Doing Philosophy A Guide to the Writing of Philosophy Papers

by Feinberg, Joel; Shafer-Landau, Russ

• ISBN13: 9780534516826
• ISBN10: 0534516823
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-04-11
• Publisher: Wadsworth Publishing

Summary

Clear and concise, this brief text is designed to assist students with no previous formal background in writing philosophy papers. Contents include topic selection, outlines, and drafts, proper and improper quotation, argument development and evaluation, principles of good writing, style and logic.

Table of Contents

Preface	ii
Contents	iii
Methods of Proceeding	1	(8)
Introductory	1	(1)
Selecting a topic	2	(1)
The irrelevance of most library research	2	(2)
Resolving controversies	4	(1)
Appreciating philosophers of an earlier period	4	(1)
The outline	5	(1)
Preparation of the final draft	6	(1)
Writing blocks	7	(2)
Rules of the Game	9	(8)
Plagiarism as a legal wrong (violation of another person's property right)	9	(1)
Plagiarism as a moral wrong (cheating and lying)	9	(1)
Quotation, attribution, and acknowledgement	10	(2)
Alternative formats for notes	12	(2)
Acceptable abbreviations in the notes	14	(3)
Criteria for Grading Student Papers	17	(5)
Clarity	17	(1)
Presence of argument	17	(1)
Cogency of argument	18	(1)
Originality, subtlety, imaginativeness	18	(1)
Degree of difficulty	19	(1)
Ordering the criteria	20	(2)
General Principles of Good Writing	22	(9)
Clarity again	22	(1)
Simplicity	22	(2)
Economy	24	(1)
Padding	24	(1)
Repetitiveness	25	(1)
Redundancy	26	(1)
Misplaced emphasis	26	(1)
Pretentiousness and fancy words	27	(2)
A miscellany of further judgments	29	(2)
Mistakes of Grammar	31	(26)
Grammatical and nongrammatical errors	31	(1)
Criteria of correct grammar	31	(3)
A sampler of grammatical rules and their problems	34	(20)
The vanishing apostrophe	34	(2)
Ain't misbehavin'	36	(1)
Between or among?	37	(1)
Conjunctions as first words	38	(1)
Ungrammatical danglers	39	(1)
The problem of ``sexist pronouns'': some proposed solutions	40	(3)
Double negatives	43	(1)
Different from or different than?	44	(1)
Which or that?	44	(3)
Prepositions as last words	47	(2)
Split infinitives	49	(1)
Who (or whoever) or whom (or whomever)?	50	(4)
Summary	54	(3)
Some Common Mistakes in Diction	57	(10)
Diction and grammar	57	(1)
Linguistic correctness and controversy	57	(1)
Constantly changing usage	58	(1)
Linguistic liberals and conservatives	59	(1)
Sample mistakes in diction	60	(7)
``Criteria'' for ``criterion''	60	(1)
``Disinterested'' for ``uninterested''	61	(1)
``Enormity'' for ``enormousness''	62	(1)
``Fortuitously'' for ``fortunately''	62	(1)
``Infer'' for ``imply''	63	(1)
``Refute'' for ``rebut''	64	(1)
``Irony'' for ``coincidence''	64	(3)
Stylistic Infelicities	67	(14)
The concept of style	67	(1)
Prose writing as a source of pleasure	67	(2)
The paragraph	69	(3)
Motion metaphors	72	(3)
Smoothing the flow	75	(1)
Conspicuous over-use of favorite words	76	(1)
Forget adornment and eloquence	77	(1)
Types of poor writing style	78	(3)
Logic and Language	81	(8)
Correct and incorrect reasoning	81	(1)
Deductive and inductive reasoning	81	(1)
Sentences and propositions	82	(1)
Arguments	83	(1)
Premises as unproved ``assumptions''	83	(1)
Logical necessity versus psychological certainty	84	(1)
Necessity and contingency	85	(1)
Three types of impossibility	85	(4)
Basic Deductive Logic: Some Fragments	89	(16)
Possible truth value combinations	89	(1)
Validity and soundness	90	(1)
Definition of truth-functional connectives	91	(3)
Necessary and sufficient conditions	94	(1)
Valid deductive argument forms: a sampler	95	(10)
Logic Without Necessity	105	(8)
Some informal fallacies	105	(2)
Some inductive inferences, good and bad	107	(1)
Begging the question	108	(1)
Analogical reasoning	109	(1)
A sampler of fallacies	110	(3)
Varieties of Philosophy Papers	113	(1)
Rules of Strategy	113	(1)
Manageable philosophical tasks	113	(1)
Modest partial reasons	114	(1)
Interpretation	114	(1)
Generalization and counterexample	115	(1)
Definition	116	(1)
Other categories of philosophical papers	117