Critical thinking

Reading Assignment – Final Term Paper Guidelines

You have now read 2 long essays. One by Peter Singer and one by Bedau. For the final term paper you may select something (a piece) of what Peter Singer advocates OR take one of the sub-sections that Bedau commented on (with respect to the death penalty). You can also select different topics (see below)

This “piece” should be something that you have a counter-argument to advance (and hence, a new thesis) …or something that you might agree with, but you believe it needs better justification (and more critical thinking). This will become the basis of your final paper.

The basic problem you have to avoid is to try and cover too much and be overly board. Your final paper will be 4-5 pages double space Therefore, select something you can manage. In terms of the death penalty you have sub-sections…if you want to expland upon the one you selected for the Discussion Board into a term paper…that could work…your thesis would be the “yes” or “no” to the way Bedau advocated for that particular component of the death penalty and instead of the one or two paragraphs you posted, you would need to develop it into a full blown paper.

In terms of Singer you had a quiz in which you selected one of his “points”….you could take this and enlarge upon it and develop what you submitted for the quiz into a term paper. Or you can select another issue raised by Singer for your term paper.

The above are suggestions…you do not have to follow them. However, the subject for your term paper is limited to the following:

1. You may write on the Singer essay in this course shell.

2. You may write on the Bedau article that is in the course shell (with elements broken down in the course text).

3. You may also select ONE of the other issues in Social Philosophy that is discussed in Section 6 of your course text. This would be Animal Rights, Abortion, Distribution of Wealth, and Just War Theory.

If you deceide to write on of these topics…make sure you stay on point and develop a thesis that limits your paper to a piece of this argument. You are not writing a research paper or an essay to “summarize” things. As an example, if you choose the abortion topic you might limit your discussion to something like “What, if any potential rights does a fetus have?” This would require focus on this aspect alone. You cannot cover the whole range of abotition issues in a 4-5 page paper. The issue of “potential rights” is highly focused on a single question that you could explore in such a short paper. The same advise applies to any of the topics listed here in number 3.

For the Singer and Bedau article we have already broken down the talking points and you should be aware that if you choose one of these options (1,2) you would limit yourself to one or two general “talking points” to develop into a thesis.