I was a Philosophy major at University of Maryland College Park.  I really enjoyed my time there and I learned a lot.  Philosophy as a major forces you to do a lot of writing; it also bleeds into other subjects.  Some of the papers here are from classes other than Philosophy classes, but they have a definite Philosophy flair so I am including them here.  My favorite philosopher is John Locke, his writings greatly influenced our Founding Fathers and the Declaration of Independence.  For some reason I can't find works cited for all of these papers; I don't know why I used to store them in separate documents instead of with the paper.  If someone has a correction or wants me to remove something, just contact me.

ENG 392

This was a Junior English class that was part of the required courses for graduation.  I scored high enough on my SAT so that I didn't have to take freshman English.  I wrote a paper against the death penalty.  Paper Works Cited

PHIL 308m

This was a Philosophy class called something like The Philosophy of Magic, Science and Religion taught by Prof. Allen Stairs.  I wrote two papers for this class. 

    1) Paper on the Power of words.

    2) Paper refuting St. Augustine.

PHIL 342

This was a class called "Moral Problems in Medicine."  Since this was a class on medical issues, I wrote a paper against partial birth abortion.  Paper Works Cited

PHIL 140

This was the second class I took in Philosophy and one of the most thought provoking courses ever.  The class title was "Contemporary Moral Issues" and the Professor was Corey Washington.  We discussed three main topics in this class: homelessness and poverty, abortion and the death penalty.  The Professor did a great job of presenting the material and the possible arguments (for both sides) without ever making his personal opinion know.  I learned a lot about how to form a valid argument in this class.  Looking at things critically I also learned more about the opinions I had prior to coming into the class and I actually made a major switch during the class.  Due to my religious beliefs, I have been pro-life for as long as I can remember; I also considered myself to be pro-death penalty.  One of the things that we discussed in this class was the consistency of our beliefs.  When I looked at it, my main argument against abortion is the sanctity of human life; this conflicted with my pro-death penalty belief.  Therefore, before the end of the class, I had switched sides and was against the death penalty (I am still pro-life though).  Some of the papers I wrote for this class were very short so I'll include two here:

    1) Quick paper describing the legal history of abortion and a bit of opinion.  Paper

    2) Paper on poverty and homelessness.  This was based on some stories in the book, Rachel and Her Children by Jonathon Kozol, which was based on interviews with several people/families found in homeless shelters.  It was a very interesting book and makes you think about the homeless people you see on the city streets; in reality any one of us could end up there if a series of bad events were to occur.  Paper

PHIL 245

This was a Social and Political Philosophy course. As mentioned in the beginning of this page I mentioned that John Locke is my favorite Philosopher; this is a paper on John Locke and our government (here in the US).   Paper

PHIL 326

"20th Century Analytical Philosophy" I wrote a paper on exactly how we obtain knowledge.  I compared Robert Nozick and Keith Lehrer.  I took Nozick's side.  This looked like an interesting topic so I studied it further in a later class.   Paper

PHIL 462

"Theory of Knowledge" I was interested in the topic from my Phil 326 class so I took this class to study it further.  Nozick really caught my attention with his theories so I studied him more in depth here.   Paper

PHIL 341

"Introduction to Ethical Theory" Ethics and logic are two of my favorite topics in Philosophy.  For this class I wrote a paper on John Stuart Mill and his utilitarian ethical theory.   Paper Works Cited

PHIL 408G

"The Idea of a University" Interesting concept, a university class looking at universities.  For this class I wrote a paper against affirmative action, of which I am not a fan.   Paper Works Cited

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