Doing Philosophy
1. METHODS OF PROCEEDING Introductory, Selecting a topic, The irrelevance of most library research, Resolving controversies, Appreciating philosophers of an earlier period, The outline, Preparation of the 'nal draft, Writing blocks. 2. RULES OF THE GAME Plagiarism as a legal wrong (violation of another person's property right), Plagiarism as a moral wrong (cheating and lying), Quotation, attribution, and acknowledgement, Alternative formats for notes, Acceptable abbreviations in notes . 3. CRITERIA FOR GRADING STUDENT PAPERS Clarity, Presence of argument, Cogency of argument, Originality, subtlety, imaginativeness, Degree of difficulty, Ordering the criteria . 4. GENERAL PRINCIPLES OF GOOD WRITING Clarity again, Simplicity, Economy, Padding, Repetitiveness, Redundancy, Misplaced emphasis, Pretentiousness and fancy words, A miscellany of further judgments. 5. MISTAKES OF GRAMMAR Grammatical and nongrammatical writing errors, Criteria of correct grammar, A sampler of grammatical rules and their problems, Summary 6. SOME COMMON MISTAKES IN DICTION Diction and grammar, Linguistic correctness and controversy, Constantly changing usage, Linguistic liberals and conservatives, Sample mistakes of diction . 7. STYLISTIC INFELICITIES The concept of style, Prose writing as a source of pleasure, The paragraph, Motion metaphors, Smoothing the 'ow, Conspicuous over-use of favorite words, Forget adornment and eloquence, Types of poor writing styles. 8. LANGUAGE AND LOGIC Correct and incorrect reasoning, Deductive and inductive reasoning, Sentences and propositions, Arguments, Premises as unproved assumptions, Logical necessity versus psychological certainty, Necessity and contingency, Three types of impossibility. 9. BASIC DEDUCTIVE LOGIC Possible truth value combinations, Validity and soundness, definition of truth-functional connectives, Necessary and sufficient conditions, Valid deductive argument forms: a sampler. 10. LOGIC WITHOUT NECESSITY Informal fallacies, Some inductive inferences, good and bad, Begging the question, Analogical reasoning, A sampler of fallacies 11. VARIETIES OF PHILOSOPHY PAPERS Rules of strategy, Manageable philosophical tasks, Modest partial reasons, Interpretation, Generalization and counterexample, definition, Other categories of philosophical papers. 12. PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH ON THE INTERNET. APPENDIX: A CHECKLIST FOR PHILOSOPHY PAPERS.