Writing Philosophy
McDaniel is, starting in ‘09-’10, requiring a 3rd year ‘writing in the discipline’ course for all majors. In preparation for this course, I’ve been collecting a list of words and/or phrases with philosophic implications of which most undergraduates are unaware. For example, many undergrads use ‘conclude’ as a synonym for ’summarize’, and ‘assert’ as a replacement for ’state’. I’m particularly interested in highlighting those with logical implications that are unknown to our students.
Another example that I can’t resist: a colleague of mine recently had a student who consistently used the phrase ‘due to’ in an odd way. When pressed, the student explained that her high school English teacher had told her never to use the word ‘because’ in formal prose. So whenever she wrote a paper, she wrote ‘because’ and then did a search and replace to change it to ‘due to’. The fact that she had made it to her 3rd or 4th year of college without correction staggers the imagination.
Here’s my initial list. Any suggestions or additions would be helpful.
Assert
Assume
Conclude
Necessary
Sufficient
Imply
Entail
Valid
Belief
Opinion (as in “Do I have to use sources in this paper, or do you just want my opinion”)
Infer
Conclude
Any more?
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May 14th, 2008 at 10:53 am
A few thoughts -
There are all kinds of “success” words, which imply that you are saying you’ve succeeded in doing the action. Students often use them to mean they have attempted the action.
The two most painful examples of this:
prove
refute
Eg a student will say something like “Hobbes proves that the state of nature is very bad. But I say it’s not so bad.”
claim
assert
assume
accept
argue (I have a student who’s substituting “fight” for this — eg “Hobbes fights that the state of nature is very bad”)
endorse, subscribe to, etc vs. describe, report, present someone’s view
valid or sound, as used of a statement
very valid, or other intensifiers with “valid”.
so, thus, hence, therefore, for this reason, as a result
because
May 14th, 2008 at 10:56 am
other success words –
shows
demonstrates
vs
tries to prove
tries to refute
tries to show
tries to demonstrate
Here’s a question -
I tend to offer students “rebuts” as a non-success-implying alternative to “refutes”. Does that seem right to you? Or do you think that if I say someone rebutted me, that means I am conceding defeat? Now that I’m thinking about it, I think rebuts is success-impplying too. Rats.
objection
reply
response