Guide for Writing a Philosophy Paper

what is a counter example well you better figure that out before you start to write the paper [Music] you're enrolled in an undergraduate philosophy course and in two days from now the paper is due and so you've come here to the internet to try to figure out how to write a philosophy paper so let's just get started step one actually learn the material so there's two days and the paper is due and the paper is about aristotle and you don't really understand aristotle but you figure you have like four hours worth of time today and

maybe four hours tomorrow that you can work on the paper and so that's eight hours total and so you only have eight hours this thing is due the day after tomorrow and you're getting nervous and so it's time to just start writing this paper already right wrong you have to fight the urge to just start writing the paper immediately if you try to write a paper about aristotle without understanding aristotle then there's a 100 chance that the paper will be a mess four hours learning the material plus four hours writing the paper is a lot

better and a lot more efficient and will produce a lot better paper than just eight hours scrambling to write a paper about something that you really don't understand that's step one actually learn the material step 2 read the assignment very carefully there are basically two types of paper assignments that you will get in an undergraduate philosophy course you'll get the specific ones or you'll get a generic open-ended one which just asks you to write what i'm going to call a standard philosophy paper let's go through each of these we'll start with the specific one let's

say you're given an assignment that says present a counter-example to utilitarianism utilitarianism is the name of a moral theory if you don't know what that is don't worry about it it's just an example just know that that's some theory about which actions are morally good and which actions are morally bad at some theory okay whatever the assignment that we're imagining in this example is that you're supposed to give a counter-example what is a counter-example well you better figure that out before you start to write the paper a counter example and i have a longer video

about this that i will link to in the description a counter example is a specific type of objection so what you're going to be doing is presenting an objection to utilitarianism but not just any old objection a counter-example which is a specific type and make sure that you're objecting to the theory itself right in this course that you're taking that we're imagining you're taking right you may have read some argument in favor of utilitarianism and the argument is the series of claims that's supposed to demonstrate that the conclusion is true in this case we're imagining

you read some argument in favor of utilitarianism so utilitarianism is the conclusion the prompt says to present a counter-example to utilitarianism not to the argument in favor of it so make sure that the thing you're attacking is the theory itself we're ready to move on from specific paper prompts or paper assignments to what i'm calling the standard philosophy paper the standard philosophy paper has two and really only two parts you've got your thesis your claim that you're making it should be somewhat interesting hopefully and you've got the reasons or the argument or arguments that you're

making in favor of the thesis the point of the paper is to rationally persuade your reader of some claim two quick caveats about this one is that you might actually need one more thing that is you might need some kind of background material before you really get to your argument if you really need the background material then include it and it goes in between the two the second thing to note is that the standard philosophy paper in most undergraduate philosophy courses is not a research paper a research paper as i'm using the phrase is a

kind of paper where you have to go read tons of material you have to go find that material to yourself your professor isn't just giving it to you you have to go find it in the library and you put it all together and you put in a ton of quotes demonstrating something or whatever typically that's not what we're doing in undergraduate college-level philosophy courses we really just want you to respond to the readings that we've assigned say something marginally interesting and clearly demonstrate that it's true you don't need to go read outside material just stick

with the stuff that was assigned in the course unless the instructor says otherwise now you've read the assignment carefully it's time to move on to step three i'm not gonna write step three on the board step three is write the paper clearly clarity that's what you want you want every word every paragraph every page of this paper to be crystal clear here is how you do that tips for writing a clear paper number one hand in the smartest person's paper to explain what i mean by this i need to tell you a little bit about

what it's like to be a college philosophy professor you get a ton of papers handed in to you where the beginning of the paper is sort of like rambling and lost but the end of the paper is like pretty clear and well written and when you're writing the paper yourself you can also sense this right at the beginning it's really hard to get going but then by the time you're writing the end of the paper the words just come easily right and you know what you want to say and you get it out why is

that why is the beginning of the paper difficult to write and difficult to understand but the end of the paper comes very easily and is super clear and comprehensible the reason is that in the process of writing the paper you come to figure out exactly what it is you want to say and how you want to say it so if this happens to you then you need to do the following listen to me very carefully you need to go back to the beginning of the paper and take those early paragraphs and those early papers and

throw them in the garbage because they are poison they will ruin the whole paper those early paragraphs and those early pages they were written by someone who didn't know what they were trying to say so you just can't include them in the final paper that you hand in it's like this if you have a stupid friend you know which friend i'm talking about the one who like if someone spills a beer at a party they're gonna like slurp it up out of the carpet so none of it gets wasted i'm talking about that one say

that they're enrolled in the same course as you and they make you an offer hey i'll write your paper for you would you let them write your paper for you i mean aside from the fact that it's cheating you wouldn't let them write that paper because the paper would be really bad like they haven't done any of the reading they don't understand any of the material they don't have a plan for what they're going to say in the paper those early paragraphs that you wrote before you figured out exactly what you wanted to say those

paragraphs were written by a version of you that is stupider in the relevant sense than your current self don't hand in the work of some dumber less prepared version of yourself instead hand in the smartest person's paper if you get to the end of your writing process and finally as you're writing that last paragraph or two you feel like you know exactly for the first time what it is that you want to say and how you want to say it then you have to go back to the beginning again you're just getting started tip number

two use simple language a philosophy paper is not a place for you to demonstrate that you know some big words don't try to use words that you don't understand it's like my dad my dad will say something like i texted you an email no dad you can't text an email you can text a text or you can send an email that's how the words are used but my dad doesn't understand that because he's like old and he doesn't understand those words well if there's some philosophical technical terms that have come up in this course and

you don't really understand how to use them and you've tried but you still can't figure it out fine don't use them just use simple straightforward language that's all we're looking for tip number three say exactly what you mean and not something else okay we're going to need an example to really drive home this point so i'm going to write up on the board a couple sentences that might appear in an undergraduate philosophy paper these aren't real sentences that were written by a real student these are some sentences that i'm making up it's two sentences i'm

going to read them in its positivity mentation or the psychological inner moves not just what is in its sphere but also that without subjectivity supports footprints chemical what would you say is the biggest problem with these sentences the biggest problem with these sentences is that they don't make any sense in its positivity what does in its positivity mean mention what is mentioned well this is just a garble of words it's very confusing don't do this here is my attempt to write a much clearer much more direct version of the the thoughts behind what i think

is behind these sentences mental states cause other mental states period that's great a short sentence mental states cause other mental states and also notice something we've used the same exact phrase twice mental states mental states that'll actually come up i think as the fourth tip that you should repeat words we'll get to that in a minute for example oh there should be a comma there but for example that's great now we're getting an example okay and we know what's coming next for example smelling laundry detergent can remind one of one's grandmother super clear mental states

can cause other mental states for example so now we're going to get a specific example of a mental state causing another mental state smelling laundry detergent can remind one of one's grandmother smelling laundry detergent the smell that's the first mental state and the memory of one's grandmother that's the second mental state right so we get a sort of abstract statement and then we get a specific concrete example very clear structure here but mental states can also cause physical events okay but we're getting some contrast with what happened before we get another abstract statement about mental

states being able to cause physical events but then we get another example for example thirst can cause me to drink right thirst that's another example of a mental state and drinking moving your arm to drink something that's an example of a physical event what we've got here is short sentences repeating the words that we're using we've got parallel structure where we get an abstract statement a concrete example an abstract statement and another concrete example and also notice that all of the language is very simple right the longest word here is detergent if you write a

philosophy paper and the biggest word in your whole paper is the word detergent you're doing it right i have another longer video about how to write a philosophy paper where i go through more examples like this like difficult to understand you know passages and then i rewrite them so that they're much clearer so you get a sense of how to write clearly but we don't have time for that right now because this is the shorter quicker video because the internet has a short attention span tip number four repeat words sometimes we have multiple words in

our language that can be used to mean roughly the same thing good and right you know if we say that someone is doing the right thing or if they're doing the good thing we might just mean the same thing by those by those two sentences or those two phrases or whatever but when we're doing academic philosophy we are often using our words very very carefully and philosophers will actually use these two words to mean different things if you sort of switch between words throughout your paper then the instructor who's teaching the course is going to

be reading this paper and they're going to think wait before they said good now they're saying right do they mean something different but you don't mean something different and that's just going to confuse them so instead what you should do is just use the same word use the same phrase throughout the entire paper i get some resistance on this point because in high school i was taught and many other students were taught that you should vary your word choice the idea is that if you use the word i don't know cop in one sentence you

should use the word police officer and then in the other sentence just so that things aren't boring it sort of like mixes it up or whatever i don't know if that's good advice in other domains but when you're writing a philosophy paper you want that paper to be clear and it's more important that it's clear than that it's sort of like interesting linguistically or whatever so what we do this is the practice in all of academic philosophy is we just repeat the same word the whole time if we mean the same thing and if you

don't believe me you can just google how to write a philosophy paper and read all the stuff and every single guide that exists written by any philosophy professor or instructor or whatever will tell you to repeat the same word over and over again if you mean the same thing tip number five sign post a sign post is a sign that you post somewhere to tell your reader what's going on or what's happening up here there are no sign posts like i don't know what's coming in each sentence as i'm about to start it or in

each paragraph or whatever but down here we get the phrase for example for example is a signpost it tells you what's going to happen in the rest of the sentence it's like saying hey i'm a sentence and what i'm going to do is i'm going to give you an example that illustrates the thing that came in the previous sentence that's what those two words for example do and they're extremely useful and they make the whole paper much clearer and much easier to understand right but is actually also sort of a sign post and then we

have for example again what's good about this passage what makes it clear is that it tells you what it's going to do before it even does it also if you're you know listing off a certain number of points or items or whatever then you should number them like i've done here you just want to make it clear what's happening when and the way that you do that is by sign posting tip number six for how to write a clear paper we're gonna have to erase some of the stuff on the board to make room for

this make it clear which ideas are yours and which ideas are someone else's the primary way that you make it clear which points that you're making are your points that came from your brain and which points that you're making are some other you know philosopher that you've read in the course or something like that the main way that you do that is actually with signposting you'll use phrases like it seems to me that blah blah blah or so and so thinks blah blah blah those are little signposts that tell the reader who thought this stuff

notice also that i just use the word me you're allowed to use the word i you're allowed to use the word me in your paper that's fine what you shouldn't do is you shouldn't just make some unsubstantiated unsupported claims just because they seem a certain way to you that's not going to persuade your reader very well but you are allowed to use the word i and you should do so if you need to to make it clear which thoughts are your own and which thoughts come from someone else tip 7 for writing a clear philosophy

paper define your terms if you're using some term to mean something very specific then just say exactly what you mean by it write a sentence that says when i use the word blah blah i mean and then say what you mean by the word you can just write a sentence like that that's great that'll make the paper clearer we love that the final tip for writing a clear philosophy paper is read it out loud this is the tip that most people are going to ignore like you're going to watch this video and you're going to

nod along or whatever but then when it comes time to read your final draft out loud before handing it in most of you are not going to do it because you feel silly like sitting alone in a room and reading this thing out loud to yourself if you are capable of overcoming that sense of silliness or whatever then your papers are just going to be better if you're reading your paper and you stumble when you're reading one of your sentences and then you try to reread it and you stumble it again like like you fumble

your way through it you can't read it clearly even though you wrote the damn sentence yourself well then that's a pretty good hint that that sentence is awkward and poorly written so you should rewrite it but wait i have a complaint you say you've given us all of this stuff about how to write our papers so that they're clear but we've been reading all of this material in this course and it hasn't been clear to me so why do we have to write clearly when the authors that we're reading in this course didn't write clearly

okay good that's a good objection the answer though is that the texts that we're reading in this course by and large are actually pretty clear it's just that they're written in a different language most of the papers that we've read in this course and that you will read in most philosophy courses they're like real philosophy texts that were written not for you know the general population but they were written for other professional philosophers using all of this terminology and all of this jargon that the experts use you'd be wrong to conclude oh this text is

unclear no no it might be very clear it's just that you don't know the language we're almost done i have six more tips about how to write a good philosophy paper except for that these six ones which i'm going to go over very quickly they don't really have anything to do with clarity so they're sort of their own list of six things so i'm going to erase the board and write them up and talk about them now number one use direct quotes sparingly is that how you spell sparingly i think so direct quotes are actually

kind of a crutch you're just retyping the words that someone else has already written if you can say what they said more clearly then you should say it yourself you should just say so and so thinks that and then just say what they think in your own words that demonstrates a greater level of understanding to be able to rephrase something in your own words than merely just retyping what they said the one exception to this is if you are writing a sort of exegetical paper if you're writing a paper about plato and the thesis of

the paper is not that some claim that plato made is either true or false no no the thesis of the paper and this will be rarish in undergraduate philosophy courses i think the thesis of the paper is that plato thinks something right if what you're claiming is just that plato thinks something well then actually you want to use quite a few direct quotes because the direct quotations are the evidence in your argument you're saying something like look plato wrote this if he wrote this then he must think this other thing in that case you want

to use direct quotes a good deal but otherwise you don't want to use too many of them because they're a crutch sometimes when you're writing a philosophy paper you're going to have to have an idea of your own you're going to have to make some sort of original somewhat interesting claim what if none of those interesting original ideas have come into your mind here's what you do you make some friends or if you're not good at making friends then you then you call in some favors from some acquaintances or whatever talk to them and explain

the material to them spend 15 minutes explaining plato and what he said about whatever that you've been reading in this course in the process of explaining the material to other people you will clarify it for yourself and then most of the time an idea will just come to you some objection or different way of thinking about it or something and that's your idea that's your thesis for the paper number three here's some stuff not to begin your paper with since the dawn of time philosophers have wondered now don't do it because like you don't know

about the dawn of time and it doesn't matter if philosophers have wondered this stuff and this is just too cliche and too obvious of a way to start a philosophy paper don't do it just jump right into the meat of the paper if the paper is about plato then you can say plato claims such and such or whatever here's another way that you should not begin your paper because it's just too cliche webster's dictionary defines justice as blah blah blah don't start with this not only because lots of people tend to start papers this way

and it's annoying but also because webster's dictionary is just totally irrelevant when you're doing philosophy you get to define your own terms we don't care about webster and here are some ways not to end your paper this is just my opinion so who knows first of all i don't want just your opinion when i'm reading your philosophy paper i want your opinion backed up and supported by some persuasive argument and so you shouldn't just end on this weak note like well whatever that's just what i'm saying no no make your claim and get out end

the paper also don't end the paper with no matter what we say here the debate will rage on to eternity no i don't want the debate to rage on i want the debate to end because you wrote a perfect paper that convinces me of some very interesting thing conclusively or whatever like you might not achieve that but no no let's not let the debate rage on to eternity and then the last two additional tips here are actually points that we've already made but i'm going to write them up anyway you can use the word i

we've already made that point you can use that word just don't make unsupported statements about your own impressions or whatever and the other one is you don't need to read other material right because philosophy papers are typically not research papers so don't go reading other stuff i'm also going to record a lecture video on how to read philosophical texts for undergraduate courses if i've already produced that video then i will put a link to it in the description if not then you should search for it somehow