Should America have open borders?

Ph172 – Contemporary Moral Problems Oct 30, 2018
Professor Steven Birnbaum
The final assignment consists of 3 required parts and one optional part:
• Due 11/8/2018: Proposal – required
• Due 11/27/2018: Watch 8 Rules of Writing and review sample essays – required; work on this
while waiting to get the proposal back from me – THIS IS THE MAKE-UP CLASS FROM
WHEN I WAS OUT – there will be a quiz on this on 11/27
• Due: 11/20/2018: Draft – optional
• Due 12/6/2018: Final essay – required (Due the final day of class)
o Note: if you turned in a draft, any rewrite is due the day of the final exam; 12/20/2018;
you have the extra time to account for the turnaround time for me to get the draft back to
you.
Why write a proposal?
The purpose of this assignment is to defend a position in answer to a moral question. Your first step is to tell
me the question you want to analyze and how you will approach it. You will find some sample questions on
back but you are welcome to modify the question or to come up with one of your own. If you want to come
up with your own question, you’ll tell me what it is in the proposal.
This final essay will be about 1000 – 1500 words.
This proposal counts as one of your homework assignments.
Question for the proposal
Identify a moral question you want to answer. What position do you want to defend? What reasons do
you expect to give to support your position? (In other words, how do you think you will answer the
question? Note that you could change your mind while writing the essay. Part of philosophy is
discovering that original beliefs may be mistaken. Also, you may want to take a contrary view for the
challenge of it!)
Keep the proposal simple, about 2 or 3 paragraphs. You are not yet writing the essay. You do not need to
do a detailed analysis. I want to make sure that you are on the right track.
How to submit
I will create a link on Blackboard called Final Essay. In there you will find then Essay Proposal – due 11/8
Post Here. You will there find submission instructions for the summary. I will shortly post instructions for
submitting the optional draft and the final essay.
The 8 Rules of Writing (mandatory)
I posted on Blackboard what I refer to as The 8 Rules of Writing. You will see a link on the left side. This
link has some PDF files and 2 videos, each about 15 minutes. Follow the instructions there. These are
simple rules that will make your writing stronger and clearer. While this won’t make your writing perfect, I
believe that these simple rules can benefit even people who struggle with English as a second language
One of the PDFs contains 3 different samples of the same essay. Writing a philosophy essay is different
from others you may have written. Philosophy essays are not about you, they are about the position you 2
want to defend. It is very easy to slip into the more comfortable way of writing. These samples should help
you see the difference.
When I was out sick I said that I would make up the time with an online class. I usually cover this material in
class but have posted it in blackboard, so this is the make-up class. I intend to give you a quiz on this
material.
A note on writing an optional draft essay
Drafts are optional but highly recommended. If you write a draft, submit it by 11/27/2018. (I’ll show you
where to submit it on blackboard later.) You will get the draft back with a provisional grade about a week
later. If you want to keep the provisional grade, let me know and you’re done; you would not need to submit
a rewritten paper. If you want to rewrite, you must address my comments about content and structure. If all
you do is correct grammar or word choice, your grade will not improve. I grade the rewritten essay on its
own merits; the grade can be higher, lower or the same as the grade on the draft. If there is a difference in
grades between the two, you will be awarded with the higher grade.
The draft can be a complete essay, an outline, a sketch, or just a couple of paragraphs to see if you’re on
the right track. Obviously, I won’t give a provisional grade to anything but a complete essay.
The draft deadline is there to ensure that I have enough time to read the drafts and turn them around. If you
miss the draft deadline, I will be happy to review your progress in email, during my office hours, or during
appointments.
Plagiarism
The essay proposal will not be checked for plagiarism. The essay itself, both the draft and the final version,
will be checked for plagiarism using SafeAssign, Turnitin or both. You will be able to see the plagiarism
report so you will be able to submit a revised copy. Two things to be aware of:
• If you put a passage in quotes and tell me where it’s from, it isn’t plagiarism; if you attribute a close
paraphrase or the source of an idea to someone else, it’s not plagiarism.
• Both SafeAssign and Turnitin tend to be very sensitive and will identify some things that are not
plagiarized, such as documented quotations. Use your judgment or ask me.
Essay Instructions: Look at the sample questions below. Create a thesis, that is, a position you want to defend,
by coming up with an answer to one of the questions. (For example, look at question 8. You might create a
thesis that states, “Hate speech should be restricted under circumstances xyz” or “Hate speech should never be
restricted.”) Do some research to describe the nature or extent of the problem in the USA. Defend your position
using some of the material we discussed in class. Raise a challenge to your argument and answer that
challenge. Remember, this is a philosophy paper and not a research assignment. Background research is there
to help you clarify the problem but the position you take and your defense of it are your own.
Possible Questions:1
1. Should violent offenders be executed? Under what circumstances?
2. Should children be prosecuted as adults? Under what circumstances? At what age?
3. Should prostitution be legalized?
4. Should physician assisted suicide (one form of euthanasia) be permitted for the terminally ill?
5. Should the use of illegal narcotics be permissible? (if you want to defend their legalization, remember to
discuss which narcotics you would want to legalize)
6. Should parents who permit their children to become morbidly obese be treated as child abusers?
7. Should people be permitted to post embarrassing things about others on social media?
1 Some questions are original but others were inspired by several sources, including: http://www.youngpeopleinstitute.org/the-top-15-bestethical-essay-topics-you-should-discuss/, https://www.thoughtco.com/ethical-dilemmas-for-essay-topics-1856982 and Fisher, College
Ethics and Morrow and Weston, A Workbook for Arguments.3
8. Should pornography be permissible? If so, what kind of pornography and under what circumstances?
9. Should “hate speech” be restricted?
10. Is it wrong to download copyrighted material without paying for it?
11. Should competitive athletes be permitted to use steroids?
12. Should it be permissible to hunt and kill non-human animals?
13. Should non-human animals be used for medical experiments?
14. Should non-human animals be used for cosmetic experiments?
15. Should children be permitted to play violent video games? (Remember, this is a question about whether
or not they should be permitted to play them, not whether or not they actually do play them.)
16. Should students be graded? Or should courses be pass/fail?
17. Should America have open borders?
18. Should you tell if you see someone cheating on an exam or turning in a plagiarized essay?
19. Should a student’s ethnicity be a consideration for college admission?
20. Should a person’s ethnicity be a consideration when they apply for a job?
21. Should we increase taxes on the richest 1%?
22. Should real estate developers be permitted to destroy the habitats of endangered species?
23. Should children be permitted to listen to songs with explicit lyrics?
24. Should every 18-year-old American be required to participate in 1 year of national service?
25. Should police be held to a different standard if they kill someone in the line of duty? If so, what should
that standard be?
26. Another topic of your choosing; please discuss with me.
Here are some notes that should be helpful:
• To write an argument, you must turn your answer to any question above into a thesis, or statement.
Remember, a statement is a sentence that can be true or false, such as: “Pornography should be legal.”
That’s a statement so it is better a question, but it is not good enough.
• If you say that “pornography should be legal,” someone could ask: What do you mean by pornography?
What kind of pornography should be legal? Consensual between 2 people? Non-consensual? Between
more than two people? Straight? Gay or lesbian? S&M? (sadomasochism) Bondage? Domination?
Elderly? Children? Bestiality? Oral? Vaginal? Anal? …I could go on, but the moment someone says,
“Pornography should be legal” we ask about what limits we want to impose. If you hold the position
“capital punishment should be legal,” you most certainly do not mean that a child stealing a pack of
chewing gum should be put to death. Your thesis requires some constraints.
• Think about your topics and how you might limit your thesis statement. Examples:
o “Euthanasia is permissible” can be constrained a number of ways. With physician assisted
suicide (PAS), the individual makes their own choice and commits the act of suicide; the doctor
merely gives the individual some method to do so. Should we permit PAS for any purpose? Or
only near death when any treatment is futile? May someone else choose for the patient if the
patient is unconscious? Or must we restrict PAS to a competent patient who can make the
choice for themselves?
o “Terrorism is permissible,” demands that we ask, under what circumstances is terrorism
permissible? Never? (“Terrorism is never permissible.”) In self-defense? (“Terrorism is
permissible in cases of self defense.”) In war? (“Terrorism is permissible in war.”) Furthermore,
in each of these cases, you’d have to tell the reader what you mean by terrorism and explain the
nature of the circumstance (e.g., what is meant by self-defense)
Please use the 8 Rules of Writing that you studied on blackboard.
Additional essay instructions:
• Please post your essay on blackboard in the designated place. I’ll give instructions on this shortly.
• Make sure to type your name on your essay.
• Your essay should be a word file (.docx)
• The file name must be Ph172 Final Essay Your Name.docx. Please don’t just call the file Final
Paper or Assignment or Philosophy. Those filenames don’t mean anything and it is impossible to
distinguish one from another in a list.4
• Please do not create a cover sheet or use an extra sheet for sources cited (i.e., bibliography). Just put
the bibliography at the end. If it goes over into a separate sheet, don’t worry. I just don’t like to waste
paper.
• Put direct quotes in quotation marks and identify the source. You may indicate the source (including
page number) inside the text or as a footnote.
• Be sure to also identify close paraphrases.
• If you identify sources it is NOT plagiarism. Plagiarism comes from NOT identifying sources.
• I am not looking for any particular style for footnotes and bibliography. Use one you are comfortable with.
Just make sure it is properly documented.
• This is not meant to be a research paper per se, though I do want you to investigate why a particular
question listed is a moral problem in America. If you assert anything as a fact, you must back that fact up.
• Please use Ariel font, 12 point, 1” margins on all sides
• Double spaced
• Paper should be about 1000-1500 words (3-4½ pages). A little longer or shorter is OK, just make sure
the essay is complete.
Finally, always remember your target audience:
Write this paper for an intelligent, educated reader who knows nothing about the subject