A Brief Guide to Writing Philosophy Papers

8/3/2019 A Brief Guide to Writing Philosophy Papers

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discuss in your paper will be fully explained. You might also want to

explain any specialized terminology that you believe might not be readily

understood by your reader.

It will also be crucial that you write one or two introductory paragraphs for your

paper to give your reader some sense of the issues or questions you will beconsidering in the paper and what, in general, you intend to say about these issues

or questions.

What sort of evidence can I supply for my ideas and interpretations? This raises

the question of the proper use of citations and quotations.

Standards of Evidence

In any academic discipline there are certain standards of evidence that must be

followed whenever a particular thesis or view is proposed. In the empirical

sciences, for example, it is generally accepted that any scientific theory should besupported by empirical observations made under specified controlled conditions.

If this standard is met then anyone who questions the theory can replicate the

conditions under which the observations that allegedly support the theory wereoriginally made in order to discover whether the observed phenomena reported to

have occurred actually do occur, and consequently whether the proposed theory is

supported by the empirical evidence.

It would be inappropriate to run scientific experiments when writing on the ideas

of a particular philosopher or philosophical topic. Nevertheless, there arestandards of evidence that also apply in philosophical writing. Two common ways

of providing evidence for a philosophical view or an interpretation of a particularphilosopher are citation and quotation.

Citation. It is accepted practice in all disciplines that when a writer mentions or

discusses at length the ideas of another writer, a footnote citation of the original

source of these ideas should be supplied. For example,

Aristotle, in the Nicomachean Ethics, states that the final

end of human action is happiness.1 [usually superscripted]

Footnote 1 would supply the bibliographical information necessary for the readerto find the page in theNicomachean Ethics where Aristotle makes this statement

(see below). This allows a skeptical reader to look up the original passage to see if

Aristotle actually says what he is reported to have said.

Quotation. When a passage from a text is particularly useful in supporting yourviews or your interpretation of an author, it may be helpful to quote the passage

directly, with a footnote citation to show where the passage can be found. Direct

quotations, however, should be usedsparingly, and should only be used in


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connection with an interpretation of the quoted material. Part of the purpose of

writing a paper is to communicate to the reader your understanding of the views

of a particular philosopher. Quoting at length from a text without providing aninterpretation of what is being said in the quoted passage fails to fulfill this

purpose.

The standard practice for direct quotations is to surround quoted passages of threelines of text or less with double quotation marks ("), and indent passages of

greater length five spaces from the left hand margin.

Footnotes. A footnote should contain complete bibliographical information of asource that is being used or quoted in your paper. This includes the author, title of

the book (underlined), translator and/or editor (if any), place of publication,

publisher and date of publication, and the number(s) of the page(s) in which the

original material discussed or quoted in your paper appears. For example,footnote 1 in the example above would read,

1 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. and ed. Martin

Ostwald (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1962), p. 15.

The number of the footnote is typically superscripted, as it is in the text of the

paper itself, and the first line is indented five spaces.

If the next footnote refers to the same source, you can simply use "Ibid.," which

means "in the same place," followed by the page number(s) of the material

discussed if these are different from the previous note. Thus if in footnote 2 youwish to refer to page 35 of the same edition of theNicomachean Ethics, you

would write2 Ibid., p. 35.

If, however, you refer to some other source in footnote 2, and you wish to refer totheNicomachean Ethics again in footnote 3, or some later footnote, you can

simply write the author's name and "op. cit.," which means "in the work cited."

For example,

3 Aristotle, op. cit., p. 35.

Footnotes can be placed either at the bottom of the page where the citation or

quotation appears, or at the end of the paper on a separate sheet (as "endnotes").

For more information on the proper form of footnotes you can look at the College

Edition of a standard dictionary, such as Webster's or Random House. These

usually have a guide to writing research papers in the back pages. Anotherexcellent source of tips and information for writing research papers is Kate

Turabian'sA Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, Fifth

Edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987).


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Primary and Secondary Sources

The works of a particular philosopher that you are writing on are called "primary

sources." It is the interpretation of these writings that should be your central focus

in the paper. But it is sometimes helpful to read the interpretations of other

philosophers who have studied and written on the same primary sources--what arecalled "secondary sources." There are a couple of things to keep in mind in

deciding what secondary sources to use in your research, and how you should use

them. First of all, you should avoid using any secondary sources that you finddifficult to understand. Some secondary sources are written by philosophers with

advanced understanding of primary source materials for an audience with similar

background knowledge. It is likely that using such sources will only confuse andmislead you in your attempt to gain insight into the ideas of a particular

philosopher.

You should also be careful not to allow a secondary source to dominate the

structure and argument of your paper. It is your responsibility as a writer to offeran interpretation and defend it. Take whatever is useful from a secondary sourcethat helps to strengthen your interpretation, but remember that it isyour

interpretation that you are developing in the paper, and so you should not simply

repeat what has already been said in the secondary source you are using.

Below are three secondary sources written for the general reader that you might

find helpful in your research.

Frederick Copleston,A History of Philosophy, 9 vols. (Garden

City, NY: Image Books, 1963). The most extensive history of philosophy

in English. W.T. Jones,A History of Western Philosophy, 5 vols. (New York:

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1975). More concise than Copleston, withvolumes covering the classical and medieval periods, early modern

philosophy, and the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 8 vols. (New York: Macmillan,1967). Generally contains sound scholarly articles on all areas of

philosophy and all major philosophers.

In addition, you might wish to use The Philosopher's Index (Bowling Green, IN:

Philosophy Documentation Center), an index of all secondary literature published

in English since 1940.

Things to Avoid

(1) Plagiarism. It is accepted practice in scholarly writing to identify quotedpassages from an original text with the use of quotation marks or indentation with

full footnote citations. This not only applies for quoted material of a sentence or

more, but also for key phrases taken directly from the text. For example,


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In The Principles of Human Knowledge, Berkeley calls the

perceiver of ideas the "mind, spirit, soul or myself,"4 and argues

that this perceiver cannot be identified with the collection of

ideas perceived.

Using a passage from any source without indicating in these ways that it is takenfrom an original source is called "plagiarism" and is not condoned in scholarly

writing. Plagiarism is considered an act of intellectual dishonesty since it isrepresenting someone else's writing as one's own.

Often inexperienced writers do not plagiarize with the intent to deceive, but

simply because they become so engrossed in the wording of the original text on

which they are writing that they incorporate phrases from the original into theirdiscussion without full cognizance of what they are doing. To avoid this it is

helpful to distance oneself somewhat from the text one is attempting to explain in

a paper. Close the book while you write and try to explain in your own words themeaning of the text. Later you can return to the text to find citations and

quotations that help to support your interpretation of it.

(2) Paraphrasing. Another closely related problem that can arise at times in thework of inexperienced writers is that rather than simply copying the text verbatim,

as occurs in cases of plagiarism, they write in close paraphrases of the text,

changing some words or punctuation, omitting other words or phrases, butretaining much of the sentence structure and verbal content of the original. Thus,

where Berkeley writes, "It is evident to anyone who takes a survey of the objects

of human knowledge, that they are either ideas actually imprinted on the senses,

or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of themind," a student may write, "Berkeley says that it is clear to everyone who thinks

about the objects of human knowledge, that these are either ideas in the senseorgans, or those perceived by paying attention to the operations of the mind."

There are a couple of problems with paraphrasing. First, paraphrasing is a

mechanical process of exchanging words and phrases for synonyms that

discourages careful consideration of the meaning of the text itself. Consequently,the writer may, in making small changes in the written text, actually change the

meaning of original passage without realizing it. When in the illustration above,

for example, Berkeley's "ideas imprinted on the senses" is rendered in paraphrase"ideas in the sense organs," the writer erroneously suggests that the ideas that

Berkeley refers to are states of the body. A second problem with paraphrasing isthat since it is a mechanical process it demonstrates little of the writer'sunderstanding of the material on which he or she is writing.

The solution to close paraphrasing is the same as the solution to unintentional

plagiarizing: you should attempt to gain some distance from the text. If you closethe book while writing you will never run the risk of writing in paraphrases.


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(3) Unexplained, Unsubstantiated, and Irrelevant Statements. It is not enough

simply to make a statement in a scholarly paper, you must explain the statementand make it clear to the reader how the statement is relevant to the topic of the

paper. If you are writing on the ideas of a particular philosopher, you must not

only be concerned with what the philosopher says, but why he or she says it, andwhy you are reporting it in your paper. It would be of little help to a reader of a

paper on Descartes' concept of nature, for example, to be told that Descartes

believed that God exists if nothing is said about the strategy he uses to proveGod's existence and Descartes' theism is never connected to his concept of the

natural world. Likewise, if you offer your own opinion on a particular issue in a

paper, it is not sufficient simply to state your opinion--you must also give yourreasons for having the opinion you have.

When writing a paper, then, you should adopt the following rules of thumb: (1)

never raise a topic unless you are prepared to provide as full an explanation as isnecessary to show its relevance to the subject matter of the paper, and (2) onlyoffer your own opinion when you are prepared to provide an argument or give

some reasons in support of it.

(4) Raising Unanswered Questions. It is the writer's task in a research paper to

offer some conclusions concerning the subject matter of the paper, whether it be a

philosophical issue or the views of a particular philosopher. The writer fails in this

responsibility when he or she raises questions in a paper while offering nosuggestions as to how these questions might be answered. You should not, then,

ask a question of your reader unless you are prepared to answer it.

You should also avoid asking rhetorical questions, that is, making statements orclaims expressed in interrogative form. Often inexperienced writers will ask a

rhetorical question when they feel unsure of a claim that they wish to make in a

paper. Thus instead of writing, "His theory of forms determined, in significantways, the solutions Plato offered to the moral issues and dilemmas of his day," a

tentative writer might make the same point in interrogative form by writing,

"Wasn't it the theory of forms that determined, in significant ways, the solutionsthat Plato offered to the moral issues and dilemmas of his day?" Attempts to avoid

the criticism of readers in this manner usually fail: it is clear in these instances,

despite the evasive wording, that a claim is being made, and the interrogativeform only serves to give the reader the impression that the writer has not

thoroughly researched the paper topic.

(5) Long Quotations. By all means avoid them. It is seldom necessary to quote


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any more than a few sentences from a primary or secondary source in order to

support a view or interpretation in a paper.

(6) Frequent Quotations. Quotations should be used only as a means ofsupporting views, ideas, interpretations, etc., that you have already explained in

your paper in your own words. They should never be used as a substitute for yourexplanation. Consequently, you should never write your paper by simply

compiling a series of quotations. The bulk of the text of your paper should be yourown writing, not quotations from primary and secondary sources.

(7) Unfair Criticism. The rule that a writer should follow in criticizing the views

of a philosopher is often called the "Principle of Charity." According to this

principle, before offering a criticism of a philosopher's views it is considered goodpractice for the writer to provide a sympathetic account of those views. Without

such an account the reader cannot judge whether the criticism of a philosopher

offered by a writer is cogent, or whether it is based simply on the writer's

misunderstanding or misinterpretation of the philosopher's views. At times writerswill deliberately misrepresent the views of a philosopher so as to make those

views easier to attack. This is considered a fallacy of reasoning called a "StrawMan Argument," and should always be avoided.

(8) Going it on your own. Perhaps the surest way to guarantee failure in a

writing project is to set out to address a topic without any grounding in the

existing writing and research in the relevant area. No researcher in any area ofstudy--science, mathematics, as well as philosophy--has been able to produce

worthwhile ideas from scratch. Research is always a matter of becoming familiar

the most recent work in a given field, and using this as the starting point for one's

own work. Doing this avoids two common pitfalls of writers who attempt to go iton their own. First, without understanding what viewpoints and directions of

thought have already been pursued, one might pursue a course of thinking that has

already been proven to be a dead end, and thus simply waste time. Second, onemight pursue a course of thinking that has already been proposed, thus in effect

"reinventing the wheel." But more typically writers who aspire to be too

independent and original fail to find any cogent line of thinking, and end withgarbled confusion, since their ideas on a given topic have not been subjected to

the conceptual frameworks, organizing structures, and clarifications that previous

work in the area has already accomplished. In any writing project, therefore, it isimportant for the writer to gain some familiarity with the established research in

the field.

Grading Criteria

It would be difficult to list all of the criteria that are relevant to evaluating the

quality of a philosophy paper, but some of the more important ones are listedbelow.


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1. Accuracy. The accuracy of factual statements or interpretations of

a particular philosopher's writings is always relevant in evaluating written

work.2. Proper Use of Citations. The use of citations and quotations in

support of the interpretations offered in the paper of a philosopher's views

will be considered in grading. In particular, citations and quotations shouldbe (a) accurate, (b) in the proper form, and (c) relevant to the topics or

issues discussed in the paper.

3. Evidence of Effort. The amount of effort put into preparing thepaper, insofar as this can be ascertained from the written work itself, will

be considered in grading. Some signs that insufficient effort has been

made are (a) work that falls short of the requested length, (b) writing that

includes frequent misspellings and/or grammatical errors, (c) sloppy orillegible writing.

4. Cogency of Thought. Central to the pursuit of philosophical

wisdom is the task of discovering reasonable beliefs that are based on

sound justifying arguments and evidence. Thus one criterion for judgingthe quality of philosophical writing is how well an author supports his/her

views with clearly stated and convincing reasoning.5. Insight. A superior paper will display some insight into a

philosophical issue or the views of a philosopher that goes beyond what is

said in class lectures and discussions.

6. Originality. A superior paper may also include some original ideasor new approaches to philosophical issues. Of course an idea or approach

is not good simply because it is original. There must still be some reasons

offered as to why the idea or approach is plausible, useful, reasonable,important, etc.--in short, why it should be entertained or accepted. (Also

keep in mind what is said in section 8 above--don't commit the error of

being too original.)

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A Brief Guide to Writing Philosophy Papers