If you are interested in extra credit, read on.  This document tells you how you can earn up to 10 points that will be added on to one of your test grades.  That's an entire letter grade, of course.  There is no guarantee that simply doing the extra credit assignment will yield the full 10 points (quality matters), but the potential for it exists.
    On the UCF Department of Philosophy web-page, there is a link to electronic resources.  (When you go to the Department of Philosophy Home Page, click on the link to electronic resources.)  A major element of research in general is finding what you need to read on a particular topic.  That is what this EXTRA CREDIT assignment is all about.  Here's what you have to do:

1.  Choose one of the topics below, preferably one you are interested in.
2.  Search the Internet using the electronic resources listed in the Department's Web-Site to find 10 documents that are relevant to the topic.  These 10 documents must be from academically respectable sources.  That is, they need to be from academic journals such as those you would find using JSTOR or the Philosopher's Index.  You need at least briefly to read through the document's introduction or an abstract/summary to be sure that it is, in fact, relevant.
3.  Then search the Internet using a search engine of your choice (or more than one) to find 2 more relevant documents on the Web on the whole.  In this case, you might find a document written by Joe Blow from Kokomo that he placed on his own web-site, or you might find some professor's lecture notes from the University of Anywhere on the topic you choose.  You know, too, that sometimes when you search, you find things you weren't really looking for.  For example, if you use a search engine and put in the name "Beckett" and what you are looking for is a baseball card magazine, you will also find sites on Samuel Beckett and probably several of them on some people in Iowa whose surname is "Beckett" and who own a hardware store (or something of the sort).
4.  Then go to the UCF Library Web-site using LUIS and find 3 books relevant to the topic.
5.  Compile a Bibliography using Chicago or MLA Style, whichever you prefer.  See the Dept's Web-Site for Information on Chicago and MLA format in the appropriate link(s).  Add two more pieces of information to the web-based entries.  State the URL for each document listed from the Web and state whether you used the Department's site or a search engine (and which one).  Remember, you need 10 listings from journal articles, 2 from other Internet sites, and 3 books.
6.  Make sure your name is at the top of the page(s).  You will probably not have more than 2 pages.
7.  Put the "topic" name near the top of the document and center it.  HANDWRITTEN PAGES ARE NOT ACCEPTABLE.

And that's it; but note this:  Suppose that you've decided to do this extra credit assignment.  And suppose that you are looking for an article to read for the required paper.  You might just find one in the Bibliography you produce for extra credit.  But remember that the article you choose must be from a JOURNAL, not from Joe Blow's web-site.

Here are the topics:

• Thomas Hobbes' Theory (or Position) on International Relations (or International Sovereignty) OR Hobbes on the State of Nature or State of War
• John Locke's Position on Toleration OR Locke's position on property ownership/right to property.
• John Stuart Mill's (or Utilitarianism in general) arguments concerning censorship
• St. Thomas Aquinas' Cosmological Argument for the Existence of God
• Aristotle's, Emerson's, Plato's or Montaigne's Philosophy of Friendship
• The Problem of Evil/Theodicy
• William James's "Dilemma of Determinism"
• Aristotle's Conception(s) of Justice
• Feminist Moral Theory and the notion of "Family"
• John Stuart Mill's arguments regarding the Subjection of Women

The topics for extra credit are the same as the topics from which you will choose for the required paper.  Click here to go to the paper requirements.

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This document was last updated on 6/19/2000.