This document provides instructions for writing an argumentative paper in business ethics for a class. It outlines the required format, including having a clear claim, explaining the claim, providing reasons for and against the claim, rebuttals, and a decision. It provides examples of strong and weak claims. It also lists topics that are not acceptable for the paper and provides background information that can be researched. The paper should be the student's original thoughts and arguments on a typical activity of a large corporation related to business ethics.

1. Argumentativepaper of approximately 5 - 7 pages double-
spaced, standard margins, 12pt font. The format for the paper is
discussed in Appendix A below.Paper topics must be relevant to
business ethics (not personal, professional, or social ethics).The
required paper format is part of this syllabus (Appendix A).
Appendix A: the required format for the term paper.
Each item in bold in this appendix (i.e.,the words Claim,
Explanation of the Claim, Reasons For/Against, Rebuttals)
should appear on your paper. The paper will be discussed in
class. If you miss this discussion, obtain notes from your
classmates. You should take your audience to be an average
reader, not your philosophy instructor.
The most important part about the paper is that it should contain
your original thoughts and arguments. In other words, this is an
analysis paper not a research paper. It is easily ascertained
when you have taken concepts, reasons, and discussion from
some other source. The only things that you are allowed to
research are the facts (which must be documented). The
following facts should be researched: what countries permit
bribery, what is defined as child labor, what are applicable
laws, what are the legal definitions of discrimination, how many
illegal aliens are working in the country. Also, this is a paper in
business ethics. Do not write on ethics of individuals, societies,
government organizations, etc. Chose a typical activity of a
large corporation that is not covered by law, but appears
morally impermissible to you.
Claim:
A single well-worded declarative statement.
E.g., “Should American companies hire underage workers in

2. countries that legally permit it?” is NOT in declarative form,
and therefore is not a claim. Questions do not assert anything.
The claim must have moral significance. For example, “Many
US companies hire underage workers in countries that legally
permit such hires” is a factual claim and does nothave moral
significance.
“It is economically advantageous for US companies to hire
underage workers” is a pragmatic claim and doesn’t have moral
significance.
On the other hand, “It is permissible for the US companies to
hire underage workers in countries that legally permit such
hires.” does have moral significance. The claim must pertain to
business ethics.
Common problems: Vague claims; claims posed in the form of a
question; too broad or too narrow claims; non-moral claims;
more than one issue in the claim. Claims about abortion, death
penalty, assisted suicide, legitimacy of war, cloning, religion,
etc., are NOT relevant business ethics claims.
Explanation of the Claim: You should explain very
carefully and in common-sense vocabulary what you mean by
the claim itself and by the terms involved in the claim. For
example, it is not immediately apparent what is meant by “US
companies should not hire underage workers in countries where
it is legally permissible.” I do not know (or pretend not to
know for the purposes of grading) what is meant by “underage”,
by “countries where it is legally permissible”.
Common problems: assuming that the terms your use are self-
explanatory. The reader of your paper will assume no prior
knowledge of your subject on his part, If your do not explain
your terms, concepts, relationships you will start losing points.
Arguing in the explanation part of the paper, rather than
explaining what you mean by your claim.
Reasons For the Claim: Each reason for the claim should be
numbered with Arabic numerals (1), (2), (3), (4), (5). You

3. should provide at least four reasons for your claim. Each reason
must be unpacked in a whole paragraph. Each reason must have
moral significance.
Common problems: sketchy arguments; pragmatic rather than
moral arguments; insufficiently developed arguments; argument
borrowed from other sources (even if documented); arguments
that appeal to psychological rather than moral considerations,
weak or not well-thought out arguments.
Reasons Against the Claim: Here you step into the shoes of your
hypothetical opponent and think of reasons why your claim
doesn’t hold. Each reason against the claim should be
numbered with Roman numerals (I), (II), (III), (IV). You
should provide at least four reasons against your claim. Each
reason must be unpacked in a whole paragraph. Each reason
must have moral significance.
Common problems: same as above; attempting to rebut the
arguments presented in Reasons For the Claim – this belongs to
the Rebuttal section.
Decision: At this point in the paper you must decide which set
of reasons (i.e., Reasons For or Reasons Against the Claim) is a
stronger set. You must explain why you think a particular set of
reasons is stronger. This part must be a full paragraph rather
than a couple of sentences.
Rebuttals: At this point in the paper you must provide a
counterargument against each reason in the set of reasons that
you found to be weaker (in the Decision part of the paper). For
example, if you found Reasons For the Claim to be a weaker set
of reasons, you must counter-argue against (1), (2), (3), (4).
Conversely, if you found Reasons Against to be a weaker set,
you must counter-argue against (I), (II), (III), (IV). Each
counterargument must be unpacked in a whole paragraph.
Not acceptable topics for the paper:

4. - Cultivation and sale of Cannabis
- Outsourcing (this will be discussed in class)
- Issues regarding athletics or sports
- Child labor
- Executive compensation
- Illegal immigration
- Testing on animals
- Tobacco
- Religion
- Anything having to do with small business
- In general, anything that is already prohibited by a relevant
federal law, such as bribery, monopoly, gender or other forms
of discrimination, etc.
Title:
The Eye in the Door
Source:
Magill’s Literary Annual 1995; June 1995, p1-3
Article Author:
Yahnke, Robert; Includes bibliography
Document Type:
Work Analysis
Biographical Information:
Barker, Pat
Full Name: Patricia Margaret Barker
Gender: Female
National Identity: United Kingdom; England
Language: English
Publication Information:
Salem Press
Locale:
London; England; Great Britain; Europe; Manchester
Abstract:
An adept and sensitive neurologist in a London clinic helps

5. three veterans of the Western Front in World War I heal their
psychological scars
Literary Genres/Subgenres:
Long fiction; Novel
Subject Terms:
Children
Gay men
Government
History
Homosexuality or homosexuals
Ireland or Irish people
Paranoia
Psychology or psychologists
World War I
Wounds or injuries
ISBN:
0-89356-295-5
Accession Number:
103331MLA199510480019501039
Persistent link to this record (Permalink):
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Database:
MagillOnLiterature Plus

6. Pat BarkerBorn: May 8, 1943; Thornaby-on-Tees, near
Middlesborough, England
Quick Reference
First published: 1993, in Great Britain (first pb. in US, 1994)
Publisher: Dutton (New York). 280 pp. $20.95
Type of work: Novel
Time of work: 1918
Locale: London and Manchester, England
An adept and sensitive neurologist in a London clinic helps
three veterans of the Western Front in World War I heal their
psychological scars
Principal characters:
Billy Prior, a lieutenant in the Royal Army
Charles Manning, a captain in the Royal Army
Siegfried Sassoon, a lieutenant in the Royal Army
Dr. William Rivers, a neurologist and social anthropologist and
captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps
Dr. Henry Head, a colleague of Rivers
Beattie Roper, a pacifist and former suffragette
Hettie Roper, Beattie’s daughter, a pacifist and former
suffragette
Lionel Spragge, a spy hired by the War Ministry to investigate
Beattie Roper
Harold Spencer, a captain in the Royal Army
Essay
In many respects The Eye in the Door is a sequel to Pat
Barker’s 1992 novel Regeneration. Barker found the sources for
both novels in accounts of the lives of two historical figures —
the famous antiwar poet Siegfried Sassoon and William Rivers,
a neurologist who treated soldiers who had returned from the
front in World War I. The real Rivers actually worked at
Craiglockhart, a hospital in Scotland, and he did treat Sassoon
there in 1917 and in London in 1918. Barker’s imagination
transforms these historical sources and creates complex literary
characters who interact with one another and with a variety of

7. wholly imagined characters. One of the imagined characters in
Regeneration was Billy Prior, who suffered from shell shock,
now known as post-traumatic stress disorder. He was discharged
from the hospital and assigned to permanent home service.
Sassoon was discharged to active duty in November, 1917. The
Eye in the Door continues Barker’s exploration of their lives
and adds Charles Manning, an officer wounded in France and
now suffering panic attacks. Prior is Rivers’ patient in his
London clinic, and Sassoon appears late in the novel when he is
sent to an American Red Cross hospital in London after
suffering a minor head wound at the front. Rivers is called in by
Sassoon’s attending physician because of recurring symptoms of
emotional distress.
In Regeneration her focus was on the psychological impact of
war on the combatants. The horrors of post-traumatic stress
disorder are made vivid by the soldiers’ nightmares and
flashbacks. In The Eye in the Door Barker broadens her
approach to include an indictment of repression and paranoia on
the home front. The issues she raises reflect the contradictions
and incongruities that are the basis of people’s lives in a
country at war.
Billy Prior’s psychological crisis dominates The Eye in the
Door. After successful treatment at Craiglockhart, Prior is
discharged and sent to London to work in an intelligence unit in
the Ministry of Munitions. There he investigates the activities
of notorious pacifists. The woman he is sent to interview in a
prison outside London is Beattie Roper, an elderly woman with
whom he lived for a year when he was a small child. Her
daughter, Hettie, was one of his closest friends. Prior’s return to
his roots forces him to address the question of his allegiance —
to the people he grew up with and to his country.
When Prior interviews Beattie, he begins to suspect that she was
framed. He knows that she is a pacifist who hides deserters and
helps provide them safe passage to Ireland. She is in prison,
however, because she has been implicated in a plot to
assassinate the prime minister. Actually, she had no part in such

8. a plot: An informant, Lionel Spragge, hired by the Ministry of
Munitions, altered the facts to implicate her. Why this need to
imprison an old woman for life? Prior suspects that the Ministry
of War has made Beattie a scapegoat. She will be a lesson to
others. Clearly, Beattie is not under the control of German spies
or other agents of a secret British organization. Her allegiance
is to her children and to the young men she believes should not
be sent to die in the trenches of France. In a time of war,
however, governments will not tolerate any actions that may be
construed as attacks upon the established order. Everyone must
be on the same side; thus Beattie is sacrificed to “the cause.”
Another instance of the government’s repression is its treatment
of homosexuals during the war. Certain people within the War
Ministry believed that gays and lesbians were part of an
intricate German plot to undermine the foundations of British
culture and the British government. One of the people most
afraid of exposure is Charles Manning. He returned from the
front with a severely damaged knee and knows that he will
never be sent back to the trenches. Still, he has repeated
flashbacks of horrific scenes, and he suffers from panic attacks.
Manning is happily married, and he loves his children, but he
also has a secret life as a gay man. He has come to accept that
part of his identity, but he is vulnerable because his
homosexuality defines him as a pervert and as a criminal. He is
terrified that someone will turn him in.
The fears that are provoked when paranoia and repression hold
sway are evoked by the guiding metaphor of the novel, the eye
in the door. In the prison cells that hold war deserters and
pacifists there is a literal eye on the door; that is, around the
circular opening of the keyhole is a painting of a realistic eye.
The eye suggests that someone is always watching the
imprisoned person. Who is watching? The guards? The State?
God? One’s conscience? A spy? Billy Prior first encounters the
eye in the door when he visits Beattie Roper in her prison cell.
At first he is disconcerted by this crude metaphor; then he is
deeply troubled by it. He even has a nightmare about the eye in

9. the door. What does the metaphor mean? Certainly it represents
the power of the government to spy on its citizens, to oppress
those whose viewpoints do not conform to the “party line.” The
eye in the door also may refer to the fear felt by people like
Manning, who are oppressed in a society that condemns
homosexuality as a crime and a perversion.
The metaphor of the eye in the door is given another meaning in
Prior’s psychological crisis. After visiting Roper in prison,
Prior meets her daughter Hettie and an old childhood friend,
Paddy MacDowell, who is a deserter. Days later, Prior discovers
that there are gaps in his experience that he cannot recall. Some
gaps are thirty minutes long; some are as long as three or four
hours. Eventually he realizes that he has multiple personalities.
He fears that a shadow self is controlling him. Perhaps his
shadow self is a monster, a Mr. Hyde. Perhaps Prior has
murdered someone and does not even know it.
In the headnote to the novel, Barker quotes The Strange Case of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), by Robert Louis Stevenson. In
that novel Dr. Jekyll learns that his character is intimately
related to the character of his shadow self. For Prior the “eye in
the door” represents his fear that his shadow self is a cruel,
sadistic force watching his every move and dominating his life.
In one of his nightmares he strikes at the eye in the door with a
knife, as if to destroy a part of himself that is monstrous.
Fortunately for Prior, Rivers is able to assist him in resolving
these fears. Late in the novel Prior’s alter ego confronts Rivers
and claims to know everything about Billy Prior. He maintains
that he is superior to Prior because he feels no fear and feels no
pain. Eventually Rivers discerns that this personality is called
forth by Prior in the face of overwhelming traumatic events.
The logic of Prior’s unconscious is absolute: If he cannot stand
the pain or fear, his other personality will bear it for him. Prior
began resorting to this safety valve in order to cope with
horrifying experiences in the war. Actually, he has called forth
this personality before, when he was a child and felt
helplessness and anxiety when his father brutalized his mother.

10. Through therapy he learns that his shadow self is neither evil
nor sadistic.
Throughout the novel Rivers struggles to help the men in his
care overcome the demons that control their lives. When
Manning’s panic attacks persist, Rivers hospitalizes him and
provides aggressive therapy to help him face the horrors of life
in the trenches. In reliving his story and admitting a terrible
deed, a “mercy killing” of a young recruit, Manning begins to
free himself from another “eye in the door” — his self-imposed
guilt and anxiety.
The third character who faces a psychological crisis is Siegfried
Sassoon. Sassoon and Rivers are the most complex characters in
the novel. Their interactions are subtle, challenging, and deeply
felt. It is evident that they are fond of each other. Sassoon sees
Rivers as his father confessor, someone who can rescue him
from his guilt and anxiety. Rather like Prior, Sassoon found that
the only way he could survive at the front was to split his
consciousness into two parts — one a gung-ho commander, the
other a loving father-figure. Now he tells Rivers he fears that he
will not be able to save all of the men in his care.
Rivers understands Sassoon’s dilemma. In some respects he
faces a similar crisis himself. His role is analogous to a
company commander on the Western Front. He heals patients so
that — in many cases — they can be sent back to fight again.
His fate is the same as Manning’s, Prior’s, and Sassoon’s:
These officers have witnessed unspeakable slaughter, but their
job is to send men over the tops of the trenches again and again.
Neither Rivers nor the officers can do anything to save the
young men running into the line of fire. These contradictory and
irreconcilable truths are at the core of the madness of war and
the psychological disabilities felt by men in war.
How to resolve this dilemma? Rivers notes that in time of war
the love between men is glorified in order to form community
among the troops, but this arouses anxiety because of society’s
fears of homosexuality and deviance. Finally, he concludes, his
allegiance is to the men in his care, just as the allegiance of the

11. company commanders is to the men in their care. In both cases,
the feelings of love for those in one’s care is a vital and
positive force against the brutality of war.
Regeneration and The Eye in the Door are companion novels,
best read in order. The latter completes the stories that were
introduced in the former. In both novels Barker conveys the
sense that war is an all-encompassing experience that is
impossible to communicate to anyone who has not experienced
it, and perhaps too overwhelming to be understood by those who
have experienced it. In some respects they are classic antiwar
novels, because they admit to the ambiguities and complexities
of the individual’s and the society’s responses to war.
Essay by: Robert Yahnke