Category: Philosophy

In Plato’s Phaedo, Socrates offers four arguments to demonstrate
the immortality of the soul. In lecture, three of these arguments were described
as:
1.     
The argument from
opposites (including the argument from existential balance)
2.     
The argument that all
knowledge is recollection
3.     
The argument from the
nature of the soul vs. the nature of the body
In Chapter 2 of his Office of Assertion, Scott Crider explores the
method of ‘inventing’ or ‘discovering’ arguments by detailing the rhetorical tools
of (1) the syllogism/enthymeme and (2) the topics of invention, including:
Definition, Comparison, Relationship, and Testimony (see Class 23 slides and
Chapter 2 of the Crider text).
Choose one of the above arguments Socrates develops for the immortality
of the soul:
1)     
Identify at least one
premise essential to the argument’s conclusion which you find questionable
(i.e. open to debate) and why you find it questionable.
2)     
Answer whether you think the
premise (and thus conclusion) of Socrates’ argument is made persuasive by
Socrates through his use of syllogisms, enthymemes, and/or at least one of the following
topics of invention outlined by Scott Crider: Definition, Comparison, and/or
Relationship.
3)     
Articulate your answers
to questions 1) and 2) as your thesis argument.
4)     
Demonstrate your thesis
argument through:
a.     
Development: Expand upon
the reasons for your thesis argument through defining the terms you and
Socrates are using and explaining how you and Socrates are interpreting them.
b.     
Explication/Testimony: Quote
a passage in Plato’s text that substantiates your claims and explain it
through:
i.     
Analysis: Make clear how
the passage supports your claim
ii.     
Synthesis: Through
referring to at least one other passage in Plato’s Phaedo,
explain how the meaning you have derived from the passage is related to and/or
reflected in Plato’s general discussion about the immortality of the soul.
Your
response should be in paragraph form and approx. 350-500 words in length. It
should begin with your Thesis argument (Part 3) followed by your Demonstration
of it (Part 4)  through Development
and Explication/Testimony

INSTRUCTIONS
Choose one (1) essay topic from options A and B, below.
Once you choose which question you’d like to write about, write your essay and save it as a Word document.
Use your course texts to help you respond to the topic, and when you quote and summarize from the course texts, include information about the page reference.
You are discouraged from using additional sources. If you do choose to use an outside source, be sure to cite your source, just as you do when you use the course texts. If you use a quotation or an example from a website, cite the website’s URL and the date accessed.
Upload the essay here, in the Turnitin dropbox. Review your similarity report. Make any necessary corrections.
Post the essay to the correct discussion board – M2: Essay Discussion (D-01).
Finally, read your classmates’ posts. A complete assignment includes your written response to at least one essay besides your own–part of your score is based on your reply to at least one of your classmate’s posts. It should be a meaningful reply that continues the discussion, points out something good about the post, and makes a constructive suggestion for improvement.
Topics for your Essay, Choose A or B
Essay Length tips–To answer these topics completely, it takes about 2 pages – 8-10 paragraphs. Use the topic questions and the scoring rubric to see if your draft responds fully to all parts of the question. A complete thoughtful answer is more important than word count.
Topic A: What is the fallacy of Straw Man? How is it different than simply disagreeing with someone else’s point of view?
Use the material in Vaughn’s book to help you give a detailed explanation of what the mistake in a Straw Man is. To demonstrate your understanding and to teach the idea to the rest of the class, provide a relevant real-life example of the logical mistake. (You MAY use an outside source to help you present your example; be sure to summarize or paraphrase, cite, and use announcing verbs.) Choose carefully – consider whether your example does a good job of illustrating a Straw Man. Compare it to similar fallacies, and show why your example is a Straw Man rather than another fallacy like an Appeal to the Person. The discussion of your example should be detailed so that readers can evaluate the fallacy. Argue the case for why your example is an example of Straw Man.
Topic B: Is it morally permissible to believe in God just because it is to your practical advantage to believe? Why or why not? Use the material in Vaughn’s book to help you explain how Pascal argues for belief in God. Explain the strengths and weaknesses of other thinkers have identified in his reasoning.
What does the argument against believing in God without sufficient evidence look like? Is it plausible that God would look kindly on atheists and agnostics to because they refuse to believe without evidence? After all, aren’t they simply using God’s gift of reason to arrive at their decision?
NOTE: Please use this textbook
Title: Philosophy Here and Now: Powerful Ideas in Everyday Life
Edition: Fourth (4th)
Author: Lewis Vaughn
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Copyright: 2021
ISBN#: 9780197543412 (Brytwave Format)
OR
Title: Philosophy Here and Now: Powerful Ideas in Everyday Life (eText-Perusall Edition)Links to an external site.
Edition: Fourth (4th)
Author: Lewis Vaughn Publisher: Oxford University Press
Format: Social Reading at Persuall.com.Links to an external site. 

Hide Assignment Information
Instructions
Note: only one submission is allowed. These must be in pdf format. To get a pdf, just press “save as” and then select pdf from your word processing application. 
•A philosopher, call him Philosopher A, famously argued that There is no free will. Consider the following text:
•To say that the will is not free means that it is subject to the law of causality. Every act of will is in fact preceded by a sufficient cause. Without such a cause the act of will cannot occur; and, if the sufficient cause is present, the act of will must occur. To say that the will is free would mean that it is not subject to the law of causality. In that case every act of will would be an absolute beginning [a first cause] and not a link [in a chain of events]: it would not be the effect of preceding causes. The reflections that follow may serve to clarify what is meant by saying that the will is not free … Every object—a stone, an animal, a human being—can pass from its present state to another one. The stone that now lies in front of me may, in the next moment, fly through the air, or it may disintegrate into dust or roll along the ground. If, however, one of these possible states is to be realized, its sufficient cause must first be present. The stone will fly through the air if it is tossed. It will roll if a force acts upon it. It will disintegrate into dust, given that some object hits and crushes it. It is helpful to use the terms “potential” and “actual” in this connection. At any moment there are innumerably many potential states. At a given time, however, only one can become actual, namely, the one that is triggered by its sufficient cause.
•Explain his argument for the conclusion that There is no free will. 2.5 points, 3paragraphs
•Present his argument for the conclusion that There is no free will in standard form 2.5 points
•Create and explain an objection (a new argument where your conclusion is the negation of a premise of the previous argument) to his argument (that is, against a premise. recall our meaning of objection) 2.5 points, 3 paragraphs
•Present your objection in standard form 2.5 points

Paper Content: De George argues that the moral permissibility of whistleblowing depends on the whistleblower exhausting all procedures and possibilities available within the corporation before ‘going public’. Write an essay wherein you argue that De George is wrong to maintain that this is a condition that must be satisfied to show that whistleblowing is morally permissible.
Requirements:
1. Read Part 2 and Part 3 in the file: “Paper Requirement” I uploaded, your writing works must meet the requirements from Part 2 and Part 3 of this document.
2. This is not exactly a research paper. Please make sure not to write too much description or explanation of certain theories or things. Please make sure that 70% of the entire article should be your own observations, criticisms, and insights on De George’s views. It can be appropriately subjective.
3. You need to properly understand and cite DeGeorge’s Paper I uploaded.
4. The structure of your essay must follow the instructions on the “How to Write an Essay Philosophy” document I uploaded.

Write a double-spaced 5-8 page paper in MLA that discusses the philosophical ideas about Love, Hatred, and Resentment. Use the ideas of Alan Badiou’s Philosophy on “The Truth of Love” and how love is “Truth Procedure.” Relate these ideas to the film, “LaLand” starring Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling and discuss their relationship in comparison to the Truth Procedure (The event, the fidelity to the event, the action, and the emergence of a universal truth). Cite Badiou’s Truth of Love. I have attached the directions that show the different prompts to use (I am ecorporating prompt #1 and #5 together) and have also attached a sample paper, as well as notes on the truth procedure, and the paper I have very briefly started, that you can use as an outline. 

Express the author or authors’ central thesis, claim, or conclusion. This should be expressed as concisely, clearly, and fully as you can. What is the author arguing for?
Note that with some of the earlier readings, in which we will be dealing with various philosophers’ ethical theories, it may be difficult to isolate one key claim. Do your best here to describe their overall theory in as concise a fashion as you can. 
Articulate, to the best of your ability, any argument or arguments that the author presents in defence of their thesis.
Try to distil their argument into its simplest form.
What premises does their argument require?
Are there any hidden premises that the author assumes but does not explicitly state?
What evidence and reasons do they present in defence of their claims?
Provide citations and references from the texts to show where you are getting your information from—show me why you think an author is saying what you think they are.
Note: When there are two assigned readings for the week: 
Choose one reading to focus your summary on. 
Read the other assigned reading as well so that we can discuss it in class.
Does it defend the same thesis, or an opposing one? 
Does its argument directly relate to the one you summarised? 
Do not summarise the text page for page: your goal is to isolate the author’s thesis and argument, not to write a book report. You should read the text and then, only once you’ve got a sense of the entire text, try to capture its key parts. 
Responses that meet the word requirement, isolate a central thesis, and clearly present an argument will receive full credit, i.e. 3 points. Note that you can incorrectly interpret the author’s thesis or argument, and still receive full credit, so long as it is clear to me that you have made a concerted effort to read the text (providing references to the text is good evidence of this!).
Note: the responses will be turned in to Turnitin to check for plagiarism. Plagiarised responses will receive 
0 points. 

As a student, it is important to understand the relationship between critical thinking and writing. In this assignment, you will write a 750-1,000-word paper about this relationship, specifically argumentative essays. Include the following in your paper:
A title page
A description of at least two differences between argumentative and informative essays
A description of at least two aspects/points that are needed for an essay to be considered argumentative (reasoning by analogy should be included in some way here)
At least 2 references on a reference page (one being the book and an outside scholarly source) and accompanying in-text citations when the references are used
The paper should be formatted in APA style. Use the template provided below to start your paper, as it is already in proper APA format. Be sure to remove the existing text in the template and replace it with your own

Please DO NOT USE CHAT/GPT or AI in this assignment. No use of secondary sources.            No sources are required.   Please use the lecture files I have attached for answers and information. This assignment  would be passed via Turnitin, so please, no plagiarism. 
Write a 400 – 600 word essay explaining Epictetus’s stoicism.  Your essay should address the following: 
1) You should begin by explaining the stoic project of achieving ataraxia and how this project relates to the emotions.  
2) Your essay should explain what, according to Epictetus, causes our emotions and what we can do about unpleasant emotions that trouble us.  Here you will need to define what beliefs are as discussed throughout the semester (see Lecture 1 and the list of definitions in the syllabus).  
3) This is the most important part of the essay because here you are demonstrating you’ve understood how to use Epictetus’s philosophy even if you don’t agree with it.  Therefore this should be the lengthiest and most detailed portion of your essay.  Don’t phone it in.  You may not use examples similar to ones I discussed in class (breakups and traffic).  I want to see original thought that shows you’ve deeply understood the material and how to use it  concretely.  
4) Once you have explained the basics of Epictetus’s stoicism, discuss a difficult  thing you have experienced in your life where you experienced troubling negative emotions.  Be detailed and thorough explaining what happened and what you were going through. 
5) Now, following the step by step method you were taught in Lecture 6, apply Epictetus’s method to what you experienced and how you could have gotten rid of the negative           emotions you were experiencing.  For Step 2, you should come up with 3- 4 beliefs and        desires that caused your emotion.  Again, be detailed, thorough, precise, and explicit in discussing these beliefs and desires.  Here you are doing psychology and exploring how the way you thought about things without realizing influenced how you felt or the emotions you experienced.  For Step 3 you will need to discuss 3- 4 beliefs and desires you could have adopted to change your emotional response to the situation.  Remember, Epictetus is about changing how we think rather than changing what we do.  Be careful not to slip into action language in this essay. 

This thesis will evaluate the positive and negative correlations between social media and its general impact on the ideal democracy
Sources:
https://academic.oup.com/jcmc/article/17/3/319/4067682
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13278-012-0079-3
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20190658
Connect to plato and Socrates philosophy

Can I know anything? 
Socrates famously declared that he knew nothing. What do you think you know? Anything? In this module, we will examine a very famous skeptical argument—René Descartes’ famous argument that he cannot be certain of anything except the fact that he exists. After all, he argues, “as long as I am thinking I know something exists—the being that is doing the thinking.” The problem he struggles with is that of showing that his knowledge extends to anything beyond his own thoughts, since it seems that we can never rule out the possibility that we’re misrepresenting whatever we are thinking about.
Of course, what philosophical skeptics like Descartes worry about is very esoteric, not obviously related to our experience of everyday life. Descartes himself acknowledges that these are questions that a person without a special interest in philosophy might not be terribly concerned about, which is why he makes an effort to put his meditations on the subject in the form of a dramatic story about being overcome by doubt about his ability to trust his idea of reality. These skeptical doubts represent philosophical problems that have motivated some important developments in our thinking about the nature of mind and the role of abstract reasoning in science. We will then view the classic film, The Matrix, which uses the premises of Cartesian skepticism in its depiction of a disytopic future world. 
Module Outline
To complete this module:
Read: Meditations 1 and 2 | Descartes (with Audio Option)
Watch: Movie: The Matrix | Netflix
Watch: Video: Lecture on Meditation 1
Watch: Video: Lecture on Meditation 2
Participate in the discussion (30 points)

https://www.netflix.com/title/20557937