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Week 9

After reading your essays

Remarks on marking

  • Will send them off to you guys tomorrow morning-ish
  • Numbers less important
    • Does not affect your final grade
    • Always a bit of luck
  • Advice more important
  • Get citations right!!
  • Do send me a pdf

How to write a particularly good essay

  • General advice
    • Getting the basics down
      • Do not rely on my intelligence/patience/time
    • Being boring pays off
      • But being creative is a long term valuable skill
    • Drawing on secondary literature
      • The model for actually existing philosophical research
      • Not really required for our model
        • 'I' already in the second paragraph
      • Really helpful
        • Original thinking is good, but it's helpful if you have an understanding of the actual debate
        • Or even just knowing where other people have taken interest
  • Several stages
    1. Picking a broad topic
      • I.e something we discussed in a given week
      • It's helpful and probably mandatory that it is actually something we discussed
    2. Reread material?
      • If you have forgotten
    3. Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy
      • Really good
      • Will get you far
      • Pick a sub-topic to discuss
    4. Pick a title
      • Not everyone picked a title
      • Helps focus what you are saying
      • Either a question or a clear statement
        • Quite specific
    5. Plan
      • Write your four paragraphs as four sentences
    6. Write

Reading the Frankfurt text a bit

  • What is moral responsibility
  • What is the possibility to do otherwise
  • The purpose of these big picture questions
  • 'Someone ought to be punished when they do something wrong if they had the ability to do otherwise'