Philosophy Case Study Paper
Content
CASE STUDY PAPER GUIDELINES
GUIDELINES FOR CASE STUDY PAPERS:
The case study papers give you a chance to apply what you learn in the course to concrete issues arising in the world of business ethics.
For each case study paper, you will be given a group of theories to work with. You will then pick from the case studies at the end of select chapters (some exclusions might apply). You will describe the case, apply the theories to the case, and then argue one application over the other.
Please pay attention to the theories you have to choose from for each individual paper. These will be listed on the specific assignment. The same goes for the case studies themselves. For the most part, you will be able to pick any of the cases from the indicated chapters. But some exclusions will apply. Again, you will need to look carefully at the instructions for each individual paper.
Furthermore, please note that I am looking for moral analysis here – not necessarily what factually happened. Some of these cases have been resolved for many years. But what we are trying to do is to see what the moral resolution should be (or should have been) – not what actually happened or could happen.
Finally, I am looking for a rational argument among given alternatives. A believable argument is one that uses believable premises to logically support its conclusion. This means that a person can believe the premise without changing their religious or cultural affiliations. It doesn’t mean they necessarily will believe it. It just means they could. Arguments should be as free as possible of ordinary logical fallacies, etc. And the argument is to support one analysis over another – not to introduce a third set of analyses. However, this needs to be done with the introduction of your own premises. Just repeating analysis and facts from the case and attaching agreement is not the same as arguing for a position.
****ACTUAL ASSIGNMENT***
CHOOSE ANY CASES FROM Chapters 1-3 of the class text(will provide E-book)
Then choose two of the following three theories:
Utilitarianism
Kant’s Theory
Ross’ Theory
You may only choose from these three theories (if you choose utilitarianism, you can do either Act or Rule, BUT you CANNOT use Act utilitarianism as one theory and Rule utilitarianism as the other – only one theory of utilitarianism).
If you choose a theory which is not on this list, then you will not get whatever points would have been associated with the theory on the scoring guide found under the general assignment description above.
If you do all three for some reason, I will only score the first two according to the guide above.
Once you have chosen your theories and case, then follow the guidelines above and write the paper.
NOTE: You are doing moral analysis here – that means you need to argue for what should have been done. YOU ARE NOT simply analyzing what was done, and saying which moral theory best fits that. These aren’t sociology papers, they are ethics papers. I want you to make an argument for what the morally right thing should have been. If this is also what actually happened, then fine. But the emphasis should be on the ethics, not the
@1000 words (3.5 – 5 pages of TNR, double-spaced) should get the job done, in-text citation. In fact, if you stick to the book (which is what you should be doing), you can just put the page number in parentheses “words, words, words…” (45), etc. In that case, you don’t need a works cited page.
NO OUTSIDE RESEARCH (will provide e-book)
Here is how I will score these. I suggest you use it as a kind of guideline:
Introduction: The paper has a clear introduction which explicitly identifies the case to be examined, the theories to be used, and definitely says which theory the paper will side with (10 points)
Case Description: The paper has a concise and accurate description of the case, with a cited quote from the class text (20 points)
Theory Descriptions: The paper has concise and accurate descriptions of the theories, with a cited quote from the class text to support the description of each theory (5 points each, 10 total)
Theory Analyses: The paper makes fair and accurate analyses of how each moral theory would resolve the case (15 points each, 30 total)
Argument: The paper makes a clear and definitive argument for one set of analyses over the other, free as possible of logical fallacies and other irrelevant biases (20 points)
Style: The paper is written in a style appropriate for a humanities college class, which includes proper use of grammar, spelling, word choice, paragraph structure, etc. All quotes are properly cited. Previous style issues have been addressed. (10 points)
