Philosophy paper

by

Humanities

Paper Prompts (Choose ONE of the below prompts to respond to)

  • Was Robert Harris Morally Responsible for the murders of the two teenage boys?
  • It turns out that, instead of a brain, your parent (or guardian) has a complicated computer built from transistors, circuits, and so on. The inner workings of their computer “brain” are functionally indistinguishable from the workings of a normal human brain (leading to behaviorally indistinguishable external behavior). Does your parent or guardian have a mind?
  • Consider this slight modification to The Trolley Problem: the trolley is heading down the track towards five people who will be killed by it. Again, you are standing by a lever that, if flipped, will switch the trolley to an alternate track where there is one person who will be killed by the trolley. However, in this version, the track that the one person is on loops back around to the track where the five people are. If the trolley hits the one person, it will stop (and the five people will be safe). Basically, like before, throwing the switch will result in the one person’s death, and the five will be saved, but in this case, the one person’s body (and thus their death) is required to save the five. Is it morally permissible to throw the switch?
  • Consider the following conversation:A: I’m an atheist.B: Interesting. Why is that?A: There’s no evidence for God’s existence.B: Is the absence of evidence for God’s existence a reason to think that he doesn’t exist? Shouldn’t you just be on the fence in that case — i.e., an agnostic?A: Well, actually, not only do I lack evidence for God’s existence, I think there are a lot of things in the world that don’t make sense if God exists — like suffering, to pick just one example. Various things are best explained by God’s non-existence.B: I see it the other way around: there seem to be more things in the world that are best explained by the existence of God — fine-tuning, to pick one example.Pick a side from the above conversation and defend the position.

Paper Elements

  1. An introduction
  2. A valid argument
  3. A defense of each individual premise of that argument
  4. Two distinct (and well developed) objections to the argument and a (well developed) response to each objection
  5. A conclusion

Miscellaneous Content Issues

I am not looking for a summary of the relevant literature. The argument you present in this paper should be your own. What do YOU think about the above questions? However, in your paper, you should be critically engaging with our class material, whether in the course of defending your argument, or in the course of developing and responding to objections. You will not be able to earn a good grade on this assignment if you ignore our class material.

For this assignment, ditch the snazzy headings I’ve asked you to do in your CAs. Not much will change with respect to content as a result of this, except that I now expect you to include more explicit transition elements between the sections of your paper. Explain to the reader what you’ve just established. Explain to the reader what you’re about to do.

I expect inline citations throughout the paper, and a bibliography at the end. Note that citations aren’t just for direct quotes. If you’ve just articulated someone’s position, explained an example they use, etc., you should include a citation. I don’t care which format style you use (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.), just pick one and be consistent.

Miscellaneous Format Issues

Font size: 10-12
Font: Something legible
Spacing: Double spaced
Citations: Inline Citations & Bibliography

Length: 1800-2300 Words