PHI332
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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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. 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


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