Organizing Claims and Counterclaims Assignment | Organizing Claims and Counterclaims
Final Project Stage 2: Organizing Claims and
Counterclaims for your Philosophical Question
For the second stage of your Final Project in Philosophy 100, you will conduct an analysis of your philosophical question by listing a claim and counter-claim to your question, and organizing arguments, evidence, reasoning, and examples that support them. As an introduction to philosophy, it is important to list and organize the conceptual points of your overall argument, and also to list and organize the conceptual points of any counterclaim in order to refute them.
For the Stage Two assignment of your Final Project, list a claim and a counterclaim to your question, then below each one, list the arguments, reasoning, evidence, and examples that can be used to support each one. A good philosopher treats both claim and counter-claim with equal importance.
A claim positively asserts an answer to a question. For example, to the question “Is it more important for society to be lawful or fair?” one can claim “It is more important for society to be lawful than to be fair.” A counter-claim would be “It is more important for society to be fair than lawful.”
Question: Is it more important for society to be lawful or fair?
Claim: It is more important for society to be lawful than fair.
Counterclaim: It is more important for society to be fair than lawful.
Once you have dissected your claim and counterclaim, list the arguments you would use to support each. Arguments are the rationale for why someone should believe the evidence. All arguments are based on logic and reasoning whereby the conclusion you want the reader to arrive at comes logically from the premises on which you based your argument.
It is not enough to simply provide the rationale of the argument (as above). You must also provide evidence. Evidence can come in many forms but the most common in philosophy is the evidence of the primary texts of the philosopher. Another form of evidence is the evidence of your observations. Find all the evidence you need to support your arguments in your experiences and the primary text.
Submit this list of claim, counterclaim, and the arguments and evidence you need to support them in a word .docx.
