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About Philosophy 9^th ed., Appendix
How to Write a Philosophy Paper

Five elements a successful philosophy paper should encompass

1. The statement of the thesis.
2. Analysis and explanation of the thesis.
3. Arguments in support of the thesis.
4. An examination of objections to the thesis.
5. A response to the objections.

A Simple Foolproof Method

1. The Thesis

• A thesis is a statement that makes some clear, definite assertion about the subject under discussion
  • a statement is a declarative sentence, e.g., "God exists."
    • it asserts something that's either true or false,
    • not commands or imperative sentences: "Believe in God"
      • commands can be obeyed or disobeyed, but they are neither true nor false
      • they have no truth values
    • not exclamations: "Hooray for God!"
  • an appropriate thesis for discussion should be arguable or controversial
• Examples
  • The unexamined life is not worth living.
  • No one does wrong voluntarily.
  • A perfect world can contain evil.
  • Some knowledge is based on innate ideas.
  • All knowledge is based entirely on sensory experience.
  • Only minds and their thoughts exist.
  • Thoughts are electro-chemical processes in the brain.
  • The will is free.
  • Every event has a cause.
• Topics: indicate the matter under discussion but don't actually assert anything one way or the other
  • Wolff's Examples
    1. The scientific status of astrology
    2. Abortion: Pro & Con
    3. Why I believe in God
  • Discussion of 3: while it does presuppose that I believe in God (a statement... true of some false of others)
    • I believe in God is not appropriately controversial or controversial.
    • It's not philosophy, it's autobiography.
      • It's not really subject to argument.
      • Bald assertion carries the day: "This I Believe"
    • Everyone should believe in God -- now there's a thesis.
    • A philosophy paper is not just witnessing for what you believe, but arguing or presenting reasons for believing it.
    • Your thesis should be debatable
• Example thesis: "my pocket calculator (Cal) is a thinking thing"

2. Analysis and Explanation of the Thesis

• Define crucial terms if possible, or otherwise indicate what you mean by them
  • by "thinking" I mean the possession of one or more commonly recognized mental properties or abilities
    • particularly those higher rational abilities, e.g., calculation, having meaning or content (what philosophers call "intentionality"), "which have traditionally been held to distinguish us from and exalt us above the lower animals"
      • these being "the mental abilities we are tempted (if not practically compelled) to attribute to computers"
      • by "calculate" I mean add, subtract, multiply, and divide, these being Cal's apparent mental abilities
    • According to Descartes a thing that thinks is "a thing which doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing, is unwilling, and also imagines and has sensory perceptions" (1642, p.19); and similarly.
    • My dictionary (Webster's New Collegiate), under "think", mentions conceive, judge, consider, surmise, expect, determine, resolve, reason, intend, purpose, reflect, infer, opine and decide.
    • In this ordinary generic sense of the term, I take it, it's undeniable that calculating is thinking, and -- if my arguments are sound -- that my pocket calculator calculates and consequently thinks.
• Guard against likely misunderstandings
  • I am not claiming that Cal is a fully human thinker or capable of a broad range of cognitive abilities, like a normal person, or that Cal can pass the Turing Test.
  • Still less am I claiming that Cal has an immortal soul, or free-will, or sentience, or self-awareness.
• Set the thesis in context: what larger issues and questions does it bear on and how?
  • The problem of Other Minds is not just about how one knows that other people are thinking or intelligent beings; it is also about how we know that rocks and roses aren't."
  • "[Descartes] defends his denial that any [nonhuman animals] have any mental states at all (1646, p.208) on the grounds that "there is no reason for believing it of some animals without believing it of all, and many of them such as oysters and sponges are too imperfect for this to be credible." Similarly, I suppose, one reason for denying that any computers have any mental states at all is that there are likewise some of them, e.g., our pocket calculators, "too imperfect for us to believe it of them"; or conversely, it may be feared that if any computing device is rightly credited with any mental abilities at all -- even if 'only' the ability to add -- "then the barriers between mind and machine have been breached and there is no reason to think they won't eventually be removed." (Dretske 1985, p.25).

3. Arguments in Support of the Thesis

• 1. Calculating is thinking.
  2. Cal calculates.
  C. Cal thinks.
• The argument is valid: if the premises are true the conclusion necessarily follows
• Premise 1 is an immediate consequence of the characterization "thinking" given above.
• Premise 2 is based on observation of Cal's behavior -- we call Cal "a calculator": so it all comes down to the question "Do we have reasons to deny the observational evidence?"

4. Examination of the Objections to the Thesis

• The main objections I consider attempt to show this syllogism commits the fallacy of four terms on the grounds that "calculation" is only equivocally predicable of Cal; that Cal doesn't really calculate because Cal's performances lack features essential for genuine cognition or calculation. These features generally fall under the headings of four traditional "marks of the mental": consciousness, autonomy, intentionality, and unity.
• Consciousness is required for genuine calculation & Cal isn't conscious
  • The argument from consciousness, holds that the essence of thinking is its subjectivity: there must be something that it's like to be a pocket calculator for the calculator, or else it's not really calculating.
• Autonomy, or libertarian free will is required for genuine calculation & Cal has no such free will
  • Computers, generally, "can only do what we tell them"
• Intentionality: calculations have meaning but Cal and computers generally don't really mean anything by the symbols they process
  • the calculation that 7+5=12 is about the number that '7' '5' and '12' represent
  • The Intentionality Objection, as Searle (1980) puts it, is that the symbols or information computers process are only symbolic of something, or information about anything, to us; that they are not of or about anything to the computer.
  • Dretske sets out an Intentionality Objection that stands or falls independently -- as Searle's formulations, do not -- of appeals to consciousness. What Dretske takes to be the missing ingredient -- what we have that computers lack -- are causal connections between the signs and the things they signify. Put crudely, the difference between my contentful belief that dogs are animals and a computer's 'representation' of this same information -- say by storing a Prolog clause [that says] animal(X):-dog(X) in RAM, is that my representation came to be, or could be, elicited by the actual presence -- the actual sights and sounds -- of dogs. It is these perceptually mediated connections between my tokenings of the English word "dog" and actual dogs that makes that word signify those animals for me; and it is for want of such connections that computer representations -- tokenings, say, of the Prolog atom dog -- lack such signification for the computer.
• Unity:
  • Unity: the idea is that minds are not composed of parts (as bodies are), but are rather indissoluble units
    • a claim that ... underwrites perhaps the most important traditional argument for the immortality of the soul
    • which has been continually in the background of our whole discussion to this point. Each of the various objections we considered makes some tacit appeal to unity: each claims that disconnected from some further mental abilities or events (consciousness, or autonomy, or intentionality) Cal's seeming calculation is not really calculation at all.
  • With regard to Cal's calculation, a proponent of the Unity Objection might respond that if calculation is the only cognition-like thing Cal can do, then it's not thinking, and perhaps not really even calculation. The Unity Objection, rather than claiming that some specific mental ability is necessary for thought or calculation, claims what is essential to something's thinking, or even calculating, is having enough interconnected mental abilities of various sorts. Even if we stop short of the strong Cartesian demand that thought must be "a universal instrument which can serve for all kinds of situations" (Descartes 1637, p.140), perhaps we can at least require that would be thought processes should be flexible instruments which can serve for various situations.

5. Response to the Objections

• Consciousness
  • The trouble with this objection is that it can't be substantiated just how far (beyond myself) this mysterious 'inner light' of consciousness extends.
  • if consciousness were our basis for deciding whether any intelligent seeming thing was really a thinking subject, then one should have skeptical doubts about other minds. So, if we don't, and shouldn't, seriously entertain such doubts, this seems to show that we don't (or shouldn't) appeal to consciousness to decide what is and isn't thinking.
  • The general argumentative strategy is that no proposed criterion of thinking is acceptable if it's application leads to the conclusion that people don't think, or that we have no way of telling this, in cases where we think we know well enough that they do. The demand that criteria proposed be applied consistently to human and machine, and not selectively to machines is unexceptionable: otherwise one begs the question.
• Autonomy
  • Consciousness based version: if our awareness of and basis for attributing free will or autonomy is supposed to be introspective then this objection inherits all the problems of the Objection from Consciousness: it would be impossible to know (or even have justified belief) that anything or anyone (save oneself) really is a thinking subject of mental states.
  • Without reliance on the evidence of introspection our own claims to be thinking could be no better grounded (and might be worse) than libertarian metaphysical doctrine.
  • With consciousness of autonomy as the criterion of autonomy, it seems we can never know that anyone else has it: without consciousness it seems we can't even know that we ourselves do.
• Intentionality
  • As Searle puts it the Intentionality Objection collapses into the Consciousness Objection: difference between my calculation and Cal's 'calculation' is just supposed to be that there is something that it's like subjectively or introspectively for me to calculate that 2+9 is 11, but nothing that it's like for Cal.
  • Dretske's version, however, stands or falls independently of appeals to consciousness, but
    • First, it has less force than Dretske seems to think, even in the most favorable cases, i.e., of signs for perceptible things such as dogs or (perhaps most favorably of all) perceptible qualities such as color or pitch.
      • Dretske's account of reference threatens the conclusion that perceptually deficient humans are meaning deprived also. Presumably (on this view) someone blind from birth cannot signify anything by color words; nor the congenitally deaf by words like "pitch" and "music". Yet, I believe there are good reasons (see, e.g., Landau & Gleitman 1985) to hold that such persons can use words to refer to such things despite their lack of perceptual access to them.
      • On Dretske's view, how are we to avoid the absurd consequence that most of the words in Helen Keller's books, though signifying things to us, signified nothing (or at least much less) to Helen Keller
    • Second, not all words or signs are as rich in sensory associations as "red" or "dog". Where signs, such as numerals, represent abstractions such as numbers, it seems less plausible to think significance requires causal links to the things signified or any very robust causal-perceptual links with anything.
      • At this point, the only plausible move for a causal-perceptual theory of reference seems something like this: in order to mean numbers by numerals one must be able to apply numerals to items and events in the world, e.g. in counting; so in order to mean two by '2', say, one must be capable of reliably tokening '2' when presented various pairs of objects or events.
      • Someone in a state of total (external) sensory deprivation might still count their breaths, or even how many times they performed a carry in doing a bit of mental addition; and if this is all that's required, it's clear that it's not enough to rule out Cal. If all that's required "of any aspiring symbol manipulator is, in effect, that some of its symbols be actual signs of the conditions they signify, that there be some symbol-to-world correlations that confer on these symbols an intrinsic meaning" (Dretske 1985, p.29), then so long as Cal can count key presses and iterations of loops, this would seem causal-perceptual linkage enough to support his claim to mean numbers by his numeric tokens.
      • Perceptually impoverished as Cal is, it seems Cal has enough reality contact to support his claim to mean two by [the binary numeral] '10'.
• Unity
  • while limited capacities may suffice to exclude hard-wired special purpose devices like Cal from the ranks of the thinking; it does not seem so effective against the claims of programmable machines, such as my lap top computer. Indeed, much of the deep philosophical interest of AI derives from the fact that programmable digital computers are in fact flexible, and even -- in the sense that "they can mimic any discrete state machine" (Turing 1950, p.441) -- universal instruments.
  • This presents us with a conundrum: suppose my lap top computer (Sparky) were programmed to emulate Cal. Suppose Sparky computes the same arithmetical functions, by the same procedures, as Cal. Now it seems odd to say Sparky calculates, but Cal doesn't, just because Sparky has other abilities (or at least can be programmed to have other abilities). If both compute the same functions using the same algorithms aren't they -- in the sense relevant to cognitive attribution -- doing the same thing?
  • Perhaps the Unity Objection, for all its traditional and intuitive warrant, is misguided. As Dretske remarks, "We don't, after all, deny someone the capacity to love because they can't do differential calculus. Why deny the computer the ability to solve problems or understand stories because it doesn't feel love, experience nausea, or suffer indigestion?" (Dretske 1985, p.24).
  • What the Unity Objection seems to require -- and offer no prospect that I can see of providing -- is some account not only of how many and which other mental abilities a thing must have in order to calculate (or think), but why.

Tips, Hints, and Warnings

1. Write clear, grammatical, correctly spelled, proper English prose.
• In order to be true statements have to first be meaningful
• In order to be persuasive statements and argument have to first be comprehensible.
2. Don't wander from the basic outline when writing your paper, and don't mix together materials that belong in different parts of the paper.
3. Use language as precisely as possible
   • Say true things the Ziff rule
     • Corollary: Don't exaggerate
       • that "the existence of universals has been a disputed question ever since Plato them" is true
       • that "the existence of universals has been a disputed question forever" is false.
   • Say them as specifically as possible
4. Asking a question without answering it is not an appropriate way to present an argument.
   • The trouble with rhetorical questions: the audience may not supply the answers you are assuming to be obvious.
   • Rhetorical questions often are attempts to substitute rhetoric for argument.
5. It is perfectly all right to use an argument from a lecture you have heard or a book you have read.
   • Give credit where credit is due.
   • But "use any arguments you like as long as you are willing to stand by them." (Wolff)

Notable quotes

• "Brevity is the soul of wit." -- William Shakespeare
• "If I had more time, I would write a shorter letter." -- Blaise Pascal
• "You know that I write slowly. This is chiefly because I am never satisfied until I have said as much as possible in a few words, and writing briefly takes far more time than writing at length." -- Carl Friedrich Gauss

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