Introduction to Ethics: Assignment advice
Assignment advice for philosophy courses
Andrea Lechler
Using philosophical literature
Tips for reading philosophical literature
• Philosophy is usually not an easy read. Take your time and make sure you understand what you are reading.
• Read a few things thoroughly, rather than a lot superficially.
• Ask yourself:
o What question does the author address?
o What is his answer? What position does he defend? What position does he attack?
o How does he argue for it? What are his premises? How does he get from there to his conclusion?
• Take notes.
What sort of literature is suitable?
If you write an essay, you should do some reading on the topic you write about and make use of it in your essay. Two or three sources are sufficient at this stage.
• The safest option is to use items on the course reading list.
• Only use published books or articles in academic journals (not e.g. Wikipedia, blogs).
• The Continuing Education Library in Rewley House allows you to borrow books and provides access to online resources (databases, e-books, journals) from library computers.
• The University of Reading Library on Whiteknights Campus offers free access to the public (this excludes borrowing and access to online resources).
• Many public libraries (including Reading and Oxford Central Libraries) have philosophy books and offer online access to many academic journals via .
• Classical texts (e.g. Hume’s or Kant’s works) are often freely available online.
• Two very useful free online encyclopaedias of philosophy:
o Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
o Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
• Most academic journals don’t have free online access (though there are some free peer-reviewed online journals, e.g.: .) But some philosophers put their published papers on their websites (sometimes linked via ). Or you might be lucky and find that someone has put a copy of someone else’s paper online.
• Feel free to ask me if you aren’t sure whether a source is suitable.
Writing the essay
Before you start writing
• Make an essay plan.
• Think about the points you want to make and how to best structure them.
The introduction
• It can be helpful to start with the introduction to make sure that you are very clear about what you are arguing for and how.
• In the introduction you should introduce the question you are addressing in the essay. You may need to explain some special or technical terms.
• The general advice now seems to be to also say how you will answer this question (rather than leaving the reader in suspension). This makes the entire essay much clearer.
The conclusion
• At the end, write the concluding section of your essay.
• Summarize the considerations you have presented in the essay and state again the conclusion you have reached.
• Don’t introduce new reasons in favour of this conclusion.
• Depending on the topic and the context of the essay, you could also highlight the significance of what you have shown, e.g. some further implications of this conclusion or some questions for future research.
Some advice for the writing process
1. Make clear what question you are addressing and what your answer to it is.
2. Argue for your conclusions; don’t merely state your personal opinion.
3. Make sure that everything you say is relevant to the essay question. Don’t go off on a tangent, even if what you have to say is correct and interesting.
4. Be accurate and generous in your description of others’ views.
5. Don’t plagiarize: Mention the sources from which you get your ideas. Put quotations in quotation marks.
6. Be concise.
7. It should be clear to the reader what you are saying. In other words, it should be very difficult to misunderstand you. The following points all help achieve more clarity.
8. Use examples to illustrate your points.
9. Avoid ambiguity and vagueness. If you can’t avoid ambiguous or vague terms, define them.
10. Use short sentences.
11. Read what you wrote as if it had been written by someone else. Do you understand what you are saying? If not, don’t expect that others will.
12. Also, don’t expect too much prior knowledge in the reader. Define special terms.
13. Start a new paragraph when you get to a new point. Each paragraph should contain about 3 to 7 sentences.
Once you have written the essay…
• … revise it.
• Adopt a critical attitude towards your own arguments and the way you have presented them.
• If necessary get rid of arguments which don’t stand up to scrutiny or rewrite sections which aren’t clear and concise enough (even if it means a lot more work).
Further guides for writing philosophy papers:
• Online guides:
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o
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o (This source has links to other guides at the end.)
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• A good book on the topic is A. P. Martinich, Philosophical Writing. An Introduction. 3rd edition. Blackwell 2005.
• The Philsoc Student Essay Prize website has examples of good essays (with some comments on their merits and demerits):
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