Philosophy (101) – 4 pages assignment max

Phil 101 Writing Assignment 1.

Provide a reconstruction of Frege’s argument in the paper “Thought”.

To do this, you must successfully break his argument down into premises and conclusions.

The paper should be structured as follows.

I.                    Introduction (This should be extremely short– a few sentences at most. Here you can introduce the author and the paper, and maybe give a quick summary about what he is talking about or who he is.

II.                  Argument (This is the meat of the paper.) Here you should reconstruct Frege’s argument in detail. This should include the primary argument and sub-arguments. Determine if and how each premise is supported. Do not evaluate during this portion, simply present the argument that Frege puts forward.

III.                Evaluation Here is where you get to provide your own assessment. However, for our present purposes this section will be short. Here I’d like you to present one strength or criticism of the argument (you will find criticism much easier).

Guidelines:

–Make sure that you cite Frege and any other sources properly. Plagiarism (even if inadvertent) will not be tolerated and will result in a 0. There are multiple citation formats, and all the standard forms are acceptable. A quick google search will show you the proper protocols.

-The paper should be at most four pages. (12 pt. font double spaced) Longer papers will be graded down. Note that you should struggle to fit all the requisite information into four pages. This means that a paper significantly shorter than four pages is probably missing something important.

You may find outside sources useful, and you are encouraged to pursue them, just make sure they are properly cited.

Here is a rough guide for how your paper should be structured:

Section I- A short paragraph, no more than 1/3 of a page

Section II- 2.5-3 pages. Here’s where you present the argument and present justification for the premises. You may break this into two sections (reconstruction followed by premise justification) or go piece by piece (justify each premise after stating it). Either is acceptable.

Section III .5-1 pages. This should be short and to the point. You may provide criticism of his argument (specifically a criticism of one of his premises or a his overall argument structure.) You may also provide support for his argument, but this will be considerably more difficult, as you haven’t been familiarized with the conversation surrounding the paper and the opposing views. It is recommended that you focus on criticism.