Writing Philosophy
Writing philosophy consists, in roughly equal measures, of thinking about philosophy and then of trying to express your ideas clearly and precisely. This makes it somewhat unlike other writing: the point of writing philosophy is not, alas, to entertain, nor to explain some chunk of knowledge, nor to trick or cajole the reader into accepting a certain thesis. The point of philosophical writing is, really, to do philosophy. This means that, since philosophy is based on arguments, most philosophical essays will have the underlying structure of an argument. They will seek to defend some particular philosophical claim by developing one or more good arguments for that claim.
The conclusion of a philosophical essay, however, need not always be something like: God exists, or Physical objects are not colored. It could just as legitimately be something like: Philosopher A's third argument is flawed, or When the arguments of philosopher A and those of philosopher B are compared, B wins, or No one has yet given a good argument to show either P or not-P, or even Philosopher A's argument is not, as is widely thought, X but instead it is Y. Though these kinds of claims are, perhaps, less immediately exciting than the first two examples, they are still philosophical claims, they still need to be argued for, and they can be extremely important in an overall debate about, say, the existence of God.
