Final Project Paper Guidelines
PHI 1100
Your project should be split into 5 sections:
1. Background
The argument you choose will come from some context of debate: there’s a topic or question or
issue that people are arguing
about, and which forms the context of the argument you’re going to
analyze in the following sections. In this section your job is to explain that
larger context.
• what is the main question/issue the argument addresses?
• why is it important?
• what, briefly (one sentence), is the
conclusion of the argument you’re going to analyze?
2. Transcription of Source
In this section you should copy and paste (or transcribe, if your source is audio/video) the
portions of the source
material that are relevant to reconstructing the argument.
• copy&paste/transcribe the section that contains the conclusion
• copy&paste/transcribe the section that contains the premises
3. Reconstruction in English
• rewrite premises and conclusions in standard logical format for PL:
– “if…then”
– “and”
– “or”
– “it’s not the case
that”
• it’s often useful to try and rewrite the premises and conclusion with an eye to restructuring the
argument into a common valid form:
– A—>B, A ⊢ B (read this as: “if A then B, A, therefore B”)
– A—>B, ~B ⊢ ~A
– A v B, ~A ⊢ B
– A—>B, B—>C ⊢A—>C
• if none of the above forms makes sense for your argument, that’s ok; it may still be valid (see
section 5)
4. Translation into PL
• take your reconstruction from section 3, and translate it into PL
5. Evaluation
• is the argument valid? if not, do the
premises provide any support for the conclusion (if not a
deductive guarantee)?
• are the premises true? can you think of any objections to
them? how could the author respond
to your objection?
• don’t feel pressured to be exhaustive. if you have more to say about the validity of
the
argument, talk more about that; if you have more to say about the truth of the premises, say
more about that
5. Evaluation
• is the argument valid? if not, do the premises provide any support for the conclusion (if not a
deductive guarantee)?
• are the
premises true? can you think of any objections to them? how could the author respond
to your objection?
• don’t feel pressured to be
exhaustive. if you have more to say about the validity of the
argument, talk more about that; if you have more to say about the truth of the
premises, say
more about that
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