Dr. Dickson English 112 Spring 2007 LC
Argument Summary and Analysis
I. Beliefs, Knowledge, and Argument
Claim: something
held (however tenuously, however passionately, however blithely) to be true that you share with others. For example: writing isn’t always the easiest
thing to do.
Arguable
claim: perhaps a redundancy, an ‘arguable’ claim is one that is open to
dispute. Typically, arguable claims are the important assertions in a speech or
article—the ones on which important consequences turn.
Feelings,
Preferences and Predilections…: the language of emotional
experience—basically, we’re talking about the unfathomable depths and fuzzy
rhizomes of your internal (not yet fully articulated or shared) “thoughts”
about something. Your ‘felt sense.’ For example: You have a misgiving about
accepting someone’s invitation to vacation in
Often, when we “relate” to something we hear, it’s because what we
hear strikes a chord inside—matches up, vibrates to the same frequency, as some
inchoate feelings/thoughts we harbor inside us. Of what do these
feeling/thoughts consist? Language and culture-influenced images and emotional
embroideries. That’s the pat answer. There is no easy way to describe
“thoughts/feelings.”
To participate in intellectual culture—to argue or analyze
arguments—to some extent you have to dredge up your feelings/thoughts and “air
them out”—articulate them—as claims, and
then figure out how you might justify/support those claims for a particular
audience.
Knowledge: For
Aristotle, a Greek philosopher (384-322 B.C.), there were only a few things we
could be absolutely certain about. These are the “truths” of mathematics
and logic. Two plus two is always four. If the object of your scrutiny is human
behavior, there is considerably less certainty. You can, nevertheless, be good
at judging which general rules apply to this or that situation (this is what
goes on in ethics, psychology, and politics). This skill at reaching probable
conclusions and putting them to work in the world of human affairs Aristotle
called techne.
Dialectic
and Rhetoric are forms of techne.
Dialectic is
the art of analyzing arguments so that your analysis yields new questions,
which generate new arguments, which generate new questions, and so on.
Rhetoric is
the art of arriving at and conveying probable
truths, and this probability is a matter of a particular audience’s willingness
to grant assumptions, whether they’re consciously aware of those assumptions or
not. Assumptions are those beliefs that allow a person make an inference, to “jump”
from one or more stated premises to a conclusion.
Inference:
the movement of thinking from two or more premises to a conclusion of some
sort. For instance, I note that it’s cloudy outside today. Then I notice that the
temperature has just dropped. I infer
(or conclude) that rain is on the way. If I could slow down my thinking, I
could discover the assumptions that led me from my OBSERVATIONS to my
CONCLUSION. In everyday life, inferences are typically made with lightening
speed unconscious deliberation. For example, in the case above, the general
rules that the presence of clouds and a drop in temperature indicate
approaching rain I know without thinking about them. Then again there’s the general rule that two indicators give a
stronger indication than one—and I don’t stop to ponder any of these rules
before “leaping” to my conclusion (belief). I just think.
We use metaphors to describe how we think. One metaphor for
cognition involves “movement”. We say that people “arrive” at (travel or move towards) beliefs through
inference. This metaphor allows analysts to reconstruct the “movement” of
the “mind” in what we call “logic.”
Philosophers of Mind (as a group) have themselves “moved” from an
earlier interest in formal logic (and mathematics) to a contemporary interest
in “natural argumentation” (how people actually argue). They now give focus to
the “enthymeme,” a casual form of the syllogism:
|
Syllogism (formal logic) |
Enthymeme (informal logic) |
|
Minor Premise: you’re cute |
Observation: you’re cute |
|
Major Premise : cute is good |
UNSTATED PREMISES ( or “assumptions”): cute is good; cute trumps
poor posture & awful taste when it comes to selecting a mate |
|
Conclusion: I like you. |
Conclusion I like you |
Argument:
the provision of support (evidence and/or reasoning and/or explanation) for a
belief. For example, I argue that it will
rain today because there are clouds in the sky. Or: I think you’re great. Because basically you think I’m great.
Evidence:
appeals to some situation where methodical (that is, to some extent, unbiased)
observation and/or measurement can settle a dispute. Typically, anything (a
statement, a statistic, a study) that can be reproduced and authenticated is
evidence.
Reasoning: This
term refers to either the process of justifying a belief OR the means by which
a person “arrives at” a belief. In the former sense, we “reason” together—we
figure out which ideas are justified. In the latter sense, we “reason” as we
“think.” The “rules” of reasoning, or “logic,” first codified by Aristotle,
distinguish two ways of arriving at and/or justifying beliefs: induction and
deduction. Induction involves reasoning from observations of specific examples
to a generalization. Deduction arrives at a conclusion by inferring from two
(or more) premises (assertions accepted as true or probable).
Explanation:
because language is often vague and because sometimes a person’s language
contains allusions to matters not familiar to all audiences, summarizing an
“argument” may involve a good deal of explanation—unpacking the words and
concepts a writer uses. For example, let’s say I were to argue that the beach is beautiful because the surf
and the sand are pliable and enduring. If you were to summarize me, you
might need to explain what I (probably) mean by “pliable and enduring.” How
much explaining you need to do depends on your audience’s familiarity with
beaches, high brow vocabulary, and tolerance for poetic phrasing.
II. A Closer Look at Patterns of Reasoning
The principles of formal logic were mapped out by the Greek
philosopher, Aristotle (384-322 B.C.). Induction
generalizes from experience and arrives at probable truths:
I observe X, Y and Z (particular events—car accidents in the
rain). Since X, Y and Z all concern Q (a kind
of car, a Ford SUV) and since something happened—the cars rolled over at medium
speeds or P—I conclude that Q (Ford SUVs) are prone to P (rollovers). This is a
generalization from examples and I make it by isolating one factor (the car)
from all the others (weather, road, driving ability of drivers, etc.).
Deduction,
which is held to be a more abstract and often convoluted kind of reasoning,
conjectures from two or more premises and arrives (sometimes validly) at a
necessarily true conclusion.
If A (Bill’s at home), then B (Sarah goes out)
Not B (Sarah didn’t go out)
Therefore, not A (Bill wasn’t at home)
Some people hold that it is important to be able to distinguish
between these two modes of reasoning because the way we analyze arguments differs depending upon how a person
arrived at her/his conclusion.
A. Induction
Here are some examples of inductive
arguments:
We, students, do not feel comfortable with new pedagogies….
[imagine that this goes on to include examples]
People from the South use a lot of saturated fats in their
cooking….[ examples follow ]
Some inductive arguments are really more definition arguments. For
instance:
The
While the argument is definitely a generalization from a number of
incidents, the weight of the argument rests on the term “evidence” (or
“solid”).
People in everyday argumentation typically only provide one or two
examples because it is understood that the arguer takes the examples to be indicative of larger trends—that’s why
the person feels comfortable making the interpretive
leap from the few facts at hand to the generalization (or inductive inference).
There are some general rules concerning the dependability and responsibility
of inductive generalizations. Thus, generalizations often are accompanied by qualifiers when the examples used are
- not
available for scrutiny (the evidence has been destroyed)
- not
sufficient in quantity (the arguer only has experience with 3 X’s out of
the 1000 known to exist)
- not
sufficient in quality (the sample is not "representative" of a
group; the arguer offers 100 interviews with people she met at an airport
in Houston as examples of Texans—the sample size is OK but most airline
travelers are in upper management business)
IMPORTANT: An
inductive argument can be reasonable in its inferences and yet not compelling because it harbors assumptions that would
not be acceptable to—or respectful of—the people it concerns. Responsible (or
ethical) generalizations are usually made with an awareness of a specific
context for what they claim; they often
provide qualifiers to make sure everyone knows the claims are only
suggestive and they avoid ‘essentializing’
(read: stereotyping) people or objects being generalized about (that is to say:
they avoid being predictive of the
future and restrain themselves to being merely descriptive of a particular context).
For
example, lets imagine that you notice that women don’t speak up in class as
much as men. How do you phrase your conclusion? Here are two options:
Induction # 1: Men tend to speak more than women in class
Induction # 2: Men are better public speakers than women.
Induction #2: Men are better at public speaking than women in
situations which call for the speakers to assert a claim in the context of
disputation.
All three generalizations are valid but are all three equally
(ethically) sound? Only # 3 facilitates, rather than shuts down, further
inquiry into the matter. You could imagine that # 3 might lead a person to
speculate how women argue differently than men and to think about how the context
of class discussion doesn’t provide women with the time-frame and cues for
engaging argumentatively in the way they have learned.
Example
2
Let’s imagine that, in your experience, men and women “relate” to
one another differently. Below are two generalizations that follow from those
“facts.”
Induction # 1: Men don't like to relate (they're from “Mars”).
Women like to relate (they’re from “Venus”)
Induction # 2: Men tend to solve all their problems without
involving others in their process while women are trained in society to talk
out their problems and solutions.
The second phrasing is more ethically responsible because the
second articulation opens the door to further inquiry (it doesn’t
ESSENTIALIZE). Given the second generalization, it would seem logical to ask
next: whose problem-solving technique is better? And how do we judge better and
worse? Thus, further inquiry. The first articulation shuts inquiry down.
Inductive arguments can also be vitiated by language that smuggles
in unfair or unfounded judgments. For example, let’s say someone argues that
illegal aliens (or fat people or thin people or Southerners or…pick your
category) complain a lot about being stereotyped. This may seem like a
straight-ahead generalization based upon “facts” (examples known to the writer)
but the main terms—“illegal aliens” (or “fat people”, etc) and “complain”—are
LOADED TERMS; that is, they are words that are loaded down with presuppositions
about the world. You could analyze these terms for how they influence beliefs
in any number of ways:
- what
feelings or images do they evoke? (illegal recalls bad people, people who
shun rules and take what they want; complain evokes images of ingratitude,
of spoiled brats)
- what
binaries are they part of? (illegal/legal; home/alien; love of
country/harping criticism and ingratitude)
- how are
they figurative (metaphorical)? That is, what’s the equation? (certain
immigrants are as strange and potentially dangerous as “aliens”)
In each of the above instances, you can interrogate the terms by asking
simply: is there a factual basis for the association, binary, figuration? Is it
true (an observable phenomenon) that in responding the world you either praise
it or “complain”? If there isn’t some empirical basis for your distinction,
then these terms are being used a part of “pathetic” appeal to the reader’s
emotions and (implicit) values. This is rhetoric, perhaps, at its
worst—rhetoric as trickery.
B. Deduction
When people make deductive arguments, like:
Teachers shouldn’t use new pedagogies because they make students uncomfortable.
The
it’s pretty obvious that they are deductive because of the stated
(or implied) because term. Whenever there’s an implied or stated “because,”
it’s a deductive argument.
Granted, some arguments seem to be deductive because of the
“because” but they are not really deductive:
I
love you. Because I do.
The argument here is essentially a “tautology”: I love you because
I love you. The mind that produced this “argument” did not travel far in
reasoning; this is a mind “in love.”
Deductive arguments that condense the claim to one short
declarative statement and the support to something equally short and
declarative (and connect the two phrases with a “because”) are called “enthymemes,”
which, as previously noted, are
PROBLEM-O: Not
all deductive arguments can be readily identified (or reconstructed) as
enthymemes. Take the following examples:
People
should have less fat in their diet if they want to be healthy.
Good
films address contemporary social problems; they don’t simply pander to
audience’s fantasies of wealth and romance and omnipotence.
The first statement consists of an argument that is based on two
unstated premises, but it is stated as if it’s a simple fact. The first phrase implies that health is a matter of diet
and that fat is too large a component in most people’s diets. I could
reconstruct it as the following syllogism:
Health is a matter of a
healthy diet (All H are D)
All healthy diets are diets
with little fat (All D are L)
Health is a matter of diets
with little fat (All H are L)
Reconstructed as a syllogism, do you find the conclusion sound? It’s certainly valid, but are all the premises equally
plausible? Health is probably more than a matter of diet.
The second statement above (about films) implies that films cannot
BOTH address problems and be entertaining to people in the way films usually
are (by offering a heroic character to identify with and by having that
character’s life be changed for the better). This assumption—that films are either
serious or frivolous—is debatable, perhaps even fallacious (see: the fallacy of
the “false dilemma”).
Responding to the deductive reasoning in a piece of writing means
essentially ferreting out its implicit
assumptions—its unstated premises—and then evaluating whether or not they
are compelling.
To do this, it is first necessary to summarize the argument as an
enthymeme. Many times, though, what the acts of persuasion you encounter in
everyday life can be understood (naively, perhaps…but conveniently) as mere reports
or innocent explanations of phenomena so it can often be a challenge just to locate the arguable claim. Take for
instance, the following statement:
Our
business sells products (furniture) but we also see the service of interior
design as something else we sell. Our store includes some mock kitchens, etc.
but we need a new computer, something with imaging/interactive program
capability, because it will make it easier for us to show customers who come
into the store see what the products will look like when they’re set up. More
understanding of how we earn our money will help customers get over their fear
of buying a service because they will understand that not just anyone can put
together a kitchen.
Much of this passage is taken up in reporting facts about the
store and explaining how a fancy computer could demonstrate the art of interior
design and justify the purchase of a consulting fee. To locate an argument, you’ll have to find a claim that is in
doubt—a claim upon which something important turns. In the passage, it’s
probably that a fast computer can
improve our business. Once you’ve got hold of what you think is the main
claim, then you simply sift back through the other statements looking for
anything that justifies that claim or answers the question WHY? Well,
because…..
because… computers allow
people to see what before this
technology they could only imagine.
(This argument rests on the assumption that the word-spun fantasy
sells the product less well than the visual (simulated) reality, which may or
may not be empirically true.)
One way to discover the arguable claim in an article is to do what
philosopher Larry Wright calls the Headline
Experiment. It goes as follows: you read the article once, narrowing down
the two or three most important paragraphs (or sentences or chapters). Then,
you pretend that you are newspaper editor and come up with a title for the text
you’re reading (note: ignore its actual title) by
1. identifying the crucial subject and
2. articulating in a very condensed fashion what is said about it or what
happens to it.
If the text is simply a report, then it will probably read like
this: Titanic Sinks. If the text is,
or can be read as an argument, then it will read with a little twinge of implied
controversy: Captain’s Negligence Sinks
Ship
Once you’ve got one or two possible candidates for a headline (for
what is essentially the MAIN CLAIM), go back to the text and see if there are
any reasons or evidence given to support this claim. If you only find one piece of support, then it may be a
good idea to experiment with other possible headlines because the very notion of
a MAIN argument is that the majority of an article is given over to
establishing that claim. The main
claim is the entrée; everything else is a side dish. Students who can only find
one paragraph of support for what they feel is the main claim may have only
grasped a side order of fries when they were reaching for the Big Mac.
Deductive
argument paraphrase: a description—in your own words—of
a text’s main logical structure.
Typically, in a paraphrase, the main claim (or point) is identified first,
followed by the support, both given and implied. This order is NOT always the
way the writer lays out the argument. S/he might begin with the givens (facts
or premises) and then work up to the main point, or the main point may not ever be explicitly stated.
Deductive
Argument Analysis: posing and answering questions (perhaps in
writing) about the relative strengths and weaknesses of an argument.
[Note: To analyze the deductive reasoning in a piece
writing, sometimes it’s valuable to first isolate the non-logical appeals: pathos (how the writer appeals to the
reader’s emotions and values) and ethos
(how the writer’s credibility is established). Analysts typically identify pathos and ethos just so they can avoid it when analyzing logos: the argument.]
Once you’ve got a paraphrase of the main argument, then you
speculate about he assumptions the argument rests on. Here is a method for doing
that:
Draw a visual schema of the main argument. Visualization can help
you extrapolate the assumptions that allow (“warrant”) the writer to MOVE from
her/his reason to the claim.
For example, take the case of the Cheeto Bag. It sports the
following copy: MADE WITH REAL CHEESE! You might say that this bag has an
implied deductive argument:
EAT CHEETOS because they’re made with real cheese.
The
nice thing about doing argument analysis on advertisements is that the arguments
are already really condensed. In most
texts, you might have to work at your
paraphrase to boil it down sufficiently to make it manageable.
When analyzing and evaluating a deductive argument, your focus is
either on the quality and relevance of the evidence offered to support the
stated reason OR on how compelling the assumptions are. Assumptions are always
generalizations so they’re hardly ever absolutely true or false. It’s up to the
analyst to decide whether there are “counter-examples” (scenarios, situations,
examples) that would seriously call the generalization into question.
As for “evidence,” there are several types to consider:
examples, authoritative testimony, and “scientific” studies. Examples are usually offered as some
instance of a general rule; see the discussion above for ways of raising
questions about inductions. Authoritative
testimony is basically someone’s opinion, but this ‘someone’ is someone who
is expert in some matter. You have to always ask two questions when it comes to
“experts:” how valid are their credentials and how much do their credentials
matter when it comes to making a judgment about the thing being argued about.
For example, if I said that a certain movie was bad because it endorsed awful
values and the evidence I gave for this reason was that someone who has a great
deal of credibility for me, Ralph Nader, said so, you might wonder two things:
what are Ralph’s credentials as an expert in social commentary? Second, do his
credentials prepare him to make good aesthetic judgments?
Finally, there are “studies.”
While many times studies can provide very rigorous, scientific and politically
neutral observations and recommendations about social phenomena, they can also
be misleading, false, or inconclusive. Studies done at big state universities
tend to be less slanted than studies conducted by “think tanks.”
Studies can also be used by writers in misleading ways. For
instance, sometimes the thing being studied is not really about the thing we’re
talking about. For example, I could argue that SAT scores are valid
measurements of intelligence because people who do well on them usually do well
in college. This may be a misleading study because it only tells us about those
kids who did well on the test. What about how the kids who did poorly on the
SAT—how did they do in college? Being a good standardized test taker may be a
necessary but not sufficient cause of college success, or it might be totally
accidental.
Secondly, some studies are inconclusive. For instance, say we’re
talking about spanking kids to correct ‘bad’ behavior and I argue parents
shouldn’t. To support my claim, I quote a study done by a big university which
found that kids who grew up in homes in which corporal punishment was NOT used
to manage behavior-issues were more likely to socialize well with others. You
could find my use of this study unconvincing on the issue of should parents
spank because the study really doesn’t show whether the friendliness of kids
depends upon whether they were spanked or some other factor the study
neglected.
How
to Discover A Warrant (It's not Easy!)
Maybe the best way to
find a warrant in an argument is simply to think a lot about what assumptions
are. Assumptions are inferences made
without awareness; they are what writer or audience or both take for granted.
However, Toulmin analysis cannot help a student unpack all the assumptions in a
piece of rhetoric. For example, Toulmin cannot help interrogate a writer’s
language/terms. The assumptions Toulmin analysis deals with are called warrants
because they are special kinds of assumptions: they are the general principles
(values, beliefs) that authorize the cognitive 'leap' from the Reason to Claim.
Thus, I often tell students that when you’re trying to write out
an assumption, it is good to remind yourself of what you are looking for: a
basic rule. You can begin with words like All,
Any, None, Never, Always—words that sometimes begin rules.
We
need to send ground troops into
The support given here for the main claim (send troops) is an
analogy between
That’s a rad car! Steel rims! (the assumption is that what makes a
great car is fancy rims)
Another
thing about assumptions that could increase students'
sensitivity to them is the fact that what we’re looking for is a crucial or key
belief or value—one on which some important question turns. A “crucial” or key
assumption tests the universality of an argument by identifying some belief
that might be convincing for some people and unconvincing for others.
Sometimes when you’re trying to tease our assumptions, what you
come up with as an assumption is really just another reason, or a restatement
of the first reason given.
For example, in the argument I
can’t lend you money b/c I’ve got bills to pay, some people might suggest
that the assumption here is: I’ve got other responsibilities. That’s an
implication and could be added to the argument as an additional reason why not
money will be forked over. It’s not an assumption.
The key assumptions in this argument are: (1) paying bills will cause me to be broke AND (2) paying bills is more important to me than helping
you out.
To
any assumption, you can ask: So What? Or Why? This will help you better understand the
assumption so you can start to determine whether it holds up—or whether the
relevant audience will grant it. (But remember the earlier discussion of
ethics: some assumptions, like some inductive generalizations, while they might
be granted by an audience, are nevertheless irresponsible. There is, in other
words, an ethical dimension to argument analysis. It is not
simply—objectively—a matter of testing rigor).
So, let’s follow through on one of these assumptions. In the
example above, you could ask of the first assumption: so what? The arguer
obviously assumes that being broke is bad. He may also believe that being stingy
with one’s brother is bad, but he may rank being broke above being stingy in
the things in life he wishes to avoid. The point here is that sometimes to
evaluate one assumption you must take into account the other assumptions and
perhaps rank them in terms of importance.
Take another example: The
Some of my students have said that the assumption here is: the Soviet entrance into the Pacific war
would end WWII by itself. Actually, this is just the reason restated.
A key assumption here is: the
only reason to use the Atomic bomb is to end the war.
Some historians now argue that the bomb was useful to the
Even if you have, at this point, a grasp of the general definition
of a warrant and its basic types (empirical, evaluative, definitional), you may
still have problems “finding” (conjuring) them because it is soooooooooo
abstract, speculative….So….
Recapping
the First Technique for Finding Assumptions
The first procedure I have for finding assumptions is the general rule or principle approach. The
key to this method is being able to summarize an argument in a very condensed
way, with very few terms. Since the controversial or arguably aspect of many
issues is evaluative or purposive, in addition to doing the Headline Experiment
you might simply prompt yourself with the question: are there any evaluation or
proposal arguments being made here?
The difficulty, of course, is that few writers offer brief,
condensed arguments, and not all contentious issues in a piece of writing fall
into the categories of evaluative or proposal arguments (though a GREAT many
do). Writers often sometimes repeat themselves; they often pack in a couple
arguments into one sentence.
Take this (very difficult) example: Sexual harassment laws actually end up hurting women because employers
don’t want to hire them because they’re afraid of being sued.
There are two “because” links here! So, what do you do? One thing
you can do here is simply break the one argument into two arguments:
1. Sex Harassment Laws are bad for women b/c employers won’t hire
women
Assumption: women want to be hired
2. Employers won’t want to hire women b/c employers will be afraid
of being sued by women
Assumption 1: The liability of hiring women will outweigh the
value of women in the food service industry.
Assumption 2: Employers don’t have other options …like complying
with the new laws…to alleviate their fear of being sued.
The first argument reveals a dubious reason and the second
argument really reveals dubious assumptions.
Another
way of Finding Assumptions (though, a bit more complicated)
When it’s not possible to find an assumption one way, try another.
The second method is called, after Larry Wright’s book on reasoning, the implicit-question approach. If you can
think of your headline in your summary of an argument as the “answer,” the “implicit question” is the question
that prompted the answer. Although Wright isn’t interested in assumptions,
for me the implicit question exercise can help us generate possible assumptions
by helping us think up rival answers/claims to the one the writer has given.
“Rival answers/claims” must answer the implicit question, but in a way that is different from the reason already given by the
writer. When we look at the two claims side by side, we will gain a
perspective on the reasoning process the writer used and what s/he might have
been assuming or taking for granted.
For example, take the following letter to the Editor of a local
newspaper.
It
is a crying shame that so many performances at our elegant new
The Headline I came up
with is this: Un-purchased Tickets Should Go to Good Students ( a proposal
argument)
The implicit question
is: What should we do with un-purchased tickets?
Possible rival answers:
1. Sell them at discounted prices to people who should up at the door. 2. Give
them to people who serve on juries. 3. Burn them.
These rival answers/claims suggest to me that in the argument: We
should give unpurchased tickets to students because they go wasted otherwise, a
key assumption is that students are more deserving or will profit more
from free tickets than other possible recipients: bargain hunters, jury
members, the homeless.
Another implicit question
for this argument might be: What should we do about half-full attendance at the
Notice how that radically changes our focus.
Possible rival conclusions:
1. Hire a new advertising firm to promote productions. 2. Advise Artistic
Director of Arts Center to find more relevant plays. 3.
These rival conclusions suggest to me that in the argument: We
should give unpurchased tickets to students because they go wasted otherwise, a
key assumption is that the cause of
the unpurchased seats, or a lack of popularity of the
Another example.
Our
teacher Mr. Jones is a bad teacher because he doesn’t present the course
material in a way that’s interesting.
Headline:
Jones Bad Teacher
Implicit
question: What kind of teacher is Jones?
Possible
rival answers: He’s a good teacher b/c he’s always prepared.
He’s a good teacher b/c he cares about the students.
Key
Assumption: Good teaching has more to do with engaging students than with
being knowledgeable, prepared, or compassionate.
Another example:
Blue
whales are the largest mammals ever to exist on earth. They are bigger than
even the Tyrannosaurus rex. They can get as big as 90 feet long and weigh over
15 tons. Their communication is so complex scientists still haven’t figured it
out yet. They have 36 distinct clicks and many variations of songs.
The complete summary here is:
Headline:
Blue whales are amazing animals.
Because they’re the largest ever (reason)
Because they have a complex language (reason #2)
Evidence:
90 feet long, 15 tons; 36 clicks (that’s 32 more than me!)
Using the implicit question approach, I come up with this as my implicit question: What makes people
interested in Whales?
Rival
answers: 1. Because they’ve been around a long time. 2. Because their
blubber can be used as candle oil.
Key
Assumption: what makes an animal amazing/wonderful/interesting is its size
and intelligence (rather than ancestry or commodity usefulness). Does this mean
that amoebae are not amazing? Well, yes, this seems to be the writer’s
assumption. It seems that s/he is impressed by size and intelligence, qualities
that the whale shares with humans. We are bigger than a lot of animals on the
food chain. We also have a complex language. Is it any wonder the writer
wonders at whales?
In any case, the contrast provided by the rival answers/claims
allows us to evaluate how good the argument is by allowing us to speculate
about key assumptions.
One last example that Sherlock Holmes would like.
A
driver spun his car out of control and ended up stuck in a ditch. Luckily he
was OK, though still unconscious when the police made out their preliminary
report. The responding officers speculated that the accident could have
happened because the driver feel asleep at the wheel because he made no attempt to brake or steer
back onto the road before spinning out of control. There were no skid marks on
the road.
Claim:
Driver lost control by falling asleep
Reason: there
were no skid marks, which would indicate an attempt to steer back onto the
pavement if a fully-conscious driver lost control of the car.
The implicit question
here is: what caused the accident?
Rival answers/claims: 1. The driver’s knowledge that once you lose
control of your car you shouldn’t try to brake hard or swerve. 2. An attempted
suicide. 3. The steering and brakes failed simultaneously---foul play?.
4. DWI?
These rival conclusions help us figure out with the police’s
assumption: if the driver didn’t brake or steer, he must have been asleep. The
rival conclusions also give us three reasons to doubt the policeman’s assumption and that’s what’s good about the
implicit question approach—it helps you interrogate key assumptions.
A
Tricky One
Here’s an argument where the really crucial assumptions are not
part of the deductive argument but rather the inductive one:
We should advertise our new line of shoes in the
The deductive argument is: We should buy print advertising because
print advertising will boost our sales.
Some assumptions: we have an advertising budget; we need to boost
sales—that is, we need to spend money on pushing product rather than R&D or
raises for salespeople or upkeep on our site.
The key assumption the whole piece would seem to be hidden in the
inductive argument:
The inductive argument is:
(Conclusion) Advertising in print sources boosts sales of retail
businesses
(Examples): 6 businesses.
Assumptions: those businesses are like ours—their product lines are
similar to ours.
Conclusion
Toulmin Analysis is difficult because finding assumptions is
difficult. However, it’s useful (if you can get the hang of it) because it
allows you to draw on your own
experiences when evaluating the logic in a piece of rhetoric and 2. it
helps suggest possible research
directions if you’re doing research on a topic from which the argument
somehow stems. In the Death Penalty example, we may not feel up to judging the
quality of the evidence presented, but we can always, always respond to the assumption given our own experiences
with rules and “deterrence.” Assumptions convey the critical reader’s
understanding of what a writer takes for granted. What the writer takes for
granted is not necessarily compelling (or ethical) for everyone affected by the
issue.
This is a profound point: ferreting out assumptions can help us
understand the contingency and ethicality of arguments, including the
position(s) that we hold.
If you were to use Toulmin to examine the argument that the Death Penalty is a good idea because it can
be shown to deter homicide, you might not linger long on the evidence (who
knows whether the statistics and studies are trustworthy?). You might focus,
intead, on the assumption that Good Laws are Laws that deter crime. Certainly,
the illegalization of cocaine is an attempt to be a good law in this sense. The
more addicts, the more crime: this is almost a sociological maxim. But there
are many laws (traffic laws, Bill of Rights) that do not exist to deter crime.
In fact, good laws may be laws that protect civil liberties and promote public
safety. Some laws, in fact, exist only to honor the past (national holidays,
for instance).
So, this Death Penalty example is a case where, if a person could
find an assumption, it could lead them to reflect that what makes a good
law for legislators is not necessarily what makes a good law for people—thus,
the contingency of arguments. Your own
feelings about and experiences of laws are relevant to your evaluation of the
argument. Moreover, I will note here that in evaluating an argument we are not
simply embroiled in some cerebral exercise; we are also per force positioning
ourselves in relation to others—that is, positioning ourselves ethically. This is sometimes a difficult
point to register: all arguments are
contingent and analysis is not only interpretive
and analytic but also ethical.
Arguments stand or fall depending on the facts, but also depending
on logic and on your experience in the world, and how your interests and values
align with the arguers, and finally what kind of ethical creature you are, or
hope to be.
It’s a bit more complicated (and interesting) than a matter of
“opinion” or the presence or absence of “facts” as some people initially
believe when they think of argumentation as a social activity.
Questions:
Answer True of False
1. A deductive argument is a conclusion that is missing one or
more its premises.
2. An assumption is an unstated premise. Typically, assumptions are found in deductive reasoning, where
they are called warrants, but there are assumptions are present as well in
inductive arguments.
3 Toulmin analysis can help you find which claims are arguable.
4 Toulmin analysis can help you discover new avenues of inquiry in
a debate.
5 Inductive generalizations are typically free of hidden
assumptions.
6 Research involves summary and analysis of arguments as well as
collecting relevant data (facts).