Notes on how to tackle the Essay Paper, Peter Smith

"In these notes I offer some suggestions about how to tackle this paper, and try to answer some Frequently Asked Questions. The notes are based (in the second half, very closely indeed) on notes written by Jane Heal -- I'm very grateful to her for allowing me to snaffle some of her best suggestions, though she is not responsible for the final result. Do note, though, that the result is still just one view ... Consult other supervisors/directors of studies for additional advice." Peter Smith.

Peter Smith est professeur de Logique à Cambridge University. Il fut le directeur de la revue Analysis. Ce texte (version anglaise seulement) se trouve originellement ici.


What is the point of the paper?

To see if you can write at length about some topic, in a focused and sustained way. Focused -- not rambling disconnectedly on "everything I know about X", but discussing a specific topic or cluster of interrelated topics in an integrated way. Sustained -- following through some clear line(s) of argument in some depth (e.g. discussing not just objections but objections to the objections).

That still leaves options. You may go 'vertically' and dig more deeply into one particular issue; or you may go 'horizontally' and be concerned to make connections, and show how different parts of the philosophical landscape fit together -- or a bit of both. But whichever way you go, you should aim for a clearly structured story and some meaty arguments.


But typical one-word questions like "Necessity" or "Scepticism" or "Justice" are not very focused!

True. But they are intended as invitations to write on some specific topic that falls under the one-word heading. What the the Faculty Handbook says about Extended Essays and Dissertations applies here too. "The candidate in effect sets their own question [in the given area], and is expected to define this question and then write about it, not about its general philosophical environs." To emphasize again, you cannot construct a good extended essay merely by collecting a lot of points about a topic and setting them out one after the other. They need to be organized into an argument in favour of some particular conclusion, which you have specified as your target.


How much should I aim to write?

Quite a bit! If your essay is hardly longer than a typical answer to a single question on one of the other papers, then it is almost certainly too short. (Of course, you might be a Gettier, about to make a Major New Point in a couple of pages -- but then again, probably not ...!)

On the other hand, you might well write rather less overall than in other three hour papers, because you need to spend somewhat more time in thinking out and planning your work. Don't just dive in -- plan your answer very carefully. And certainly, you should avoid padding your answer out with material irrelevant to your main theme (that way, you can well end up with lower marks than if you had stopped sooner).


It's a lottery. How can I be expected to predict questions?

You can't make reliable predictions way ahead of time. You need to have a few areas prepared. But it's no secret how the questions on the essay paper are chosen -- 'big' topics on the syllabus of other papers that don't get questions asked on them in the relevant paper are very likely to get a question on the essay paper, so that the syllabus is covered fairly. If your favourite topic is absent from its 'home' paper, then it is a very good bet that it will turn up on the Essay Paper. So you can and should do some detailed last-minute preparation of two or three sensibly chosen topics once you have seen the other papers.


How should I prepare in general?

Practice! Whatever style of extended essay you favour, it is important to try planning and writing some before it comes to the Tripos itself. The Easter vacation is a good time to do this. Look at the essay topics set in some previous years' papers, and sketch out in detail how you would write on three or four of them (it will be good revision for the other papers too). You should actually write at least one extended essay of at least 2,000 words, and preferably two. Get some feedback about them from your supervisor at the start of the Easter term.


Am I expected to have something original to say?

Yes and no. No, you are not expected (even at Part II!) to come up with a brand new idea of your own. But yes, an absolutely routine presentation of absolutely standard points, however clearly done, isn't enough to do well. We are looking for signs of reading a bit more widely than the basic three or four papers you'd have to read for a supervision essay on the topic. And we are looking for something that is original to you in the sense of bringing together your reading and thinking in an individual way that shows that you have thought through the ideas for yourself.


But how do I give an individual twist to essays on what are, typically, very mainstream topics?

Don't worry! You'd be surprised how different even regular supervision essays can be, even on a standard topic when everyone's essay is based on a standard reading list. If you have read more than the most basic literature (important!) and have thought about it a bit (even more important!), then you'll almost certainly write with more individuality than you realize.

Still, if you find it difficult to kick-start your thought processes when faced with a numbingly general essay title like 'Pleasure', you might like to consider the following interesting advice from Jane Heal (what follows is from her notes, lightly edited):


One method: one example

It is a good thing to write in a way which shows that you can see the ramifications of the topic and are aware that there are many interesting questions, other than the most central and familiar ones, which can be asked about philosophical topics and many ways in which philosophical views interconnect.

To be able to do this you need, to start with, to have your mind decently well stocked with philosophical questions and ideas. And there is no way of getting it well stocked except by reading and thinking steadily throughout the year, getting into the habit of trying to relate what you hear in lectures to supervision reading you have already done, keeping a file of interesting ideas which strike you and so forth. But, even if you have a well stocked mind, you also need a method of retrieving from the various comers of your memory all the things you know about a given topic, so that slightly less familiar connections of ideas come into view and so that you can in the examination make best use of everything you know, rather than just relying on those obvious ideas which come first to mind. Here is one way of proceeding:

-Construct a list of major philosophical areas or concepts, for example such things as: ontology, epistemology, ethics, logic, God, time, matter, mind, causation, God, everyday life, etc. (Other big categories could include history of philosophy, art, political life, science, love, necessity, hate, creativity, death, law, etc. etc.) Choose five or six areas/concepts which you feel you know about and/or which are of interest to you and/or which name big topics which you have strong opinions about.
-Now take the essay title you want to tackle and juxtapose it in turn to all your chosen big concepts and see what questions and ideas present themselves.

An example. Suppose the topic is 'Pleasure' -- and consider questions that might arise when you juxtapose this with the first five headings above

-Pleasure + ontology: What sort of thing is pleasure - is it just a subjective state of mind? Is it different from happiness or contentment? Does it come in higher and lower varieties?
-Pleasure + epistemology: Can we know whether another is enjoying some pleasure and if so how, and how accurately? Can I know whether I am taking pleasure and if so how? Do issues about the epistemology of pleasure make obstacles for attempts to make pleasure the central notion in ethics?
-Pleasure + ethics: Is pleasure the only valuable thing? If not why not, and what other sorts of valuable things are there? How should I (morally? rationally?) weigh my own pleasure in comparison with that of others when I am making decisions?
-Pleasure + logic: What is the logical shape of claims about pleasure -- e.g. does a person always take pleasure in something or can a person just have pleasure but in nothing in particular? Can pleasure really be quantified? Does it make logical or conceptual sense to talk of 'units of pleasure' or one person having twice as much pleasure as another?
-Pleasure + God: Could God and/or belief in God be a source of happiness or pleasure? If so, of what kind and why? (And does the notion of infinite bliss lasting for eternity make sense?)

And 'history of philosophy' perhaps should also be on your list of headings, to lead you to think about what opinions notable philosophers of the past have held on Pleasure -- Plato, Aristotle, Hume or whoever.

Thus far you can proceed mechanically, although you should take a few minutes over each pairing in this part of the process. If no questions or ideas present themselves at once when you juxtapose (say) 'pleasure' and 'logic' do not give up instantly, but persevere and try associating from the two concepts in various directions and stirring round in your mind and see if you cannot get them to link up somehow.

The next stage is less mechanical and at this point your own creativity and individuality come into play. You should by now have notes of lots of questions (together perhaps with possible answers to them, reminders of opinions which others have held etc.). You should now consider which of these questions you are interested in. You should reflect also on which of them you have (or think you have) defensible answers to. And you should also (very important!) think which of the questions are linked together, so that giving a certain answer to one might commit you to giving a certain answer to another. From this kind of reflection, with any luck, you will begin to see a possible structure for an essay.

For example suppose you are initially strongly inclined to think that there are higher and lower forms of pleasure. How then are you to distinguish the levels? One plausible move commits you to saying that pleasure must be taken in something (i.e. commits you to an answer to the question about the logical shape of talk about pleasure), precisely because it seems natural to distinguish the levels of pleasure by saying that higher pleasures are taken by contemplating or somehow interacting with the more valuable things. Butt now you find yourself committed to some kind of objectivism about value. Perhaps this does not seem to you at all congenial! Can you find a way out, by differentiating higher and lower pleasures in some other way? Yes! you remember that there are various proposals here ... But do they work to draw the line between higher and lower where you would like to draw it? Hm -- let's think about various cases ...

(Note that in constructing this line of thought many, indeed most, of the questions and ideas generated by the juxtaposing process have been discarded. There is no need to think that you must use in your final essay everything assembled in the initial phase.)

Now you can begin to start outlining your essay: an introduction in which you say that what you want to do is show how we can distinguish higher and lower pleasures without committing ourselves to implausibly strong views about the objectivity of value; a first section in which you point our how the various views seem to be connected: another section in which you explain your way out; perhaps there will be various subsections as well. (There will be plenty of scope for examining different kinds of case, comparing and contrasting examples of higher and lower, saying why, according to you, objectivity of value is not a plausible idea, etc. etc.)


Another Example

Let's consider another example, say 'Knowledge of God'. When faced with such a phrase it might be a good idea to look at each part of it separately, rather than moving instantly to consider the most obvious question which the phrase as a whole suggests.

-Knowledge + ontology: What ontological category does knowledge itself belong to - e.g. is it a state of mind? What ontological categories of things can we know about?
-Knowledge+ epistemology: This looks a bit boring! Not every juxtaposition yields something interesting. But perhaps we are wrong here. Are there special problems in knowing about knowledge? There is indeed an issue about how and whether we can know about definitions of knowledge. When testing a definition we need agreed cases of the thing to be defined to provide tests, but the possibility of sceptical disputes, e.g. about whether we really do know about external objects, makes this sort of testing problematic in the case of knowledge -- so how can we test our attempted definitions?
-Knowledge+ ethics: Should we take responsibility for our own opinions (remember Descartes' view that falling into error was always our own fault?) -- Can we know about values?
-Knowledge+ logic: What is the logical shape of the concept of knowledge? How is knowledge to be defined - e.g. is it justified true belief or is it belief caused by what is known or is it belief acquired by a reliable method? How do we know about necessary truths (as some claims about God are supposed to be)?
-Knowledge+ God: Can we know God exists? Can we know God's properties? It is at this point that the most obvious questions suggested by the phrase 'Knowledge of God' will appear - e.g. Does the ontological argument work? Does the argument from design work? etc.

One line of thought which already emerges from this collection (even without going on to do more juxtaposing of 'God' and further concepts) is that consideration of the traditional arguments for the existence of God seem to operate against a background of a justified true belief account of knowledge, in that the object of these traditional arguments is to produce good reasons for believing in the existence of God and the implication of the discussions is that we do not have knowledge of God if all the arguments fail. But what if a causal theory or a reliable method theory of knowledge were correct? Then the failure of the traditional arguments would not show that believers do not have knowledge of God. Someone could have knowledge of God if they had belief in God caused by God or belief in God acquired by some reliable method, even if they couldn't produce any reasons for the belief. Does this make sense? It seems, somehow, to make things too easy for the believer to defend the claim that (perhaps) he/she has knowledge of God. In the case of the external world, many philosophers have fastened on a 'reliable method' account of knowledge as enabling us to defend the idea that we have knowledge of the external world, even when we cannot produce reasons for our beliefs and cannot disarm the sceptical Cartesian Demon arguments. And this has seemed a respectable philosophical position. But is the analogous position vis a vis knowledge of God equally defensible? Is the case of God importantly different from the case of the external world? If so how? Plenty of things could be suggested here ... (And perhaps a line of thought pursuing these issues could weave in the point about the difficulty of testing definitions of knowledge because of the difficulty of knowing which are cases of knowledge?) And so it goes ...

Well, the direction your ideas would take is no doubt different. But this is an example of how juxtaposing headings can generate ideas.


Summary

Whether or not you find the suggested method for generating ideas for your essay useful, the headline points remain clear: Your essay should be

-focused -- don't ramble or offer a disconnected heap of points: plan the essay carefully
-sustained -- at least some threads of argument need to be pursued in detailed
-informed -- show that, on your chosen topic, you know more than the absolutely basic moves
-individual -- show that you have thought for yourself.

And if all that sounds daunting, let's finish by noting that (hard as though it might be to believe) quite a few find that -- once into the business and with the adrenalin flowing -- they quite enjoy the experience ...!

Good luck!