PHI332 : The
Class : Argument
Evaluation : Article-Length Argument
Topic 3: Writing an Evaluation of an Article-Lenght
Argument
At this point, you are ready to write your mid-term
examination: Identify and evaluate an article-length argument on your research
topic. Raise objections and consider replies in your evaluation.(Min. 3 pp.).
Here is how to do it, step by step.
- Pick one of the articles you mailed to me to examine. The article should
be an argumentative essay. (How to identify argumentative essays as quickly
as possible? See modules 3.1 and 3.2.) The article should be about an issue
of particular interest to you in health care ethics. For example, if you are
in dental hygiene, you might find it most valuable to research a topic in
dental hygiene ethics. (How to find such topics? Ask instructors or professionals
in your special area of interest to help you identify ethical issues you could
examine.) It may be an article from the textbook or from the Cline library
web collection for this course.
- Make a section-level or topic-sentence level diagram of the article. How?
See module 3. How long will this part be? 1-5 pp.
- You will not object to everything in the article. Make paragraph by paragraph
diagrams of the parts of the author's argument that interest you. How? See
module 2. How long? 1-5 pp.
- Make at least one significant objection to the author’s argument. Consider
at least one reply to that objection. In writing your objections and replies,
state the arguments you examine as numbered lists of sentences. How? See modules
4.1 and 4.2. How long? 1-5 pp. Note: In your process of evaluation, you do
NOT need to evaluate or use arguments from analogy. Not every argument and
not every objection depends on an analogy; so it would be artificial for me
to insist you find or use them.
- Write a conclusion, in which you decide whether the objection(s) you raise
do or do not show a weakness in the author's argument. Perhaps your objections
threaten to destroy the author's argument. Perhaps they limit it. Perhaps
you can think of good replies to all objections raised. How long? One paragraph
up to 2 pp.
- Write an introduction, using your section level or topic sentence level
diagrams, to give the reader (me) the background information that I need in
order to understand the issue and the argument you are targeting. How long?
One paragraph up to 2 pp.
Steps 4, 5 and 6 are your midterm. They should be written up in a unified paper,
using complete sentences and any writing skills you have learned in college
apart from this course, as well as the argument analysis skills you have learned
in this course. You do not need to put diagrams in this part. This essay should
be a minimum of 3 pages (typed, double spaced). In addition to the essay, attach
the diagrams from steps 2 and 3 as appendices.
Put your midterm and attached diagrams into an MSWord document, titled "[firstname].[lastname].midterm."
Send to me as an email attachment before the deadline for your session.
I will grade your midterm paper on the accuracy of your identification of the
relevant arguments you examine and the skill and clarity you show in considering
objections and replies, as you form your evaluation.
There is an excellent example of a "midterm paper" you may study
with profit: Section I of Warren's "On the Moral and Legal Status of Abortion,"
on pp. 344-346. In that section Warren evaluates an argument in Thomson's article
"A Defense of Abortion."
Try to have fun as you work!
Once you have completed this excercise you should:
Go back to Argument
Evaluation
E-mail George Rudebusch at George.Rudebusch@nau.edu
or call (520) 523-7091
