Beoordelingscriteria filosofisch essay

Criteria

http://www.mit.edu/~yablo/writing.html

Your paper must offer an argument. It can’t consist in the mere report of your opinions, nor in a mere report of the opinions of the philosophers we discuss. You have to defend the claims you make. You have to offer reasons to believe them.

So you can’t just say:

“My view is that P.”
You must say something like:

“My view is that P. I believe this because…”
or:

“I find that the following considerations…provide a convincing argument for P.”
Similarly, don’t just say:

“Descartes says that Q.”
Instead, say something like:

“Descartes says that Q; however, the following thought-experiment will show that Q is not true…”
or:

“Descartes says that Q. I find this claim plausible, for the following reasons…”
There are a variety of things you might aim to do in your paper. You’ll usually begin by putting some thesis or argument on the table for consideration. Then you’ll go on to do one or two of the following:

Criticize that argument or thesis
Offer counter-examples to the thesis
Defend the argument or thesis against someone else’s criticism
Offer reasons to believe the thesis
Give examples which help explain the thesis, or which help to make the thesis more plausible
Argue that certain philosophers are committed to the thesis by their other views, though they do not come out and explicitly endorse the thesis
Discuss what consequences the thesis would have, if it were true
Revise the thesis in the light of some objection
You’ll conclude by stating the upshot of your discussion. (For instance, should we accept the thesis? Should we reject it? Or should we conclude that we don’t yet have enough information to decide whether the thesis is true or false?)

No matter which of these aims you set for yourself, you have to explicitly present reasons for the claims you make. You should try to provide reasons for these claims that might convince someone who doesn’t already accept them.