Short essay for Critical Thinking class

Polemic Assignment. First polemic is due on 7/8.

NOTE: There will be a continually updated Discussion Forum on Polemics that, starting next week, will give

editorials from that week that might work to fulfill this assignment.

A Polemic is an argumentative text or speech that takes a position contrary to the mainstream, or to another

specific argument. Your assignment is to take a newspaper editorial or an excerpt from a longer editorial,

approximately 400 - 700 words, and critique its arguments point by point. The polemic should use 1-inch

margins, 12 point Times font, be double spaced, and be approximately 1 ½ to 2 pages. There are 2 polemics

due by the end of the quarter as part of 5 short essays; this comes out to 1 essay every two weeks.

You must disagree with (not personally disagree; that's your business) with the editorial that you have chosen.

It is helpful to pretend that you are writing to someone who disagrees with you and who agrees with the article

you have chosen to critique. You are explaining why the article fails to prove its case. Your own experience

and opinions only become relevant in refuting one of the article's points. Thus the assignment is somewhat akin

to cross-examination in a debate.

Although I want you to address every part of the editorial, you do not have to disagree with every assertion the

author makes. It can be quite helpful to break down paragraphs into standard form arguments, but one of the

easiest ways to do poorly on the polemic assignment is to give an almost mathematical anaylses of each each

premise and conclusion, yet somehow miss what the editorial is essentially about. You are simply taking an

opposing view to his/her overall argument, and your critique may conclude that a majority of their factual

assertions are correct, but that these facts do not fully support the conclusion that they have drawn.

Common sources for written assignments: The New York Times, Newsweek, U.S. News and World Report,

CNN.com, local newspapers (the Mercury, the SF Chronicle, etc.; online versions of most of these are

available). More openly partisan sources such as Mother Jones, The National Review, or websites of socialist or

libertarian organizations.

Whenever possible, attack the author's use of evidence rather than the validity of evidence; unless you have

competing facts available, you probably cannot successfully prove that their facts are wrong. Whenever

possible, identify weaknesses in their argument that anyone, whatever position they had on the issue, would

have to admit are, in fact, logical problems. Always avoid anecdotal evidence; personal stories that illustrate

your position but have no bearing on the case at hand.

An example; let’s say you were critiquing an editorial from the Vegetarian Times that opens with the following

claim: “A recent study simply compared randomly selected vegetarians and non-vegetarians, and showed that

vegetarians live an average of 7 years longer than non-vegetarians. Therefore it is clear that not eating meat

helps you live longer.

Weak Counter-Argument: “My whole family is not vegetarian, and people eat meat all over the world. Our

bodies are made to process meat. So I don’t see how not eating meat could be healthier, or else most people

would do it.”

Better, but risky: “The article doesn’t say who did the study. It may be poorly done, may not mean anything.”

Problem: In the context of a debate, this could backfire; what if the debaters on the other side found, perhaps

on the magazine’s website, a link to the original study, and it was done by a very reputable institution. Now you

have nothing, and your counter-argument tacitly implies that, if true, the claim is irrefutable.

Best: The author cited a study presents a false dilemma, implying that “vegetarian” and “non-vegetarian” are

meaningful choices. This could be a case of correlation, and not connection. Vegetarians, by definition, have

made a conscious, disciplined choice about their health, and, as the article states elsewhere, they tend to

exercise more and smoke less than the general population. Therefore it might be these other factors—health

conscious lifestyle choices—that cause them to live longer, and not their diet. A meaningful study would

compare health-conscious carnivores to vegetarians, not vegetarians to the general population.

This is one example of the #1 rule in arguing: when your opposition presents evidence in their favor, you should

engage in the following three step process:

Option 1 (best): Accept their evidence as possibly true (“let's say for the sake of argument that that's true. Even

if it is...), and then show how their conclusion could still be false even if their evidence is true (see above

vegetarian example).

Option 2: Refute their evidence with your own. This takes a lot more work, and in the context of a

conversation, might not be possible.

Option 3 (worst, and extremely common in first polemics in this class): Simply dismiss their evidence because

they didn't fully cite their source, or because it is theoretically possible that it might not be true.

Especially with evidence regarding complex political issues (ie, Obamacare) or social issues (ie, racism),

studies that are offered as evidence are almost never slam dunks, are almost never 100% PROOF of anything

the way that 2 + 2 = 4. Also, in the context of a 700 to 1000 word editorial, you are not expected to fully

explain the study you are citing, so pointing out that they didn't cite their sources thoroughly adds nothing to the

conversation. MOST first polemics that I receive in this class consist of listing off the arguments contained in

the chosen editorial, and then saying that each argument is based on evidence poorly cited and that might not

even be true. Put yourself in the context of the person who disagrees with you, who agrees with the editorialist.

Have you challenged them? If a vegetarian believes that vegetarians live 10 years longer, and you don't, do you

add anything to the debate by saying, “The study only looked at a sample set that was in the

thousands...therefore, all it's conclusions might be false about the whole population.” Try to avoid this. Try