PHI 3083 RESEARCH METHODS

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PHI 3083 RESEARCH METHODS

• Course Description
• This course will provide students with a clear
  and practical introduction to writing a
  philosophical research paper. It will also
  provide students with the opportunity to reflect
  on the ontological conditions of interpretation
  and understanding. The instructor hopes to
  demystify the creative process that academics
  rarely discuss by focusing on the basic skills
  necessary for successful research in philosophy.
  These skills include reading, researching, and
  analyzing sources, as well as outlining,
  drafting, and revising ones writing. Class
  participation and peer evaluation will be
  required. Students will form reading and writing
  communities that will allow them to develop and
  improve their philosophical writing with a focus
  on clarity, coherence, and persuasiveness.
  Students will also be required to present their
  research papers to the class.

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Required Texts

• Adler, Mortimer J. and Charles Van Doren. How to
  Read a Book. New York Simon Schuster, Inc.,
  1972.
• Booth, Wayne C., Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M.
  Williams. The Craft of Research, 3rd ed.
  Chicago The University of Chicago Press, 2008.
• Gadamer, Hans-Georg. Truth and Method. Translated
  by Joel Weinheimer and Donald G. Marshall. New
  York Continuum, 1989.
• Turabian, Kate L., et al. A Manual for Writers of
  Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations, 7th ed.
  Chicago The University of Chicago Press, 2007.
• Williams, Joseph M. Style Toward Clarity and
  Grace. Chicago The University of Chicago Press,
  1995.

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Course Goal

• Students will write the best research paper they
  can write.
• How can we make this possible?

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Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing

• It is a general observation that people write as
  they read. As a rule, careful writers are careful
  readers and vice versa. A careful writer wants to
  be read carefully. He cannot know what it means
  to be read carefully but by having done careful
  reading himself. Reading precedes writing. We
  read before we write. We learn to write by
  reading. A man learns to write well by reading
  well good books, by reading most carefully books
  which are most carefully written.

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Introductory Questions

• 1. What is research?
• 2. What is method?
• 3. What do you understand by philosophical
  method?
• 4. What are the different philosophical styles or
  methods?
• 5. How do/did you write a research paper in
  philosophy?
• 6. Why do philosophical research?

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What is Research?

• Research late 16th century The noun is from
  from the obsolete French recerche, based on
  cerchier to search. The prefix re- here is an
  intensifier of the meaning. (The Oxford
  Dictionary of Word Histories)
• An intensive search
• Verb to search or investigate exhaustively
  (Merriam-Websters Collegiate Dictionary, 11th
  ed.)
• To gather information to answer a question that
  solves a problem (Craft of Research 10)

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Why do philosophical research?

• Truth, Rhetoric, and Pleasure
• Develop your understanding and approach or unveil
  the truth
• Develop valuable skills for any future career
• The sheer pleasure of it!
• Power? Peace of Soul?
• The expression of maturity and mastery in the
  midst of doing, creating, working, and
  willingcalm breathing, attained freedom of the
  will. Twilight of the Idolswho knows? Perhaps
  also only a kind of peace of soul. (Nietzsche)

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What is Method?

• Method late middle English Originally a method
  referred to a prescribed medical treatment for a
  disease. The word came via Latin from Greek
  methodos pursuit of knowledge, based on hodos
  way. (The Oxford Dictionary of Word Histories)
• So, perhaps we can define research method as
  an intensive search to find a way to ease ones
  discomfort in the lack of understanding.
• Is the ease found through the search itself or
  through the result of the search?

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A Digression on Punctuation

• What is research?
• What is research?
• What is research?
• What is research?
• This is the right way.
• This is the right way.
• This is the right way.
• This is the right way.
• Manual for Writers, 3.106-107, 5.17 (6th ed.)
  pp. 305-7 (7th ed.)

• right
• wrong
• right
• wrong
• right
• wrong
• wrong
• right

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Why is So Much Philosophy So Tedious?

• 1. What is the genre of this text?
• 2. What makes philosophical texts tedious or
  boring?
• 3. What are the deplorable styles of
  philosophical writing?
• 4. What prescriptions for writing a good
  philosophy paper can be developed from this
  article?

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What is Philosophical Method?

• Thinking is the only philosophical method
• No experiments
• Raising simple, basic or fundamental questions
• Theoretical and Practical
• Metaphysics, epistemology, logic
• Ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics

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Thinking and

• Writing!
• Five Major Philosophical Styles (Methods?)
• Dialogue
• http//socrates.clarke.edu
• Treatise or Essay
• The Meeting of Objectives
• http//www.ccel.org/a/aquinas/summa/FP.html
• Systematic
• http//home.earthlink.net/tneff/index3.htm
• Aphoristic

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Major Philosophical Ways

• Socratic Method
• Dialectic question and answer, the importance of
  the method is that questions lead to more
  questions and not answers
• Irony the pose of ignorance on the part of the
  teacher, who may know more than he lets on
• Elenchos cross-examination, refutation
• Midwifery (maieutic) eliciting ideas already
  present in the pregnant subjects mind

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Descartes Discourse on Method (1637)

• Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting the
  Reason, and Seeking Truth in the Sciences
  http//www.classicallibrary.org/descartes/discours
  e/index.htm
• The first was never to accept anything for true
  which I did not clearly know to be such that is
  to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and
  prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my
  judgement than what was presented to my mind so
  clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground
  of doubt.
• The second, to divide each of the difficulties
  under examination into as many parts as possible,
  and as might be necessary for its adequate
  solution.
• The third, to conduct my thoughts in such order
  that, by commencing with objects the simplest and
  easiest to know, I might ascend by little and
  little, and, as it were, step by step, to the
  knowledge of the more complex assigning in
  thought a certain order even to those objects
  which in their own nature do not stand in a
  relation of antecedence and sequence.
• And the last, in every case to make enumerations
  so complete, and reviews so general, that I might
  be assured that nothing was omitted.

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Hans-Georg Gadamers Truth and Method (1960)

• Philosophical hermeneutics
• The art of interpreting texts which emphasizes
  that meaning is a function of fusing the
  historical horizons of the author and the reader.
  One should try to make the prejudices of each as
  clear as possible, but they all cannot ultimately
  be avoided.
• There is no final truth or interpretation of a
  text, only a dialogue between text and readers
  that continues indefinitely.
• Questioning and the hermeneutical circle
• Philosophy as dialogue
• More to come

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Writing again How do/did you write a research
paper?

• The importance of a rhetorical community
• Writing for others demands more from you than
  writing for yourself. (CR 14/13)
• You will understand your own work better when
  you explicitly try to anticipate your readers
  questions.
• Writing a research report is thinking in print,
  but thinking from the point of view of your
  readers. (CR 15/14)

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Group Timed Writing

• (1) Identify three key points for researchers in
  CR, chapters 3-6.
• (2) What is the central problem of Gallaghers
  paper?
• (3) Identify the main parts of Gallaghers
  argument.
• (4) Is it significant? Is it cogent?

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How do you choose a topic?

• Chapter 3 If you are free (35).
• A philosophical question Do you choose your
  topic or does your topic choose you?
• Practical guidance
• Start with what interests you most deeply
• Generally, a topic is too broad if it can be
  stated in four to five words (39)
• Be wary of the Internet (37)
• Watch out for Wikiality! http//www.comedycentral.
  com/colbertreport/videos.jhtml?videoId72347
• Begin with questions that others have asked
  (e.g., Am I free to choose what I do?) (Manual
  2.23, 3.78/ pp. 305)
• Summary Quick Tip (pp. 48-50)

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Research Problems

• Research problems are defined by incomplete
  knowledge or flawed understanding. You solve it
  not by changing the world but by understanding it
  better. (CR 59, 53)
• Having a topic to read about is not the same
  as having a problem to solve (54). In philosophy
  many topics can easily be changed into problems
  by asking whether a particular view or position
  is consistent and cogent.
• What are some tips for finding a good research
  problem? (p. 62f)

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An Example

• Topic
• I am studying Gallaghers contribution to the
  discussion of free will and consciousness and the
  conflict between libertarians and deterministic
  neuroscientists,
• Question
• because I want to find out how an
  interdisciplinary approach to free will sheds
  light on this concept and whether it is cogent
  and conclusive,
• Significance
• in order to help my readers better understand the
  nature of human actions in the world and avoid
  the pitfalls of many contemporary accounts found
  in philosophy of mind, psychology, and
  neuroscience.

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Another Example

• Topic
• I am studying the central features of the ethical
  visions of Spinoza and Kierkegaard,
• Question
• because I want to find out how closely these
  positions are related given their opposing
  theological foundations,
• Significance
• in order to help my readers better understand
  that an ethics of love does not need to be based
  on a particular conception of God.

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Another Example

• Topic
• I am studying philosophy in the time of terror
  and the notions of terrorism and forgiveness that
  arise in Derridas thinking,
• Question
• because I want to find out whether there is an
  isomorphism or common structure between the
  experiences of terrorism and pure forgiveness,
• Significance
• in order to help my readers better understand why
  pure forgiveness may be an appropriate response
  to terrorism.

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Another Example

• Topic
• I am studying Spinozas view of the ethical
  treatment of animal species,
• Question
• because I want to find out how he could accept
  the slaughter and destruction of different
  species given his ethical vision of the unity of
  nature and his ethics of love and nobility,
• Significance
• in order to help my readers better understand the
  inadequacy of this speciesism.

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A New Example

• Topic
• I am studying the notion of the pre-reflective
  self in recent phenomenological accounts of
  consciousness in Zahavi and Gallagher,
• Question
• because I want to find out whether the notion of
  a pre-reflective self can be phenomenologically
  justified and whether its relationship to
  subjectivity can be clarified,
• Significance
• in order to help my readers better understand the
  question of the self and that both the
  self-theorists and the no-self-theorists may be
  claiming more than can be demonstrated.

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Parts of a Philosophical Argument

• Questions/Problems
• Claims
• Reasons
• Evidence
• Acknowledgements and Responses
• Warrants