Paper-writing Tips


Many of you have never written a paper of this type before. The following points may help you to be sure you are on the right track.
 

  1.  Ideally, your paper should begin with some assumptions your audience (some hypothetical audience, not necessarily your professor)  can readily agree with and from them reason logically to a conclusion that this audience would be unlikely to agree with initially.
  2.  You may make any assumptions you like; however, assumptions that few would agree with limit your potential audience (people you
     can persuade to agree with your conclusion) and thus weaken your argument.

          E.g.:

Assumption 1:  Most murder victims deserve to die.
Assumption 2:  Most murderers have some redeeming qualities.
  1. A paper arguing that capital punishment is not justified might begin with either of these assumptions. But because more people agree with Assumption 2 than with Assumption 1, a paper beginning with Assumption 2 is stronger (other things being equal). Notice also that the distance between the initial assumption and the conclusion is greater when Assumption 2 is used.
  2. Try to identify explicitly all the assumptions you make in your paper.
  3. Your paper should consist of a single coherent argument for your conclusion. Each part of the paper should contribute to building your argument.
  4. Try to anticipate objections and answer them. The more objections you can answer, the more readers you will persuade. It is  particularly important to respond to objections to your position covered in the course reading.
  5. You may use the arguments of others as part of your own argument where they are relevant. When you use such arguments, spell out the whole argument rather than simply referring to the author and the conclusion of the argument. There are no authorities in philosophy; everything depends on the merits of the argument itself.
  6.  Avoid making your paper primarily a summary or restatement of the arguments of others. The more of your paper that consists of your own ideas, the better.
  7.  You may make use of empirical data if appropriate. However, these data should play the same role as other kinds of assumptions in    your paper, i.e., they should be used as a starting point rather forming than the main body of the argument. (See "What is a Conceptual Paper?")