The essay is worth 25% of your grade.

Discuss the following controversial passage:

Your essay should be eight to ten pages typed double-spaced, not counting a cover page and bibliography.

The cover page should contain your title, the number of our course, the semester, my name, a 100 word-or-less summary of the essay, but not your own name. Instead, place your name at the end of the essay after the last paragraph of regular text so that I won't know whose paper I am reading until I get to the end.

The essay not only should be a report on what other philosophers have said but, ideally, should also demonstrate your ability to argue for or against some philosophically controversial position. The essay should demonstrate the ability to create philosophy in the analytic style. Depth of philosophical insight and quality of argumentation are the paramount factors in the grade on the essay and the exams, but English writing skill is also a significant factor.

Here are some additional points. Write an academic paper. Use a professional, analytical style; don't be chatty; don't make non-academic jokes. You should consider yourself to be a philosopher writing this essay to other philosophers. Assume that your reader can think philosophically, but may not be familiar with your specific topic.

You are required to give credit to other authors from whom you receive significant ideas. If your paper repeats word for word what someone else has said, then place those words within quotation marks and give a footnote indicating where I can go to double check. For large quotes, skip the quotation marks and indent the passage. If your paper contains someone else's ideas that aren't normally considered to be common knowledge in the philosophical community, even if you are not directly quoting that person, then add a footnote indicating where the person presented the ideas. Do not give every paragraph a footnote. A footnote is assumed not to refer back to more than one paragraph unless you say something to the contrary such as "The position on a priori truth discussed in these last three paragraphs originated in the work of G. Frege, The Grundlagen, pp. 88-101." You may use endnotes instead of footnotes. You may use the style of endnoting instead of footnoting.

The single most helpful, yet easy, way to improve your essay is to complete it; let it cool for two days; then re-read it as if you are a new reader. Better yet, have someone else do this reading and talk to you about what they thought of it. Then revise your essay if it needs revising.

Don't bother placing your essay in a special folder. Just staple the pages together.

More extensive tips on writing philosophy papers are available on the Philosophy Department web page at http://www.csus.edu/phil/req/writing.htm

Late essays are accepted with a penalty of 1/3 of a letter grade per day counting weekends. Submit late essays as soon as possible by email to dowden@csus.edu with the subject line of "Phil. 181 essay" so my spam filter won't dump your email into my delete folder.

Some of the articles in our course textbook are relevant to the essay topic. I've placed many books on the essay's topic on reserve in the library. You might look at the article "Time" in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, though some researchers complain that this article's treatment of the topic is heavily weighted toward one side of the issue. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy online is useful. The Philosopher's Index in our library will point you toward other resources.