Assessment

Assessment is by one 2,000 word essay (50%) and one pre-seen exam (50%).

Assessment of the Essay (and the Exam)

The feedback you receive on your essay will be divided into short sections as follows:

(i) Relevance (in terms of chosen topic/title). To fulfill this criterion you must address the question that is asked; you’d be amazed how many essays fail to do this adequately.

(ii) Knowledge and sources (accuracy, appropriate selection, citations, bibliography).

(iii) Analysis, argument and structure (clarity, relevance, fairness, coherence).

(iv) Independence of thought (including critical engagement with other views).

(v) Written presentation (spelling, punctuation, grammar, appropriate language).

(vi) Overall comments and mark.

You should bear all these criteria in mind when you write your essays in philosophy - indeed, in any university level writing. Use these criteria as a check list and consider the draft of your essay under each one. When you’ve done this, make the appropriate improvements to the final version of your essay. There is a description of the philosophy criteria showing the marking bands at the back of this guide.

Concerning essay presentation, please also run your essay past the following basic check list. Your essay should:

(i) be typed/word processed;

(ii) be one and a half line-spaced with adequate margins (this is both easier to read and, importantly, allows room for written comments);

(iii) have a cover sheet (see the information on essay submission deadline below); and

Remember also to keep a copy of your work, including a back-up electronic copy.

The Essay Question (2,000 Words)

“Is knowledge valuable in itself or does it have only instrumental value”

Remember the usual caveat: Make sure the essay is your own work. You are encouraged to cite other people’s work and ideas, but it is important that you acknowledge their work when you do this. To copy or paraphrase someone else’s words or arguments without crediting them - so that the reader is given the impression that this work is yours - is a form of theft called plagiarism.

Essay Submission Deadline

Tuesday 16th November

Essays should be submitted by 4.30pm to the email address philosophyhandin@uclan.ac.uk Make sure you put a cover sheet on your essay (available from WebCT) and save it all as a single file.

Let’s think about the assessed essay. The title is: “Is knowledge valuable in itself or does it have only instrumental value”.

So the title suggests an either / or. Either knowledge is valuable in itself, or it only has instrumental value. To have knowledge in itself is to have intrinsic knowledge. So the question is, does it have intrinsic value or only instrumental value.

It’s worth remembering something I said in the lectures. If you think that knowledge has intrinsic value, you probably think it also has instrumental value. (That’s why there’s the word ‘only’ in the question.) So it is not intrinsic versus instrumental. It is intrinsic plus instrumental versus instrumental only.

So that’s what the question explicitly asks. But it also implicitly assumes that knowledge does have a positive value. If you were persuaded by Rousseau’s arguments you will disagree with this. So you might answer the question by saying: “In this essay I will argue that knowledge has neither intrinsic value nor instrumental value; instead it is corrupting...”

So the first thing is to think what you do think.

The three position are below and the people I linked to them are thus:

1. intrinsic value (plus instrumental value) - Plato

2. instrumental value, only - Bacon

3. no positive value - Rousseau

Let’s assume you like position 1. If so, you will probably need to set out and articulate the argument from Plato. You will need to work out how he argues that knowledge has an intrinsic value and also why, according to him, it has. The allegory of the cave certainly suggests that it has intrinsic value – since no one would want to go back in the cave and live in ignorance even if the cave were comfy – but it is far less clear why it might have. So perhaps the story is misleading.

One reason why knowledge might NOT have intrinsic value is that knowledge presents the world as it really is. But if so, then it is like a transparent window which does not add value one way or another to the world we grasp via it. (Bedtime stories are always nice and comforting; they are lovely / valuable. But they do NOT present the world as it really is.)

You’ll need to think. One further clue is an undated thought experiment like the Cave: Nozick’s Experience Machine. Look it up!

Suppose you decide you like position 2. Still you will need to outline Plato’s argument for 1 and then rebut it. Having down that, you might want to say a little about why knowledge is instrumentally valuable. You may or may not want to consider and recent Rousseau’s argument against knowledge. It depends on space.

Suppose you like position 3. If so, you will need to consider Rousseau’s arguments and glean from them arguments both against the intrinsic and the instrumental value of knowledge. Failing that you might first argue against Plato’s arguments for intrinsic value and then use Rousseau against the instrumental value of knowledge.

The key thing is that this is a test of your ability to put an argument / assessment together. It is supposed to focus on the first two or three weeks only. Whilst extra sources will make the essay more plausible, there’s no need to have lots of sources.

************

In reponse to a question, here is a bit more guidance:

First, the issue is supposed to be a general one: pitched at the level of knowledge in general not particular bits of knowledge (say, knowledge of cars). Plato doesn't limit what the people in the cave see to specific things: he thinks that nothing they have access to is real, everything is a mere shadow (whatever exactly a shadow is / stands for). So if Plato argues for the idea that knowledge is valuable in itself (ie intrinsically valuable) it is supposed to be a general claim about knowledge of the real world as a whole.

Second, Plato's allegory is a story with a lot going on in it. But you need to think what - if anything! - about it is relevant to the question of whether knowledge has intrinsic value. And it seems to me that the key idea there is this: the man who escapes the cave would not want to go back. Now what do we need to fill out what this claim amounts to? Well, a bit of understanding of the allegory, but not too much. We need to know that Plato thinks that most of us are not in a position to get knowledge of what is really real about the world, although we might. (That explains both the idea of most people being in the cave but some can escape). Now he thinks this because he subscribes to a particular view of what's really real: the forms. But we do not need to believe exactly that to assess his thought experiment. All we need is the idea that we might be at first be systematically deceived about the world and then come to realise that, properly understand the world and then reflect on whether we would ever go back to ignorance. (Youngsters might think about the Matrix at this point.)

If it seems that we prefer the enlightened position for its own sake, then we are valuing knowledge in itself. ((Compare with Nozick's experience machine - look it up!))

But it is one think to serve up a thought experiment like that, it is another to work out whether it is a good guide to what we ought to think. Here's an argument to the contrary: knowledge presents us with the world as it is. So knowledge is transparent. So it cannot have a value - either way - in itself. (Contrast with a cosy bedtime story...)

Does that help? You've got to think what Plato tells us about the value of knowledge in general.

Information on the Exam

The best strategic advice anyone can give you for the exam is, of course, to spend one hour on one question and one hour on the second question. There is no point in writing a long, brilliant answer to the first question if you only leave yourself time to write a paragraph or two on the second question. This is because it’s always easier to get the first 50% of the marks than the second 50%. Two good answers will almost always average out to a better overall mark than a long, brilliant answer on one question and a one or two paragraph, five-minute scrawl on the second question.

Instructions to candidates:

1. Answer TWO questions

2. You may take NO MORE THAN 200 words of notes into the examination, which must be handed in with the script at the end.

Date: 15 December 2010

Time: 09:20-11:30

Venue: Vernon 011

- Outline and assess Williams' account of the connection between the objectivity of knowledge and the ‘absolute conception’.
- Is there room for a personal element in knowledge? (Polanyi)
- What, according to Wittgenstein, is the relation between knowledge and certainty? Comment on whether his account can it be used to defeat scepticism about the external world.
- Can knowledge by testimony be justified? If not, does this matter? (Kusch)
- Does knowledge depend on custom and habit? (Hume)
- What is the value of philosophical inquiry? (Russell)