Job Automation Reflection

Job Automation Reflection

Instructions for the Response Paper

Job Automation Reflection

This assignment requires you to write a critical response to another student’s paper – 800 words
minimum. Any paper under 800 will not be accepted for credit. That’s not a lot of space so pick
your battles carefully. You may have written critical responses in other classes, but here your
focus should be primarily on the ideas in your student’s paper – and nothing else. To give you an
idea for what I’d like to see, I’m going to start with the downer-strategy and give you a bunch of
“DON’Ts”:
● You don’t need to be giving grammar criticism. Save that for an English class. Here
we’re trying to learn how to think better – that’s our focus. Your comments can
possibly be a big help to the person you’re reviewing; giving them more ideas to
work with, stimulating new ones, seeing other perspectives.
● Don’t MERELY give your opinion. This is not another paper YOU are writing. You
want to be in dialogue with the AUTHOR’S ideas. Play on their turf. Don’t get astray
in irrelevant tangents. Share your ideas but make sure that you 1) connect them in
with what the author is up to and 2) defend them. Just stating that you disagree isn’t
useful. Giving an argument for an objection helps IMMENSELY.
● Don’t just share the first 700 words of ideas you have. Pick and choose what you
think is most significant to talk about. You’ll probably have more reactions that you
have space for. Share what will be most helpful to your author.
On the more positive side, here’s a couple ways to think about how to approach giving criticism.
(you don’t have to follow these categories exactly, but if you’re having trouble finding things to
talk about this might help):
● Identify places where clarification in the ideas needs to happen. If you’re confused, it
may be your fault for misunderstanding, but most of the time the author shares the
responsibility here. And regardless of the finger-pointing (which is not really the
point here), your author will want to be as clear as possible and if there’s a
communication breakdown, they should know about it. When sharing this kind of
response be sure to include your guesses as to what they have in mind – this will
really help the author know where things got off track. (Don’t make this category the
entirety of your reaction!)
● When the author makes claims in their arguments, ask yourself if you think that those
claims could be challenged – whether by you personally, or someone else less
sympathetic to the position. If there is significant room for a challenge, indicate on
what grounds someone might be suspicious of that claim or outright dispute it.
● Argument anatomy refresher: all arguments have a thesis or CONCLUSION that is
being defended and PREMISES that are the claims that defend the truth of the
conclusion. When looking at the arguments your author employs, ask if you could
agree with all the premises and yet disagree with the conclusion.
#1 THING FOR THIS ASSIGNMENT: HAVE PATIENCE! Your paper’s author is just trying
out this whole philosophy thing for the first time too, so don’t expect freaking John Stuart Mill is
writing the paper you’re reviewing. BE CHARITABLE and CONSTRUCTIVE. And don’t forget
that “constructive” doesn’t mean you can’t be critical. But also: “critical” doesn’t license being
abusive! Keep it friendly. So basically: don’t pull the punches but throw those punches as a
friend and not as an enemy. Think about how two martial artists might spar with each other for
their mutual benefit and with mutual respect. This is more like that than an all-out brawl.