Joe Lau's wiki: Courses/2006b PHI L1005pb 2

Problem set #2

Warning

• You are expected to work on this assignment ON YOUR OWN.
• WE SHALL DEDUCT MARKS from students whose argument maps are very similar to each other. To avoid that, make sure you use your own words, and think of your own special way of presenting the map.
• If you have questions, post to the bulletin board and do not email Joe Lau.

Assignment

Your task is to draw an argument map for ONE of these claims:

1. We should encourage coffee drinkers to buy fairtrade coffee.
2. Hong Kong should not allow medical research using embryo cells.
3. Hong Kong should enact minimum wage legislation.
4. Hong Kong should start imposing a sales tax.
5. The US should withdraw all its troops from Iraq immediately.

• The argument map should be either printed or neatly handwritten.
• Minimize size: 1 A4. Recommended: A3 (or two pieces of A4 attached together). Maximum: 3 pages of A4.
• Font size: at least 7pt.
• You should hand it in to Loletta in Room 302 of the Main Building before 5pm on Tue 22 May 2007. Make sure you get a receipt from her and KEEP THE RECEIPT. Try to hand it in EARLIER, since there are so many students and there might be a long queue of people submitting at the last minute.
• If you hand in late but before 1pm 25 May, there will be a 50% deduction of marks. After that, no marks will be given.

Additional guidelines

• The argument map should provide a good overview of the major arguments FOR AND AGAINST the claim you have selected. You should try to be fair, balanced, comprehensive, clear, and succinct.
• You need to do quite a bit of research if you want to do this well. Do not rely on only one or two sources because you might miss out some other viewpoints.
• There is no need to quote your sources, but obviously, if you find an argument map on exactly one of these topics, you should not copy it!
• Apart from laying out the arguments for and against the claim, it is important also to consider the arguments for and against the arguments being given. In other words, the map should extend beyond just a single level. Of course, the map can get very complicated. It is up to you how many reasons and objections you want to show, and how many levels of arguments there should be. The aim is to provide a good balance of clarity and comprehensiveness.
• You do not have to follow the rabbit rule and the holding hands rule in this exercise. You can if you want.
• See http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/argmap/ for software which you can use to draw the map.

Examples

• http://www.macrovu.com/CCTWeb/CCT1/CCTMap1.html - This is very detailed, but you are not expected to produce something so complicated!
• Here is a simple example. Your submission should be MORE detailed.
• You are strongly encouraged to use a notation similar to this example here. This is a reasonably good argument map, well-argued and clear. But notice that the OBJECTIONS against the main claim are missing.