Homework
Essay Assignment Phil. 125, Prof. Dowden
	This end-of-semester essay should be six to eight pages long, typed double-space, not counting a cover page and a bibliography, if any. Discuss the following reasoning. The caterer of a wedding finds it convenient to plan in terms of the average wedding-goer who drinks 2.3 alcoholic drinks and eats 1.5 desserts. The geographer finds it convenient to describe the world as having an equator. In the same way that the average wedding-goer does not exist over and above specific, observable people at weddings, and the equator doesn't exist over and above the observable topographic features of the world, so also we should say that electrons do not exist over and above the complex of actual data they stand for. The theoretical term "electron" doesn't literally denote anything. Instead, the term is helpful to scientists in summarizing and predicting observations. The idea that electrons really exist when no one is 'measuring' them is just a useful fiction. Write as if your audience is a group of philosophically literate persons who might not accept your position nor have yet considered the reasons you have to offer. In evaluating your writing, I will be asking myself the following questions: (1) Did you make a case and not just give your undefended opinions?   (2) Is the essay clear? That is, does the essay use English well, and is it well organized, and easy to follow?   (3) Have you demonstrated an awareness of what others have said or would say on the topic?   (4) Have you demonstrated how your assigned reading is relevant to the essay topic?   (5) Did you make mountains out of mole hills? Don’t place your essay in a booklet. Just staple the pages together. Place your name only at the end of the essay so that I won't know whose paper I am reading until I get to the end. Late essays are accepted with a penalty of one-third of a letter grade per day until the end of finals week. Submit late essays by email to dowden@csus.edu Your optional bibliography page, if any, doesn't count as part of your page count. 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 sentences within quotation marks and give a footnote indicating where I can go to double check. For long quotations, indent them rather than put them in quotes. If your paper contains someone else's ideas that aren't normally considered to be common knowledge in the philosophical community, then add a footnote indicating where the person presented the ideas, even if you are not directly quoting that person. Do not give more than half your paragraphs 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, Begriffsschrift, 1879, pages 88-101." You may use endnotes instead of footnotes. The single best thing you can do to improve your essay after completing it is to let it cool for two days, then re-read it as if you are a new reader. Then revise your essay if it needs revising. Extensive tips on writing philosophy papers are available on the Philosophy Department web page at http://www.csus.edu/phil/req/writing.htm