I am slowly returning all your papers. Here are some quick comments about all of the papers:

Papers tended to go well when 

- they fit the assignment (and the requirements of philosophy papers generally) in that 

- they presented arguments in logically valid form, 

- discussed whether arguments were sound or not, 

- explained why or why not various premises are true or not (often using the concept of a counter example) and 

- raised and responded to objections. 

And, of course, they had an introduction, a thesis, were well-organized, were grammatical and spelling-error- free and had a conclusion.

Papers tended to be poor when they did less of this. So, people lost points when they:

- did not present arguments in logically valid form;

- when they did not do this, they really could not discuss whether they were sound or not;

- when they did this, they tended to not consider objections to the arguments or respond to them;

- they ignored discussion from the books and class; thus, they avoided objections we discussed: since the point of philosophy papers is to engage objections to your views, that is contrary to the point of philosophy papers. 

Thanks,