Please see all the requirement in files i uploaded and write a final paper for this class.it should be about 2500 words and meet all requirement in instructions.
final_paper_assignment.docx
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Final Paper Assignment
PHIL 205A—Professional Ethics: Business
Due Friday, August 12th by 5:00pm
Details and Particulars
All students will write a final term paper for the course, due at the end of the semester, in
response to one of the prompts provided below. Students may write on a topic of their
choosing so long as 1) students are able to clearly articulate the thesis that they intend to
defend and 2) receive permission form the instructor first. There is no official page or
length requirement, but it is expected that students will aspire to produce a final product
that will be approximately 10 pages or approximately 2500 words. (Note: the number of
words in the body is a more accurate gauge of the amount of content in a paper. Margins
and spacing can be fudged.)
Philosophy papers are not research papers or opinion pieces; they are argumentative
essays. It is expected that students will 1) articulate a thesis that they intend to defend and
then 2) supply reasons in support of that conclusion. Make sure that you are doing both!
Students should consult the handout “How to Write a Philosophy Paper” for further
guidance. It is expected that students will make ample use of the text to supply the ethical
theory necessary to defend their conclusion. It is perfectly acceptable if your only
recourse is the Kernohan text: remember, I’m interested in your thesis and in your
argument for that thesis. Papers that do not appeal to the themes in the Kernohan text—
for example, justice, harm, rights and duties, virtue, and so forth—in support of a
conclusion will be seriously downgraded.
Outside resources are welcome to the extent that they help explain why I should agree
with you and not your opponent. I have a strong preference for using resources that have
been published peer-reviewed journals and academic databases. Be very wary of using
random or unaccredited online resources in defense of your position; not everything that
you can find on the internet is true and not everyone with an online presence is a
qualified expert.
With respect to format and style: I prefer papers written in Chicago style and I would
encourage you to use the Chicago Manual of Style, but I do not require any particular
method of documentation or citation. If you are more comfortable or familiar with some
other style guide—say, APA or MLA—that’s fine, but you must cite your sources
appropriately. Pick a style guide—any style guide—and stick with it.
Papers should be emailed to the instructor by the relevant due date. Later papers will be
downgraded by 5 points per day. Exceptionally late papers may be refused altogether.
Consult the course syllabus for policies concerning academic integrity and plagiarism.
Prompts
Respond to exactly one of the following prompts for your final paper. Be sure to answer
each part of the bolded question. Most importantly, be sure that your paper has a clearly
stated thesis and provides reasons for believing that thesis. Keep in mind that while many
of the questions admit of “Yes” and “No” answers, there are probably a range of nuanced
responses available. For example, if you think that we should adopt some policy, be sure
and explain what you think that policy should look like, the more detail the better. If you
think that we shouldn’t adopt that policy, is there something else that we should be
doing? What? In all cases, avoid just giving an opinion without argument.
1) Any number of businesses are adopting or revising policies about transgendered
team members and guests to use the restroom or fitting room facility that
corresponds with their gender identity as do McDonald’s and Kroger, among
others. Federal law and state law is arguably ambiguous here: the Equal
Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has held that discrimination
against transgendered persons violates federal law but the Civil Rights Act of
1964 does not explicitly refer to gender identity or transgendered status. Different
states handle things differently: some states explicitly prohibit discrimination
against transgendered persons, some—including Michigan—do not. And recently,
some states have made it a crime for persons to use a public restroom that does
not conform to the gender listed on the birth certificate, for example. What sort
of policy should businesses adopt with respect to transgendered persons?
And why? Be sure to defend your answer with reasons.
2) The institution of slavery has been formally abolished in the Unites States since
1865, but debates about reparations of slavery have not gone away. Whether or
not any currently living person has unjustly benefited from the use of slaves, there
are any number of businesses and corporations who have acknowledged that they
profited in some way from slavery: for example, New York Life Insurance
Company, Lehman Brothers, JPMorgan Chase, and CSX Railroad Company,
among others. What should we do with businesses that profited in some way
from slavery? Why or why not? Be sure to defend your answer with reasons.
3) The question of whether or not corporations can be persons comes up a couple of
times in the text. As a matter of constitutional law, the Supreme Court of the
United States has held that corporations are persons and has extended some, but
not all, Constitutional protections to them—for example, corporations have some
rights associated with free expression but not the right to vote. Suppose that
corporations are persons (in some relevant sense). Could they be executed? That
would involve, presumably, dissolving their articles of incorporation, seizing their
assets, punishing—perhaps executing—high-ranking executives, and perhaps still
more. Obviously, forcing a corporation out of business would have consequences
for shareholders, employees, consumers, business partners, and still more. Should
we ever “execute” corporations? Why or why not? Be sure to defend your
answer with reasons.
4) Affirmative action is often brought up in the context of higher education and
college admissions. But the first use of the expression ‘affirmative action’ was
used by President Kennedy in 1961 to in an executive order, calling upon
government contractors to “take affirmative action to ensure that applicants are
employed, and employees are treated during employment, without regard to their
race, creed, color, or national origin.” (The order was amended in 1967 to include
gender.) The Kernohan text suggests some reasons for thinking that gender-based
affirmative action is morally necessary—for example, given concerns about
equality of opportunity—but it also recognizes a plurality of ethical positions.
Should businesses be required to practice affirmative action? Why or why
not? Be sure to defend your answer with reasons.
5) As a general rule, you are not allowed to sell your organs for profit. You can,
however, engage in some financial transactions that come close: you can sell
plasma, hair, eggs and semen, and perhaps still more. You can also be
“compensated” for donating bone marrow and blood, and you can be paid
handsomely for participating in clinical trials. A “full right of self-ownership”
would allow us to freely contract with any other party, including business who
have a financial state in harvesting and selling organs, and sell our labor but also
our bodies, consistent with other people having the same right. We do not at
present have a full right of self-ownership. Should we? There are real concerns
about exploitation here: the poor and other vulnerable populations might very
well be targeted by some companies if we did have a right to sell our organs
consistent with a full-right of self-ownership. Should we allow individuals to
sell their organs for profit? Why or why not?
Grading Rubric
Papers will be assigned a grade out of 100 points. That grade will be determined based on
the following criteria.
I. UNDERSTANDING AND SUMMARIZING (50 points)
50 points. Student demonstrates good understanding. Key concepts are correctly
defined and author’s position is noted and competently summarized.
40 points. Central concepts are not clearly discussed and unambiguously defined;
subtleties of author’s position are missed; summary of argument is incomplete or
unclear or not entirely accurate; tangential points are given undue stress.
30 points. Student’s presentation of authors’ position is thoroughly confused.
Alternatively, summary is paragraph-by-paragraph re-statement of article rather
than a presentation of key points supporting a conclusion.
25 points. Discussion fails to engage with obvious philosophical theses and
concepts.
II. CRITIQUE AND DEFENSE (30 points)
30 points. Student’s critique of assigned argument or defense of a position is
comprehensive and fair. Critique is based on an assessment of arguments and not
on whether or not the student agrees or disagrees with the conclusion.
25 points. Student’s critique pays undue attention to minor details or ignores
major flaws. Student’s own opinion on the issue may be interfering with fair
consideration of arguments.
20 points. Student’s criticisms are based on a serious misrepresentation of
author’s argument.
15 points. Argument is entirely absent. Thesis or conclusion are simply stipulated
or offered without defense or absent any reason to believe them.
III. STYLE AND MECHANICS (20 points)
20 points. Essay is easy to read. Word choice is precise, original, concise, and
rich. Sentences flow nicely. No errors in spelling, grammar, punctuation.
16 points. Sentence construction is sometimes awkward, and/or mechanical
errors are frequent enough to distract the reader from content, or make the
student’s point unclear.
12 points. The writing is almost incomprehensible. Sentences are choppy,
incomplete, rambling, or awkward. Mechanical errors are common.
10 points. Frequent spelling errors and inaccessible to a reader. Unacceptable
writing for a college paper.
Guidelines for Writing a Philosophy Paper
1) What am I doing?
It is often thought that philosophy papers are radically different than papers written for
other classes—this is my only explanation for the often-enough heard concern (or
complaint) that “I don’t know how to write a philosophy paper.” Admittedly, a
philosophy paper does require doing more than simply expressing your opinions or
reporting events, but that does not make philosophy papers unique. In actuality, a
philosophy paper consists in offering a reasoned defense of a thesis by means of an
argument. Providing an argument will require specifying a conclusion and supplying
premises that support that conclusion, along with evidence for believing those premises.
A philosophy paper just is an argument.
2) How do I get started?
The first step is to determine just what your thesis is. It is not really enough to simply
“write on abortion” or “talk about Thomson”—it is important to know ahead of time just
what you will be arguing and what conclusion you will be defending.
A good philosophy paper will accomplish a particular task. Very broadly, you can do
one of three things: first, you can criticize someone else’s argument; second, you can
defend someone else’s argument against some objection; and third, you can offer a new
argument for some thesis. All of the following are more precise examples of tasks:
Criticize an argument or show that certain arguments for some thesis are no good
(e.g., “Mill argues on utilitarian grounds that the only justification for interfering
with another person’s liberty is to prevent harm to others. However, utilitarian
reasoning actually supports interfering for other reasons…”
Defend a thesis against someone else’s criticism (e.g., “Beckwith is mistaken
when he accuses Thomson of being internally inconsistent…”)
Offer new reasons to believe the thesis or give examples which help explain or
illustrate it (e.g., “Whether or not utilitarianism does support the harm principle,
there is another reason to support it as well…”)
Make explicit what a thesis does or does not imply (“It may appear that
Feinberg’s offense principle requires us to prohibit all varieties of hate speech and
thereby violate the right to free expression. But this is not so…”)
Argue that certain philosophers are committed to the thesis by their other views,
though they do not come out and explicitly endorse the thesis (e.g., “While Mill
does not explicitly endorse legal paternalism, there are reasons for thinking that
he must accept it…”)
Discuss what consequences the thesis would have, if it were true or false (e.g.,
“Note that, even if Devlin’s arguments for legal moralism are unsuccessful, if
legal moralism really were false, the liberal would be unable to explain what is
wrong with…”)
Revise a thesis in the light of some objection
3) How do I get started?
This is probably the hardest part. If you have a thesis you must have some reasons for
thinking that it’s true—why else would you believe it? The hard part is transforming
those reasons into a paper. The only way to do this is to start writing. Don’t feel
obligated to write your introductory paragraph first, although you should know just what
your thesis is before you start writing.
The most important thing to remember is this: you have a defined and relatively small
task to accomplish. You are not expected to, and should not attempt to, answer
questions that are far too broad or sweeping—no one expects you to settle whether or not
abortion is morally permissible for all time. Just answer the question asked and be sure
to answer all of its parts.
Good papers are structured well: they have clear and distinguishable parts that serve
different purposes, those different parts are in the correct order, and there will be
transitions that explain that you are moving from one part of the paper to another and why
you are moving to that part of the paper. Since you want your paper to be well
structured, separate your paper into sections from the very beginning and work on
them separately. For example, if you are explaining and critiquing Professor X’s
argument, first write the section of your paper where you critique that argument. Then,
later, write the section where you criticize that argument. If you have two different
criticisms, work on them separately. After all that is done, go back and combine those
sections into a flowing and coherent draft. It will be much easier to tackle a few small
tasks rather than trying to finish one big one.
Some people find it helpful to prepare an outline—I prefer to simply divide my paper into
sections. Whatever you do, having some pre-planned idea of what the structure of your
paper will be is probably helpful, even if you have only a bare outline. For example,
suppose your thesis is that Mill’s argument for Mill’s Principle is not adequate. You
might want to structure your paper as follows:
I.
II.
III.
IV.
V.
VI.
Introductory paragraph
a. Thesis statement
b. Brief explanation of what is coming
Exposition
a. Explain what Mill’s principle is
b. Explain what utilitarianism is
c. Explain what Mill’s utilitarian argument for Mill’s Principle is
Criticism
a. First reason for thinking that Mill’s argument is flawed
b. Second reason for thinking that Mill’s argument is flawed
A possible reply by Mill
A response to Mill’s reply
Conclusion
4) What next?
The next step is to revise your paper. Revision is not easy and it requires not waiting
until the last minute. Revision is more than simply changing a few words here and there
or adding transitions sentences and sign-posting. You may have to tear your own paper
to shreds, you may have to rewrite entire sentences and even paragraphs, and you may
have to abandon arguments you previously thought were outstanding. In all cases, you
are trying to, first, improve the content of your paper, and second, make your paper
read more clearly. The first of these tasks is most important and is also the task that
students work on the least.
I find it helpful to revise a paper only after I have not read what I have wrote for a while.
My experience is that if I try to revise a paper (or part of that paper) too soon after I have
written it, I am too close to it and I cannot objectively criticize my own work. An old
professor of mine suggested putting a paper in a drawer for a week after writing it.
However long you wait, re-reading your own work with fresh and critical eyes is highly
advisable. It is amazing how much better a paper can be after putting it through a few
drafts.
Again, revision is not simply hitting spell-check. But don’t forget to check spelling and
grammar! Admittedly, this is not a composition class, but you had better believe that
prose and presentation counts. Your goal is to provide a clear, coherent, and convincing
argument. If your grammar is poor and if your paper is poorly written, it will be very
difficult—perhaps very, very difficult—to make sense of what your argument is and you
will be less likely to succeed at your task. Egregious instances of poor grammar—e.g.,
run-on sentences and fragments—suggest that you did not take this assignment very
seriously. In any case, papers that were written the night before will read like they
were written the night before. More importantly, papers that were written the night
before will be graded harshly.
5) What should I not do?
A few things to avoid:
i)
ii)
Try to avoid using first-person pronouns like “I” or “my.” Relatedly,
try to not assert your thoughts by saying “I feel that…” or “I just think
that…” and so forth. True, you are asserting your beliefs here, but
what you want to do is argue that your conclusion is true, not just
inform your audience that you think it is true. In any case, good
college-level writing usually does not use the first-person.
The most common mistake that is made when writing a philosophy
paper is that students spend far too much time on exposition and not
nearly enough time actually defending their thesis. No paper that
based on little or nothing more than exposition will earn more
than a ‘C.’ So, don’t spend too much time on exposition, nor too little
time actually developing and defending your thesis.
iii)
iv)
v)
vi)
Don’t use overly flowery language. Good philosophy papers aim for
clarity and using vague or obscure language usually makes things less
clear. If you must use technical terminology, be sure and explain it to
your reader.
Don’t start out your paper with something like “Every since the
beginning of time, man has pondered __________” or “__________ is
one of the most controversial issues…” The first proposition is
hyperbole and the second is trivial.
Don’t write the paper expecting that I will be reading it. Imagine that
your audience is intelligent but uninformed about your topic. Thus,
you will have to define technical or obscure terms, clearly state your
thesis, and so forth.
Don’t simply quote someone and leave it at that. Quotations need to
be explained and put into a context. If you do quote, either first
explain to your audience what the quote will or assert or later explain
what the author you quote means, or both. Never use a quote without
telling your reader why you included it and what it means.
6) Any other advice?
A few seemingly paradoxical things, actually:
i)
ii)
iii)
Be concise but thorough. It is important to defend any conclusion that
you are arguing for, so be sure that you actually do provide reasons for
accepting your conclusion and be sure to provide enough good reasons
that your intelligent but uninformed reader will be persuaded.
However, don’t bury your reasons in the midst of unnecessary chatter.
My two most common comments on student papers are “Focus” and
“Say more.” Say everything that you need to say and avoid t …
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