Guide for Writing a Philosophy Paper
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If you are taking a college-level philosophy course, and you have to write a paper or an essay, then this video is designed for you. In it, I explain how academic philosophical writing is different from the other kinds of writing that you may have had to do in the past. And I offer several specific tips for how to write better undergraduate philosophy papers. I also give some anecdotes or examples to illustrate the various points that I make. The main point is that the goal of philosophical writing is clarity. You want your paper to be as clear as possible. This is a tutorial on writing a college or university academic philosophy paper.
Bold of you to assume that it's due in two days or more!
Mine is due in 3 hours
How’d it go? Lol
Damn, you make some top tier videos. I handed in my first ever undergrad essay yesterday, so I'm just melting into my chair as I watch this, knowing that ship has sailed
It's your first essay. Most of your peers won't figure this stuff out for several semesters, maybe never. If you are taking philosophy classes and you figure out how to write a philosophy paper at this point, you will be way ahead of the curve. Good luck!
Yeah, but if you wait just awhile, you will find that your ship has come in!
In high school I felt that I was proficient at writing papers for my english class, so when I got to college and I had to write a paper for my history class, I spent too much time on writing prose, and not enough time answering the questions. I came to realize that I needed to adjust my approach when writing papers for classes outside of english class, so that I think of it more as writing a technical paper rather than writing prose. Since the dawn of time, people have been making this mistake, but that's just my opinion so the debate rages on!
I feel so much joy watching these videos. At my 38 years old, I took the bold decision to go back to college, and double major in philosophy and neuroscience with a minor in entrepreneurship. 👽♥️♥️♥️
This sounds pretty strong
"Shorter, quicker video because the internet has a short attention span." That hit me
Since the dawn of time, all philosophers wondered how to write papers clearly...😂😂
WOW, I follow many youtube channels about philosophy since I am an undergrad in philosophy, and let me tell you that your videos are WOW. I love the concept of the "whiteboard" you use, it gives a natural feeling so to say, I mean, it is like in a classroom. PLEASE, continue and if possible make longer videos for complex philosophical concepts. For me, it works. I hope you will continue posting videos.
"Repeat words" sounds like good advice, that I probably wouldn't have thought to tell an undergrad. My favorite aphorism about writing is "make sure you know the rules, so that you can make an informed decision to break them." So of course I repeat words when one word is the right word to use in multiple places. I just wouldn't have thought of it specifically.
Yeah, but a thesaurus is better!
This is such good guidance! It gives tips useful not only for philosophy papers, but for writing in general.
You make such top level, entertaining, interesting videos! I am an A-level philosophy student from the UK and I benefit so much from these, infact some of your videos I have been watching just for fun! Do you think you could make a video on analysis? On how to analyse an argument or a theory and use your own voice in directing that analysis in essays.
Very good video! So helpful for the difficult task of interpreting philosophy into your own work!
Thank you, your guide and examples are clearer than your glass board.
"The texts... in this course are actually pretty clear. It's just that they're written in a different language." This gave me flashbacks to my Junior year when I signed up for Epistomolgy and the PhD candidate teaching the course decided we would learn about the subject by reading a single book by his favorite philosopher: "A Critique of Pure Reason". I can recall filling up this little notebook that was essentially a dictionary for all these Kantian concepts, words, phrases each with several revisions of what I thought they meant, page and paragraph references, etc. It was maddening but I kept at it and somewhere just past page 200 I remember doing the reading assignment fluently without having to reference my dictionary. It was like something clicked and i was fluent in Kantian. The rest of the book went by much more smoothly and had a profound impact on the way I thought about the world - in the end, Kant lived up to his hype (his ethics were such a let down though). The following semester I had a class entirely devoted to Hegel. I much prefer the Young Hegelians to Hegel, himself, and though reading him provided vital context to their writing, I'm still convinced anyone who says they can 100% understand Hegel with crystal clarity is lying to you or themselves.
This was a great help, thank you.
I really appreciate it,every of your video
Absolutely delightful.
My professor sent this link and this is so helpful, thank you! But that's just my opinion... its all relative to the situational fundamental semantics of my current existentialistic ideals
Very helpful video! But at the end when you say “don’t start your paper with...” and “don’t end your paper with...” I think it would’ve been really helpful to include successful ways to start and end your paper.
Good point. I may add that somehow...
Great advice, although there is one minor error: grandmother is longer than detergent.
Good catch!
With all writing, read out loud You will find something to improve.
This was so helpful! Thank you!
I helped myself to a speggity dinner.
very good!!
I feel like the weird kid here because I really enjoy writing and researching papers for absolutely no reason. Then I go back and review and try finding holes until I end up rewriting entirely or editing the theory. I have been collecting them in a notepad. I even record myself reading it and have notes that follow along when the paper gets far enough for me to be able to do that. I am enlisting in a local state college here in IL next year spring 2024. I am really really excited to begin
Begin at the beginning.
Very good. Thanks
Thank you. 🌹
I was reading along with my Philosophy professor’s advice for how to do her paper and yeah, pretty much word for word on how you put it. This did clarify a couple things for me though so thanks
Edit: coming back this tutorial 9 days later. Still haven’t started and its due in a few hours…. Why do I torture myself so? 😭😭😭
Thank you. My professor recommended this video and it's really helpful. And you have a nice personality!
Thank you! 😃
I began my paper this way: "Plato was a dolt."
@@allen5455 i dont get it
@@33bockbock Plato's "Republic" is devoted to communism as a moral necessity. This is one of the reasons why Marx dubbed communism as "inevitable." Later in life, Plato gave up on his idea of 'total government'. Plato leaves us wondering about his "philosophy," his world-life view. We could have respect for Plato's metaphysics. But, in essence, he's all over the place. Aristotle is a much better philosopher.
@@allen5455 I still dont get it
i got a paper due in 3 days, let's get this doneeeee!
Hai Jeffrey, would you share a video on how to write philosophy article for philosophy academic journal?
Life saver
Perfect explication!
Philosophically, there is no such thing as "perfect."
Plz make a video on problem on induction
This dude was my GSA in undergrad. Go Jeff! er, dr. Kaplan now?!
another reason to have a lot of direct quotes is if you're disagreeing with an author. your reader can't trust you to put what you're disagreeing with accurately, maybe because you don't really understand it, or because you're being dishonest. however, unless the meaning of a direct quote is obvious, it's a good idea to put your understanding of it in your own words, too.
Can you make a video on how to properly extract information from journal & article for legal studies? Or maybe on studying, answering method , to ensure that you are on the right track Thank youu for your videos, it has been very helpful in understanding this subject
I'm a philosophy graduate. I read philosophy with humanities at the open university in 2004. A housing association has asked me if I'd care to write a paper that could be used in a forthcoming meeting. The question asks if modular house construction will make building low-cost social housing more economical than traditional construction methods and whether it will be simpler to build than traditional methods. My problem is that I am an 88-year-old retired person. I cannot afford to sign up for the university's Master's degree course plus I may not last that long. Consequently, I have spent considerable time studying the subject in question and will include an argument on behalf of the urban village concept. I have gathered together as much reference material as I think is relevant to the question. Can you point me to any books or videos that you think would be of benefit to me?
i'm a bit confused about the last tip saying that we dont need to read other material. does it mean that phylosophy paper should be super original?
Sort of, yes. Undergraduate philosophy papers are not 'research papers'--i.e., their purpose is not to demonstrate the truth of some claim by gathering together evidence found in lots of published resources. Rather, undergraduate philosophy papers are attempts to make some mostly original argument. You want to argue for some philosophical claim not by gathering evidence from other sources, but by producing some rational, logical, persuasive argument that comes from your own brain.
I m a student of philosophy, now i teaching in this subject, so i want to phd. Please help me
Thank you. How do you make your videos? :-)
You are not the first to ask. I made a video explaining it: kzhead.info/sun/acOdZJiao5OVenk/bejne.html
my paper is in 2 days and we have to compare both moral theory’s utilitarianism and deontology to a situation (which we don’t know ) and im struggling to find criticisms (pros and cons) of each theory, has anyone compared these and have any knowledge that could help understand the two.
i know its late but part of those exercises is for you go come up with your own opinions but if you don't truly understand or know I would always start with one of the easier ones that you have to compare.. .for example the notion of utilitarianism... the idea of trying to maximize utility or happiness and then taking that to its extreme or come up with ideas that you think it could be a problem.... for example in a medical sense where could it be or in the macro or micro... then come up with counter points to that counter. it sounds like is consequentialism and utilitarianism but yeah keep pushing i know its one year later but that should help in general.
You are 2 days late and this explaination could have saved me for dropping the class. 🤣
I am glad I am not the only person who's parents have the ability to text emails.
welp, looks like i failed two essays
0:32 Okay, well that was a little too accurate…
Fellow prof here - wishing I knew how you made the videos - you are standing behind a glass?
Yes, I am standing behind a piece of glass. Here is a video I made explaining how it works: kzhead.info/sun/acOdZJiao5OVenk/bejne.html
Alternatively, how to write a Master's dissertation without going insane.
Just started my Philosophy degree. Thanks! A lot of help!!!
Professor Kaplan. Please, answer it if you get this message. Suppose a "third world" phd in cognitive sciences who is "out of the circuit" since 2000 had discovered something amazingly new and truly unexpected in the famous and old gedanken called "The Chinese Room" of John Searle, what could be the best way to disclose such discovery? Thanks (I believe I cannot post my e-mail because it is deleted by the KZhead so I would wait here...)
The truth is that professional academic philosophers with appointments at reputable colleges and universities regularly get contacted by people outside of academic philosophy who think they have made a fantastic philosophical discovery. I get several emails of this variety every year. Very famous philosophers (I am certainly not one of them!) get emails of this kind even more regularly. The graduate student lounges at top philosophy PhD programs usually have a stack of self-published books or pamphlets from people without academic training in philosophy who think they have made a brilliant philosophical breakthrough. No one reads them. The reason for this--and sorry to put this so bluntly, but this is the truth--is that the *vast* majority of them are unknowingly repeating some point that that was made in the secondary academic literature decades ago. Is it possible that someone who has not spent years reading academic philosophy has some genuinely novel and groundbreaking philosophical idea? Of course. But academic philosophers receive so many communications from people who merely *think* they have had such a discovery, that reading all of these treatises is simply not a good use of one's time. Sorry if this is discouraging, but this is the obstacle that you face. The route past this impasse, of course, is to write the ideas up as an academic paper and have it accepted at a peer-reviewed academic journal. But the likelihood of acceptance is very low. I am a formally trained philosopher with a PhD from a top department, several publications in top journals, and a tenure-track job, and I have enough trouble getting my own papers accepted at the good journals!
@@jeffreykaplan1 Well. So I would publish it on Quora. What do you think about it? Supposing I had a truly interesting point? Certainly, in a globalist world with tons of colleges everywhere, I cannot secure that such idea is truly original. Nevertheless, I believe it is original. More important than that, it has striking and interesting logical consequences. In the past I accumulated one million views in Quora using a pseudonym but I killed the account because I hate "fame"' and (jn fact) I hate social networks and all that excessive globalism. I am an old fashion intellectual. Finally, what do you think of QUORA in terms of a source for an academic paper? I am a Brazilian from the Danish cologne in the Southern countryside.
11:42 the longest word there is "grandmother" .
im a philosophy major at Rutgers
Actually not writing this the night before for once. This definitely isn’t my subject. I told my professor the more I learn about “so and so” the more he makes me want to bang my head on the wall to which she responded, “that just means you’re doing philosophy right.” 💀
Longest word is grandmother, right?
YOU ARE GOD, THANK YOU
Came here thinking I have to figure out how to write like 9:11, glad I was so wrong
My professor is so strict 😢
guys i beg yall to suggest me professors to other subjects with similar vibe/format as him.
The longest word is grandmother !
Well here that is the teachers lecture paper they forgot to write it and just improvise, I shouldn't have to write those.
How write a philosophy paper you want to publish: 1.Don't write an abstract because you are afraid nobody will read the paper 2.Beat around the bush as long as possible and have the conclusion as some sort of surpise at the end, as if you write a novel and not an academic paper 3.Don't get read anyway, because nobody has time for your shit. Also if you are Jürgen Habermas: Just list propositions and never bring arguments.
Is he actually writing backwards form his side of the glass?????????
My paper it's actually about Aristotle lol.
Aristotle was the best, no?
@@suppiluiiuma5769 he was good, but the GREATEST by far is Jesus Christ, no man spoke like He spoke
@@JP-vv1mz Allow me to disprove that affirmation, by noting Jesus spoke "Love others as thyself", but as I speak: "Love others as thyself", so I too speak as greatly as Jesus, thus he is not the Greatest since I stand next to him.
Only listening to this instead of watching the video, can cause quite some confusion when you understand playdough instead of Plato... But that might just be a problem for some Europeans I guess.
A counter example to utilitarianism? Is that even possible?
Just learned I am the stupid friend guess I am screwed
u kinda look like a toby maguire
🤣🤣
Grandmother is the longest word…
did the bro suggest that you can understand Aristotle in 4 hours? what am i witnessing?
I hated the novel!
I'm insulted. I'm the friend who slurped the beer from the carpet so it wouldn't be wasted. Also they keep making me do iq tests because apparently I'm a genius. Your philosophy needs work :P