Research
berli
InstructionsGrading.docxInstructions and General Advice
You have received a guide I composed for my Intro students (“Writing for Philosophy”) so it mentions advice on picking topics that is more unrestricted than what you have to do for the paper in this class. However, all the general advice that is offered still applies!
The #1 thing that is different is that your topic in this paper MUST deal with ethical issues in the business world. I've mentioned two routes you might explore for finding a topic:
- There is a general ethical issue that you are interested in (like Affirmative Action or Whistleblowing) and you will just enter into that discussion directly
- There is a case or event that occurred (like the housing crisis of 2008) that interests you, and you want to explore the ethical perplexities that this case exemplifies or brings to our attention.
EITHER WAY, you will need to talk about ethical issues that will have a general application. I don't want to see your paper only aimed at telling us what should have been done in a specific situation. You can talk about specific cases, but only as a way of drawing out the more general controversies that emerge.
To help you in anticipating what you need to be doing, here are the main objectives I want you to aim at in composing this paper:
- You have a clearly defined position or thesis you will be defending with arguments. In other words, this paper is NOT supposed to be a survey of all the different positions and arguments in the debate, told in the perspective of an impartial observer.
- The debate that you contribute to is something substantial and controversial. In other words, the position you take has significant and legitimate opposition. I don't want you arguing against straw-men. You want to have a topic that actually perplexes us and where we need to have someone doing some work thinking about it to work out what the truly right answer is. In your paper you will be providing this service to us: thinking deeply and contributing to some question where we're not sure what the answer is. An example of a bad topic/thesis in this regard would be: "Embezzling money is unethical".
- You engage with opposing perspectives. In other words, you charitably consider the best that your opponents have to offer in competition with your position/thesis. This might look like presenting and attacking the arguments your opponents use to defend their positions. Or it might look like considering what objections your opponents might make to the arguments you are making.
- Your paper shows evidence of editing and organization. The only way I have of evaluating this is by looking for 1) how clearly you've been able to articulate your points 2) how much irrelevant content is included 3) how sensibly you've arranged your thoughts in the structure of the paper. So that's what I'll look for!
- I WON'T be grading you on the basis of how effective I think your arguments are! This doesn't mean you should feel you have room to be sloppy - sloppy arguments will still run afoul of some of these other criteria. But of course, I won't be grading you worse if I disagree with your position or think that I can poke holes in your arguments.
- Finally, I will be using length as a (minimal) grading criterion. The intended length of the paper is somewhere in the range of 2500-3000 words, but if you want to write more, I’m definitely open to that. The MINIMUM word count for the paper is 2000 words. I will NOT accept any papers that are below this! If you send me a paper with 1999 words, I will send it back and ask you to send me an extra word. Seriously! I will not accept it as a completed assignment. If you are struggling to get to 2000 words, then there is probably something else that we can be doing to make the paper more robust anyway. So if you find yourself in this boat, contact me ASAP and we’ll try to diagnose what is happening and what to do about it! If you are doing all of the things that I describe in this document and in the “Writing for Philosophy” guide, you will most likely already be over the 2000 word min.
And as always: use me as a resource! I can be VERY helpful in guiding you through this assignment. At the very least you should try to clear a topic with me to make sure you aren't heading off in a direction that will make trouble for you down the road. Choosing a topic is one of the very HARDEST parts of this assignment, and you can make your life very difficult if you have a bad one.
Good luck everyone!
Grading Criteria
There are a few areas that I’ll be especially looking at in determining what grade to give your final paper:
· Topic/Thesis:
· 1) Is your topic a topic in business ethics? That is, is this a debate about what is actually right/wrong or good/bad (not just a report on what events have actually happened in the world) This paper is supposed to be defending a position that is taking a stand on how the world ought to be, not how it actually is. Also, is this a topic having to do with realities relating to commerce (the business part)?
· 2) Is the debate you have framed a controversial one? Is your opponent a reasonable opponent? Do they have a plausible chance of being right and posing a threat to your position? Having a strong opponent to wrestle with might be the most important thing I care about for this paper. Without an opponent worth fighting, the whole paper loses its point. I’ve been telling some of you to think about it this way: this paper isn’t a pulpit; it’s not a time for you to preach your opinions; this is you providing a service for us by thinking about a difficult issue that we are not sure how to handle and reporting back to us about what you uncovered by thinking about it more deeply.
· The Defense:
· I won’t be grading you on how effective I think your arguments are. It isn’t like if I can refute your position I’m going to mark you down! Instead, I’m mainly interested in first, seeing signs that you’ve thought deeply about the issues. The major way I’m able to do this is by seeing how many ideas you’re cramming into your defense. Number of words is unimportant – conceptual richness is everything. Don’t belabor points longer than you need to in order to get the idea across. Just because you have more words in you doesn’t mean they need to get out on the page! In writing, the more succinct you are, the easier it is to keep the ideas flowing. When you drag them all out, everything slows down (I won’t be grading you on this, I’m just making a suggestion).
· As a secondary consideration, I’ll be looking to see you engage with your opponent as you mount your defense. The best papers will be arguing to convince the opponent by appealing to independent reasons rather than preaching to the choir and using rhetoric. The best papers will also consider ways in which their defense could get challenged by their opponent (the presenting of possible objections), and then responding to those objections.
· Finally, while I said above that I won’t be grading based on how good I think your arguments are, I WILL be grading as a tertiary consideration whether I think your arguments are addressing the issues head on or if you are quibbling over minor details and ignoring the biggest concerns. This is difficult to grade since it relies on my judgment of what is important – thus, I will not be giving a lot of weight to this, and I’ll be mostly concerned with those issues of importance that are obviously important (not subject to controversy).
· Organization
· The major thing I look for here is sign of reflective editing. I won’t be grading super rigorously here (certainly not grading for grammar!), but where there are signs of sloppy organization or signs that no organization or editing happened at all, I will penalize your score. Clarity is the goal here - not following a model (even though models are helpful!). I don’t really care what form your paper takes as long as it is a reasonable way of presenting your ideas in a clear way. I might recommend even little title breaks to clearly mark off separate arguments or discussions of particular objections etc. You can be creative and original, and that’s ok. What I don’t want to see is what I call “shotgun” or “barf” papers – papers where a student just writes a stream of consciousness, maybe does some quick spell checking, and then turns it in.
· (For 360 students ONLY): Research Sources
