Synopses & Reviews
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, drafts, proper and improper quotation, argument development and evaluation, principles of good writing, style, criteria for grading student papers, and a review of common grammatical and dictional errors. In addition, the book devotes several chapters to basic concepts in logic, which have proven invaluable for philosophy students in the course of critically considering and writing about the ideas and arguments they encounter.
Synopsis
Write a good philosophy paper with DOING PHILOSOPHY: A GUIDE TO THE WRITING OF PHILOSOPHY PAPERS! With coverage of topics such as outlines, drafts, proper and improper quotation, argument development and evaluation, principles of good writing, criteria for grading student papers, and a review of common grammatical and dictional errors, this philosophy text provides you with the tools you need to prepare a good argument and write a good paper. Models of excellent and poor philosophy papers provide you with real-world examples of what to aim for and what to avoid.
About the Author
Joel Feinberg (Professor Emeritus) is recognized as a leading political and social philosopher. He is well known both as a leading scholar and as an excellent teacher. He has published widely on moral issues such as capital punishment, the treatment of the mentally ill, civil disobedience, and environmental ethics. Before joining the University of Arizona faculty, he served on the faculties of Brown, Princeton, and Rockefeller Universities. He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship in 1987-88 to work in Japan. He was chairman of the National Board of Officers in the American Philosophical Association for three years in the mid-1980s.
Table of Contents
Preface. 1. Methods of Proceeding. 2. Rules of the Game. 3. Criteria for Grading. 4. General Principles of Good Writing. 5. Mistakes of Grammar. 6. Some Common Mistakes in Diction. 7. Stylistic Infelicities. 8. Logic and Language. 9. Basic Deductive Logic: Some Fragments. 10. Logic Without Necessity. 11. A Model of an Excellent Paper. 12. A Model of a (Very) Bad Paper.