Vaccines

I have a topic: Vaccines. Thought this would be appropriate since the covid vaccine is close being released. I am going to school for sonography and I will be required to get a flu vaccine which I am not thrilled about since my son in law died from a flu shot a few years ago

Ethics Critical Paper

            All PHL 2306 classes are required to have a writing assignment of at least 750 words in which the student defends and supports a thesis across multiple paragraphs. This assignment could be filled by a variety of papers a student might write, so I’m going to describe what I assume will the most common ethics papers students will choose to develop. This isn’t the only way to satisfy the paper requirement for the course, of course, so don’t feel as though you have no choice but to write a paper of the variety characterized in this handout. So long as you write a four page paper wherein you state, defend, and support a thesis across the length of the paper, you should be fine. I would urge all students to have a conversation with me about paper topics and plans to develop those topics, but especially so if you plan on deviating from the script laid out in this handout. Again, please write the paper you want to write, but let’s have a conversation about it so you don’t veer off into a paper that will not meet the requirements laid out here.

The first thing to point out is that ethics classes at ACC are supposed to be of the applied variety – which is to say that we don’t just talk about the theories we study, but we also how they function in concrete ways by using them to settle matters of ethical significance. In general, then, there is an expectation that your paper will be an exercise in applied ethics. A “normal” paper for this course would likely be one in which you apply one of the ethical theories we talk about in the course of the semester to some topic that interests you. That topic might be drawn from one of your other classes (perhaps a business / medical / environmental issue), from some hobby you’re passionate about (video games, sports, health), or maybe something from history or dramatized in a work of fiction (movies, novels). Of course you could write a paper that is purely theoretical if you wish – perhaps you might try to give a critical appraisal of one of the theories we study, or perhaps you might compare / contrast two of the theories we’ve studied to show strengths / weaknesses of the various approaches. What I’m trying to suggest here is that you have the flexibility to approach your paper in a way that will make it the most interesting / rewarding to you. Again, it would be advisable to have a discussion during office hours, via email, or possibly even in class when we’re talking about the paper, to make sure what you’re thinking about doing is appropriate. I’m trying to give you a great deal of latitude in the hopes that doing so will inspire you to do something outside the box that will give you greater satisfaction than simply filling in blanks spaces in a cookie cutter assignment.

Just so we’re clear on this matter: this is not a research assignment. For whatever reason, the last few years I’ve had a problem with students turning in plagiarized work. I may be wrong about this, but in my estimation the more research you do on these sorts of topics the more likely you will be to either purposively or accidentally appropriate someone else’s ideas. For the purposes of our paper, then, you are allowed to reference only the following sources: (a) anything said during class about the material, (b) the specific texts we read for the class, and (c) you may also make use of the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (http://www.iep.utm.edu) if you need additional help with the material. This means you can use the IEP, not the many sources linked by it! The IEP sometimes gives more information than you probably need and other times gives too little. If that occurs then we can certainly talk about it. Whatever you do, though, please don’t submit someone else’s work as though it’s yours as that will result in a failing grade for the assignment and the class as a whole.

Finally, here are my instruction for the most common sort of ethics paper. If you write a different type of paper some of what follows will change – the body paragraphs – but most of it should apply to any paper you choose to write. My expectation will be that you write a very brief introductory paragraph (three or four sentences should handle it), body paragraphs for each of the parts of the assignment that involve explaining philosophical positions / ethical problems that take a little less than a page apiece or so, your own thoughts on the topic (which is the most important part of the paper and could well be multiple paragraphs), and a very brief conclusion. Let’s now turn to a more detailed account of how each of these tasks should be carried out and how they will be evaluated.

Introduction:

All you’re doing here is telling me what the topic of your paper is going to be. This is just a setup for what is to come, so it need not be incredibly detailed or labored – just a short explanation of the topic is all that’s required. There is one thing that happens in the introductory paragraph that’s of considerable importance for a good philosophy essay: a thesis statement. Your thesis statement tells me exactly what it is you will be arguing in your paper. By this I do not mean what your paper is about in general, I mean specifically what you are going to say in the paragraph devoted to your thought. It’s often useful to write your complete paper before constructing a thesis statement to ensure that the two match. At the very least, reread your thesis statement after you’ve finished the paper to be sure you didn’t change your position somewhere along the way.

Philosophical Position:

In order to keep your paper in the proper ballpark for playing the game that is philosophy, one of the folks you should be incorporating into your paper should be a philosopher. That person need not be someone we studied – feel free to ask me about someone outside the scope of our class if you wish to do so – but it should be someone known for work in ethics. You will then want ot explain what this thinker’s approach to ethics is. So, for example, if you’re writing about Kant, explain how Kant thinks we should make ethical decisions. If you’re going to be applying Kant to some particular moral problem, that’s fine, but don’t address how Kant would respond to that particular problem until later in the paper (that’s the whole application aspect of the assignment and it’s a completely separate task). In this paragraph you should be summing up thinker A’s position in your own terms. Feel free to use a short quotation or two from our texts to support your claim that the philosopher says / argues x, y, or z, but don’t go overboard with quotations. The key thing here is to demonstrate that you grasp both the philosopher’s position and his / her reasons for holding it in your own terms. If you cite a paragraph that someone else wrote, then you’re probably not doing an acceptable job of showing your own understanding of the position, so keep the quotations to a reasonable size and number. The idea here is that when the reader is done with this paragraph, they’ll know what the thinker says about making moral judgments as well as why they think this. The key issues here will be just how well you explain the philosophical position in terms of accuracy, completeness, and depth of understanding. This paragraph should be in the two thirds of a page to a full page range as far as length goes.

Statement of the Moral Problem

At this point you will need to discuss the moral problem to which you will be applying the ethical theory discussed above. We will already have covered some moral problems in the course of the semester and you are, of course, welcome to talk about one of them in your paper if you wish. If you choose to use a topic we’ve already discussed, please at least try to bring something new to the discussion. Obviously there’s an expectation that you’ll have something of your own to say about it in the appropriate paragraph below, but you’re going to want to make the moral problem your own in some respect as well. In short, don’t simply reuse something we’ve already talked about in class – at least give it your own spin. If you want to use the Mark Twain story, for example, that’s perfectly acceptable, but try to dig something out of it that we didn’t already go over in class. Beyond that, this area is pretty wide open: you can talk about issues in the news, problems that arise in work, social, or even online environments, events drawn from other cultures, or maybe the kind of dilemmas that crop up in fiction. The main point of this paragraph is to lay out what’s involved in the moral choice and to make clear that there is in fact a choice by explaining why multiple approaches to the problem have merit. To return to the short story, there are reasons why one might lie (and the aunts present some of them throughout the story as does the doctor), but there are also reason why telling the truth might have been the better course of action. Only by giving both sides a hearing can you be said to be treating the moral problem fairly. If you’re going to use a moral problem raised within the course of a piece of fiction, don’t let a complete recounting of the movie, novel, or whatever other source you’re using overwhelm this paragraph. Context is important to fully capture the nuances of a decision that must be made, but your goal here isn’t to rehash an entire plot, just enough to illuminate the choice. It’s entirely possible that this paragraph could require some research. If you decide to write about environmental issues, for example, you’ll likely need some numbers or other related data from a trusted resource on science. You don’t need to spend hours at the library, in fact I’m trying to discourage that, but if your topic requires some research please do that work and present it here rather than adopting an “everybody knows this” approach. This paragraph should also be about two thirds of a page to a whole page in length.

Application of the Ethical Theory to the Moral Problem

The title here pretty much says it all: apply the principles involved in the ethical theory you explicated to the moral problem you developed. What would Kant or Aristotle say about the issue you raised? What you want to do in this paragraph is to take the particulars of the decision you discussed and work out what your philosopher would conclude. You should be able to show how the ethical theory you talked about works in practice in this paragraph. So, to return to the example being used previously, if you were writing about the Twain story and Kant you’d want to be able to explain Kant’s reasoning about lying (which should be relatively easy to do since he specifically talks about it in one of his examples of applying the categorical imperative) and how that would then play out within the course of the story. That might seem simple enough, but since the story is explicitly about lying, and there are several positions adopted by various figures in the story, you should go through why Kant’s reasoning would fly in the face of all of them. The point here is not just to articulate what Kant, Aristotle, or whomever would say about the matter at hand, but also to note why your philosopher would take that position and how they’re reasoning would counter or agree with the other reasoning presented in your statement of the moral problem. The paragraph should likely be a little shorter than the previous two, though if the moral problem is complicated enough it could well end up being just as long or longer.

Your Thought:

This is where you interject yourself into the conversation. Whether you agree, disagree, or a little of both with the philosopher you’re writing about, now is the time to make that plain. This is the paragraph that makes your paper a philosophy paper: your arguments for what you think. The key point here is to argue for whatever you wish to say. One of viewing your task is attempting to convince someone who doesn’t necessarily agree with you that you’re right by giving the best arguments you can for your position. Just because you believe x is no reason for anyone else to believe x. Now if you can cite some evidence as to why you think x is true, note some authoritative figures who agree with you (making sure, of course, that they’re authorities on the topic at hand – don’t appeal to a mathematician’s beliefs as evidence outside of math, for instance, or you’re in the realm of the fallacy of appeal to authority), or maybe even purely deduce the necessity of the truth of your position, then you’ll have something. You want to be convincing, but not in a rhetorical way, in a logical way. You’re unlikely to impress a philosopher with an emotional appeal, or an appeal to what most people believe, or by noting that you’ve always been taught something is true. It’s fine, and natural, to start with whatever you happen to believe about some matter, but in a philosophy paper you’re expected to think about how you would support your position by appealing to evidence / reasons / arguments that you would expect all rational people to have to accept or at the very least respect. Since this is the most important paragraph in your paper, it should ideally be the longest – or perhaps devoting two paragraphs might well be merited if you have several key points to make.

Conclusion:

Wrap it up. The first sentence in your conclusion is expected to be a restatement of your thesis statement. When I say “restatement” I don’t mean cut and paste, I mean say the same thing in a different way. You are concluding your paper after all, so state, once more, what you’ve done in your paper. Much like the introduction, this should be on the extremely brief side. You might note how thinking about this topic has helped shape your beliefs, how your paper topic opens the door to some other issues that might be related (or not) and deserving of further exploration, how the answers you wrote about have impacted thought since their time, etc. Your concluding paragraph just needs to bring your paper to a reasonable stopping place.

If these instructions are not sufficient to make the assignment clear, please talk to me in class, after class, during office hours, or email me. It’s far better to ask a question you think is silly than to just assume you know what you’re doing and end up with an unsatisfactory paper. Feel free to take advantage of the Learning Lab as there are folks over there who can help you with the basic mechanics of writing a paper as well as philosophy tutors who can provide help with content as well. This should provide you with a good idea of how to construct your paper, but there are a couple of related topics I need to address: citation and plagiarism.

Citations:

Since this is not a research paper you need not provide a citations page. If you are using the books ordered for the class (or handouts provided in class) then you need only note the text and the page number from which your citation originated immediately after the quotation in parentheses. If you are using the web versions of the texts then you just need to note after the quotation the text and that you used the online version. So, for example, if you quoted Plato’s Meno from the book it would look like this: “ ___ ____ ____ ____.” (Meno, 77). If you use the web version then it would be the same except you’d type “web” where “77” is in the previous example. If you need to quote the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy then you can just type up your citation and put (IEP) behind it. The web sources are easily enough searched that no more information is needed. It probably should be apparent that no works cited page will be required for this paper if you stick to the resources noted above. If I approve a topic beyond the scope of our class, though, you will need to supply such a page.

Plagiarism:

Presumably everyone should have some idea of what plagiarism is. You can do a search on ACC’s home page for more information about it and the Learning Lab folks can tell you more than you’d ever want to know about it. When you write a paper you are representing its contents as your work unless you specifically note that you’re citing another source. Plagiarism occurs when you use someone else’s words or ideas without giving credit to that source. Clearly in such an instance the ideas / words you’re claiming are yours are not, and ACC does not tolerate this variety of dishonesty. If you commit plagiarism in your paper you will be given a failing grade for the class. Plagiarism is considered a very serious offense in the academic world so please consult with your instructor or other authority (the Learning Lab is a great resource for this) if you have any question at all about whether your work could be considered plagiarism or not.