"How do I know what I think until I see what I say?" - EM Forster
Writing is important, especially to a liberal arts education, because in many ways the act of writing is the embodiment of the process of critical thinking. Consider what Douglas Soccio has said about the subject:
"Critical thinking is the conscious, deliberate, rational assessment of claims according to clearly defined standards of proof" (Soccio 2001, 39).
"One of the signs of good critical thinking is the willingness to accept the best evidence, even when it requires modifying or rejecting a cherished belief of highly desired conclusion" (Soccio 2001, 41).
Just as we could say that philosophy is the pursuit of wisdom (for philosophers are, literally, lovers of wisdom), we can say that philosophy is a deep and comprehensive inquiry into human experience. In order to perform this inquiry, philosophy relies on knowledge from other disciplines, but also may go further in its investigation by analyzing the assumptions made by other disciplines, like what it means to be human, what it means to have knowledge, etc.
As such, philosophical inquiry is a special brand of critical thinking. As philosophers we are intensely interested in what we should believe, what we should do, and how we are to know what we should believe and what we should do. The process of creating, analyzing, and evaluating arguments helps us to determine what claims are most likely to be true, and thus helps us achieve our philosophical goals.
The goal here is to help you to become comfortable writing philosophy papers. Many of the ideas, directives, and admonitions are idiosyncratically my own, and may not be shared by all philosophy teachers. However, I do think that much of it will be useful to you not only in my class, but in other philosophy courses you may take, and indeed in other college courses you may take.
_________________________________________________________________________________
Soccio, Douglas J. (2001) How to Get the Most Out of Philosophy, 4th Edition.
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.