Writing 1

Lecture 3

See page 123 for the stages in argumentative analysis

1) Do a close analysis of the passage containing the argument

2) List all explicit premises and the conclusion in standard form

· Step 1 (from last time): identify argument markers and compose a list of explicit assumptions and the conclusion

· Step 2: remove irrelevant claims (claims whose truth has no bearing on the truth of the conclusion) and repeated claims (why clutter up the argument with different wordings of the same claim)

· With repeated claims, pick the wording that is most unambiguous and clear to include in your account

· Step 3: check to see if assurances and guarding terms can be omitted from the explicit argument

· Assurances: is the assurance intended to contribute to the argument?

· This isn’t always true, but generally appeals to authority will need to be retained in the argument while commenting or expressing the strength of our belief in a claim is usually not a claim that must be retained. The last method of assuring, conversationally implying reasons, depends entirely on the context and the implication.

· Guarding: the question to ask here is whether the guarding move actually defines the scope of the claim being guarded. Consider:

· “It seems reasonable to think that Meredith is off of work by now, so she can give us a ride to the party”

· In this case it isn’t the “reasonableness” of the belief that entails that Meredith can give a ride. It would be the truth of the fact that she is out of work by now.

· Think of the “reasonableness” term here referring to why we should allow this premise, not what the premise is saying

· “Meredith can probably give us a ride to the party since she’s probably off of work by now”

· Here the conclusion is being guarded in the sense that it would be possible to make the stronger claim: “Meredith is able to give us a ride to the party”. The “probably” here cannot be omitted without changing what the argument is about.

· Generally (but not always!), it is less likely you should drop the guarding terms for conclusions than you should for premises.

· EXERCISE 1

3) Clarify the premises and the conclusion where necessary

· As the book points out, this is a less than perfect ideal.

· What does clarifying mean?

· Reducing ambiguity and vagueness from the claims themselves (with this step we’re just trying to get clear on what is being claimed)

· Sometimes this means rewording, sometimes providing a definition, sometimes using common terms throughout the argument when they are intended that way

· When and why should we do this?

· This is tricky to tell sometimes!

· The book’s suggestion: clarify anything that seems likely to produce confusion later if not cleared up now

· But what might qualify as possibly creating confusion?

· Just like with assurances: see if you can come up with an understanding of the terms such that the argument can be valid

· Also, check to see if you can come up with understandings that give the best chance for the premises being true

· Both of these require charity

· If you can’t come up with such an understanding ask the person who gave the argument

· When should you check for this?

· Look to see if there are any obvious objections to the validity or truth of the premises that could be resolved by changing the meanings of the terms

4) Break up the premises and the conclusion into smaller parts where this is possible

· There is only one rule for this step: you want to have each premise making one claim (of course, without distorting the argument as it is intended!)

· This requires careful listening to what is being said and there really isn’t any mechanical way to figure it out

5) Arrange the parts of the argument into a chain or tree of sub-arguments where this is possible

· Determine which claims are intended to support other claims

· This doesn’t mean to figure out which claims actually do support other claims, but what is intended

· Of course, if it is unclear what the intention is, interpret charitably

· Figure out if the support for any claim requires more than one premises taken in conjunction

· This requires sensitivity to sufficiency (as opposed to necessity)

· [Discuss] N & S conditions for 1) eating a cheeseburger 2) getting downtown 3) going on a date with someone

· [do some diagrams from the HW]

· EXERCISE 2

AN IMPORTANT ASIDE: At this point we start exploring an evaluation of the argument, but it must be emphasized that this is happening right now ONLY for the sake of putting the best possible construction on the argument being analyzed (this is charity at work!). So this is all happening “prior” to marshalling an attack, objection, or registering agreement with the argument – in other words, prior to responding to the argument. Very important!

6) Assess each argument and sub-argument for validity

· CRUCIAL NOTE!!! The book’s use of “validity” in this chapter is sloppy. I’m keeping with its practice here to avoid confusion, but know that it doesn’t really mean the technical concept of deductive validity that we have already learned. In Chapter 5 “validity” is being used as short-hand for “good support relation”. Remember that validity is only one of the standards we could use to evaluate a “good support relation” (inductive Strength being the other one). Don’t worry about this for now – we’ll have lots of time in the 2nd third of this quarter to clear up validity vs strength!

· As a prelude to introducing suppressed premises, check the explicit premises for validity to see where suppressed premises might be needed.

7) If any argument or sub-argument is not valid, or if it is not clear why it is valid, add suppressed premises that will show how to get from the premises to the conclusion

· Suppressed premises are needed when an explicit argument is not valid, but could be made valid

· Usually the suppressed premises required are assumptions we usually take for granted (however, this is not always the case – as in the situation where two people have different background assumptions)

· Arguments that require suppressed premises are called enthymemes or enthymematic

· Common types of suppressed premises:

· Contingent Facts: these premises concern empirical matters of fact (that are usually familiar or commonly accepted and so rarely stated explicitly)

· These can be tied into the implicit context. Ex: imagine I say to you “The test is on Wed, so you should come talk to me if you are unable to attend class on Wed so you can make up the test.” Here the major claim (the conclusion) is you should come talk to me (if you can’t attend) so as to make up the test and the supporting claim (the reason) is that the test is on Wed. In order for this to count as a reason to talk to me, it must also be true that I am the instructor. In the context where I say this to you, this fact is already so obvious to not need mentioning but is still required for the argument to be valid. If I was not the instructor, a talk with me would do nothing to help you make up a missed test.

· Linguistic Principles: these premises flesh out claims that are entailed by the semantic content of words (what the words mean)

· Example: pg120 “husbands are men” To see this is linguistic, ask yourself what makes this claim true? On what does its truth depend? Here it is the meaning of the word husband.

· Evaluative Premises: these premises include moral, ethical, or aesthetic principles or judgments (which usually – but not always! – are considered to be so basic or beyond criticism that they do not need to be put forward as explicit claims)

· Ex: Look back at the test example above. This argument is still missing another premise. Generally, any time the conclusion is a normative claim (such as “you should…” or “one ought to…” or “it would be best to…” or “it is good to…” etc) and you can’t find a normative premise, there is a suppressed evaluative premise to be found. This is true of the test example. What is the suppressed evaluative premise?

· Good Uses of Suppressed Premises (both of these conditions are necessary, but only together are they sufficient)

· When the missing steps of the argument are easily supplied by anyone

· When the suppressed premises are not controversial

· Bad Uses

· When one of the good conditions above is not satisfied

· Ugly: purposefully leaving out conversationally implied premises in an attempt to avoid making them available to be criticized.

· This happens most frequently with suppressed evaluative premises – so be extra careful with normative arguments (moral, ethical, or aesthetic)

· EXERCISE 6

8) Assess the truth of the premises

· Step 1: ask yourself if you think all the premises are true! (compare the claims to your own judgments)

· If yes: go to step 2

· If no: go to step 3

· Step 2: look carefully to see if someone else might be able to object to the premises (this takes imagination and empathy!)

· If yes: go to step 3

· If no: Awesome! This argument seems to be sound (as long as the above stages ensured the argument’s validity)

· Step 3: See if you can’t put together a (relatively) simple and uncontroversial defense of that premise

· By anticipating the work of your opponent, you not only argue charitably, but you inform yourself as to how far the possible objections might reach. Perhaps the objection is not fatal to the argument and the argument can be easily fixed. Or the possibly objection is a deep threat, but is itself not recommended by much argument (there is little reason to think the objection itself is true)

· A Useful Strategy to look for clues (not in the book): try to identify the motivations behind the argument. Why would one WANT to argue for this conclusion? Or in this way? This will help you get into the mind of your opponent’s perspective and help inspire your imagination to come up with possible defenses for things you already have reason to think are false

· (it is very hard to imagine how something is true once you have just considered how it might be false)

· Incidentally: this strategy has, for me, proven to be one of the most useful the more I do philosophy

· This is where the book discusses Fundamental Principles. Let’s hold off for now…

· Step 4: Depending on the argumentative context (the context in which your debate takes place) various Responses are now appropriate

· You might just discuss these various considerations to your argumentative audience

· But perhaps a more prepared response is required

· In this case, weigh all these considerations and construct your own position/argument for what elements need take priority

· Which seem more important and compelling: the reasons why the premise might be true or might be false?

· Do you want to commit to the claims that are required for a candidate objection

· IMPORTANT NOTE: ALL objections require positive claims!

· Don’t forget that perhaps the argument is still invalid! You might not have been able to reconstruct it in order to make it valid

· Whatever your response, Prioritize what you say. Make sure that the most important or central issues to the argument and possible objections are discussed rather than the nit-picky, small scale stuff. You can even mention them if you want to without getting into them.

· Ex: “In response to your argument, I have a few small problems/concerns with the intended definition of ‘threatening gestures’, but I’m mainly concerned with the fact that you think it would ever be ok to weed-whack a person’s face.”

· These steps are not intended to be mechanical, but it is important that you not only consider your own beliefs and possible objections, but also those of anyone else you can imagine and also other responses to those possible objections. When responding critically, one is under the same critical responsibilities as the person who gives the argument: the goal is to give reasons that can be accessible to anyone, so you want to consider as many perspectives as possible.

· The book mentions a tension between establishing the truth of the premises and the validity of an argument

· [Remember Guarding]

· The Blame Talk pg 124

· “blame” here is like another common phrase in critical argumentation: “burden of proof”

· Both are not necessary concepts to capture what is really at stake here:

· We don’t have all the time in the world to consider (and attempt to save) a particular argument

· There are other things that require our attention and might be more important

· We still have to make decisions on things depending on how those decisions affect our lives

· All of these reasons when combined mean that there is a limit that sets when we need to draw a conclusion about an argument and when we need to consider it further

· You don’t want to be hasty in drawing conclusions

· But also you can’t stay in one tiny part of the universe forever

· HOWEVER, the other thing that can be respected here is that if someone else puts together another defense or construction of the argument that intend to solve the original’s lack of validity or its false premises, then that’s ok and you should consider that if it happens (with practical qualifications if necessary of course).

· Ex. I come to you with an argument for why philosophy is the COOLEST! You think about it for a while and just can’t find a way to get over some objections (which you don’t actually have, ‘cause you love philosophy too, but which you can imagine someone else holding). You bring this response back to me, saying that you cannot accept my argument as it is given. You have here reached your limit and decided to stop trying to come up with ways to solve this objection and save the original argument. You have drawn your own conclusion about the status of my argument and everything is done and good. Now, I can always think about it on MY own and see if I can’t do anything about this objection until I reach MY limit (sometimes because of ourselves and our lives, these limits are different, but there is probably some absolute minimum that is recommended for everyone). If I bring this back to you, you should reconsider what I now have to say in response even though you reached your limit with it last time. Now, this process itself (objection->response->objection etc) has its own potential limits. You might say, “Tim, I’ve been graduated for 20 years, I’m an accountant for life with 7 children and trying to start a real estate business. You can stop trying to convince me that majoring in Philosophy is a good idea!”

Fundamental Principles

· The book is right. Once we go back and forth a few times we might get to a point in a debate where it seems that the argument relies on fundamental principles that could be opposed by the opposite fundamental principles

· An Aside: what problem for arguments would this concern?

· Why is it important to notice where these are?

· Most importantly: because arguing for or against these premises is a debate in itself!

· In such cases, if there are no other objections, just note this fact about the argument

· Ex: “Well, as far as I can tell, as long as you think that only people with white skin have moral rights, then I guess you have an argument for why our government shouldn’t be concerned with the relatively low high school graduation records for minorities. However, I don’t believe that we should think that white people are the only people with moral rights.”

· As this example indicates, arguing about the roots of something like deep racist beliefs in the context of some other issue would be perhaps 1) futile and 2) at least distracting. That issue should be talked about, but on its own terms. The response above directs attention appropriately to the most controversial part of the argument. Instead of nit-picking about what is done with such a fundamental principle, it addresses the deeper issue straight on. It might be difficult to argue for or against such a belief, but we must see what we can do before giving up…

· …which brings me to the important point with fundamental principles: they are not fundamental!

· The status of fundamental principles is defined by our inability to find claims that back up such premises. This doesn’t mean that they are not there to be found!

· While it is a never ending project to defend our basic premises, the deeper we can go the more we have accomplished in bringing perspectives into dialogue [see diagram]

· If we fail at finding such reasons, then strictly speaking (for a critical context) we must leave things as they are (unresolved) for the time being. Perhaps pragmatic considerations take over at this point. But this shouldn’t inspire despair – instead it should serve as a reminder that there is unresolved business to be worked on when possible.

· Why am I making a big deal of this?

· This is the world we live in at this point in history. This kind of skill will be more and more important as more perspectives and positions that were never before thrust in the same context are now living side by side.

· The alternative is dogmatism. And that is a dark dark road…

· EXERCISE 9