Advice to first-year students in philosophy:

Insufficiently Frequently Asked Questions

 

-         How should I prepare for the exam?

-         How does one go about writing a philosophy exam?

-         How does one go about writing a philosophy essay?

How should I prepare for the exam?

  1. Start preparing a while in advance. Ask around; you will realize that philosophy is as hard as physics. Don’t take it too lightly, because you will get a “light” mark.
  2. Read all the relevant course material.
  3. Write down short summaries of the key points and arguments of the texts you read.
  4. Sit down with the review questions, and answer them without looking at your notes, as if this were an exam. Don’t spend too much time, just do your best.
  5. Go back to your notes and/or the texts and check/complete your answers to the review questions.
  6. Ask you professor or TA whether mastery of the review questions is as good a preparation for the exam as you can get. Usually it is, and in this class we make sure it is, but you should ask. If needed study more and reflect on other aspects of the material.
  7. Make sure you know who said what (don’t confuse Rowe with Plantinga, for instance, because they say opposite things).
  8. Also make sure you know the key arguments by name, if they have any (e.g. “The Argument from Immediate Experience of Free Choice”).
  9. You’re ready.

 

How does one go about writing a philosophy exam?

  1. You should know first that, at least in first and second year courses, you are not expected to have much to say about the authors/questions/problems than what was discussed in class. If you’re asked to discuss critically the theory of so and so, the surest way to a near-perfect score is to expound the key arguments that were discussed in class –we will always have discussed them in class. You can add points of your own, but you should really start by covering the material that was handed down to you. It’s easier, and the chances that the person reading you recognize stheir value is higher. Also, you have to be able to understand, criticize, and build on what others have said before writing your own book and becoming a famous philosopher.
  2. Read all the questions at the beginning and make sure you know how many points they are worth. How many points a question is worth is a good indicator of how much time you should spend on it (and how much you should write).
  3. Start with the question that seems easiest. That will help you feel more confident and calm you down, which will help you think clearly.
  4. For each question, start by identifying all the sub-questions. Often they won’t be numbered, but there are almost always many parts to a question. Take for instance this question from the last exam:

What does Peter Van Inwagen mean by "philosophical skepticism"? How does he say that philosophers might be forced into philosophical skepticism? How does he defend himself against it? How good is his defense?

In this case, each sentence is a separate question. It might help you to write small numbers next to each.

  1. You are typically expected to write short essays for each question. For logic and multiple-choice questions it’s different, of course.
  2. How much should I write? You have to give as extensive an answer as you think you can provide given the available time to each sub-question. How much space this takes depends on your handwriting, but normally it’s possible to write a perfect answer in only one single-spaced page for each question of a first year exam. Of course, it can take much longer depending on your style and all (it can also take much less, again depending on your style). The most important is that you have a sense of what are the main points your answer should cover.
  3. For each question and sub-question, sketch an outline of your answer before starting to write. The outline is also some sort of brainstorming: write whatever comes to mind first, than you strike out stuff and you shape up your answer. The outline should be written on scrap paper or some part of the exam booklet that is clearly identified as draft space. Normally you write your outline on the flip sides of the lined pages, and you write “DRAFT:” at the top. Don’t spend too much time on the outline. It’s just to give you the big picture. Personally, I use keywords. For example, take the above question:
    1. What PS means

                                                               i.      Not position

                                                             ii.      Undecided

    1. How forced

                                                               i.      Compare with others

                                                             ii.      Other know the same, smart

                                                            iii.      Same by external standards.

…

  1. When answering the question, separate, if appropriate, your answer to each sub-question in paragraphs. In this way you are helping the person marking the exam. But you’re not doing it because you’re nice: you want to make sure that they don’t misunderstand you. Even though spacing is good, it may be best for you not to number the parts of your answer if they are not numbered in the question, because this way you make it more likely that you will get points for one sub-question for a part of your answer which you thought would give you marks for another sub-question. Let me emphasized though that you should number your answers to sub-questions if they are numbered on the question sheet.
  2. GO STRAIGHT TO THE POINT. Your answers should not have introductions or conclusions. You simply answer the question, as directly as if you were telling the time to someone. Use simple, short sentences.
  3. Check your handwriting. If your handwriting is illegible, many things can happen whether the person marking the exams wants it or not. They may be unable to read some key words and consequently skip sentences. They may get seriously annoyed, and although I personally don’t care that much because my handwriting is one of the worst in the world, I’m sure this can be a serious problem. (Once I got 83% for an exam. I was quite disappointed because I thought I had answered everything perfectly. The TA had written “handwriting!!!” in a corner somewhere. I thought, what if he read only half of my answers? I asked the prof to remark the exam, and the final result was 95%.)
  4. If you have a few minutes, read your answers again once you are done answering each question. You will often spot awful errors by doing that. Don’t worry too much about your grammar unless you’re told you should. Worry about having said something unintelligible, self-contradictory, etc. If needed, strike out stuff, draw arrows to supplementary material, etc.
  5. Note that the stylistic points I make below concerning essays carry over to exams.

 

How does one go about writing a philosophy essay?

  1. I’m not going to say too much here. Here is a good webpage to read at least once:
    1. http://www.princeton.edu/%7Ejimpryor/general/writing.html
  2. Let me point out common errors I noticed recently (mostly stylistic ones):
    1. Use the present tense when citing an author, even if he is dead. For example:

                                                               i.      Wrong: “Hume argued that causation is …”

                                                             ii.      Right: “Hume argues that causation is …”

There are exceptions to this, of course. One exception is when an author changed his mind. If Hume had written a book in which he says that P, and another later in which he says that not-P, you could say that “Hume argued that P before arguing that not-P”. But you are still not forced to use the past. For instance, you should still say that “Hume argues that P in his first book”. You could even say, “Hume argues that P in his first book, but he argues that not-P in his second”.

    1. Generally speaking, it’s a good idea to provide examples. It’s also important to discuss the examples commonly used to reinforce the points you are attacking or arguing for. Examples make your essay much clearer.
    2. Avoid obscure language. Really, this can’t be overemphasized. The simpler your writing, the smarter you seem –you seem to have clearer ideas. You must write something that will seem as clear as source water to your reader. If you can’t make a point in a reasonably clear manner –in a way that people who know nothing about philosophy could understand– you should consider simplifying or dropping it.
    3. Generally speaking, expressions such as “I believe”, “I think”, “my understanding is”, etc. are superfluous. We know that what you are writing is what you believe and think. You should use these expressions only when you deliberately want to convey to the reader that you aren’t so convinced about something or that what you are saying is controversial. When you say “I believe that…”, you are marking a passage as problematic.
    4. Pay particular attention to terms defined in class, such as “valid” and “sound”. Your mark will drop very fast if you don’t use them properly.
    5. Once you’re done writing your essay, set it aside for a few days before proofreading it again. (This means you should not start writing your essay the day before the deadline.) You will be amazed how different it seems after a few days (perhaps 3 or 4, it depends on the person). Sometimes you will wonder how you could have written such things; you will be able to take the same perspective as an external reader, and this will allow you to make your essay twice as clear.
    6. As far as I am concerned, a first-year essay is graded based on six general criteria:

                                                               i.      Coherence: don’t contradict yourself

                                                             ii.      Historical accuracy: don’t attribute a claim to the wrong person

                                                            iii.      Clarity: you should know what that is

                                                           iv.      Comprehensiveness: say as much as one could say in the available space

                                                             v.      Originality-level1: I distinguish two levels of originality. The first level is putting things in your own terms, coming up with extra examples, etc., while essentially re-using arguments discussed in class.

                                                           vi.      Originality-level2: At this level, an essay has the originality of the first level, but also involves extra research, truly new ideas, etc.

 

These criteria are not all as important. Comprehensiveness is the most important. Historical accuracy and coherence are peculiar. A very good (A-) essay can contain an inconsistency or inaccuracy. What’s bad is systematic incoherence or inaccuracy. This means C and under automatically, often D or F. Clarity, accuracy, and originality (1 and 2) are the kinds of qualities that do not make a good essay by themselves. Clarity and accuracy are necessary not to loose points, but they don’t really give you points. Originality gives you points, but an original essay that is unclear and not comprehensive isn’t worth much. In first year courses, you can aim for originality of level 1, but you should usually not worry about writing very original answers (level 2). This would prevent you from writing something clear and comprehensive. The result would be a low grade.