Instructions
The paper (6–10 pages long) is due, as an attachment, via the “Assignments” tool
on eCommons, by 11:55pm Wednesday, March 22 (in PDF or any format easily
converted to PDF, e.g. MSWord, LATE X, RTF, plain text).
The topics listed here are suggestions. If you want to write on another topic,
feel free to do so. It might be a good idea, however, in that case, to check with me
first.
You should use some material from the second part of the course — i.e.,
Popper and/or Kuhn, and possibly also one or more of Popper’s critics (Neurath,
Putnam, Lakatos). Most if not all of the topics will also allow you to bring in
material from the first part (e.g. you could write on Carnap vs. Popper, or Quine
vs. Popper).
The first three suggested topics below are new; the others are modified
versions of topics from the first paper
Note that the topics tend to have many sub-questions. You need not (and
probably should not) try to answer all of them. (You certainly should not just
answer them one after another in order—that would make a bad paper.) I put
them there to suggest various directions for thinking about the topic, and in
particular to head off superficial or excessively simple ways of thinking about
it.
The main focus of the paper should be, one way or another, on texts we’ve
read for this class, though you’re welcome to use other material also if it seems
useful/relevant. If you do use outside sources, it should go without saying that you
must cite them, and provide enough bibliographical information that I can figure
out what they are.[1]If you have any questions about policies on plagiarism and
related issues, please see https://www.ue.ucsc.edu/academic_misconduct. (For
sources from the recommended or required reading, title and page number should
be sufficient.)
I recommend an attempt to interpret (understand/explain/make sense of) the
views of the authors we’ve read, rather than, say, an attempt to make an
argument of your own against them. (I recommend this particularly if one or more
of these authors rubs you the wrong way or seems obviously wrong or
uninteresting.) All of the suggested topics below are along those lines. This is only
a recommendation, however: I suspect that an effort in this direction is most likely
to produce a good paper, but if you think you have a good idea along other lines,
go ahead and try it.