Feeding the hungry

CRITICAL THINKING AND ETHICS SECOND TERM PAPER ASSIGNMENT: ARGUMENTATIVE ESSAY This handout contains instructions for the first of three essays in PHI 2604, Critical Thinking & Ethics. Your essay must follow these instructions. Term papers deviating significantly from these instructions may receive a grade of zero and be returned without further feedback than failure to follow instructions, so read the instructions carefully and do not hesitate to ask questions if you have any. 1. Due Dates and Submission. A. This is the second of three essays, which together will determine 40% of your grade in this course. Only the best two of the three essays will be used to determine your grade. Each essay will be graded on the five-point scale described later in these instructions. The grading for this assignment is importantly different from the first assignment, so read that section carefully. B. This first essay is due Friday, March 13 at 11:59 p.m. Essays turned in after this time, will suffer a penalty of one (1) point, which increases by one (1) additional point every 48 hours thereafter, thus making Monday, March 23 at 11:59 p.m. the latest this assignment can be submitted for any points at all. C. Term papers must be submitted in .PDF format. Paper submitted using any other file format will not be accepted under any circumstances. Students who are unsure of how to convert their term papers into .pdf format should contact the professor as soon as possible for individualized instructions. Term papers must turned in electronically, either at the courses ANGEL webpage in the Drop Box under the Lessons Tab, or submitted to the professors e-mail at amobley1@mdc.edu. D. Any and all sources summarized, quoted, or otherwise used by the student must be cited in text and listed on a works cited/references page, but no particular format or style is required. Students may use end notes, footnotes, in-text citations, or any other method of citation that they prefer, so long as they provide both a list of sources and identify which information in their text came from which sources. Any term paper with content that is not cited and should be will suffer a penalty of at least one (1) point, and egregious examples will receive a grade of zero and be reported to the college as plagiarism/cheating. 2. Paper Format and Content. A. This essay will be a critical/argumentative essay, which clearly, accurately, and concisely summarized the best arguments of other authors, and critically evaluates and responds to those arguments. This essay begins as your first essay did – with a summation of others work, in the students own words, and presented as clearly and concisely as the student can manage without altering the meaning or content of the original authors argument. However, after completing this summary, the student will provide an evaluation and critical response to the two arguments presented. The student has three possible options regarding this evaluation and response: I. The student may choose to side with one of the two authors whose positions he or she summarized by either producing additional arguments that support the same conclusion as that author, or by demonstrating that the other authors position is critically flawed in some way that the students preferred argument is not. In either case, the student will have to bring to the table something new, not featured in either of the two assigned readings: either a new argument in favor of one author, or a counterargument/refutation of the other author. II. Alternatively, the student may endorse a third position, which neither of the two assigned authors defended. In this case, the student will have to provide an entirely new set of premises in support of an entirely new conclusion on the same general topic as the two readings already summarized. The student may or may not, in doing so, respond to specific points made by the other authors. III. Finally, the student may refute both of the summarized positions, demonstrating crucial flaws in each, without adopting a third position. This will require that the student clearly demonstrate at least one crucial flaw in each of the two arguments already provided on the topic, but does not require the student to adopt and defend a third position. B. Students may choose to combine elements of several of the strategies above. For example, a student could choose to refute both of the assigned authors positions (Option III) and at the same time endorse a third position (Option II); or a student could argue that one authors position is better than the other (Option I) and also argue that a third position would be even better still (Option II). C. Students may produce their additional arguments in one two fashions additional research, or original, philosophical thinking. Students who choose to do additional research may simply find, on their own, arguments of one of the three kinds described in (A), and summarize them just as they have the two assigned authors arguments. That is, a student may choose to find an author who endorses a third position on the issue that the two assigned authors discussed, or may find an author who has already written a refutation/counterargument to one or both of the two assigned authors, and may simply choose to summarize that authors work. Alternatively, the student may simply think critically and philosophically about the assigned topics and the two readings he or she has already done, and produce their own argument of one or more of the three kinds described in (A).

D. Students must choose from among the same four pairs or works they chose from for their analytical essays. They may choose the same topic they choose for the first essay, in which case the analysis portion of this assignment should already be complete or very nearly so. All eight works have been provided to you and are also available in .pdf format on the course webpage,

under the Lessons Tab. Topic 1: Global Poverty & Hunger The Singer Solution to World Poverty by Peter Singer Feeding the Hungry by Jan Narveson Topic 2: The Moral Status of Non-human Animals Puppies, Pigs and People: Eating Meat and Marginal Cases by Jan Narveson Moral Standing, the Value of Lives, and Speciesism by R.G. Frey Topic 3: Abortion A Defense of Abortion by Judith Jarvis Thomson Why Abortion Is Immoral by Don Marquis Topic 4: Affirmative Action The Case against Affirmative Action by Louis P. Pojman Affirmative Action: Bad Arguments and Some Good Ones by Daniel M. Hausman E. Your paper should be written for an audience that has a general education and a familiarity with the material we have covered in class, but not with the two works you are analyzing. Assume

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