Requirements of paper

Structure

The paper should be 6-8 pages long, 12-point Times New Roman font, double-spaced, with one-inch margins. All papers will be checked for plagiarism through SafeAssign. You should include page numbers at the bottom-right corner and a title at the top of the first page. A cover page is not required. The paper should be submitted in either Microsoft Word (.doc or .docx) or PDF (.pdf) format. I will not accept essays in Pages format or any other format besides Word or PDF. If you have any questions about how to format your paper or how to convert your paper to Word or PDF format, please email me.

Citations/Bibliography

The paper should include a bibliography and either in-text citations, footnotes, or endnotes. No specific citation style is required; however, I strongly recommend becoming acquainted with and utilizing a citation style related to your future academic and career goals, such as MLA, APA, or Chicago/Turabian. At minimum, your in-text citations, footnotes, or endnotes should include the author of the work you are citing, the title of the work, the year the work was published, and the page number you are citing. The citations in your bibliography should, at minimum, include the author of the work, the title of the work, the publisher, city of publication, and year of publication.

You are required to include at least two sources in this paper, as you need to outline two opposing viewpoints. You are allowed to have more than two sources.

Overview of Problem

You are required to choose a philosophical problem that you are interested in and provide an overview of this problem. This may be any problem that is faced in the philosophical literature, so long as it is approved by me in the paper proposal. In the outline, make sure to state what the problem is and why it is a significant philosophical problem. Make sure to include enough detail that your reader can have a good understanding of the problem without any background knowledge. Also make sure to explain technical terms that are necessary for understanding the problem.

Opposing Viewpoints

Find at least two philosophers who have differing viewpoints on the problem you have identified. For example, if you choose a topic such as “do human being have free will?” then you need to find a philosopher who says “yes, humans do not have free will” and a philosopher who denies the existence of free will. Do not choose a topic where you are unable to find opposing viewpoints.

In this section, you will be required to outline the positions of both philosophers – what is their response to the problem, what is the argument that they use to defend this response, and how are the responses similar and different from one another? Make sure to provide enough of an overview of both viewpoints that the reader can adequately understand the steps of each philosopher’s argument even without background knowledge.

Constructive Response

You are required to provide your own constructive response to the problem, demonstrating one possible solution. This solution may be the same as one of the opposing viewpoints, or you may offer your own viewpoint that differs from both. In either case, you must provide an argument that defends the solution you propose. You should provide argumentation and evidence that logically supports the conclusion of the argument. You should also demonstrate how your viewpoint is better than the other alternatives that you have discussed (or better than one of the alternatives, if you chose to side with one of the opposing viewpoints). You must provide enough detail that a reader could fully understand your argument, follow the steps of your argument, and understand the strengths of the argument over the other viewpoints.