Portfolio

Each student has to submit a portfolio which should be entirely his/her own work. This is not a group project.
The assignment has two parts.
- [45 marks] Part I is a collection of 3 news clippings, each of which is followed by your own commentary, showing how the principles of critical thinking discussed in the course can be applied in the analysis of the excerpt, e.g. showing that it contains an unsound argument.
- [55 marks] Part II is an argument mapping exercise. You will be given a list of issues and you need to do your own research to draw an argument map for one of them.
Plagiarism will not be tolerated. Submissions which are significantly similar will be heavily penalized.
You should submit your portfolio to Loletta before 4:30pm May 6 in the philosophy dept main office of the Main Building. Make sure you get a receipt from her and KEEP THE RECEIPT. Try to hand it in EARLIER, since there are many students in this course and there might be a long queue of people submitting at the last minute.
An announcement will be made on the course web site when all the portfolios have been graded and can be returned.

About part I

Sources can include newspapers, websites, magazines, journal articles, textbooks. The material must be in English and you should provide the original passage and a citation of the source.
Excluding the sources, the length of each commentary should NOT be longer than 1 A4 page.
Grading criteria include: grammar, clarity, relevance, correctness and depth of analysis.

See http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/arg/complex.php for more details about argument mapping techniques and the software you can use.
Your argument map should NOT be larger than four A4 sheets of paper. Recommendation: 2 A4 (1 A3)
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.
Some examples of good argument maps:
- http://www.macrovu.com/CCTWeb/CCT1/CCTMap1FreeWill.html
- Link. But notice that the OBJECTIONS against the main claim are missing.

Work on one of these issues for your argument map assignment.