This page holds a finished PHIL-347N Week 2 argument reconstruction, showing one assigned passage rebuilt as numbered premises under the conclusion it was written to establish. Searches like "phil 347n week 2 assignment example", "phil347n week 2 sample" and "phil-347n week 2 example" land here.
What a finished PHIL-347N Week 2 argument reconstruction looks like
Half a page of the finished document is white space, which surprises people the first time. At the top, the conclusion, inside quotation marks, with a page or paragraph reference. Beneath it, premises numbered from one, each a complete declarative sentence rather than a fragment, each carrying a single idea. Beside several of them, a short bracketed note recording what was done: a pronoun replaced by the noun it referred to, a rhetorical question turned into the statement it was making, two clauses joined by a semicolon split into lines four and five. Below the list, a paragraph of three or four sentences defending the harder choices. Somewhere in that paragraph, an admission of what was dropped and why it carried no weight.
How a PHIL-347N Week 2 example is structured
Where the assigned passage stops and the surrounding reading begins is set by the instruction, so the example works only the lines it was pointed at. Work then runs in this order. The conclusion is located first, by hunting the indicator words that mark it, and then checked by asking what the rest of the paragraph would be doing if that sentence were removed. Premises come second, harvested in the order the passage gives them rather than reordered for elegance. Splitting follows: any line carrying two ideas becomes two lines, because a single number has to be deniable on its own. Then the pass nobody enjoys, where every line is read back against the text and anything the author did not say comes out. The defense paragraph is written last, since it is a record of decisions already made.
Finding the conclusion first
The sentence the rest of the paragraph exists to support, located before anything is numbered, since every later decision depends on which sentence that is.
Indicator words and what they hide
So, thus, since and because signal direction, but an author who uses none still has a conclusion, and an author who uses because for a cause has not marked a premise at all.
One idea to a number
Compound sentences broken apart so each line can be accepted or refused by itself, which is what the two later tests need in order to run on anything.
Bracketed notes for every change
Each departure from the author's wording recorded beside the line: a pronoun resolved, a question converted, a repeated idea merged. The notes are what make the display checkable.
The paragraph that defends the list
Three or four sentences on the choices a reader might contest, including the material left out, with the reason it does no work in reaching the conclusion.
Where marks go in PHIL-347N Week 2
The expensive failure is invention: a premise that states the argument's point better than the author managed, which converts the assignment into an essay about what the passage should have said. Almost as costly is the two-idea line, where one number carries both that a policy costs too much and that nobody wants it, leaving the later tests nothing clean to work on. Compression that changes force costs a row of its own, since a passage saying most and a reconstruction saying all are different arguments. Background sentences promoted into premises dilute the list and make the structure test harder than it is. Last, quoting the conclusion from memory instead of from the page breaks the one property this document sells, which is traceability.
Get a PHIL-347N Week 2 example written to your instructions
Send the passage your section assigned along with the instruction sheet, and a reconstruction of it comes back inside 24-48h, first one free. If your classroom supplies a worksheet with numbered slots, send that too; the example is filled into your format rather than into the one we would have chosen.
PHIL-347N Week 2 questions, answered
What if the passage argues for more than one thing?
Then the instruction usually names which one, and where it does not, the example reconstructs the claim the passage spends the most space on and says so in the first line of the defense paragraph. A second argument can be listed in one sentence as present and set aside. What loses points is silently reconstructing the smaller one.
Is it cheating to leave out a sentence the author wrote?
No, and leaving nothing out is usually the worse answer. Passages carry examples, restatements and asides that add no support, and a reconstruction that numbers them produces a list nobody can test. The rule these examples follow is to drop only what could be deleted without changing whether the conclusion goes through, and to say in writing what was dropped.
How many premises should the finished list have?
However many the passage supplies, which for a paragraph of argument is rarely more than a handful once splitting is done. A list of ten usually means compound sentences were left whole and then broken later, or that background got numbered. A list of two usually means two ideas are sharing a line. Neither count is a target; the passage decides it.