Philosophy

Exam 1 Instructions Phil 100, Winter 2021 Roholt Montclair

Due Date: 12/30, 10PM (If you do not submit your exam on time, I will not be able to give you feedback on it.)

400 points possible

You will upload your written-exam document to Canvas. To submit, click "Assignments." The assignment will be processed through Turnitin, which is cloud-based, originality-checking software. Make sure that you understand plagiarism and its repercussions.1

Mechanics The length must be between 850–950 words. Double-spaced, size 12 font, one-inch margins on all sides. The top left of the first page of your paper should include the following heading, which should not be double-spaced: — Your name 
 — “Exam 1”
 — Title and section number of the course 
 — Name of the instructor 
 — Date — Word count of your paper

MSU “University Writing Standards” [The following is quoted from the MSU Student Handbook]

Standard English, Grammar, Style
 Your papers should be written in formal, standard English. They should be free of nonstandard constructions (such as double negatives) and of informal usage (such as "The experiment went O.K.").

Your sentence structure should be free of major grammatical problems, such as sentence fragments, subject-verb disagreement, inconsistent verb tenses, unclear pronoun reference, and misplaced modifiers.

Your sentences should be clear and concise, showing capable use of the tools necessary to a mature writing style, such as coordination, subordination, parallelism, and transitional devices. Your choice of words should be precise and appropriate to your subject. You may sometimes find it

https://www.montclair.edu/policies/all-policies/academic-dishonesty/1

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essential to use technical terms, but you should always avoid unnecessary jargon. [In this course, when you use technical terms, you must explain them.]

Mechanics And Appearance
 Your papers should contain no errors in spelling, punctuation, capitalization, or typing. You should show careful attention to matters of appearance, including legibility, neat corrections, and suitable presentation.

[Handbook quotation end]


Additional Instructions Begin the process early. Begin by jotting down the main themes, arguments, or concepts that you think the exam requires. What are the sub-themes? What is required in order to thoroughly present these themes? (You can ascertain much of this by reviewing lecture notes and by skimming the text—which you have already read carefully and marked strategically.) From these initial notes you can construct a working outline.

Concision will be a factor in your grade; avoid verbiage. Avoid grandiose introductory comments. Do not include, for example, a philosophers' biographical information or an evaluation of his or her importance. Get right down to business.

Philosophical writing should be focused on concepts, claims, and arguments; this dictates the order of presentation. Typically, you must take information from different parts of the text and present it in the best order for making the claims and their justifications clear and effective. Do not present information in the order given in the text, as you might in a book report (unless this order just happens to be effective).

Give reasons (justification) for all positions you set out, and for evaluative comments you make (thereby making your comments more than opinions).

Your imaginary reader is not someone who has read the text you are writing about; she does not already understand the claims and arguments. You must explain the positions and criticisms. You might imagine a reasonably intelligent friend or family member as your reader. Relatedly, in grading your exam, I shouldn't have to read the exam sympathetically; what you have to offer should be clearly on the page. When you use terms that have a special meaning for an author (e.g. “experience” or “a good life”), you must give that meaning.

Your exam should contain no quotations from the text; describe the author's ideas in your own words. Be sure to use very plain language. You ought to strive to breakdown the ideas into the simplest, most straightforward terms possible; this involves thoughtful word-choice and uncomplicated sentence structure (but of course, you don’t want to simplify expression at the expense of accurately representing the details and subtleties of the concepts and arguments). 


To find an objective perspective on a draft, write an outline from it.

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Do not use secondary sources; do not use internet sources. This is an exercise in working with the text, lecture notes, and discussing the issues in the discussion group, with me and others.

Feel free to ask me any questions that might occur to you during the writing process.

Grading Criteria —Does your exam have a proper heading, including the word count? And is your paper the proper length? —Is your exam written grammatically, clearly, concisely, and do you avoid quotations? —Do you unpack, flesh-out the claims and terminology sufficiently by using plain language, rather than merely paraphrasing the philosopher's statements? (In other words, is the proper imaginary reader taken into account?) —Do you demonstrate that you have read the texts carefully, and have invested time in attempting to answer the questions? —Is your example of a person clear and effective? —Are most of the relevant and important issues addressed? —Do you accurately describe the relevant claims and reasoning of the theories? —Have you answered the questions correctly?

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Exam Instructions Number the parts of your exam as below.

1. Devote about 200 words to describing a particular person’s life or a part of their life. Keep this short. Describe key relationships, work-life, goals, values, etc. This might be a person you know, someone you only know of, yourself, or an imaginary person. You’ll want to focus on the kinds of features of the life that seem to be especially relevant to well-being.

Your answers to each question below should be approximately the same length as #1. Importantly, at least 3/4 of each answer below should consist of direct explanations of the philosophical views; only 1/4 should pertain to your example. Why the emphasis on direct explanations?—because the main goal of the exam is to demonstrate that you understand the details of the claims and arguments in the texts we’ve read. You do not need to repeat what you have said in 1, just refer back to 1 concisely. Write in your own words, in plain language, with no quotations. See above regarding your imaginary reader.

2. Explain the main components of default hedonism. Assess the well-being of the person in your example in terms of the theory.

3. Explain the main components or desire theory. Distinguish between the present (actual) desire theory and the informed desire theory. Assess the well-being of the person in your example in terms of the theory.

4. Briefly describe the experience-machine thought experiment. Would the person of your example want to plug-in? Why or why not? What does this tell you about the success or failure of DH and desire theory as theories of well-being? That is, can you use your example to help the reader to understand how the experience-machine thought experiment might serve as a criticism of these two theories? (See Bramble)

In the writing process you should develop and adjust your example to help you to bring out a better and better explanation of the theories (by fine-tuning your example, which you can use for illustrative purposes). For instance, you want aspects of your example's life to enable you to draw the distinction clearly between hedonism and desire theory, by referring to features of that life to help you to explain the theories.

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