Preliminaries

If you haven't done so already, take a look at the suggestions for reading a philosophy paper. Your readers will approach your text in just the same way they would any other text, which means that they'll ask the same questions of it that they'd ask of any other text. You'll be more successful in your writing the more you anticipate the questions they ask and then answer them.

There's also a nice resource on writing written up by Jim Pryor (of NYU Philosophy) about writing philosophy papers, hosted here.

The general lesson from both of these pages is that your writing and your reading skills will grow together. You become a good reader of philosophy texts by thinking hard about what questions an author is trying to address, what her reasons are for giving the answer she in fact gives and what her reasons are for not giving alternatives you could think of, etc. You become a good writer of philosophy texts by making the task of your readers as easy as possible. So when you write, think about what it would be like to be a reader of the text you're producing; when you read, think about what the author was doing from the author's perspective. You'll get better at both of these tasks the more you do them.

Continue to Some Rough Guidelines.

Some Rough Guidelines

Philosophy papers have a point. Most of the papers you will write in college (and graduate school, should you pursue philosophy) will have a single, overarching point. This is your Thesis. Your paper should be concerned with exactly one goal, once you've fixed on your thesis: to explain and defend that thesis.

Continue to The Thesis.

The Thesis

Whoever reads your paper should be able to draw a box around a single sentence that states your thesis. Moreover, it shouldn't be hard to do that. There are many ways of pointing your reader to your main point, by using expressions like "In this paper, I'll argue that..."

Such a thesis can take many forms. Perhaps you are discussing an argument someone else made and you want to raise an objection. In that case, your paper might start like this.

Plato contends that ... Against Plato, I'll argue that there are good reasons to reject his conclusion. These reasons are...

Alternatively, you might argue that a certain argument is not compelling.

Descartes argues that we have good reason to accept his skeptical doubts. As I'll argue, Descartes in fact fails to establish this doubt.

Or perhaps you want to suggest a solution to a problem you've encountered.

Goodman has proposed what he calls the "new riddle of induction." After presenting this riddle, I'll propose the following solution...

As these examples illustrate, the sentence you'll write down is simple. The thought you're expressing need not be.

Continue to Explaining the Thesis.

Explaining the Thesis

Once you've stated the thesis, you may well need to spend a paragraph explaining it. For example, if you're writing about skepticism, you have to tell your audience what that is. If you're writing about the new riddle of induction, you need to tell your audience what that is. This is a great place to make use of your first example: when you make use of technical vocabulary, it really helps your reader to be given an example of how you would use that vocabulary to describe a simple case. The simpler and more familiar the case, the better.

Such an explanation need not take a huge amount of space---it may well be only a paragraph or two. But that doesn't mean that the explanation isn't important. Only once you've explained your thesis is your reader in a position to figure out whether the reasons you've produced for your thesis are good reasons. If she doesn't know what some of the key terms mean, she'll be lost.

Continue to The Argument.

The Argument

Once you've settled on a thesis and explained it, the rest of your paper is concerned with giving reasons for believing it. Here's the question you should be asking yourself: what do I need to tell someone who doesn't already agree with me to get her to agree with me? The best way to make progress on this question is to talk to people (e.g., in sections). Tell them what you want to argue, and why they should believe it.

In such informal discussions, you can get several clues about which parts of your papers need the most work. If the person you're talking to says nothing or just "huh!", you probably haven't explained your main point well enough. The criterion of explaining your thesis is that someone could see what sorts of reasons are relevant to your thesis---what would count in its favor, what against it. For beginning philosophers, this is the single hardest part about talking philosophy. In general, here's a good habit to get into. If someone gives you a blank stare after you've tried to explain a philosophical idea or concept or claim, assume that it's your problem. You need to try again, perhaps by using different words or by using more examples.

Once you've gotten your interlocutor on board with the thesis, try out some reasons. Philosophers, and indeed many people, will enjoy arguing with you once they see what's at issue. At this point, pay special attention to what you are saying. If you find yourself saying things like "OK, I didn't mean that. What I should have said..." a lot, you need to pay attention to your writing when you produce your paper. Think about whether what you're writing down really expresses what you're trying to get across. Philosophy papers are short precisely because we want you to make sure that every sentence---indeed, every word---is exactly what you want.

Let me end with a note on another watch word you'll come across very often: focus. Really explaining a reason you have for a claim can be complex. For that reason, you want to make sure that you only state your very best reasons for the thesis. Quality over quantity! Second, only state reasons for your thesis, not for other claims you might find interesting, or you're proud of having thought of. This latter is a constant issue for all of us (including myself). You think of a cool point, but it doesn't really fit into the paper you're writing. The only correct course of action is to cut the cool point from your paper and store it away for a future day when it will fit into whatever paper you're writing.

Continue to Upshot.

Upshot

The structure of a good philosophy paper is always the same, whether you're writing for an introductory course or for publication in philosophy journals. The goal of a philosophy paper is not to dazzle, but to illuminate.