Writing Exercise #2

Imagine that you're trying to explain the argument to someone else who has never read it before. They may be unfamiliar with technical terms like "dualism" and "interactionism." Your job is to give a little bit of set-up, so that they know what view is being discussed (this may involve summarizing material that precedes the particular passages we've assigned). Then you should explain how the argument in the assigned passage goes. Your goal is not just to list or give a sentence-by-sentence copy of the author's text, with some words and phrases switched around. Instead you want to reconstruct the argument in your passage, in a way that makes its organization clear.

We don't want you to criticize or defend the views or arguments you discuss. Just set them out, as carefully as you can, and in your own words. Learning how to do this well is an extremely important philosophical skill, and it's much harder than you'd expect.

Try to be as rigorous and clear in this writing assignment as you would be when writing a more substantial paper.

• Choice 1: the two-paragraph passage that starts with "Has the dualist any way to respond to this counter-argument?", on p. 161-2 of the van Inwagen article.
• Choice 2: the three-paragraph passage that starts with "We turn now to a third argument," on p. 164 of the van Inwagen article.

This exercise will not be graded, but everybody must do it. It will be due by 11 PM on Monday Oct 2.