways the definition might be modified to accommodate the counter-example.  This cycle can be repeated through numerous iterations, including new counter-examples to new definitions, followed by newer definitions accommodating these counter-examples, etc.

Narrow focus papers are mainly critical: they aim to undermine particular arguments, assumptions, or definitions proposed by specific philosophers.  For this reason, it is useful for a student writing a narrow focus paper to think of her role as analogous to that of a defense attorney in a criminal trial.  Her goal is not to prove that the conclusion to some argument is false.  Rather, her role is to show that the reasons some philosopher has provided for a specific conclusion are insufficient to establish that conclusion.

Broad Focus Papers

Unlike narrow focus papers, broad focus papers do not restrict their scope to particular arguments, assumptions, or definitions made by particular philosophers.  Instead, such papers identify a broad topic that has been discussed by many philosophers throughout history, identify different positions that have been taken on this topic, sketch the different kinds of arguments that have been provided for these different positions, and then take a stand on the topic by defending one of these arguments as superior to the others, or providing a new argument.  For example, rather than focusing on just one assumption in one of Aquinas’s arguments for the existence of God, a student may choose to treat the question of the existence of God more broadly, sketching the different positions on this topic, and some of the classical arguments that support them.  The student may then defend theism or atheism by offering an improved version of one of these arguments that avoids some of the classic criticisms of it, or by providing an argument of her own.

Broad focus papers are, in general, more challenging than narrow focus papers.  Undergraduates are rarely asked to draft papers longer than 15 pages.  However, it is extremely difficult to do justice to a broad topic in philosophy in so little space.  Philosophical questions and claims tend to ramify: they tend to open cans of worms – other questions and claims that are equally if not more difficult to resolve.  For this reason, the best advice for undergraduate philosophical writing is to focus on as narrow a topic as possible.  It is possible to write a decent broad focus undergraduate paper.  However, it is very difficult, and students who focus as much as possible on specific claims and arguments make life much easier for themselves.

Application Papers

Perhaps the most interesting strategy for composing an undergraduate philosophy paper – the strategy that allows the most scope for individual creativity – is to illustrate some philosophical concept, claim or argument with a concrete example drawn from art, film, fiction, popular culture, science, or one’s own experience.  For example, a classic dispute in epistemology – the philosophical study of knowledge – concerns our justification for believing the testimony of others.  On one view, this justification is derived from our own observation that people are, for the most part, reliable.  On the opposing view, trusting testimony is justified in itself, not in virtue of observing that people are typically reliable.  A classic argument for this opposing view is that young children could never learn anything from adults if they had to wait to observe that people tend to be reliable before trusting their testimony.  This argument makes substantial assumptions about how young children learn.  It therefore suggests an interesting topic for an application paper: see whether the latest literature in developmental psychology supports this assumption.

Often, showing how some common experience, drawn from everyday life, fiction, film, or popular culture, illustrates some philosophical principle, argument, or claim is very useful.  Not only does this help clarify the philosophical principle, argument, or claim; if the common experience is sufficiently vivid and compelling, it might even provide some support for the philosophical principle, argument, or claim.  For example, consider the classical philosophical definition of knowledge mentioned above, in the discussion about philosophical definitions.  According to this definition, a person knows some claim just in case she believes it; she is justified in believing it, and it is true.  The counterexamples that philosophers have raised to this definition have been fairly abstract and contrived.  However, it is possible to illustrate the problems with the definition by more plausible, real world examples.  For example, consider the claim that the sun moves.  We know this to be true today.  But what about people who lived prior to Copernicus?  Copernicus proposed that, contrary to the assumptions of astronomers that lived before him, the earth moves around the sun rather than vice versa.  So pre-Copernican astronomers believed that the sun moves around the earth.  This means that they also believed that the sun moves.  Since we know the sun moves, this belief of theirs was true.  Furthermore, they had good reasons for this belief, and were therefore justified in believing that the sun moves.  Copernicus had not yet formulated an alternative hypothesis and all the evidence seemed to support their view.  So pre-Copernican astronomers had a true justified belief that the sun moves.  But, arguably, they did not know this, since the reason they thought the sun moves – that it circles the earth – is not the true reason it moves – that, like any star, it is caught up in the motion of the galaxy of which it is a part.  This concrete historical example illustrates what is wrong with the classical definition of knowledge.

Working through such a concrete example from the history of science not only clarifies a philosophical point, it also provides some support for this point by showing that it is easily illustrated with concrete examples from the history of human knowledge.  Furthermore, it immediately suggests how a paper focused on this example can be further extended.  For example, one might imagine how a defender of the classical definition of knowledge would reinterpret this case in a way that vindicates the classical definition.  One could then respond to this reinterpretation.  In general, application papers can be based on very clear and simple argumentative structures: they argue that some concrete example illustrates a philosophical thesis, and then they consider how those who deny the thesis might deal with the example.  

4. A Short Primer on Logic

As we saw above, in section 2, although philosophical arguments can go wrong in two ways – either the premises are false or implausible, or they fail to support the conclusion – philosophers tend to focus on detecting and avoiding failures of the latter kind.  Here, I provide a short primer on the various ways that premises in philosophical arguments succeed and fail to support their conclusions.

Kinds of Support

There are broadly two kinds of support that premises provide for conclusions of arguments.  First, in  deductively valid  arguments, the premises  guarantee  the conclusion, i.e., if we assume the premises are true, we cannot, at the same time, deny the conclusion.  Here is a classic example: All humans are mortal.  Socrates is a human.  Therefore, Socrates is mortal.  If we accept the premises, we cannot, at the same time, deny the conclusion.  So, this is the strongest kind of support that premises can provide for a conclusion.  Notice that, when determining whether or not an argument is deductively valid, it is not necessary to establish whether or not the premises are true.  Validity is a matter of the support the premises provide the conclusion, not their truth.  The question is: if the premises were true, would the conclusion also have to be true?  So, for example, the following argument is deductively valid, despite its questionable premises:  All George Washington University students are Dalmatian.  Barack Obama is a George Washington University student.  Therefore, Barack Obama is Dalmatian.  Note that this argument has the same logical form as the previous argument about Socrates: “humans” has been substituted with “George Washington University students”; “mortal” has been substituted with “Dalmatian”, and “Socrates” has been substituted with “Barack Obama”.  Despite the fact that the second argument’s premises and conclusion are false, it is a deductively valid argument because the premises guarantee the conclusion.  That is,  if  the premises were true, the conclusion would also have to be true.

In deductively valid arguments, the premises supply the strongest possible support for the conclusion.  One can refute an argument claiming to be deductively valid by showing that even if the premises were true, the conclusion could still be false, i.e., there is still at least a slight probability that the premises are true and the conclusion is false.  For example, the following argument, though plausible, is not deductively valid: Every morning I’ve lived, the sun has risen.  Therefore, tomorrow morning, the sun will rise.  As we’ll see next, this is an inductively strong argument: the premise provides strong support for the conclusion.  But the argument is not deductively valid because the premise does not  guarantee  the conclusion: it is possible that the premise is true but the conclusion is false, e.g., if the sun explodes tonight, it won’t rise tomorrow morning.

The second kind of support that premises can provide conclusions is evident in  inductively strong  arguments.  In such arguments, though the premises do not guarantee the conclusion, as they do in deductively valid arguments, they  make the conclusion more likely .  Such arguments are common in science and politics.  Most arguments in which the conclusion is based on a public opinion poll are inductive arguments.  For example, suppose you do a blind taste test comparing Coke to Pepsi with 5% of the GWU student population, finding that 60% of this sample prefers Coke to Pepsi.  If you then generalize, concluding that 60% of the GWU student population prefers Coke to Pepsi, you are making an inductive argument: the premise is the result of the poll, and the conclusion is the generalization from the 5% sample to the whole GWU student population.  The strength of the support this premise provides this conclusion depends on the size of the sample, and how it is obtained.  Sometimes, for example, such arguments rely on samples that are not obtained randomly, and therefore contain biases relative to the population to which they generalize.  This is one way of criticizing an inductive argument: if the sample is biased, the argument is inductively weak.

In another sort of inductive argument, the premises express certain observations that need to be explained, while the conclusion is a plausible explanation of those observations.  Such forms of inductive argument are common in criminal trials.  The prosecution presents the jury with facts, e.g., the defendant’s alleged motives, her presence at the crime scene at around the estimated time of the crime as testified to by a reliable witness, etc.  They then conclude that the best explanation of all these facts is that the defendant committed the crime of which she is accused.  However, such premises never guarantee the conclusion, since there may always be alternative explanations for the evidence.  The defendant may have been at the crime scene by coincidence, or the witness may be lying, or the prosecution may be trying to frame the defendant, etc.  This is why, in such arguments, the premises never guarantee the conclusion, as they do in deductively valid arguments.  At best, they provide defeasibly strong reasons to accept the explanation that constitutes the conclusion.  But such arguments can always be criticized by providing an alternative explanation of the evidence that is just as good or better.

A classic philosophical argument of this type is the argument for the claim that nature is the product of intelligent design. Proponents of this argument begin with a list of facts about nature, e.g., that it is orderly, complex, goal-directed, and dependent on highly unlikely background conditions.  They then argue that the best explanation for these facts is that nature was designed by a supernatural intelligence.  However, as with the case of arguments made in court, these facts do not guarantee this conclusion.  There may be alternative explanations of these facts that are just as good or better.  For example, Darwin argues that many such facts can be explained by his theory of evolution by natural selection, with no appeal to intelligent design.

Argument types in which the premises do not support the conclusion are called “fallacies”.  Philosophers have studied the ways that arguments can go wrong for millennia, and they have identified dozens of fallacies.  Here are five common fallacies that it is useful to keep in mind when evaluating or formulating arguments in a philosophy paper.

• Begging the Question: Arguments that commit this fallacy are also known as circular arguments.  Such arguments assume what they are trying to prove.  Recall that the point of philosophical, and, indeed, any argumentation, is to try to prove a controversial conclusion on the basis of less controversial premises.  For example, as we saw above, Aquinas tries to prove the controversial claim that God exists on the basis of uncontroversial premises, like the claim that objects are in motion.  But sometimes the premises of an argument are equally or more controversial than the conclusion.  In fact, sometimes the premises of an argument covertly assume the conclusion they are trying to prove.  Consider the following argument for the existence of God, for example.  “God wrote the Bible.  Therefore, everything the Bible says is true.  The Bible says God exists.  Therefore, God exists.”  This argument is circular, or begs the question, because it assumes what it is trying to prove.  For God to write the Bible, he has to exist.  So, in this argument, the premises provide no independent justification for the conclusion: they are just as controversial as the conclusion because they covertly assume the conclusion’s truth.
• False Alternatives: Arguments that commit this fallacy rely on at least one premise that claims that there are fewer alternatives than there actually are.  Consider the following example: “Either France supports the United States or France supports the terrorists.  France does not support the United States.  Therefore, France supports the terrorists.”  This argument is fallacious because the first premise is a false alternative.  France might not support either the United States or the terrorists.
• Unjustified Appeal to Authority: Arguments that commit this fallacy rely on premises that appeal to an authority with no justification.  Consider the following example: “There are passages in the Bible that prohibit homosexuality.  Therefore, homosexuality is immoral.”  The conclusion is not supported by the premise because the argument fails to establish that the Bible is a legitimate authority on moral matters.
• Ad Hominem: The name of this fallacy is a Latin term meaning the same as “to (or against) the man”.  Such fallacies are often committed in the course of critiquing another argument.  For example, suppose an Evangelical Christian has just finished arguing that abortion is immoral, and a critic responds not by identifying any weaknesses in the argument but, rather, by pointing out the arguer’s religious beliefs as a reason for dismissing the argument.  The critic may say something like, “Clearly we cannot accept the reasoning of someone with such superstitious convictions!”  This is an example of the Ad Hominem fallacy: instead of criticizing the argument, the critic is attacking the person who presents the argument.  In logic and philosophy, we are interested in whether or not the premises of an argument support its conclusion.  The identity of the person making the argument is irrelevant to this.  People with whom one disagrees on many matters can nonetheless produce sound arguments.  A person’s personal convictions or personality are irrelevant to the strength of her arguments.
• Straw Man: This is another fallacy that often arises in the course of criticizing someone else’s argument.  It occurs when the critic misrepresents the argument she is criticizing, formulating a version of it that is easier to refute.  This is where the fallacy gets its name: a “straw man” is easier to knock down than a “real man”.  Consider the following example.  Suppose a person defends abortion rights on the grounds that no law regulating a person’s control over her own reproductive decisions is equitably enforceable.  If someone were to criticize this argument on the grounds that (1) it claims killing a fetus is morally unobjectionable, and (2) this assumption is false, then the critic would be guilty of a Straw Man fallacy.  The argument makes no claims about whether or not killing a fetus is morally unobjectionable.  The critic has burdened her target with a difficult to defend assumption that she never made.  In terms discussed above, such a critic does not respect the principle of charity that guides all good philosophical writing.  Philosophical writers have an obligation to present their antagonists’ arguments in as favorable a light as possible before criticizing them.  Only then can they be sure that they are seeking to establish claims that are supported by the best reasons, rather than merely scoring rhetorical points.  

Undergraduate philosophical writing is about evaluating and constructing arguments.  A good argument is one in which strong reasons are provided in support of some claim.  In order to evaluate and construct arguments, the claims that comprise them must be expressed in clear and precise language.  In addition, these claims must be perspicuously organized, such that the complex relations of support they bear to each other are apparent to any educated reader.  The goal of philosophical writing should be discovering which claims are supported by the best reasons, not scoring cheap rhetorical points.  For this reason, philosophical writing must be guided by a principle of extreme charity: views antagonistic to the author’s must be considered carefully and fairly, and presented with the utmost sympathy.  The author must anticipate likely criticisms of her own views and respond to them.  Undergraduate philosophical writers must master the art of conveying abstruse philosophical concepts in clear, plain language, writing for an imagined audience of educated non-specialists, like family and friends.  This makes undergraduate writing clearer, and demonstrates to the instructor that the student has understood difficult concepts in her own terms.  The use, as much as possible, of concrete examples to illustrate abstract philosophical concepts is strongly recommended.

Finally, the best undergraduate philosophy papers focus on relatively narrow and specific topics, e.g., a specific argument or assumption made by a specific philosopher.  One cannot establish an ambitious philosophical claim in the 10-15 pages usually allotted for undergraduate philosophy papers.  Thousands of years and pages have been devoted to determining whether or not God exists, for example.  Yet the question remains controversial.  Do not assume that you can accomplish, in 10-15 pages, something that professional philosophers have failed to accomplish in thousands of years.  Philosophical arguments tend to open cans of worms because they invariably make assumptions or raise difficult issues that go beyond the topic on which they focus.  The art of writing philosophy consists in avoiding such potential digressions, and contributing to specific, constrained debates.

The foregoing is a good guide to composing an initial rough draft of a term paper for an undergraduate philosophy class.  Different instructors might not agree with all of my recommendations; however, most will agree with most of them.  Once a student receives feedback from her instructor on a rough draft, she will be able to fine-tune the paper to the instructor’s particular preferences.  Although the foregoing should help students make a good start on a philosophy paper, there is no substitute for frequent consultation with one’s instructor.  Do not fear “bothering” your instructors about helping with paper drafts.  As long as you follow the relevant instructions on their syllabi and give them plenty of time, they are obligated to help you with your writing.  The persistent pursuit of detailed feedback from one’s instructor is the best resource you have for succeeding at undergraduate philosophical writing.  This guide provides a solid foundation from which to start.

2.6 Writing Philosophy Papers

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you will be able to:

• Identify and characterize the format of a philosophy paper.
• Create thesis statements that are manageable and sufficiently specific.
• Collect evidence and formulate arguments.
• Organize ideas into a coherent written presentation.

This section will provide some practical advice on how to write philosophy papers. The format presented here focuses on the use of an argumentative structure in writing. Different philosophy professors may have different approaches to writing. The sections below are only intended to give some general guidelines that apply to most philosophy classes.

Identify Claims

The key element in any argumentative paper is the claim you wish to make or the position you want to defend. Therefore, take your time identifying claims , which is also called the thesis statement. What do you want to say about the topic? What do you want the reader to understand or know after reading your piece? Remember that narrow, modest claims work best. Grand claims are difficult to defend, even for philosophy professors. A good thesis statement should go beyond the mere description of another person’s argument. It should say something about the topic, connect the topic to other issues, or develop an application of some theory or position advocated by someone else. Here are some ideas for creating claims that are perfectly acceptable and easy to develop:

• Compare two philosophical positions. What makes them similar? How are they different? What general lessons can you draw from these positions?
• Identify a piece of evidence or argument that you think is weak or may be subject to criticism. Why is it weak? How is your criticism a problem for the philosopher’s perspective?
• Apply a philosophical perspective to a contemporary case or issue. What makes this philosophical position applicable? How would it help us understand the case?
• Identify another argument or piece of evidence that might strengthen a philosophical position put forward by a philosopher. Why is this a good argument or piece of evidence? How does it fit with the philosopher’s other claims and arguments?
• Consider an implication (either positive or negative) that follows from a philosopher’s argument. How does this implication follow? Is it necessary or contingent? What lessons can you draw from this implication (if positive, it may provide additional reasons for the argument; if negative, it may provide reasons against the argument)?

Think Like a Philosopher

The following multiple-choice exercises will help you identify and write modest, clear philosophical thesis statements. A thesis statement is a declarative statement that puts forward a position or makes a claim about some topic.

• How does Aristotle think virtue is necessary for happiness?
• Is happiness the ultimate goal of human action?
• Whether or not virtue is necessary for happiness.
• Aristotle argues that happiness is the ultimate good of human action and virtue is necessary for happiness.
• René Descartes argues that the soul or mind is the essence of the human person.
• Descartes shows that all beliefs and memories about the external world could be false.
• Some people think that Descartes is a skeptic, but I will show that he goes beyond skepticism.
• In the meditations, Descartes claims that the mind and body are two different substances.
• Descartes says that the mind is a substance that is distinct from the body, but I disagree.
• Contemporary psychology has shown that Descartes is incorrect to think that human beings have free will and that the mind is something different from the brain.
• Thomas Hobbes’s view of the soul is materialistic, whereas Descartes’s view of the soul is nonphysical. In this paper, I will examine the differences between these two views.
• John Stuart Mill reasons that utilitarian judgments can be based on qualitative differences as well as the quantity of pleasure, but ultimately any qualitative difference must result in a difference in the quantity of pleasure.
• Mill’s approach to utilitarianism differs from Bentham’s by introducing qualitative distinctions among pleasures, where Bentham only considers the quantitative aspects of pleasure.
• J. S. Mill’s approach to utilitarianism aligns moral theory with the history of ethics because he allows qualitative differences in moral judgments.
• Rawls’s liberty principle ensures that all people have a basic set of freedoms that are important for living a full life.
• The US Bill of Rights is an example of Rawls’s liberty principle because it lists a set of basic freedoms that are guaranteed for all people.
• While many people may agree that Rawls’s liberty principle applies to all citizens of a particular country, it is much more controversial to extend those same basic freedoms to immigrants, including those classified by the government as permanent residents, legal immigrants, illegal immigrants, and refugees.

[ANS: 1.d 2.c 3.c 4.a 5.c]

Write Like a Philosopher

Use the following templates to write your own thesis statement by inserting a philosopher, claim, or contemporary issue:

• [Name of philosopher] holds that [claim], but [name of another philosopher] holds that [another claim]. In this paper, I will identify reasons for thinking [name of philosopher]’s position is more likely to be true.
• [Name of philosopher] argues that [claim]. In this paper, I will show how this claim provides a helpful addition to [contemporary issue].
• When [name of philosopher] argues in favor of [claim], they rely on [another claim] that is undercut by contemporary science. I will show that if we modify this claim in light of contemporary science, we will strengthen or weaken [name of philosopher]’s argument.

Collect Evidence and Build Your Case

Once you have identified your thesis statement or primary claim, collect evidence (by returning to your readings) to compose the best possible argument. As you assemble the evidence, you can think like a detective or prosecutor building a case. However, you want a case that is true, not just one that supports your position. So you should stay open to modifying your claim if it does not fit the evidence . If you need to do additional research, follow the guidelines presented earlier to locate authoritative information.

If you cannot find evidence to support your claim but still feel strongly about it, you can try to do your own philosophical thinking using any of the methods discussed in this chapter or in Chapter 1. Imagine counterexamples and thought experiments that support your claim. Use your intuitions and common sense, but remember that these can sometimes lead you astray. In general, common sense, intuitions, thought experiments, and counterexamples should support one another and support the sources you have identified from other philosophers. Think of your case as a structure: you do not want too much of the weight to rest on a single intuition or thought experiment.

Consider Counterarguments

Philosophy papers differ from typical argumentative papers in that philosophy students must spend more time and effort anticipating and responding to counterarguments when constructing their own arguments. This has two important effects: first, by developing counterarguments, you demonstrate that you have sufficiently thought through your position to identify possible weaknesses; second, you make your case stronger by taking away a potential line of attack that an opponent might use. By including counterarguments in your paper, you engage in the kind of dialectical process that philosophers use to arrive at the truth.

Accurately Represent Source Material

It is important to represent primary and secondary source material as accurately as possible. This means that you should consider the context and read the arguments using the principle of charity. Make sure that you are not strawmanning an argument you disagree with or misrepresenting a quote or paraphrase just because you need some evidence to support your argument. As always, your goal should be to find the most rationally compelling argument, which is the one most likely to be true.

Organize Your Paper

Academic philosophy papers use the same simple structure as any other paper and one you likely learned in high school or your first-year composition class.

Introduce Your Thesis

The purpose of your introduction is to provide context for your thesis. Simply tell the reader what to expect in the paper. Describe your topic, why it is important, and how it arises within the works you have been reading. You may have to provide some historical context, but avoid both broad generalizations and long-winded historical retellings. Your context or background information should not be overly long and simply needs to provide the reader with the context and motivation for your thesis. Your thesis should appear at the end of the introduction, and the reader should clearly see how the thesis follows from the introductory material you have provided. If you are writing a long paper, you may need several sentences to express your thesis, in which you delineate in broad terms the parts of your argument.

Make a Logical and Compelling Case Using the Evidence

The paragraphs that follow the introduction lay out your argument. One strategy you can use to successfully build paragraphs is to think in terms of good argument structure. You should provide adequate evidence to support the claims you want to make. Your paragraphs will consist of quotations and paraphrases from primary and secondary sources, context and interpretation, novel thoughts and ideas, examples and analogies, counterarguments, and replies to the counterarguments. The evidence should both support the thesis and build toward the conclusion. It may help to think architecturally: lay down the foundation, insert the beams of your strongest support, and then put up the walls to complete the structure. Or you might think in terms of a narrative: tell a story in which the evidence leads to an inevitable conclusion.

Connections

See the chapter on logic and reasoning for a developed account of different types of philosophical arguments.

Summarize Your Argument in the Conclusion

Conclude your paper with a short summary that recapitulates the argument. Remind the reader of your thesis and revisit the evidence that supports your argument. You may feel that the argument as written should stand on its own. But it is helpful to the reader to reinforce the argument in your conclusion with a short summary. Do not introduce any new information in the conclusion; simply summarize what you have already said.

The purpose of this chapter has been to provide you with basic tools to become a successful philosophy student. We started by developing a sophisticated picture of how the brain works, using contemporary neuroscience. The brain represents and projects a picture of the world, full of emotional significance, but this image may contain distortions that amount to a kind of illusion. Cognitive illusions produce errors in reasoning, called cognitive biases. To guard against error, we need to engage in effortful, reflective thinking, where we become aware of our biases and use logical strategies to overcome them. You will do well in your philosophy class if you apply the good habits of mind discussed in this chapter and apply the practical advice that has been provided about how to read and write about philosophy.

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Philosophy essay writing guide

Introduction.

This guide is intended to give new students of philosophy some preliminary advice about writing philosophy essays at university. For many of you, writing a philosophy essay will be something of a new experience, and no doubt many of you will be a little unsure of what to expect, or of what is expected of you. Most of you will have written essays in school for English, History, etc. A philosophy essay is something a little different again. However, it is not an unfathomable, mysterious affair, nor one where anything goes.

Just what a philosophy essay is will depend a lot, as you'd expect, on just what philosophy is. Defining philosophy is always a more or less controversial business, but one way to think of what is done in university philosophy departments is to think of the difference between having a philosophy and doing philosophy. Virtually everyone "has a philosophy" in the sense that we have many basic beliefs about the world and ourselves and use certain key concepts to articulate those beliefs. Many of us initially come to thus "have a philosophy" (or elements of several philosophies) often only unconsciously, or by following "what's obvious" or "what everybody knows", or by adopting a view because it sounds exciting or is intellectually fashionable.

"Doing philosophy", on the other hand, is a self-conscious unearthing and rigorous examination of these basic beliefs and key concepts. In doing so, we try to clarify the meanings of those beliefs and concepts and to evaluate critically their rational grounds or justification. Thus, rather than having their heads in the clouds, philosophers are really more under the surface of our thinking, examining the structures that support - or fail to support - those who trust that they have their feet on the ground. Such examination may even help to develop new and firmer ground.

Doing philosophy, then, begins with asking questions about the fundamental ideas and concepts that inform our ways of looking at the world and ourselves, and proceeds by developing responses to those questions which seek to gain insight into those ideas and concepts - and part of that development consists in asking further questions, giving further responses, and so on. Human beings across the world have been engaged in this sort of dialogue of question and response for many centuries - even millennia - and a number of great traditions of reflection and inquiry have evolved that have fundamentally influenced the development of religion, art, science and politics in many cultures. The influence of philosophical thinking on Western civilization, in particular, can be traced back more than 2,500 years to the Ancient Greeks.

In philosophy, a good essay is one that, among other things, displays a good sense of this dialectic of question and response by asking insightful, probing questions, and providing reasoned, well-argued responses. This means that you should not rest content with merely an unintegrated collection of assertions, but should instead work at establishing logical relations between your thoughts. You are assessed not on the basis of what you believe, but on how well you argue for the position you adopt in your essay, and on how interesting and insightful your discussion of the issues is. That is to say, you are assessed on how well you do philosophy, not on what philosophy you end up having. Nonetheless, you ought to make sure that your essay's discussion is relevant to the topic. (See Section 5.2 below on relevance.)

It is hoped that you enjoy the activity of essay writing. If you have chosen to study Arts, it is likely that you will have a particular interest in - even a passion for - ideas and the variety of forms and genres in which ideas are expressed and explored. The argumentative or discursive formal academic essay is one such form, and one which can be a pleasure to read and to write. Thus, the assessment that is set in philosophy courses is primarily an invitation to you to pursue what is already (or, hopefully, soon to be) your own interest in writing to explore ideas. However, your immediate goal in writing an academic philosophy essay ought not to be to write a personal testament, confession or polemic. Rather, you should primarily aim at articulating, clearly and relatively dispassionately, your philosophical thinking on the topic at hand. Nevertheless, the kind and degree of personal development one can gain from taking up the challenge to think and to write carefully, clearly and thoroughly is certainly something to be greatly valued.

This guide is intended to help you get started in the business of writing philosophy essays. As you practise your philosophical writing skills, you will develop your own technique, and learn what is appropriate in each particular case. So you may well come to "work around" many of these guidelines. Nonetheless, it is important that you pass through that which you seek to pass beyond.* In addition to your own writing, your reading of other philosophers will help you to develop your sense of what constitutes good philosophical writing. As you read, note the various styles and techniques that philosophical authors employ in their treatment of philosophical issues. Practice and studying good examples, then, are the most valuable ways to develop your essay writing skills.

This guide is, moreover, only one of many publications that introduce philosophy students to essay writing. Some others you may like to consult include:

• A. P. Martinich, Philosophical Writing, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997)
• J. Feinberg and R. Shafer-Landau, Doing Philosophy: A Guide to the Writing of Philosophy Papers, 2nd ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2001)
• Z. Seech, Writing Philosophy Papers, 4th ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2003)
• R. Solomon, "Writing Philosophy", Appendix to his The Big Questions: A Short Introduction to Philosophy, 6th ed. (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 2001)
• S. Gorovitz et al., Philosophical Analysis: An Introduction to its Language and Techniques, 3rd ed. (New York: Random House, 1979)

Also, the websites of many philosophy departments in universities around Australia and the world contain downloadable essay writing guides or links to them.

*This phrase is adapted from Jacques Bouveresse, "Why I am so very unFrench", in Alan Montefiore, ed., Philosophy in France Today (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 12.

What do I do in a Philosophy essay?

Philosophy essay topics are not designed to provide an intellectual obstacle course that trips you up so as to delight a malicious marker. They are designed to invite you to "grapple with" with some particular philosophical problem or issue. That is to say, they are designed to offer you an opportunity to demonstrate your understanding of a particular philosophical problem or issue, and to exhibit your own philosophical skills of analysis, argumentation, etc. These twin goals are usually best achieved by ensuring that your essay performs two basic functions (your understanding and your skills apply to both):

an exposition of the problem or issue in question (often as it is posed in some particular text); and a critical discussion of the problem or text

These two functions can, but need not always, correspond to physically or structurally distinct sections of your essay. See Section 5.1.

The expository ("setting forth") aspect of your essay is where you should make clear what the issue is and why it is an issue. Where you are dealing with an issue as it is presented in some particular text, your aim should be to make clear what it is that the author in question meant in their text, what they see as the issue and why they see it as an issue. This does not involve merely quoting or paraphrasing a text. Of course, occasional quotation and paraphrase may be appropriate - sometimes necessary - but these ought not to constitute the sole or major content of your exposition. Where you do quote or paraphrase, make sure you attribute your sources in footnotes or endnotes. (See Section 7.)

Exposition is, then, primarily a matter of developing in your own words what you think the issue is or what you think the text means. In all expository work you should always try to give a fair and accurate account of a text or problem, even when the exposition becomes more interpretive rather than simply descriptive. You ought to be patient and sympathetic in your exposition, even if you intend later to criticise heavily the philosopher in question. Indeed, the better the exposition in this regard, usually the more effective the critique.

An important part of exposition is your analysis of the text or issue. Here you should try to "break down" the text, issue or problem into its constitutive elements by distinguishing its different parts. (E.g. "There are two basic kinds of freedom in question when we speak of freedom of the will. First, … . Second, …", or "There are three elements in Plato's conception of the soul, namely... He establishes these three elements by means of the following two arguments... ") This also involves showing the relationships between those elements, relationships which make them "parts of the whole".

As well as laying out these elements within a text or issue, you can also (when appropriate or relevant) show how a text or issue "connects up with" other texts, issues, or philosophical and/or historical developments, which can help to shed further light on the matter by giving it a broader context. (eg "Freedom of the will is importantly connected to the justification of punishment", or "Plato's tripartite theory of the soul bears interesting resemblances to Freud's analysis of the psyche", or "Kant's transcendental idealism can be seen as reconciling the preceding rationalist and empiricist accounts of knowledge".)

An exposition of a text need not always simply follow the author's own view of what it means. You should, of course, demonstrate that you understand how the author themself understands their work, but an exposition can sometimes go beyond this, giving another reading of the text. (eg "Heidegger might deny it, but his Being and Time can be read as developing a pragmatist account of human understanding.") A given text or issue may well be susceptible to a number of plausible or reasonable interpretations. An exposition should aim to be sensitive to such variety. When appropriate, you should defend your interpretations against rivals and objections. Your interpretation ought, though, to be aimed at elucidating the meaning or meanings of the text or issue and not serve merely as a "coat-hanger" for presenting your own favoured views on the matter in question, which should be left to your ...

Critical discussion

This is where your thought gets more of the centre stage. Here you should attempt to develop a response to the issues which your exposition has made clear, and/or, in the case of a discussion of some particular text, attempt to give a critical appraisal of the author's treatment of the issue. In developing a response to a philosophical problem, argumentation is, again, of central importance. Avoid making unsupported assertions; back up your claims with reasons, and connect up your ideas so that they progress logically toward your conclusions. Consider some of the various objections to and questions about your views that others might or have put forward, and try to respond to them in defence of your own line of thinking. Your goal here should be to discuss what you have expounded so as to come to some conclusion or judgement about it. ("Critical" is derived from the Ancient Greek for "to decide, to judge".) Critical discussion is thus not necessarily "destructive" or "negative"; it can be quite constructive and positive.

In the case of a critical appraisal of a particular author's text, you can negatively criticise the author's arguments by pointing out questionable assumptions, invalid reasoning, etc. If, on the other hand, you think that the text is good, then your critical discussion can be positive. This can be done by revealing its "hidden virtues" (that is, by showing that there is more to the author's arguments and views than what lies on the surface) and/or by defending an author against possible and/or actual criticisms. (eg "Norman Malcolm argues that Descartes is mistaken in assuming that dreams and waking episodes have the same content.* However, Malcolm fails to appreciate the subtlety of Descartes' argument in the First Meditation, which allows Descartes to claim . . .") Just to expound an author's arguments and then say "I disagree" or "That seems right" is not really enough - you need to "have something to say" about it. Of course, by all means go on, after finding fault with some philosopher, to answer in your own way the questions tackled or raised by the author. (eg "Simone de Beauvoir's analysis of women's oppression in The Second Sex suffers from serious weaknesses, as I have shown in Section 2 above. A better way to approach the issue, I shall now argue, is to . . .".)

Where you are not primarily concerned with evaluating or responding to a particular text, your critical discussion can be more focused on your own constructive response to the issue. (eg "Having used Dworkin's account to clarify the meanings of the concepts of 'the sanctity of life' and 'voluntariness', I shall now argue that voluntary euthanasia is morally permissible because its voluntariness respects what is of value in the notion of the sanctity of life" - where you now leave Dworkin behind as a source and move on to give your own account.)

* See Norman Malcolm, "Dreaming and Skepticism", in Willis Doney, ed., Descartes: A Collection of Critical Essays (London: Macmillan, 1967), p. 56.

Guide to researching and writing Philosophy essays

5th edition by Steven Tudor , for the Philosophy program, University of Melbourne, 2003.

This fifth edition of How to Write a Philosophy Essay: A Guide for Students (previous editions titled A Guide to Researching and Writing Philosophy Essays ) was prepared in consultation with members of the Philosophy program, the University of Melbourne. For advice and assistance on this and earlier editions, thanks are due to Graham Priest, Barry Taylor, Christopher Cordner, Doug Adeney, Josie Winther, Linda Burns, Marion Tapper, Kimon Lycos, Brendan Long, Jeremy Moss, Tony Coady, Will Barrett, Brian Scarlett, and Megan Laverty. Some use was also made of materials prepared by the Philosophy Departments of La Trobe University, the University of Queensland, and The Australian National University.

Disclaimer: University, Faculty and program rules

Please note: this booklet does not provide authoritative statements of the official policies or rules of the University of Melbourne, the Faculty of Arts, or the Philosophy program with regard to student essays and examinations or any other matters. Students should, therefore, not rely on this booklet for such information, for which they should consult the various appropriate notice boards, handbooks, websites, and/or members of staff.

Essay topics

What do philosophy essay topics look like? There are, very roughly, two basic kinds of philosophy essay topics: "text-focused" topics and "problem-focused" topics. Text-focused topics ask you to consider some particular philosopher's writing on some issue. (eg "Discuss critically David Hume's account of causation in Part III of Book I of his A Treatise of Human Nature " or "Was Wittgenstein right to say that 'the meaning of a word is its use in the language', in his Philosophical Investigations, Sec. 43?"). Problem-focused topics are more directly about a particular philosophical problem or issue, without reference to any particular philosopher's text. (eg "Is voluntary euthanasia morally permissible?" or "What is scientific method?")

There is another sort of topic, one which presents a statement and asks you to discuss it, where that statement is a "made up" or, at least, unattributed quote. (eg. "'Without belief in God, people cannot be moral'. Discuss.") I shall regard these as variations of the problem-focused type of topic. Where you are asked to discuss some such statement "with reference to" some specified text or philosopher, then that topic becomes more text-focused. (eg "'Without belief in God, people cannot be moral'. Discuss with reference to J.L. Mackie's Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. ") Occasionally, a topic presents an unattributed statement, but the statement is, in fact, a quote from a particular philosopher you've been studying, or, at least, a good paraphrase of their thinking. (An example of the latter: "'All the ideas in our minds originate from either sense perception or our reflection upon sensory information.' Discuss.", in a course devoted to John Locke, whose views are summed up in the quoted statement, though those words are not actually his.) Should you take such topics as problem- or text-focused? Rather unhelpfully, I'll say only that it depends on the case. You might ask your lecturer or tutor about it. Whichever way you do take it, be clear in your essay which way you are taking it.

The difference between text-focused and problem-focused essay topics is, however, not very radical. This is because, on the one hand, any particular philosopher's text is about some philosophical problem or question, while, on the other hand, most philosophical problems (certainly virtually all those you will be given as essay topics at university) will have been written about by previous philosophers.

The basic way to approach text-focused topics, then, is to treat the nominated text as an attempt by one philosopher to deal with a particular philosophical problem or issue. The essay topic will, generally speaking, be inviting you to do philosophy with that philosopher, to engage with them in thinking about the issue, whether that engagement proves to be as an ally or an adversary. The chosen text will usually be one which has been (or deserves to be) influential or significant in the history of philosophy, but the task is not to pay homage to past masters. But, even if homage is your thing, the best way to do that here is to engage with the master philosophically.

With regard to problem-focused topics, you will often find your exploration of the problem aided by taking some text or texts which have dealt with it as reference points or prompts. This is not always strictly necessary, but many of you starting out in philosophy will find it helpful to do so - it can help you give focus to your response to the question. (Thus, you might, in an essay on the topic "Is voluntary euthanasia morally permissible?" take it upon yourself to use, for example, Ronald Dworkin's Life's Dominion and Peter Singer's Practical Ethics as reference points. Or, in an essay on the topic "What is scientific method?", you might set up your answer via a comparison of the two different accounts in Karl Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery and Paul Feyerabend's Against Method.*) How will you know which texts to adopt as reference points or prompts, if none is mentioned in the essay topic itself? One way is to consider what texts have already been mentioned with regard to the topic in your course reading guide and in lectures and tutorials. Another way is to do some of your own research. On this see Section 4 below.

* In this guide, in giving examples of how to go about answering an essay question, I am not necessarily giving any concrete or reliable advice for any particular topic. The examples are primarily to do with the form or style or strategy you might find helpful.

Researching your essay

To do research for your philosophy essay you need to do only two things: read and think. Actually, for problem-focused essays, thinking is the only truly necessary bit, but it's highly likely that you will find your thinking much assisted if you do some reading as well. Philosophical research at university is a little different to research in most other disciplines (especially the natural sciences), in that it is not really about "collecting data" to support or refute explanatory theories. Rather, the thinking that's involved in philosophical research (as part of one's preparation for philosophical writing) is more a matter of reflecting critically upon the problems in front of one. Researching the writings of other philosophers should, therefore, be primarily directed towards helping you with that reflection rather than aiming at gathering together and reporting on "the relevant findings" on a particular topic. In many other disciplines, a "literature review" is an important research skill, and sometimes philosophy academics do such reviews - but it is rare that philosophy students are asked to do one.

What, then, to read? It should be clear from your lectures and tutorials what some starting points for your reading might be. (All courses provide reading guides; many also have booklets of reading material.) Your tutor and lecturer are also available for consultation on what readings you might begin with for any particular topic in that subject. Independent research can also uncover useful sources, and evidence of this in your essay can be a pleasing sign of intellectual independence. Make sure, though, that what you come up with is relevant to the topic. (See Section 5.2 below on relevance.) Whichever way you proceed, your reading should be purposive and selective.

In the case of essay questions that refer to a particular text, you should familiarise yourself thoroughly with this text. Usually, such a text will be a primary text, i.e. one in which a philosopher writes directly about a philosophical issue. Texts on or about a primary text are called secondary texts. (Many philosophical works will combine these two tasks, and discuss other philosophical texts while also dealing directly with a philosophical issue.) Some secondary texts can be helpful to students. However, don't think you will only ever understand a primary text if you have a nice friendly secondary text to take you by the hand through the primary text. More often than not, you need to have a good grasp of the primary text in order to make sense of the secondary text.

How much to read? The amount of reading you do should be that which maximises the quality of your thinking - that is, you should not swamp yourself with vast slabs of text that you can't digest, but nor should you starve your mind of ideas to chew over. There is, of course, no simple rule for determining this optimal amount. Be wary, though, of falling into the vice of looking for excuses not to read some philosopher or text, as in "Oh, that's boring old religious stuff" or "She's one of those obscure literary feminist types", or "In X Department they laugh at you if you mention those authors in tutes". If someone wants a reason not to think, they'll soon come up with one.

Philosophical writings

Most philosophical writings come in either of two forms: books or articles. Articles appear either in books that are edited anthologies or in academic journals, such as Philosophical Quarterly or Australasian Journal of Philosophy. Some academic journals are also on the internet. Most articles in the journals are written by professional philosophers for professional philosophers; similarly with many books. But by no means let this put you off. Everyone begins philosophy at the deep end - it's really the only kind there is!

There are, however, many books written for student audiences. Some of these are general introductions to philosophy as a whole; others are introductions to particular areas or issues (eg biomedical ethics or philosophy of science). Among the general introductions are various philosophical dictionaries, encyclopedias and "companions". These reference works collect short articles on a wide range of topics and can be very useful starting points for newcomers to a topic. Among the most useful of the general reference works are:

• Edward Craig, ed., The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (10 vols.) (London: Routledge, 1998)
• Paul Edwards, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy (8 vols.) (New York: Macmillan, 1967)
• Robert Audi, ed., The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
• Ted Honderich, ed., The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)
• Simon Blackburn, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)
• Thomas Mautner, ed., The Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy (London: Penguin, 1998)
• J.O. Urmson and Jonathan Ree, eds., The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers (London: Routledge, 1993)
• Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (an internet-based reference work: plato.stanford.edu/ )

Note taking

Note taking, like your reading, should not be random, but ought to be guided by the topic in question and by your particular lines of response to the issues involved. Note taking for philosophy is very much an individual art, which you develop as you progress. By and large it is not of much use to copy out reams of text as part of your researches. Nor is it generally helpful to read a great number of pages without making any note of what they contain for future reference. But between these two extremes it is up to you to find the mean that best helps you in getting your thoughts together.

Libraries and electronic resources

The University's Baillieu Library (including the Institute of Education Resource Centre), which is open to all members of the University, contains more than 2,500 years' worth of philosophical writings. The best way to become acquainted with them is by using them, including using the catalogues (including the Baillieu's on-line catalogues and subject resources web-pages), following up a work's references (and references in the references), intelligent browsing of the shelves, etc.

In the main Baillieu Library, the philosophical books are located (mostly) between 100–199 in the Dewey decimal system, and philosophical journals are located in the basement. The Reference section on the ground floor also has some relevant works. The Education Resource Centre also has a good philosophy collection.

In addition to hard-copy philosophical writings, there is also a variety of electronic resources in philosophy, mostly internet-based. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy was already mentioned above. Links to other useful internet sites (such as the Australasian Association of Philosophy website) can be found through the Baillieu Library's web-page and the Philosophy Department's web-page.

A strong word of warning, however, for the would-be philosophical web-surfer: because anyone can put material on a website, all kinds of stuff, of varying levels of quality, is out there - and new-comers to philosophy are usually not well placed to sort their way through it. Unless you have a very good understanding of what you're looking for - and what you're not looking for - most of you will be much better off simply carefully reading and thinking about a central text for your course, eg Descartes' First Meditation, rather than wandering about the internet clicking on all the hits for "Descartes". Exercise your mind, not your index finger.

Writing your essay

Planning and structuring your essay.

It is very important that you plan your essay, so that you have an idea of what you are going to write before you start to write it. Of course, you will most likely alter things in later drafts, but you should still start off by having a plan. Planning your essay includes laying out a structure. It is very important that your essay has a clearly discernible structure, ie that it is composed of parts and that these parts are logically connected. This helps both you and your reader to be clear about how your discussion develops, stage by stage, as you work through the issues at hand.

Poor essay structure is one of the most common weaknesses in student philosophy essays. Taking the time to work on the structure of your essay is time well spent, especially since skill in structuring your thoughts for presentation to others should be among the more enduring things you learn at university. A common trap that students fall into is to start their essay by writing the first sentence, then writing another one that seems to follow that one, then another one that sort of fits after that one, then another that might or might not have some connection with the previous one, and so on until the requisite 1,500 words are used up. The result is usually a weak, rambling essay.

There are, of course, no hard and fast rules about how to structure a philosophy essay. Again, it is a skill you develop through practice, and much will depend on the particular topic at hand. Nonetheless, it might be helpful to begin by developing an essay structure around the basic distinction between your exposition and your critical discussion (as discussed above). In this it will be important that you make clear who is putting forward which point, that is, make it clear whether you are presenting your own thoughts or are expounding someone else's. (Again, confusion in this regard is a common problem in student essays.) It can often help your structuring if you provide headings for different sections (possibly numbered or lettered). Again, this helps both your reader to follow your discussion and you to develop your thoughts. At each stage, show clearly the logical relations between and the reasons for your points, so that your reader can see clearly why you say what you say and can see clearly the development in your discussion.

Another key to structuring your essay can be found in the old adage "Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em. Tell 'em. Then tell 'em what you've told 'em", which provides you with a ready-made structure: Introduction, Main Body, and Conclusion.

In your Introduction, first introduce the issues the essay is concerned with. In doing so, try to state briefly just what the problem is and (if there is space) why it is a problem. This also applies, of course, to issues covered in text-focused essay topics. Next, tell the reader what it is that you are going to do about those problems in the Main Body. This is usually done by giving a brief sketch or overview of the main points you will present, a "pre-capitulation", so to speak, of your essay's structure. This is one way of showing your reader that you have a grasp (indeed, it helps you get a grasp) of your essay as a structured and integrated whole, and gives them some idea of what to expect by giving them an idea of how you have decided to answer the question. Of course, for reasons of space, your Introduction might not be very long, but something along these lines is likely to be useful.

In your Main Body, do what you've said you'll do. Here is where you should present your exposition(s) and your critical discussion(s). Thus, it is here that the main philosophical substance of your essay is to be found. Of course, what that substance is and how you will present it will depend on the particular topic before you. But, whatever the topic, make clear at each stage just what it is you are doing. You can be quite explicit about this. (eg "I shall now present Descartes' ontological argument for the existence of God, as it is presented in his Fifth Meditation. There will be three stages to this presentation.") Don't think that such explicitness must be a sign of an unsophisticated thinker.

A distinct Conclusion is perhaps not always necessary, if your Main Body has clearly "played out" your argument. So you don't always have to present a grand summation or definitive judgement at the end. Still, often for your own sake, try to state to yourself what it is your essay has achieved and see if it would be appropriate to say so explicitly. Don't feel that you must come up with earth-shattering conclusions. Of course, utter banality or triviality are not good goals, either. Also, your essay doesn't always have to conclude with a "solution" to a problem. Sometimes, simply clarifying an issue or problem is a worthy achievement and can merit first-class honours. A good conclusion to a philosophy essay, then, will usually combine a realistic assessment of the ambit and cogency of its claims with a plausible proposal that those claims have some philosophical substance.

What you write in your essay should always be relevant to the question posed. This is another common problem in student essays, so continually ask yourself "Am I addressing the question here?" First-class answers to a question can vary greatly, but you must make sure that your essay responds to the question asked, even if you go on to argue that the question as posed is itself problematic. (eg "To ask ‘What is scientific method?' presupposes that science follows one basic method. However, I shall argue that there are, in fact, several different scientific methods and that these are neither unified nor consistent.") Be wary, however, of twisting a topic too far out of shape in order to fit your favoured theme. (You would be ill-advised, for example, to proceed thus: "What is scientific method? This is a question asked by many great minds. But what is a mind? In this essay, I shall discuss the views of Thomas Aquinas on the nature of mind.")

This requirement of relevance is not intended as an authoritarian constraint on your intellectual freedom. It is part of the skill of paying sustained and focused attention to something put before you - which is one of the most important skills you can develop at university. If you do have other philosophical interests that you want to pursue (such as Aquinas on mind), then please do pursue them, in addition to writing your essay on the set topic. At no stage does the requirement of relevance prevent you from pursuing your other interests.

Citing Philosophical "Authorities"

There might be occasions when you want to quote other philosophers and writers apart from when you are quoting them because they are the subject of your essay. There are two basic reasons why you might want to do this. First, you might quote someone because their words constitute a good or exemplary expression or articulation of an idea you are dealing with, whether as its proponent, critic, or simply its chronicler. (eg "As Nietzsche succinctly put the point, 'There are no moral phenomena at all, only a moral interpretation of phenomena'.*") You may or may not want to endorse the idea whose good expression you have quoted, but simply want to use the philosopher as a spokesperson for or example of that view. But be clear about what you think the quote means and be careful about what you are doing with the quote. It won't do all the work for you.

The second reason you might want to quote a philosopher is because you think their words constitute an "authoritative statement" of a view. Here you want to use the fact that, eg Bertrand Russell maintained that there are two kinds of knowledge of things (namely, knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description) in support of your claim that there are two such kinds of knowledge of things. However, be very careful in doing this, for the nature of philosophical authority is not so simple here. That is to say, what really matters is not that Bertrand Russell the man held that view; what matters are his reasons for holding that view. So, when quoting philosophers for this second reason, be careful that you appreciate in what exactly the authority lies - which means that you should show that you appreciate why Russell maintained that thesis. Of course, you can't provide long arguments for every claim you make or want to make use of; every essay will have its enabling but unargued assumptions. But at least be clear about these. (eg "For the purposes of this essay, I shall adopt Russell's thesis* that ...").

* Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, trans. R.J. Hollingdale (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973 [first German ed.1886]), Sec. 108.

* See Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1967 [first pub. 1912]), Ch. 5.

Philosophy is by its nature a relatively abstract and generalising business. (Note that abstractness and generality are not the same thing. Nor do vagueness and obscurity automatically attend them.) Sometimes a longish series of general ideas and abstract reasonings can become difficult for the reader (and often the writer) to follow. It can often help, therefore, to use some concrete or specific examples in your discussion. (Note that there can be different levels of concreteness and specificity in examples.)

Examples can be taken from history, current events, literature, and so on, or can be entirely your own invention. Exactly what examples you employ and just how and why you use them will, of course, depend on the case. Some uses might be: illustration of a position, problem or idea to help make it clearer; evidence for, perhaps even proof of, a proposition; a counter-example; a case-study to be returned to at various points during the essay; or a problem for a theory or viewpoint to be applied to. Again, be clear about what the example is and how and why you use it. Be careful not to get distracted by, or bogged down in, your examples. Brevity is usually best.

English expression

There's another old saying: "If you can't say what you mean, then you can't mean what you say" - and this very much applies to philosophical writing. Thus, in writing philosophically, you must write clearly and precisely. This means that good philosophical writing requires a good grasp of the language in which it is written, including its grammar and vocabulary. (See Section 9.3 for advice for people from non-English speaking backgrounds.) A high standard of writing skills is to be expected of Arts graduates. Indeed, this sort of skill will last longer than your memory of, for example, the three parts of the Platonic soul (though it is also hoped that some of the content of what you study will also stick). So use your time at university (in all your subjects) to develop these skills further.

Having a mastery of a good range of terms, being sensitive to the subtleties of their meaning, and being able to construct grammatically correct and properly punctuated sentences are essential to the clear articulation and development of your thoughts. Think of grammar, not as some old-fashioned set of rules of linguistic etiquette, but rather as the "internal logic" of a sentence, that is, as the relationships between the words within a sentence which enable them to combine to make sense.

Virtually all sentences in philosophical writing are declarative (ie. make statements), as opposed to interrogative, imperative or exclamatory types of sentences. There is some place, though, for interrogative sentences, ie. questions. (Note that, in contrast, this guide, which is not in the essay genre, contains many imperative sentences, ie. commands.) As you craft each (declarative) sentence in your essay, remember the basics of sentence construction. Make clear what the sentence is about (its subject) and what you are saying about it (the predicate). Make clear what the principal verb is in the predicate, since it is what usually does the main work in saying something about the subject. Where a sentence consists of more than one clause (as many do in philosophical writing), make clear what work each clause is doing. Attend closely, then, to each and every sentence you write so that its sense is clear and is the sense you intend it to have. Think carefully about what it is you want each particular sentence to do (in relation to both those sentences immediately surrounding it and the essay as a whole) and structure your sentence so that it does what you want it to do. To help you with your own sentence construction skills, when reading others' philosophical works (or indeed any writing) attend closely to the construction of each sentence so as to be alive to all the subtleties of the text.

Good punctuation is an essential part of sentence construction. Its role is to help to display the grammar of a sentence so that its meaning is clear. As an example of how punctuation can fundamentally change the grammar and, hence, meaning of a sentence, compare (i) "Philosophers, who argue for the identity of mind and brain, often fail to appreciate the radical consequences of that thesis." and (ii) "Philosophers who argue for the identity of mind and brain often fail to appreciate the radical consequences of that thesis." In the first sentence it is asserted (falsely, as it happens) that all philosophers argue for the identity of mind and brain; in the second, only some philosophers are said to argue for the identity of mind and brain. Only the punctuation differs in the two strings of identical words, and yet the meanings of the sentences are very different. Confusions over this sort of thing are common weaknesses in student essays, and leave readers asking themselves "What exactly is this student trying to say?"

It will be assumed that you can spell - which is not a matter of pressing the "spell-check" key on a word-processor. A good dictionary and a good thesaurus should always be within reach as you write your essay.

Also, try to shorten and simplify sentences where you can do so without sacrificing the subtlety and inherent complexity of the discussion. Where a sentence is becoming too long or complex, it is likely that too many ideas are being bundled up together too closely. Stop and separate your ideas out. If an idea is a good or important one, it will usually deserve its own sentence.

Your "intra-sentential logic" should work very closely with the "inter-sentential logic" of your essay, ie. with the logical relations between your sentences. (This "inter-sentential logic" is what "logic" is usually taken to refer to.) For example, to enable sentences P and Q to work together to yield sentence R as a conclusion, you need to make clear that there are elements within P and Q which connect up to yield R. Consider the following example: "Infanticide is the intentional killing of a human being. However, murder is regarded by all cultures as morally abhorrent. Therefore, people who commit infanticide should be punished." This doesn't work as an argument, because the writer has not constructed sentences which provide the connecting concepts in the various subjects and predicates, even though each sentence is grammatically correct (and possibly even true).

If you are concerned to write not only clearly and precisely, but also with some degree of grace and style (and I hope you are), it's still best to get the clarity and precision right first, in a plain, straightforward way, and then to polish things up afterwards to get the style and grace you want. But don't sacrifice clarity and precision for the sake of style and grace - be prepared to sacrifice that beautiful turn of phrase if its presence is going to send your discussion down an awkward path of reasoning. Aim to hit the nail on the head rather than make a loud bang. What you are likely to find, however, is that a philosophy essay which really is clear and precise will have a large measure of grace and style in its very clarity and precision.

Remember that obscurity is not a sign of profundity. (Some profound thought may well be difficult to follow, but that doesn't mean that one can achieve profundity merely through producing obscure, difficult-to-read writing.) Your marker is interested in what's actually in your essay, not what's possibly inside your head (or indeed what's possibly in some book you happen to have referred to in your essay). So avoid hinting at or alluding suggestively to ideas, especially where they are meant to do some important work in your essay. Instead, lay them out explicitly and directly. Of course, you won't have space to spell out every single idea, so work out which ideas do the most important work and make sure that you at least get those ideas clearly articulated. In expounding a text or problem that ultimately just is vague, muddled, or obscure, try to convey such vagueness, muddle or obscurity clearly, rather than simply reproducing it in your own writing. That is, be clear that and how a text or problem has such features, and then perhaps do your best to make matters clearer.

Despite these stern pronouncements, don't be afraid of sometimes saying things which happen to sound a little odd, if you have tried various formulations and think you have now expressed your ideas just as they should be expressed. Philosophy is often an exploratory business, and new ways of seeing and saying things can sometimes be a part of that exploration.

The need for clarity and precision in philosophical writing sometimes means that you need to stipulate your own meaning for a term. When you want to use a particular word in a particular way for the purposes of your essay - as a "technical term" - be clear about it. (eg "In this essay, I shall intend ‘egoism' to mean ...") Also, be consistent in your technical meanings, or else note when you are not. Be wary, though, of inventing too many neologisms or being too idiosyncratic in your stipulations.

With regard to what "authorial pronoun" to adopt in a philosophy essay, it's standard to write plainly in the first person singular ("I", "me", "my", etc.) rather than use the royal "we" (as in "we shall argue that ..."), or the convoluted quasi-legal indirect form ("It is submitted that ..."), or the scientific objectivity of a physics experimental report. Nonetheless, stick closer to "I argue", "I suggest", "my definition", etc., than to "I wish", "I hate", "my feeling", etc. A philosophy essay is still something more intellectual and formal than a personal reminiscence, polemic, or proclamation. In terms of audience, it's probably best to think of your reader as someone who is intelligent, open to discussion and knows a little about the topic you're writing on, but perhaps is not quite clear or decided about the issues, or needs convincing of the view you want to put forward, or is curious about what you think about the issues.

Try also to use non-discriminatory language, ie. language which does not express or imply inequality of worth between people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and so on. As you write, you will be considering carefully your choice of words to express your thoughts. You will almost always find that it is possible to avoid discriminatory language by rephrasing your sentences.

Other things to avoid:

• waffle and padding
• vagueness and ambiguity
• abbreviations (this guide I'm writing isn't an eg. of what's req'd. in a phil. essay)
• colloquialisms (which can really get up your reader's nose)
• writing whose syntax merely reflects the patterns of informal speech
• unnecessary abstractness or indirectness
• unexplained jargon
• flattery and invective
• overly-rhetorical questions (do you really need me to tell you what they are?) and other flourishes

There are many guides to good writing available. Anyone who writes (whether in the humanities or the sciences, whether beginners or experienced professionals) will do well to have some on hand. Most good bookshops and libraries will have some. Among the most consulted works are (check for the latest editions):

• J. M. Williams and G. C. Colomb, Style: Toward Clarity and Grace (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995)
• W. Strunk and E. B. White, The Elements of Style, 4th ed. (New York: Longman, 2000)
• E. Gowers, The Complete Plain Words, 3rd ed. (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1987)
• R. W. Burchfield, ed., The New Fowler's Modern English Usage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)
• Pam Peters, The Cambridge Australian English Style Guide (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995)
• Australian Government Publishing Service, Style Manual for Authors, Editors and Printers, 5th ed. (Canberra: AGPS, 1995)

Vocabulary of logical argument

Closely related to the above points about English expression is the importance of having a good grasp of what can rather generally be called "the vocabulary of logical argument". These sorts of terms are crucial in articulating clearly and cogently a logical line of argument. Such argumentation will, of course, be of central importance in whatever discipline you are studying, indeed in any sphere of life that requires effective thinking and communication. I have in mind terms such as these (grouped a little loosely):

all, any, every, most, some, none, a, an, the that, this, it, he, she, they if . . . , then. . . ; if and only if . . . , then . . . ; unless either . . . or . . .; neither . . . nor . . . not, is, are therefore, thus, hence, so, because, since, follows, entails, implies, infer, consequence, conditional upon moreover, furthermore which, that, whose and, but, however, despite, notwithstanding, nevertheless, even, though, still possibly, necessarily, can, must, may, might, ought, should true, false, probable, certain sound, unsound, valid, invalid, fallacious, supported, proved, contradicted, rebutted, refuted, negated logical, illogical, reasonable, unreasonable, rational, irrational assumption, premise, belief, claim, proposition argument, reason, reasoning, evidence, proof

Most of these are quite simple terms, but they are crucial in argumentative or discursive writing of all kinds. (Many are themselves the subject of study in logic, a branch of philosophy). The sloppy use of these sorts of terms is another common weakness in students' philosophy essays. Pay close and careful attention to how you employ them. Moreover, pay close and careful attention to how the authors you read use them. For further discussion of some of these terms and others, see:

• Basic Philosophical Vocabulary, prepared by the staff of the Philosophy Department and available from the programs Office
• Wesley C. Salmon, Logic, 2nd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1973)
• Antony Flew, Thinking About Thinking (London: Fontana, 1985)
• Graham Priest, Logic: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)
• Joel Rudinow and Vincent E. Barry, Invitation to Critical Thinking, 4th ed. (Fort Worth, Texas: Harcourt Brace, 1999)

Revising your essay

It is virtually essential that you write a first draft of your essay and then work on that draft to work towards your finished essay. Indeed, several drafts may well be necessary in order to produce your best possible work. It is a rare philosopher indeed who can get things perfectly right on the first attempt, so be prepared to revise and re-develop what you write. Don't be too precious about what you have written, if it appears that it should be sacrificed in the revision process. There is usually a very marked difference between essays which are basically first draft rush-jobs done the night before they are due and those which have been revised and polished. Give yourself time to revise by starting writing early on. For most philosophy students, the greater part of the work in essay writing is in the writing, not in the preliminary researches and planning stages. So be wary of thinking "I've done all the research. I only need to write up my notes, which I can do the night before the essay's due". This is likely to lead to a weak, perhaps non-existent, essay (and very likely a sleepless night).

Stick to the word limit given for your essay. Why are word limits imposed? First, to give the markers a fair basis for comparing student essays. Second, to give you the opportunity to practise the discipline of working creatively under constraints. Skill in this discipline will stand you in very good stead in any sphere where circumstances impose limitations. Again, word limits are not constraints on your intellectual freedom. Outside your essay you are free to write without limit. But even there you'll probably find that your creativity is improved by working under a self-imposed discipline.

As a general rule, most student essays that fall well short of the word limit are weak or lazy attempts at the task, and most essays that go well over the limit are not much stronger or the result of much harder work - the extra length is often due to unstructured waffle or padding which the writer hasn't thought enough about so as to edit judiciously. If you structure your essay clearly, you'll find it easier to revise and edit, whether in order to contract or expand it. ("Hmm, let's see: section 2 is much longer than section 4, but is not as important, so I'll cut it down. And I should expand section 3, because that's a crucial step. And I can shift that third paragraph in the Introduction to the Conclusion.")

Plagiarism and originality

Plagiarism is essentially a form of academic dishonesty or cheating. At university level, such dishonesty is not tolerated and is dealt with severely, usually by awarding zero marks for a plagiarised essay or, in some cases, dismissing a student from the university.

When you submit your essay, you are implicitly stating that the essay is your own original and independent work, that you have not submitted the same work for assessment in another subject, and that where you have made use of other people's work, this is properly acknowledged. If you know that this is not in fact the case, you are being dishonest. (In a number of university departments, students are in fact required to sign declarations of academic honesty.)

Plagiarism is the knowing but unacknowledged use of work by someone else (including work by another student, and indeed oneself - see below) and which is being presented as one's own work. It can take a number of forms, including:

• copying : exactly reproducing another's words
• paraphrasing : expressing the meaning of another's words in different words
• summarising : reproducing the main points of another's argument
• cobbling : copying, paraphrasing or summarising the work of a number of different people and piecing them together to produce one body of text
• submitting one's own work when it has already been submitted for assessment in another subject
• collusion : presenting an essay as your own independent work when in fact it has been produced, in whole or part, in collusion with one or more other people

None of the practices of copying, paraphrasing, summarizing or cobbling is wrong in itself, but when one or more is done without proper acknowledgment it constitutes plagiarism. Therefore, all sources must be adequately and accurately acknowledged in footnotes or endnotes. (See Section 7.) Plagiarism from the internet in particular can be a temptation for a certain kind of student. However, be warned: there is a number of very good internet and software tools for identifying plagiarism.

With regard to collusion, it's undoubtedly often very helpful to discuss one's work with others, be it other students, family members, friends or teachers. Indeed, philosophy thrives on dialogue. However, don't kid yourself that you would simply be extending that process if you were to ask your interlocutor to join with you in the writing of your essay, whether by asking them to tell you what you should write or to write down some of their thoughts for you to reproduce in your essay. At the end of the day, you must be the one to decide what goes into your essay.

Originality

Students sometimes worry about whether they will be able to develop "original ideas", especially in light of the fact that nearly every philosophical idea one comes up with seems to have been thought of before by someone else. There is no denying that truly original work in philosophy is well rewarded, but your first aim should be to develop ideas that you think are good and not merely different. If, after arguing for what you believe is right, and arguing in way that you think is good, you then discover that someone else has had the same idea, don't throw your work away - you should feel vindicated to some extent that your thinking has been congruent with that of another (possibly great) philosopher. (If you have not yet handed your essay in when you make this discovery, make an appropriately placed note to that effect.) Don't be fooled, however, into thinking that plagiarism can be easily passed off as congruent thinking. Of course, if that other philosopher's ideas have helped you to develop your ideas, then this is not a matter of congruent ideas but rather of derivative ideas, and this must be adequately acknowledged. If, after developing your ideas, you discover that they are original, then that is an added bonus. But remember that it is more important to be a good philosopher than an original one.

Quotations, footnotes, endnotes and bibliography

Quotations in your essay should be kept to a minimum. The markers know the central texts pretty well already and so don't need to have pages thereof repeated in front of them. Of course, some quotation will usually be important and useful - sometimes essential - in both exposition and critical discussion.

When you quote the words of someone else directly, you must make the quotation clearly distinct from your own text, using quotation marks . (eg "Descartes said that 'it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once.'* He makes this claim …" - where the words quoted from Descartes are in 'single quotation marks'. Note that it is relatively arbitrary whether one uses 'single' or "double" quotation marks for "first order" quotations, but whichever style you adopt, use it consistently in the one essay.) Alternatively, where the quoted passage is greater than three lines, put the quoted words in a separate indented paragraph , so that your essay would look like this:

In his First Meditation , Descartes argues as follows:

Whatever I have up till now accepted as most true I have acquired either from the senses or through the senses. But from time to time I have found that the senses deceive, and it is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once.* In this essay I shall argue that prudence does not in fact require us to distrust our senses and that Descartes's sceptical method is therefore seriously flawed.

In both cases, the quotations must be given proper referencingin a footnote or endnote.

When you are not quoting another person directly, but are still making use of their work - as in indirect quotations (eg "Descartes says that it is wise not to trust something that has deceived us before"*), paraphrases, summaries, and cobblings - you must still acknowledge your debts, using footnotes or endnotes.

* Rene Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy , trans. John Cottingham (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986 [first French ed., 1641]), p. 12.

Footnotes and endnotes

Footnotes appear at the foot of the same page on which the cited material appears, clearly separated from the main body of the text, each one clearly numbered. Endnotes appear at the end of the essay, again clearly separated from the main body of text, numbered and headed "Endnotes" or "Notes". Either method is acceptable, but you should choose one and stick with it throughout the one essay.

Below are some examples of how to put the relevant referencing information in footnotes and endnotes. This is not intended as an exercise in pedantry, but as a guide to how to provide the information needed for adequate referencing. The reason we provide this information is to enable our readers to find the sources we use in order to verify them and to allow them to pursue the material further if it interests them. In your own researches you will come to value good referencing in the texts you read as a helpful source of further references on a topic. Again, it is this sort of research skill that an Arts graduate will be expected to have mastered.

There are various conventions for writing up footnotes and endnotes. The Philosophy Department does not require that any particular convention be followed, only that you be consistent in your use of the convention that you do choose. For other conventions see the style guides mentioned above, or simply go to some texts published by reputable publishers and see what formats they employ.

Imagine, then, that the following are endnotes at the end of your essay. I will explain them below.

• James Rachels, The Elements of Moral Philosophy , 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993), p. 25.
• Philippa Foot, "Moral Relativism", in Michael Krausz and Jack W. Meiland, eds., Relativism: Cognitive and Moral (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982), p. 155.
• Ibid., p. 160.
• Immanuel Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, trans. H. J. Paton (New York: Harper and Row, 1964 [first German ed., 1785]), p. 63.
• Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, (London: Dent, 1973 [first pub. 1651]),p. 65.
• Rachels, The Elements, p. 51.
• Peter Winch, "The Universalizability of Moral Judgements", The Monist 49 (1965), p. 212.
• Antony Duff, "Legal Punishment", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2001 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2001/entries/legal-punishment/ at 15 June 2003, sec. 6.

Notes explained

• This is your first reference to a book called The Elements of Moral Philosophy. The title is given in full and in italics. If you are unable to use italics, then you should underline the title. The book's author is James Rachels. It's the 2nd edition of that book, which was published in New York, by the publishers McGraw-Hill, in 1993. The page you have referred to in your main text is page 25
• This is your first reference to Philippa Foot's article, "Moral Relativism", the title of which is put in "quotation marks". This article appeared in a book (title in italics) which is an anthology of different articles, and which was edited by Krausz and Meiland (names in full). The rest is in the same style as note (1)
• "Ibid." is short for "ibidem", which means "in the same place" in Latin. Use it on its own when you want to refer to exactly the same work and page number as in the immediately preceding note. So here the reference is again to Foot's article at page 155
• Ditto, except this time you refer to a different page in Foot's article, namely page 160
• This is reference to a book by Kant. Same book details as per note (1), except that, because this is a translation, you include the translator's name, and the date of the first edition in the original language
• This is a book reference again, so it's the same as note (1), except that, because it's an old book, you include the date of the original edition. (How old does a book have to be before it merits this treatment? There is no settled view. Note, though, that this convention is not usually followed for ancient authors)
• Here you are referring to Rachels' book again, but, because you are not in the very next note after a reference to it, you can't use "ibid.". Simply give the author's surname and a short title of the book, plus page reference. There is also a common alternative to this, whereby you give the surname, and write "op. cit." (which is short for "opere citato", which is Latin for "in the work already cited") and page reference (eg "Rachels, op. cit., p. 51.") Your reader then has to scan back over the notes to see what that "op." was exactly. The first option (author plus short title) is usually easier on the reader
• This is a reference to an article by Peter Winch in a journal called The Monist. The article's title is in "quotes", the journal title is in italics. The volume of the journal is 49, the year of publication is 1965, the page referred to is p. 212
• This is a reference to an article in the internet-based Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. The article is titled "Legal Punishment" and was written by Antony Duff. The Encyclopedia was edited by Edward N. Zalta. Note that I have basically followed the mode of citation that the Encyclopedia itself recommends. (This is one sign of the site being a reputable one. Where a site makes such a recommendation, it's best to follow it.) I have, however, also added the date on which the article was retrieved from the site, and put the author's given name first, to be consistent with the other footnotes. I have also added the reference to section 6, in an effort to be more precise as to where in the article the material I used came from. Since web pages aren't numbered in the manner of hard copy works, it will help if you are able to refer to some other feature, such as paragraphs or sections, so as to pin-point your reference. In the absence of a site recommending a mode of citation to its own material, the basic information needed for adequate citation of internet-based material is (where identifiable) the author, the document title, the year the document was created, the website name, the uniform resource locator (URL) in <arrow-brackets>, date of retrieval, and a pin-point reference*

* I am here following the mode of citation of internet materials recommended in Melbourne University Law Review Association Inc, Australian Guide to Legal Citation , 2nd ed. (Melbourne: Melbourne University Law Review Association Inc, 2002), pp. 70-73. I have, though, added the desirability of a pin-point reference.

Bibliography

At the end of your essay (after your endnotes, if used) you should list in a bibliography all of the works referred to in your notes, as well as any other works you consulted in researching and writing your essay. The list should be in alphabetical order, going by authors' surnames. The format should be the same as for your notes, except that you drop the page references and should put surnames first. So the bibliography of our mock-essay above would look like this:

• Duff, Antony, "Legal Punishment", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2001 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2001/entries/legal-punishment/ at 15 June 2003
• Foot, Philippa, "Moral Relativism", in Michael Krausz and Jack Meiland, eds., Relativism: Cognitive and Moral (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1982)
• Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan (London: Dent, 1973 [first pub.1651])
• Kant, Immanuel, Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals , trans. H.J. Paton (New York: Harper and Row, 1964 [first German ed. 1785])
• Rachels, James, The Elements of Moral Philosophy , 2nd ed., (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993)
• Winch, Peter, "The Universalizability of Moral Judgements", The Monist 49 (1965)

Presentation of essays and seeking advice

Generally, you should present an essay that is legible (hand-writing is OK, but typed or word-processed essays are preferable), in English, on one side of pieces of paper that are somewhere in the vicinity of A4 size and are fixed together . You should attach a completed Cover Sheet provided by the Philosophy program. Plastic document covers, spiral binding and other forms of presentational paraphernalia are not necessary (nor are they usually even desirable, as they mostly just get in the marker's way).

Late essays

Late essays are penalised . (For details of penalties consult the Philosophy program's notice board.)

Essays not handed in

Essays not handed in at all get zero marks. An essay that is handed in but gets a mark below 50 (and so is technically a "failed" essay) still gets some marks. (At least, it will so long as it's not so extremely late that the deducted marks wipe out all the marks it would have received if handed in on time.) All marks received for your essay (whether pass or fail) go toward your final score in the subject. Therefore, even if you think your essay is bound to fail (but please let your marker be the judge of that), or the due date has already passed, or both, it is still in your interests to hand your essay in .

Tutors and lecturers

Philosophy staff are not there just to be listened to by you; they are also there to listen to you. So don't hesitate to contact your tutor or lecturer to discuss questions or problems you have concerning your work.

If you have a legitimate excuse, you may be granted an extension on the due date for your essay by the lecturer in charge. Similarly, special consideration may also be granted when illness or other circumstances adversely affect your work. Applications for special consideration are made online via the Special Consideration web page.

Student counselling

Some personal or non-philosophical academic difficulties you might have you might want to discuss with someone other than your tutor or lecturer. Student Counselling and Psychological Services are there for you to discuss all sorts of problems you might encounter. Please consult your student diary for details on the counselling service.

English language assistance

As noted above, good philosophical writing requires a good grasp of the language in which it is written. If you are from a non-English speaking background and are having difficulties with your English expression in an academic context, you might like to make use of the services provided by Student Services Academic Skills . Many native English speakers, too, can benefit from short "refresher" courses and workshops run by the Centre. Please consult your student diary for details about this service.

A bit on Philosophy exams

Essays of the sort discussed so far in this guide are not the only form of assessment in the Philosophy program - examinations are also set. What is to be said about them?

First, not much that is different from what's been said above about philosophy essays. This is because what you write in a philosophy exam is none other than a philosophy essay . Have a look at past philosophy exam papers, in the Gibson and Baillieu libraries, to get a feel for them. The only basic difference between essays and exams is the matter of what constraints you're working under. Essays have word limits; exams have time limits . Again, stick to them. (Actually, you'll be made to stick to them by the exam invigilators.)

It's best, then, to think about how long to spend writing on an exam essay topic, rather than about how many words to write on it. Simple arithmetic will tell you how much time to spend on each exam question. (eg if you have a 2-hour exam and have to answer 3 questions, each worth one-third of the exam mark, then spend 40 minutes on each question.) Avoid the trap of "borrowing time" from a later question in order to perfect your answer to an earlier question, and then working faster on the later questions to catch up on lost time - this is likely to get you in a tangle. There are no word limits in philosophy exam essays, but don't think that the more you scrawl across the page, the more marks you'll get. Nonetheless, use the time you've got so as to maximise your display of your philosophical understanding and skills in answering the question.

Planning and structuring remain very important in exam essays. With regard to the niceties of footnotes, endnotes and bibliographies, etc., these are not necessary, so don't waste time on these. However, if you quote or refer to a specific passage from a text, do indicate clearly that it is a quotation or reference. (The principle of being clear as to who is saying what remains central.) If you have the reference handy, just put it briefly in the text of your exam essay. (eg "As Descartes says in Meditation I (p. 12), . . ." or "'[I]t is prudent never to trust completely those who have deceived us even once' (Descartes, Meditation I, p. 12)".) Generally speaking, you will show your familiarity with any relevant texts by how you handle them in your discussion. This is also true for your non-exam essays.

Your preparation for the exam should have been done well before entering the exam hall. Note that various subjects have restrictions on what texts and other items can be brought into the exam hall. (Consult the Philosophy program's notice board for details.) Many subjects will have "closed book" exams. Even if an exam is "open book", if you are properly prepared, you should not need to spend much time at all consulting texts or notes during the exam itself.

You won't have time for redrafting and revising your exam essay (which makes planning and structuring your answers before you start writing all the more important). If you do want to delete something, just cross it out clearly. Don't waste time with liquid paper or erasers. Write legibly . Don't wr. "point form" sav. time. Diff. kn. mean. use incomp. sent.

Finally, read the instructions at the beginning of the exam paper. They are important. (eg it's not a good strategy to answer two questions from Part A, when the Instructions tell you to answer two questions, one from Part A and one from Part B.) Note the (somewhat quaint) University practice of starting Reading Time some time before the stated time for the exam. Philosophy exams usually have 15 minutes of reading time. (Check for each of your exams.) So, if your exam timetable says the exam is at 2.15 pm, with reading time of 15 minutes, then the reading time starts at 2.00 pm and the writing time starts at 2.15pm - so get to the exam hall well before 2.00 pm. Reading time is very important. Use it to decide which questions you'll answer and to start planning your answers.

Checklist of questions

• Do I understand the essay question ? Do I know when the essay is due ?
• Do I know which texts to consult? Do I know where to find them?
• Have I made useful notes from my reading of the relevant texts?
• Have I made a plan of how I'll approach the question in my essay?
• Have I given myself enough time to draft and redraft my essay?
• Have I written a clearly structured essay? Is it clear what each stageis doing? Do I do what I say I'll do in my Introduction?
• Have I clearly distinguished exposition and critical discussion ? Have I given a fair and accurate account of the author(s) in question?
• Is my response to the topic relevant ? Do I answer the question? Have I kept my essay within the general bounds of the topic?
• Have I displayed a good grasp of the vocabulary of logical argument ? Are my arguments logically valid and sound? Are my claims supported by reasons ? Am I consistent within my essay?
• Is my English expression clear and precise ? Are my grammar, punctuation and spelling correct? Have I said what I meant to say? Is my writing legible?
• Have I fully acknowledged all my sources in footnotes or endnotes? Are my quotations accurate? Have I included a bibliography ?
• Do I need to revise any part of my essay again?
• Have I made a copy or photocopy of my essay for myself?
• Have I kept the receipt for my handed-in essay?

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