Thesis Construction

Please read these assignment instructions before writing your paper, and re-read them often during and after the writing process to make sure that you are fulfilling all of the instructions.

Overview
The following assignment is an exercise designed to help you write your Final Paper. In this exercise, you will do the following:

• Identify a topic of interest from the list, and narrow it down to a particular, concrete ethical problem or question.
• Provide an introduction in which you briefly explain the topic and the particular question on which you will focus your paper.
• Explain three ethically significant issues pertaining to this question that would need to be considered when addressing it.
• Use the Thesis Generator in the Ashford Writing Center to construct a thesis statement that articulates your position on the topic as you have defined it. (https://awc.ashford.edu/writing-tools-thesis-generator.html)

Instructions
The exercise must be at least 400 words in length (excluding title and reference pages) and formatted according to APA style as outlined in the Ashford Writing Center. Be sure to including a title page and reference page as necessary. Your exercise must be organized to address each of the five parts below. Number each part accordingly.

1. Part One: Thesis Statement
   Use the Thesis Generator in the Ashford Writing Center to construct a thesis statement that articulates your position on the question as you have defined it. This will likely be the last thing you do in this exercise, but your thesis should be placed at the top of the first page after the title page.

   Your thesis should clearly state your position and provide a concise statement of the primary reason(s) drawn from the three issues you raise in Part Two. For example, having identified three important issues that need to be considered, you may find that two of them support your view, and while one may present a challenge to it, that challenge can be overcome.
    

2. Part Two: Provide a Brief Introduction to the Topic
   Your introduction must make clear to the reader exactly what ethical issue or question you are addressing within this topic, and what you consider to be the boundaries of the question.

   For example, a paper on criminal punishment might consider whether capital punishment should be used as punishment for certain types of crime, or it might consider the broader question of whether the criminal justice system should favor retribution over rehabilitation. If you were writing on this topic, you would need to specify which of these (or some other) specific question you intend to discuss. (Note: You may not write on criminal punishment, this is just an example. More examples are given in the “Notes and Advice” section.) You should aim to focus your question as narrowly as possible.

   The final sentence of this paragraph should provide a brief summary of the three ethically significant issues pertaining to this question that you intend to address.
    

3. Parts Three, Four, and Five: Explain Three Ethically Significant Issues Pertaining to This Question
   An “ethically significant issue” is a feature of the topic and circumstances that must be taken into account when reasoning about the question. For example, if you were writing on criminal punishment and focusing on the question of whether drug users should be imprisoned, ethically significant issues might include the monetary costs, the social costs, the impact on the person, the effect on the drug trade, and so on. And each of these, in turn, would have sub-issues, negative and positive sides, etc. Your task is to be as specific as you can in explaining the ethically significant issue. See the “Notes and Advice” section for further information.

   The first sentence of each paragraph must be a topic sentence that clearly states what issue you will be considering. The remainder of the paragraph should address the relevance and import of the ethically significant feature of the situation. Each paragraph should be focused on a distinct issue.