Skepticism,
Atheism, and Religious Faith (Religious Studies 2LL3)
Fall 2014
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SUMMARY 1
Assignment due
in class on September 22 from students with last names beginning in A-L
This assignment consists of attendance of the full class session on September 22, plus completing the written
assignment below, to be submitted in class on September 22 only. (Rationale: Text Summary assignments are designed to help
you prepare the reading assignment for a particular class meeting, in conjunction with your participation in that class meeting, when we go over the reading selection together.) If you cannot come to class on September 22, please plan to complete Text Summary 2 for September 29 instead.
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1.
Before beginning the
writing assignment, please read:
- Hugo Bedau, Thinking and Writing About Philosophy,
pp. 7-10 top [in coursepack], on writing
summaries to understand reading
- Gordon Harvey, Writing with Sources [coursepack/purchase book], pp.
15-19, on quoting, especially item (f) on p. 17, on "reasons to quote a
source directly."
You might also find it helpful to have a
look at:
- They
Say/I Say, pp. 38-40 [coursepack], on "signal verbs"
(The text summary assignment
is also being discussed in class on September 15.)
2.
Please prepare a written summary (1-1.5 pages long, approximately 500
words) of:
- Descartes, Meditation 2, from the beginning (AT 23) up
until the paragraph ending "...a thinking thing" (AT 27)
(Be sure to use the print editions of the texts selected for this course, i.e., in this case: Descartes, Discourse on Method, and Meditations on First Philosophy, trans. Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1998), available for purchase at the Campus Store.)
Detailed Instructions:- The purpose of the
summary is to lay
out what the
text says, in roughly the order in which it is said, taking care to
mention the aspects that you think are most important or
interesting.
- Your summary should highlight key concepts and describe the
main argument(s). (Please draw on what you learned in the September 15 tutorial meeting about "describing arguments.")
- Your observations about the text should be
backed up
with references
that allow your reader to see what they are based on; for this purpose,
please use in-text
parenthetical page references - for an example of these, see
Harvey, Writing with Sources,
p. 51, under "MLA Basic Rules." For your writing on Descartes,
your parenthetical references should be not to the regular page numbers
in the book, but to the marginal "Adam-Tannery" page numbers (see "Note
on the Translation" at the beginning of the book), e.g., "(AT 41)."
- Please include in your summary at least one
quoted
phrase (e.g., embedded into a sentence of your own) that helps you
convey a point more effectively or vividly (see e.g.,
the list of reasons to quote in Harvey, p. 17 item (f)). Since
this summary is short, quote only a phrase or a short sentence at
a time, and be sure to make clear in your own words what the quoted
phrase/sentence is supposed to illustrate.
- Please
print your assignment double-spaced and
with one-inch margins, using an 11-12-point
font. Please number and
staple the pages you hand in.
- Please
indicate the total word count at the end.
Note: Since
this is your first reading of this text, and since
we have not yet discussed it in class, the summary assignment is simply
a first effort at figuring out what it says, and doing it will help you
get the most of our in-class work on it. The assignment is not evaluated for whether it demonstrates a good understanding of the reading, but for evidence of your having worked in detail to understand the reading. Your fuller
understanding will develop in the course of our class meetings, and
with successive re-readings.
Plagiarism Warning: This assignment is designed to be completed by means of independent work on Descartes' Meditations, aided by the guidance you have received in class/tutorial and by consulting the instructor and the TA: We are always available to discuss your questions of comprehension. It is neither necessary nor desirable that you consult outside sources in order to complete this assignment. Please remember that unacknowledged use of such sources constitutes plagiarism and is a violation of the university's Academic Integrity policy.
Please
keep a copy of your summary to
refer to in our class discussions of Descartes over the next couple of
meetings.
posted/distributed
September 15, 2014
updated September 16, 2014