The scores we gave you on these assignments are based on our grading rubric, only in this case we used only some of the categories and the “following instructions” component was worth only 5 points instead of 10. So for these exercises the maximum score was 20. Here is our approximate sense of how the numerical scores for this assignment translate to letter grades.
| A | 19 and above |
| A- | 17.5 to 18.5 |
| B+ | 16 to 17 |
| B | 14.5 to 15.5 |
| B- | 13 to 14 |
| C+ | 11.5 to 12.5 |
| C | 10 to 11 |
| C- | 8.5 to 9.5 |
| D | 7 to 8 |
G1. Use quotes very sparingly. The flow of the writing is best if you put things in your own words. Also, excessive use of quotes will make us suspect that you do not know what you are talking about.
G2. It is generally a good idea to break up your writing into paragraphs. Paragraphs should usually be 2-6 sentences long, and should usually obey a one-thought-per-paragraph rule.
G3. Try to avoid using phrases like “in my opinion,” especially to preface statements that are not matters of opinion. A few students said things like “In my opinion, the author argues in this passage that…” Yes, you have an opinion about what the author argued. Your opinion may be right or wrong. But the reader’s attention and interest should and will be on what your opinion says — whether the author does argue what you say they do — and on the value of those arguments, rather than on the fact that you think this is what’s happening.
G5. Many of you used terms that have a technical meaning in philosophy incorrectly. For example, “validity” was often attributed to things that were not arguments. As we are using the term, this is not correct. It is only arguments that can be valid or invalid. (See also point G9 below.) Be sure to explain any terms that are being used in a special way. Another example: the phrase “simple object” in the argument in passage two. You should explain to us what this means.
G6. Many of you made what we call “category mistakes” in parts of your writing. For example, some of you wrote things like “Dualism believes that there are non-physical souls,” but note that “Dualism” is a view - it’s not the kind of thing that can have beliefs. Dualists can have beliefs (probably ones inspired by dualism!) but not the view itself.
G7. What makes someone a “dualist”? This label is applied to philosophers who think we have souls, which are immaterial substances that have our thoughts and feelings. Some dualists will say that you are identical to your soul; these dualists will deny that your body is part of you. Instead it’s just a physical vehicle that you control. Other dualists will say that when you have a body, your body is part of you. Some of them will even say it’s an essential part of you, that is, you are a combination of a body and a soul, and cannot exist without either part. Other dualists say you need a soul to have thoughts and feelings, but you can survive having that soul replaced. (We’re not going to explore this last view in our course.) All of those are things one can say, while still counting as a dualist. They are different options that dualists make different choices about. You shouldn’t include any of these things that dualists disagree about in a definition of dualism.
G8. You should be clear on how philosophers use and understand the words “body”, “mind/self”, and “soul”. These are not synonyms for each other. How these words are used may sometimes vary depending on who’s in the debate, and what’s being taken for granted. For example, in our discussions it’s taken for granted that we really do have bodies; it’s taken to be an open possibility, but disputed, whether we also have souls. (In other discussions, it might instead be taken for granted that we have souls, and not be taken for granted that we really have bodies.) Our ground rules are: We definitely have bodies, and everyone agrees these are wholly physical. Everyone also agrees that if souls exist, they are not physical; but it’s disputed whether souls do exist. Everyone also agrees we have minds/selves. But it’s disputed whether those words name any kind of individual substance or Thing, in the first place, and if they do, whether it’s a physical/material object or an immaterial soul. The words “mind/self” are “neutral” words, in that most philosophers agree there are these things, but then have competing pictures/theories about what they amount to.
In your writing, we sometimes see you using the word “soul” when you should instead be using a more neutral word like “mind”; or doing the reverse, that is, saying “mind” when you should be saying “soul” instead. For example, if you begin your submission saying something like “Minds are non-physical,” you probably meant to say “soul” instead. Everyone will agree that souls — if they exist, which is a big “if” — are non-physical. So that’s something you could reasonably take as a premise or starting point in your submission. The claim that minds are non-physical is something that dualists agree with, but since you’re summarizing discussions about whether there are good arguments for dualism, that claim about minds won’t be something you should start your discussion with. That’s a claim the dualist is trying to establish or earn the right to say.
G9. Sometimes, there are a variety of words you could choose between that would be equally appropriate. For example, words like “claim,” “proposal,” “theory,” “view,” “thesis.” When you choose one of these words, it’s best to stick with it. If you start talking about X’s claim and then switch to talk about X’s proposal, a reader might naturally expect you’re talking about two different things — even if it’s not obvious what those two things might be.
But be careful about choosing a word like one of those, versus choosing a word like “argument.” An argument is a reason (or structure of multiple reasons) for a claim. An argument often has, or could have, a “therefore” in it. A claim on the other hand, is just a single sentence. The difference between these is discussed more in the Terms & Methods webnotes you read earlier.
If you talk about a “conclusion,” that’s a claim that someone thinks follows from an argument. So if there’s a conclusion, there should be an argument somewhere.
If you talk about a “premise,” that’s a claim that someone wants to use as a starting point in an argument. So if there’s a premise, again there should be an argument somewhere.
If you talk about an “assumption,” you’re saying this is a claim that someone accepts but hasn’t given any argument for. That’s needn’t be a bad thing. We don’t have to, and can’t, argue for everything we say. But you should understand what’s meant when you label something as someone’s “assumption.”
Other words you may use, that mean different things than the ones already discussed, include: analogy, example, objection, question, possibility. If you use one of these words, try to be sure that’s what you mean, rather than something else like “claim” or “assumption.”
Another place to be careful is with words like “idea.” Often students use this word when they’re not sure whether to say “argument” or “claim.” But philosophers will understand “ideas” to mean things like “justice,” “possibility,” and “circularity.” Such things are very different from claims, which can be accepted or denied, and can be true or false. Other expressions that might substitute for “idea” are “concept” or “notion” or “word.” Don’t confuse when you want to talk about something like those, versus when you want instead to talk about something that can be true or false. Or when you want to talk about an argument.
It may happen that what you’re talking about plays multiple roles. So you might be discussing something that could be called either an argument or an example of van Inwagen’s, that’s at the same time an objection to somebody else’s argument. Even though the words “argument” and “example” and “objection” have different meanings. But do think about which words you’re choosing, and whether they really fit what you’re aiming to say.
G10. In your writing, it should be clear what each sentence is contributing, how it connects to its neighbors and to your main goals in that paragraph or section of your text. If we point to a sentence and say, “I don’t see what role this plays, or how this bears on what came before, can you explain?” then you should always be able to give an answer. Maybe if we discuss things, some connection you thought you saw or were making will turn out to be less clear than you initially thought. That’s fine. What you shouldn’t be comfortable with is when we ask you about a sentence’s role, you having no answer, or you immediately seeing that there is no clear connection. Even for a brief exercise, you should read over your text and think about what its overall plot is, and how each sentence is contributing to that plot.
When we talk about “improving your writing,” we can mean addressing points like G1–G10 above. Or we can mean writing more simply and straightforwardly. Here’s an example. One student paper had:
Moore claimed that “I am closer to my hands than I am to my feet.” Van Inwagen notes that it makes sense to us as humans to comprehend this statement and to thus distinguish “I” from “my hands” and “my feet”…
I might understand what this passage is saying but the author makes it harder than it needs to be to do that. How about writing this instead?
Moore claimed that “I am closer to my hands than I am to my feet.” Van Inwagen agrees this sounds plausible and supports distinguishing “I” from “my hands” and “my feet”…
Or maybe we should instead say only that van Inwagen agrees this…seems to support distinguishing…, but ultimately we take him to be denying that it really supports doing so. That will depend on how you interpret the passage. I’m just trying to illustrate here what we mean when we tell you to aim for simpler prose. Here’s another example. A different paper had:
The passage goes into the philosophy of physicalism, which states that there is a direct and exclusive relationship between mental processes and the physical interactions that take place in the brain.
The underlined part of this is fine. It could perhaps be expressed more concisely, by talking about “brain processes,” but it’s also fine as it is. The earlier part of the sentence needs more improvement. We could start off just with “Physicalism says…” Then we have to say what physicalism says about how mental processes and brain processes are related. What this student wrote says “there is a direct and exclusive relationship” between them. It’s not really clear to me what that means. What (according to this student) is a physicalist committed to saying? What they’re writing here can benefit from some more precision or specificity. So this example shows both how some things can be said more simply, and other things might be wordy just because they’re covering up something that really ought to be “sharper” or more precise.
This was the Leibniz’s Law passage.
A1. It is important to explain that van Inwagen’s argument is supposed to show that Descartes’ argument mistakenly applies the following principle: If x has a property y lacks, then x is not identical with y. Many of you did not explicitly state that the mistaken application of this rule was the target of the argument.
A2. When you say “the substitution rule” you need to state what this rule is. Many of you referred to “the substitution rule” without being explicit about what this is.
A3. The substitution that van Inwagen’s argument has in mind deals with substituting terms that denote the same thing. Many of you identified “I” and “the author of An Essay on Free Will” as properties, or called these “equal terms”. This is not right. The argument turns on whether “can be conceived by me not to exist” refers to a property. The test for this is to try and predicate this phrase to one object under two different two labels and check that the two resulting sentences are always both true or both false (have the same truth conditions).
A4. Many of you did not give any background on what Descartes’ argument was, or the claim that van Inwagen was arguing against. This makes it hard for a reader to understand what “the argument” is supposed to refer to. (See also point G4 above.)
A5. When talking about this argument, many of you said something like, “the substitution making this sentence false shows/proves that the rule/the phrase/the property is invalid.” First, “validity” is a property of arguments (see points G5 and G9 above). Phrases and properties are not the kinds of things that can be valid or invalid. (“Rule” is trickier, since we sometimes talk about logical rules being valid, but that is generally not what we are dealing with in this course.) Second, be careful about using the language of “shows” or “proves.” That’s a strong claim, and is generally stronger than what van Inwagen was arguing for.
This was the “colored dot” passage.
B1. A common misunderstanding of Passage 2: van Inwagen is arguing here that the difficulty we have in representing a physical thing as thinking does not provide support for dualism. He goes about this by trying to show that we are no better able to represent a non-physical thing as thinking. If it’s equally hard to represent thought in both physical and non-physical things, then the difficulty of representing thought in the physical does not give us reason to say that non-physical things must exist.
A few students claimed that the argument was instead that the inability to imagine non-physical things thinking does not support dualism. We’re not sure where this understanding came from.
B2. It is important to provide some background about what van Inwagen is responding to. Saying something like “van Inwagen refutes the argument by…” without specifying what “the argument” is can be confusing for a reader.
These were the three paragraphs concerning the “closer to hands than feet” argument.
C1. Many of you wrote things about our visual experiences, and that it is where our eyes are located that is the center of our experience (where our experience itself is located). Note that van Inwagen’s argument does not say anything so strong. He only says that things might appear this way.
C2. With the Helen Keller example, many of you wrote something like, “Keller’s center of experience was in her hands.” This is not what van Inwagen says. We do not know where Keller’s center of experience was. Van Inwagen is suggesting that given what is said about clustering of our sensory organs on our head, Keller may have had the experience of “her” being located at her hands, given the primacy of tactile sensations in her experiences. This was talked about in the hint for the prompt. (See also point C6 below.)
C3. Many of the submissions suggested that van Inwagen is arguing for the position that one’s body and one’s mind are not the same thing. Van Inwagen is bringing up this claim (especially the G. E. Moore quote) as the claim that he is arguing against.
C4. Note that while van Inwagen is arguing against dualism, his argument does not prove that dualism is wrong. (And nor does he think it proves that.) Some of you wrote things like, “So, van Inwagen’s argument shows that dualism is false.” This is too strong: there could be other arguments for dualism that van Inwagen is not arguing against in this passage.
C5. Note that this passage spends one paragraph presenting the dualist’s argument, and then two paragraphs critically reacting to it. We expect your summaries to say enough about the dualist’s argument for the reader to understand what’s being talked about, and to then (also, and primarily) to summarize the objections given in the passage. It should be clear in your exposition which points are meant to be helping the initial dualist argument, and which points are offered in order to criticize that argument in some way. (See feedback point G4 above.)
Here is an example from one paper that did a good job with this. Note the underlined sentences; these are what are missing in many other submissions:
Van Inwagen… argues that the premise that one is closer to their hands than their feet could easily be mistaken. He proposes that the self might only seem to be closer to the hands because the person’s sense organs, especially the eyes, are clustered at the head, and so our sensation of our physical surroundings is also centered at the head. To argue his conclusion, Van Inwagen describes the example of Helen Keller, who was deaf and blind. Since her sensation of her surroundings relied heavily on her hands, he speculates that she may have thought of herself as closer to her arms than her head. However, it would seem strange to conclude on this basis that Helen Keller’s mind is located differently relative to her body than a sighted person’s to their body.
Here’s how I would have approached the task of summarizing this passage. I’d have said something like this:
A dualist is someone who holds __[fill in explanation here]__. The passage we’re looking at presents an argument for dualism, which is that we seem or feel to ourselves to occupy a different space than our body does. This is offered as a reason to think we are not identical to our bodies. The passage then presents a number of doubts or complaints the author has about this argument. First, the author observes that the argument leaves open the possibility that we are identical to another physical object, for example, our brains. Second, how much should the dualist be ready to trust this seeming or feeling, since on their view, we don’t really occupy any space at all? Third, the passage offers a suggestion about why we might have this seeming or feeling, namely that it centers on where our main sense-organs are. The dualist’s opponent who thinks we are identical to our bodies after all could “explain away” the seeming or feeling if this suggestion were right.
This was the passage about there being other rational beings that are physically very different than us.
Here’s how I would have approached the task of summarizing this passage. I’d have said something like this:
The dualist argues that there may be, or it’d at least be possible for there to be, aliens that are rational but have physically very different bodies than ours. This seems to conflict with physicalism, which says that our thoughts and feelings are identical to states or processes in our brains. That’s because these aliens could have thoughts and feelings, without having anything like a human brain.
Some physicalists might respond by denying that such aliens are possible. But this passage mainly explores other strategies a physicalist could use to respond. These physicalists want to agree that physically very different rational aliens are possible, but argue that this is still compatible with physicalism.
The author explores some different kinds of physicalist theories, and how they’d explain that. We’ll focus here on just one of these, that the author describes as a kind of “type-type physicalism.” The way this physicalist can make sense of the possibility of physically very different aliens also having thoughts and feelings is this: they say that some types of events are more “abstract” or general than other types of events, that are more specific. For example, killings is a more general type of event than political assassinations. The physicalists will argue that although the specific physical details of our bodies are different from the aliens, still there will be more general and abstract similarities between us, and having thoughts and feelings can be identical to physical events of those more general types. In the same way, receiving broadcast X can be identical to some general physical properties shared by radios that work by different specific mechanisms.