Week five: Essay writing and more nagel
Essay writing
Citations
- What you need to cite
- Ideas
- Claims about other people
- Correct format
- Chicago manual of style
- Notes and bib
- Short notes?
- Always give page number
- lucas@henri.lv
- How do create a citation
- Difficult to teach because there are different ways of doing it
- By hand
- If you're not comfortable with computers
- Boring but straightforward
- Just read document and do it
- Software
- Zotero
- more accessible
- LaTeX
- extra brownie points
- biblatex-chicago package
- I can help
Other submission formatting stuff
- Just to make me happy
- Double spacing, large margins
- English style (quotations e.t.c.)
Structure
- Starting from the 4 sentences
- I.e. essay plan
- Building up from there
- 300-400 words total
- Not very much
~ 4 sentences per paragraph
- Explaining further your point
- Think of it as laying out premises that lead to the claim
- Explaining concepts
Other advice
- Write for the idiot
- In particular in this format, where there is no space to do anything fancy
- Clarity, Clarity, Clarity
- Answer the question and make clear you are answering the question
Potential questions
- Does Nagel show being alive to be positive?
- Does the analogy with the brain damaged person show that you can wrong someone
who is no longer alive?
- Does the comparison with other ways of being wronged after death make more
feasible the idea that death wrongs the person who dies?
- Does Nagel successfully show how, by his account, you are not wronged if you
are born later?
Nagel
Disagreements about nagel interpretation
- With Malte & Maxi
- Difference between different versions
- Later on more explicit about experience being good in itself
- Significance of the disability example
- Perceiving, desiring, etc all still there, but in a less advanced form
A single practice exercise
- Nagel claims that death is bad because experience is something good in itself
- I disagree because there are some things that we choose unconsciouness over
experiencing e.g. surgery.
- One could object that it is not experience in itself that Nagel values, but
rather things like e.g. perception, that can exist to differings degrees and
in different ways, some of which might be better missed.
- I would respond that, if it is not perception in itself that he values, but
some positive part of it, it seems that he does not value it for itself, but
rather whatever this positive thing is 'good perception', and it is not clear
that we have more of that than bad.
- Come up with an expanded version of each on your own (add 3-4 sentences). We
will then discuss our results as a class.
Essay writing
Citations
- What you need to cite
- Ideas
- Claims about other people
- Correct format
- Chicago manual of style
- Notes and bib
- Short notes?
- Always give page number
- lucas@henri.lv
- How do create a citation
- Difficult to teach because there are different ways of doing it
- By hand
- If you're not comfortable with computers
- Boring but straightforward
- Just read document and do it
- Software
- Zotero
- more accessible
- LaTeX
- extra brownie points
- biblatex-chicago package
- I can help
- Zotero
Other submission formatting stuff
- Just to make me happy
- Double spacing, large margins
- English style (quotations e.t.c.)
Structure
- Starting from the 4 sentences
- I.e. essay plan
- Building up from there
- 300-400 words total
- Not very much ~ 4 sentences per paragraph
- Explaining further your point
- Think of it as laying out premises that lead to the claim
- Explaining concepts
Other advice
- Write for the idiot
- In particular in this format, where there is no space to do anything fancy
- Clarity, Clarity, Clarity
- Answer the question and make clear you are answering the question
Potential questions
- Does Nagel show being alive to be positive?
- Does the analogy with the brain damaged person show that you can wrong someone who is no longer alive?
- Does the comparison with other ways of being wronged after death make more feasible the idea that death wrongs the person who dies?
- Does Nagel successfully show how, by his account, you are not wronged if you are born later?
Nagel
Disagreements about nagel interpretation
- With Malte & Maxi
- Difference between different versions
- Later on more explicit about experience being good in itself
- Significance of the disability example
- Perceiving, desiring, etc all still there, but in a less advanced form
A single practice exercise
- Nagel claims that death is bad because experience is something good in itself
- I disagree because there are some things that we choose unconsciouness over experiencing e.g. surgery.
- One could object that it is not experience in itself that Nagel values, but rather things like e.g. perception, that can exist to differings degrees and in different ways, some of which might be better missed.
- I would respond that, if it is not perception in itself that he values, but some positive part of it, it seems that he does not value it for itself, but rather whatever this positive thing is 'good perception', and it is not clear that we have more of that than bad.
- Come up with an expanded version of each on your own (add 3-4 sentences). We will then discuss our results as a class.