philosophy assignments

Purpose:

The purpose of this assignment is to give you practice in identifying metaphysical questions (Outcome 2), differentiating between a rhetorically good argument and a rationally good one (Outcome 5), and bing able to reconstruct arguments given by philosophers (Outcome 6) and to have you think about the philosophers which we have read and talked about (this is partially Student Outcome 8).

Task:

There are two different assignments possible, you are to choose one of them and do it.

Task A:

Tim Crane in "The Mind-Body Problem" gives many different stances regarding the problem and their own problems. Choose one of those pairs (the stance and its problem), explain to me both and tell me why you think it is a problem or not a problem.

The point break-down is:

1. 5pts to choose a pair (make it obvious)

2. 5pts for explaining the stance

3. 5pts for explaining the problem given

4. 5pts for telling me why you think it is good or bad

Task B:

This assignment option relates to the optional content concerning AI. The paper is  Minds, Brains, and Programs by John Searle

Actions

. Being able to do this assignment will really prove to me that you can do this kind of work, as extracting the arguments and giving explanation is a lot harder than the other reading. In the paper, Searle gives a thought-experiment against strong AI. What was this thought experiment? What does he claim it shows? What was his argument? Was it any good?

The breakdown is:

1. 5pts to explain the thought experiment

2. 5pts for explaining what Searle claims this shows

3. 5pts for explaining his argument

4. 5pts for telling me why you think it is good or bad

Each of these should take you around a paragraph to answer. Each of them are worth 5pts. Since this is worth 20pts, this is worth 5% of your total grade.

Submission:

To submit this assignment, I only accept .pdf, .doc, .odt, and .docx. I do not accept .pages. You can find where to submit in the upper right of this screen. As for all assignments in this class, the standard is Times New Roman, 12pt font, double spaced, 2-3 pages (that is, at least a few words onto the second page to the bottom of the third).