Your only prompt for the short paper due in class on September 20 is this:  In approximately 500 words, give the clearest and most persuasive answer you can to the question ‘Do animals have minds?’.  Focus your attention on laying out the case as clearly as you can using commonly known facts, rather than hunting down additional research and readings online.  This is intended to be a basic exercise in argumentation and writing composition, not internet research.  Our main reading assignment on animal minds is scheduled for after the paper is due.  That is on purpose–this assignment, unlike your final paper, is supposed to be simply an exercise in clearly and carefully setting out your own thoughts on a familiar topic.

Part of the idea behind the assignment is to keep the instructions minimal at this point.  Just give it your best shot for right now.  My expectation is that most students with prior experience writing philosophy papers will be able to write up something they are happy with without too much trouble.  But if you don’t have prior experience, you may find that you are not happy with how things turn out with your feedback on the first draft.  THIS IS OK.  Writing a philosophy paper is a specialized skill, and you will be getting a lot of guidance on how to do it very soon.  But I have found that this works better after you have already taken a shot at a brief bit of writing on your own.  That is why you will have the option of taking another shot at it after you get feedback on the first attempt.

The way the grading will work is:  If you are happy with the mark you receive on the first draft, then you do not need to submit a revised draft.  But if you’d like to make *substantial* revisions, then you will have the opportunity to do so, and your mark for the revisions will be recorded instead.  (I’ll talk more later on about what we are expecting for the revisions, but you should write the best draft you can now, so that you hopefully won’t need to do revisions.)