Essay Three

Requirements

Each student will write a rougly three page essay.  This essay is due via email attachment by 5 PM on Friday, Feb. 20th.  The essay must be in MS Word 2007 or below or WordPerfect 12 or below or pdf.  I often cannot open Microsoft Works or other files. You should send with a return receipt or ask me to reply to make sure I have received the attachment.  If you copy yourself, you should also be able to see if the attachment worked.  Note the policy on late papers in the policy section at the end of the syllabus. If your paper will be late, please send via email so there is a time and date  it was sent.

1. Your essay should be word-processed, double-spaced, one-inch to one and one-half inch margins. It should be spell-checked and grammar-checked. Pages Numbered. Font no smaller than 12 point.

2. You should have a cover page with title, date, prompt, class and section, and your name. 

3.    Number each paragraph.     Bold your thesis.  After the end of the essay, attach an OUTLINE of the essay with the thesis clearly stated and at minimum a line for each paragraph.

4. Each essay should be approximately three pages long (not including the title page or Works Consulted page).

5. You must include a Works Consulted/Cited Page and/or Complete Footnotes/Endnotes.  You may use MLA, Turabian, Harvard, or University of Chicago in-text, footnote, or endnote styles. APA is OK, provided you add page numbers to it. CAREFUL AND CORRECT CITATION IS REQUIRED. WHEN IN DOUBT, CITE. Remember that simply paraphrasing or changing every third word is not OK. Quote and cite or radically summarize and cite. Use quotation marks when quoting or indent if quote is five lines or longer. Guessing at where your information comes from is not OK. Use page numbers in your in-text citations, footnotes or endnotes. Book or journal titles are italicized or underlined.  You need not consult any other sources than what we have read for class.  Those sources and any other sources you consult must be included in your Works Consulted/Cited and cited in-text or in footnotes/endnotes.

6. Your essay should define any key terms used, use examples to illustrate and support your thesis where appropriate, and discuss likely alternatives or respond to possible objections.

Please consult the Essay Grading/Proofreading Rubric for further details.

Choose One of the following prompts (questions/topics) to write about:

1.  Pick some argument or issue in the assigned readings on epistemology.  As per O'Rourke, "you should devote the first half of the essay to reconstruction of the argument or issue you focus on and the second half to your comment. This comment can be critical in nature, but it need not be. For example, if you focus on an argument that you find compelling, you could devote the comment to consideration of the argument’s implications. " 

2.  Both Haraway and Preston try to hold both social constructionism and very real material reality as important epistemologically.  Why?  OR, a different topic:  Do they succeed in maintaining the tension fruitfully?

3.  What do you see as the upshot of Quine's call for a naturalized epistemology in terms of environmental philosophy?

4.  From the environmental philosophy you have read so far, what one or two aspects of Preston's project might prove useful for the subdiscipline?  Why?

5.  Explore one or two contributions that Preston's work might make to epistemology in general.

6.  What does "richly situated knowledge" involve in either the Preston or Haraway reading?

7.  Wildcard.  Pick a topic and check it with the professor.