essay assignment

 Do the following using complete, grammatical sentences.

1. State your thesis statement. Define theoretical terms and expressions and any other terms in your statement that should clarified or disambiguated. The expression ‘sound deductive argument’ is a theoretical expression. A theoretical term or expression is one that has a distinct definition that is used in scientific, philosophical, legal or other truth-seeking discipline. For example, ‘point’ has a theoretical definition in geometry that has a meaning different from everyday uses of point, as in, e.g. ‘the point of the knife’, and ‘the two roads come to a point near Oviedo’.
Use the definition of ‘deductively sound argument’ from my lectures. It is the contemporary definition from the science of logic.
Because ‘deductively valid argument’ is part of the definition of ‘deductively sound argument’, you’ll have to define when you define ‘deductively sound argument’. Again, use the correct definition from that, the one used in class.
When it comes to theoretical definitions, you should likely directly quote you source. If my lecture/s is the source, you can site it as follows.

James Durham, Course Lecture, Lawrence Technological University, 2020.

The reason a direct quote is likely better for ‘valid’ and ‘sound’ definitions is that several students tried to put those definitions in their own words these semester, and although these efforts all showed partial understanding of the definitions, they all got something wrong about the meaning of the expression they where explicating.

2. State your main reason (the premises you think is strongest) for your thesis.

3. State what you believe is the strongest objection to your own thesis.

4. Post at least one helpful comment about another student’s positing.
The comment can be helpful because it supports OR raises a good challenge to a student’s thesis or premise/s. The latter will help your fellow student write a better paper, as they can respond to your relevant challenge. Any comment aimed at being helpful is acceptable, so long at it is thoughtful and polite.