Do you know your liar paradox from your Ship of Theseus? Can you tell a Catch 22 from an Unexpected Hanging? This WritePhilosophy.com quiz will test your paradox identification skills. This quiz is hosted on Sporcle.com, and all your answers are anonymous.
A philosophy paper consists of an argument for a thesis. The quality of your paper will be judged primarily on how well your argument supports your thesis. But what is a thesis? How specific should it be? How do we construct arguments, breaking them down into a series of premises and a conclusion? What makes an argument persuasive?
We laid out two criteria for a persuasive argument: that the conclusion follows from the premises, and that the premises are all true. But what does it mean for a conclusion to "follow from" the premises? In deductive inference, we want to know whether an argument is valid and whether it is sound. What do these terms mean and how are they used?
Where to start? Writing an introduction or abstract for your philosophy paper can be daunting - and with good reason. The first paragraph of your paper is also the most important. But how do you write a good introduction? What should you include and what must you leave out? And how can writing an introduction help you to structure your paper?