Jessica Titler
Final Project Proposal
March 16, 2009
For my final project, I would like to expand on and enhance the essay I wrote last week, “Nature vs. Nurture.” In the essay’s current state, it focuses on my personal opinion, which is that genetic engineering will not rob humanity of its identity due to the effect of our environment during growth on personality and skills. As an argument, I will expand on this opinion, utilizing many more resources than my original article and including further support for my personal opinion. I hope to include an examination of many of the class texts and their relevance to the topic (e.g. Frankenstein, Bill Joy’s essay, Enough, Challenging Nature, and Jimmy Corrigan), but recognize that I may not be able to include all due to the assignment length. I also will include literature from several philosophers, such as John Locke, and many psychologists/personality theorists, such as Jung or Freud. My counterargument will be provided by both texts from class (e.g. Bill Joy’s article and Enough) and dissenting personality theorists and philosophers. The counterargument would be, basically, that genetic engineering will rob humanity of its identity and that personality is determined entirely by our genes.
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2 comments:
The argument is a good, clear, reasonably focused one of obvious significance both in general and in the class in particular. The danger here is that you're showing a tendency (already!) to throw the kitchen sink at it. While all of our texts are *relevant*, trying to incorporate all of them isn't likely to be ideal. In fact, I'd argue that the ones you should be focusing on are McKibben & Silver, and that beyond that your texts should probably be additional ones you discover in your research. If the paper is ultimately about the acceptability (desirability?) of genetic engineering, there's no need to overcomplicate things.
Hey Jessica!
I really like your argument and I think using a previous paper will definitely make it a lot easier to begin writing. Since you already have a good idea of your argument and counterargument, I think it would be a good idea to pick specific examples for both arguments before you begin writing. Like Adam said, it would probably be really difficult to add all of the texts in the paper (even though I'm sure they would all apply), so narrowing them down and finding specific examples in the texts now will definitely be beneficial. Also, I like your idea to add the ideas of certain philosophers, but I think it would also help your argument to add in examples from studies done that show that environment plays a major role in a human's personality. Good luck writing!
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