HPS100H1: First Paper Assignment Guidelines Fall 2025

Instructions:

Step 1: Choose ONE topic from the options below (on page two of these guidelines). These topics and their corresponding questions are meant to be broad enough for you to formulate your own viewpoint through a critical analysis of the relevant text.

Step 2: Examine your chosen selection closely. Answer the posed questions in an essay format (600-750 words). In your paper, you should explain the author’s claim and argument, the significance of the subject for course themes, as well as formulate your own viewpoint.

You are required to use U of T's Library Search or U of T Library databases tool to find at least one additional source, outside of the course readings, that you will need to draw on and to cite in your paper. Besides the one additional source that you find and cite, you should otherwise draw primarily on course readings. Be sure to cite all the sources that you use and to make clear, through the use of citations, when you are using information from other sources versus your own ideas and interpretations. Below are some guidelines for what your paper should include:

•   Your paper should begin with a clear and concise introduction that states your topic choice (A, B, or C), your thesis, and how you will argue for it.

•   Your paper should contain a clear summary of key positions, ideas, or arguments in the course reading(s) that is pertinent to your essay topic. Here you should think about how you would teach this material to a friend who was learning about the topic for the first  time—don’t assume an understanding of any key concepts, terms, or knowledge of key figures or events. You will need to explain these things. This portion of the text should demonstrate your understanding of the subject matter.

•   Your paper should be written with complete sentences, paragraphs, and proper grammar and citations.

•   Your paper should have a clear and sufficiently narrow thesis statement, that is, your answer to the essay question(s).

•   By the end of your paper, it should be clear to your reader what the significance of the essay question you’ve chosen is; what answering it might illustrate about course themes; how your response might gesture towards larger issues underlying the course topic; etc.

•   Your paper should end with a clear and concise conclusion that summarizes what you have argued for and how.

Step 3: Check that you have followed the formatting requirements listed below.

Essay Topics:

Topic A:  In Book 1, Part iii, section 6 of his Treatise on Human Nature, David Hume writes,

“If reason determined us, it would proceed upon that principle, that instances, of which we have had no experience, must resemble those, of which we have had experience, and that the course of nature continues always uniformly the same.”

Explain what Hume is saying here in your own words. How does this connect to his account of the problem of induction? Try to carefully reconstruct Hume’s argument, and explain why this problem matters for science. Finally, give your own view: what do you  think is the best way to respond to this problem, and why?

Topic B: In her article, “Rational Authority and Social Power”, Miranda Fricker writes,

“There is likely … to be some social pressure on the norm of credibility to imitate the structures of social power.  Where that imitation brings about a mismatch between rational authority and credibility--so that the powerful tend to be given mere credibility  and/or the powerless tend to be wrongly denied credibility--we should acknowledge that there is a phenomenon of epistemic injustice.” (Fricker 1998, p. 170)

What does Fricker mean by this? Explain her idea of epistemic injustice in your own words, and carefully lay out her reasoning. Why is this idea important for thinking about  the social nature of knowledge? Finally, give your own view: what do you think is the best way to address the problem of epistemic injustice, and why?

Topic C: In his chapter, “A Guide to Social Epistemology, Alvin Goldman writes,

“According to Steven Shapin (1994), being a gentleman in seventeenth century England was a positive marker of epistemic trustworthiness or credibility. Gentlemen  were regarded as distinctively reliable informants because they had no need, in virtue of their social position, to lie or dissemble.” (Goldman 2012, p. 231)

What does Goldman mean by this idea of a “a positive marker of epistemic trustworthiness”? Why do people need ways of figuring out who counts as a good source of information, and why does this matter for how scientific knowledge is shared? Finally, give your own view: what do you think is the best way to decide who is a good informant and why?