Instruction: PART 1 https://youtu.be/AGNLT7CqpBE
PART 2 https://youtu.be/flZOkJ2b1ow
Writing Assignment, Part I
In this first assignment, you will be writing two 600-word essays (1,200 words total): (A) a 600-word essay laying out the possible hypotheses explaining the events of September 11, 2001 and (B) a 600-word essay laying out the possible hypotheses explain the facts of former President Obama’s nationality.
At this stage, you are simply laying out hypotheses that explain the data associated with the issue. NOTE: Obviously, one of those hypotheses must be the non-conspiracy hypothesis, so you can compare it to the others (i.e. one of the hypotheses must be that terrorists flew planes into and destroyed the Twin Towers and Pentagon and that former President Obama was born in Hawaii). You are not taking a position or analyzing the strength of the hypotheses in the first part of this assignment. You will carefully examine all of the material I provide for you to come up with well-informed, plausible alternatives to the conspiratorial hypotheses. You will need to state and explain each hypothesis clearly and fairly. Your explanation of each hypothesis should be clear and objective, such that a proponent of each hypothesis would agree with your explanation.
Tips:
Jump right into the exposition of the articles. Your introduction should be simple, something like: “In this essay, I will be explaining [three or four] hypotheses that attempt to explain … . The first is …. The second is ….”
In academic papers, use “one” or “oneself” instead of “you.” The use of “I,” “me,” etc. has become widely accepted in academic writing, so you are free to use those first-person pronouns.
Don’t use quotes over four lines long. You can summarize parts of something you read from a source and then quote a piece of it no longer than four lines.
When you refer to an author, use her or his first and last name the first time you mention her or him and the last name only afterwards. Never use the first name alone.
Make arguments, don’t ask rhetorical questions intended to be arguments. For example, you might say, “It is unlikely that Barak Obama’s parents would have thought to falsify his birth announcement because he would one day run for President of the U.S.,” instead of “Why would Barak Obama’s parents falsify his birth announcement?” Don’t use questions as arguments.
Writing Assignment, Part II
In Part A of this assignment, you laid out different hypotheses that purported to explain certain pieces of evidence. One of your hypotheses should have been the theory that you believe best explains the data (e.g. foreign terrorists flew airplanes into the World Trade Center and Pentagon, President Obama was born in Hawaii). In that part of the assignment, you provided evidence for each of the claims.
In Part B of the assignment, you will now evaluate the hypotheses you provided by the criteria of adequacy we discussed in the module on abductive arguments. You will show how the hypotheses you’ve discussed either meet or fail to meet the criteria. For each hypothesis, you will carefully evaluate how it either is or is not testable, fruitful, simple, conservative, or has good explanatory scope. Each evaluation should be, at least, 600 words (1,200 words total for the two essays).
Remember, you are not yet explicitly stating which is the best explanation of the data. You will be adjudicating between the views in the final part of the assignment (due the last week of class).
Jump right into the evaluation of the hypotheses. Your introduction should be simple, something like: “In this essay, I will be evaluating [three or four] hypotheses by the criteria of adequacy … . The first is …. The second is ….”