Phil 89: Third Writing Exercise

This will be another exercise in expositing the argument from a text. As before, choose one of these passages, and try to explain the argument in it to someone who hasn’t read them. You should say enough that they could understand and discuss the argument, based just on your summary of it. Don’t provide more detail than is needed to do that.

As before, don’t try to list or five a sentence-by-sentence copy of the author’s text, with some words and phrases switched around. Instead, reconstruct the argument in your passage, in your own words and in a careful way that makes its organization clear. You may want to say things in different order than the original does.

Your primary aim in this exercise is to explain the argument in the passage you chose. But if, in the course of doing that, you want to remark on objections that could be raised, or better responses that Sam Miller could have given to Gretchen Weirob, it’s fine for you to do so.

These exercises, like the previous two, will be graded only: High quality/Satisfactory/Low quality, with the default grade being Satisfactory.

Submit your exercise in Sakai by the end of the day (11:59 pm) on Thursday Sept 29.

Please submit your work as a PDF if possible. Also please make sure to have identifying information on the PDF, so that I can see whose paper is whose when I print them out. When we get to your longer, more substantial papers later in the course, I will grade them anonymously, and so you’ll have to identify yourself with your PID. But for now, please identify yourself with your name instead. In any case, don’t give me PDFs with no identifying info on them at all.

Passage 1

The passage in the Perry dialogue that starts on p. 6 with “Did Descartes not draw a clear distinction”, and ends on p. 9 just before “Must I bring up the kleenex box again?”

Passage 2

The passage in the Perry dialogue that starts on p. 9 with “If it was part of the meaning”, and ends on p. 12 just before “Your reasoning has some force.”

Passage 3

The passage in the Perry dialogue that starts on p. 12 after “it was Barbara Walters and not you”, and ends on p. 15 just before “I see. But wait.”

Passage 4

The passage in the Perry dialogue that starts on p. 15 with “How is it that you know in your own case”, and ends on p. 17 with “since a soul on your conception doesn’t look or feel like anything at all.”