There's nothing like a good argument to get the adrenaline flowing and the brain cells clicking. Whether it's you and your brother arguing about the latest pitcher acquisition for the Red Sox or your banker brother-in-law and Aunt Glad (former union organizer and socialist) having a grand set-to about the incredible salaries of American CEOs, arguing is a fundamental and exciting activity. It doesn't exactly set us apart from the other animals — cats and dogs have been arguing for eons — but the allegedly high level of our discourse and our ability to sustain argument and to change our behavior based on what we learn from argument is surely a hallmark of what it means to be human. How, though, do we argue in a paper or in argumentative essays , where there is only one of us, the writer? The argumentative essay has to take into consideration the fact that the writer is the only one who has permission to speak; he or she holds the floor, the gavel, and the microphone all at once. What counts in an argumentative essay, then, is the writer's ability to create a sense of interior debate, of allowing other voices their say, and maintaining equilibrium among those voices. It's a matter of fairness and reasonableness.

What This Handout Is About This handout will define what an argument is and explain why you need one in most of your academic essays. Arguments Are Everywhere You may be surprised to hear that the word "argument" does not have to be written anywhere in your assignment and academic essay for it to be an important part of your task. In fact, making an argument—expressing a point of view on a subject and supporting it with evidence—is often the aim of academic writing. Your instructors may assume that you know this and thus may not explain the importance of arguments in class. Most material you learn in college is or has been debated by someone, somewhere, at some time. Even when the material you read or hear is presented as simple "fact," it may actually be one person's interpretation of a set of information. Instructors may call on you to examine that interpretation and defend it, refute it, or offer some new view of your own. In writing assignments, you will almost always need to do more than just summarize information that you have gathered or regurgitate facts that have been discussed in class. You will need to develop a point of view on or interpretation of that material and provide evidence for your position.

Reflective Essay The reflective essay is the primary component of the Personal Development Portfolio. Think of it as your opportunity to describe and document your growth as a person during these four years of your life. Thought of this way, the essay should ultimately reflect the person who wrote it, and it should demonstrate the maturity and development it intends to describe. It should be creative. It should have a clear and authentic voice -- your voice. It should allow its readers a candid view of the person you are becoming during your college experience. Students sometimes confuse reflection with "reaction" or "response." Our essay services recommend to document your reaction or response to an experience would be to document how you feel about it or to describe the emotional or practical impact the experience had on you. Reflection, as we're using the term here, is something more than this. To reflect on your experiences is really to engage in an intellectual exercise whereby you review in detail what you know (what you've read, or learned, or observed, or felt, or experienced) and then draw some conclusions about the experience's significance in relation to the context of your life as a whole. The process involves your actions and emotions, certainly, but true reflection occurs as a result of thoroughly considering and understanding the significance of those thoughts, emotions, and experiences rather than merely charting or labeling them.

The most important philosopher ever to write in English, David Hume (1711-1776) — the last of the great triumvirate of “British empiricists” — was also well-known in his own time as an historian and essayist. A master stylist in any genre, Hume's major philosophical works — A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740), the Enquiries concerning Human Understanding (1748) and concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), as well as the posthumously published Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779) — remain widely and deeply influential. Although many of Hume's contemporaries denounced his writings as works of scepticism and atheism, his influence is evident in the moral philosophy and economic writings of his close friend Adam Smith. Hume also awakened Immanuel Kant from his “dogmatic slumbers” and “caused the scales to fall” from Jeremy Bentham's eyes. Charles Darwin counted Hume as a central influence, as did “Darwin's bulldog,” Thomas Henry Huxley. The diverse directions in which these writers took what they gleaned from reading Hume reflect not only the richness of their sources but also the wide range of his empiricism. Today, philosophers recognize Hume as a precursor of contemporary cognitive science, as well as one of the most thoroughgoing exponents of philosophical naturalism. You can order custom essays if you need to write about such topic.

ALL THE SOCIOLOGY YOU NEED (TO UNDERSTAND THIS PAPER) This custom college essay explores trends in higher education in terms of Max Weber's theory of rationalization. It is Weber's contention that there are four basic motivators for human behavior. People are motivated by custom or tradition, by emotions, by religious or ethical values, and by rational goal oriented behavior (which Weber calls "zweckrational"). All human behavior, Weber claims, is motivated by various combinations of these four basic factors. Weber's thesis is that bureaucracies increasingly centralize and broaden their scope in advanced industrial societies. Bureaucracies are human organizations specifically designed for the efficient achievement of short-term rational goals. As societies become more bureaucratic, Weber states, goal oriented rational behavior becomes dominant in guiding our actions--at the expense of traditions, emotions, and values. It becomes a habit of thought, a way of interpreting our world. This trend is called the "rationalization" process. The final factor that should be understood in Weber's theory of rationalization is the phenomenon of the "irrationality factor." Just because an action is rational in terms of fulfillment of a short-term goal, Weber asserts, does not mean it is rational in terms of the whole society. It often happens, he writes, that an excessive focus on short-term goals undermines the very goals of both the society and the bureaucracies themselves.