Philosophy 6340, First paper assignment

A sketch of the assignment:
The assignment is to write a conference-style paper on the value/swamping problem for knowledge.

Because it is a conference-style paper, it cannot be more than 3000 words, including all footnotes and endnotes, but excluding the references section and the abstract. It must have an abstract (let's say 150 words max). Formatted for blind review (although since I do need to give you a grade, you should put your name at the very end of the references section). Please ask me if you are uncertain what any of this means or how to accomplish it (learning this stuff is part of the point of this assignment).

Also because it is a conference-style paper, it must argue for a point, either presenting a point no one has made before or a new argument for an old point. The point argued for cannot be purely historical or a matter of textual analysis. The audience members you should have in mind when writing are people who would be interested to attend a talk on this subject, but who have only the body of knowledge shared by most competent philosophers, and lack any specialized knowledge on the topic you are writing on. So you will need to do some work to motivate and situate your topic and your argument, but of course cannot spend too much time on that as you have only 3000 words. Ideally, it should also be a paper that a person could follow if they heard it read.

Other stuff
* Please submit a topic and tentative thesis to me by September 30, via email. Please keep these brief; if you need to say more, let's talk in person.

* You will work in three person groups. Each of you will write your own paper. But you will go over outlines of each others' papers in detail (we'll pick a date for this soon). And you will send all members of your groups completed drafts of your paper by the 12th. You should return detailed feedback on these drafts by the 14th. I would like each group to have at least one advanced student and one starting student/undergrad in it. I'm pretty sure we have enough of each to go around.

* The paper will be due October 17. Please email it to me (at my bigfatgenius email address) in .doc format. DO NOT SEND .PDFs!

* I'm considering giving you an additional homework assignment which will be to write up a handout for the talk you would give on this paper, but let's leave that TBD.