Let me talk first about something more general than what's in the
text. I want to talk about the whole idea of arguing…
Arguing for a conclusion. We do this thing with words where we present not only
our view, our conclusion, our passionate belief or conviction or decision, but also
give people reasons for believing, reasons for accepting it.
I'm giving somebody reasons for accepting it as true.
This is one of these things that we do with language: we don't just assert
facts or points of view, but we argue for them. We say: “These reasons present…” We can call this…
We recognize this as one of the methods of justification from Chapter Two.
We can justify things by saying “take my word for it, trust my testimony or my authority,” I can
appeal to the definition, I can do a couple of other things, but the one that
we ended with last class was justification by reasoning, which means giving arguments.
The one hazard I want to point out which I don't think is mentioned too
much by Morrow in the book but which does come up in my experience is…
the problem of, rather than giving an argument,
some people will make the mistake of just restating the conclusion
in slightly different words. That is, they will reassert the thing that they're trying to prove,
instead of proving it. And this is a bit like… well it's going around in circles,
it's presenting a circular argument because it doesn't give me any new reasons. The problem here…
If all your argument does is to restate your conclusion then all you're doing is going around
in a circle, you're saying you should accept x as true because x is really *really* true.
I’m just stating it more emphatically. And it could be that what you really have in the back of
your mind is an appeal to authority or testimony or something, or simply because I passionately
believe this you should accept it. But you haven't given reasons or facts or any new information that
might bring the person to accept the claim as true. Whatever else you're doing there,
it's not arguing. And that's one of those, sometimes it's a bad habit, sometimes it's just
something we inadvertently stumble into. That is, we say some words that sound like
they are proving the conclusion, but they're not actually exerting any force against the
conclusion. They're not doing the argumentative job of bringing the audience to accept it.
So we'll talk about this new info that the premises of an argument should present…
If we're thinking just from scratch about the kind of things that our premises
should be in an argument: they should be things, they should be facts, they should be
assertions, that the audience
already believes, or could be brought to believe, they should be more plausible than the conclusion.
That's the kind of facts that we are
trying to present. Something that they already believe. So if I think,
in terms of a movie, “You should go see this movie,” [conclusion] well “This is an action
movie, and you like action movies.” [premises] What am I doing? I’m pointing to facts about
you that you already believe (you like action movies), or that I can bring you to believe more
easily than my conclusion (this is an action movie--how do you tell? look at the trailer,
look at the descriptions of it), that's easier to
see than the conclusion that you should go see this movie, you should pay eight dollars…
This is important. It seems maybe a little bit obvious. One, the premises should bring new info
to the table and not just restate the conclusion. That's a sort of simple formal requirement:
if all you're doing is going around in circles, saying the conclusion in additional words,
you recognize that this is not actually closing the gap at all and then [two,]
that the evidence we give should be something that that bridges the gap between what they believe…
It's a visual metaphor here, like a spark plug gap.
What I want to do, if what they believe is over here and my conclusion is over here: I want to
narrow the gap between them. I want to bring these two things closer together, I want to add on to
what they believe until I can get the spark to jump across that gap, until they can agree:
“Yeah, okay, I agree with that conclusion.” So what am I doing? I’m adding to their beliefs,
I’m adding premises that I believe that they can accept, that they would find plausible,
that they would find reliable. Premises also that are relevant to the conclusion because
they take me in the direction of getting them closer and closer to accepting it.
And then at some point I think you just have a moment of insight where they say “oh yeah,
okay, yeah, I can accept that.” I may have to get it quite quite close if they're very
stubborn or if the conclusion is something that's very difficult for them to accept,
very controversial, or that they're very resistant to. But I think every good, every argument has
really got this kind of structure. I’m sort of adding on to the body of my audience's beliefs
until they get close enough or even touch the conclusion, then they can incorporate that
into their body of beliefs. So this is like building a bridge, to use another metaphor…
The evidence I give should bridge the gap between what my audience already believes
and the conclusion that I would like them to believe.
Now, there are other requirements: we can talk about reliability, we can talk about the fact
that the premises should be true, should be plausible. I shouldn't lie to people,
that seems like that's… even if it's successful in a practical sense, that's going to be bad
intellectual practice, not fair play, certainly not good for a relationship.
And I need the logical connection between these things in the conclusion
to be there, so I’m moving in the right direction. Are there any questions about this? I point this
out even though it's not in the text because this is this is the number one thing that I’ve
found people will stumble into. They'll think, “well I’ve said some words,
and they're about the conclusion, and somebody who accepts them should accept the conclusion,”
and I would point out, “wait, all you've just done is
tell me the conclusion again in different language, what I need is new information.”
And that means getting creative, it means maybe committing yourself to an additional set of facts
that brings these things together.
So maybe this… now that I’ve drawn this diagram I kind of like it, the idea of sort of building
up incrementally bit by bit, it helps to think… and sometimes, sometimes you have
to do more work than others. Yes? Okay, I've got one. I've got one.
Suppose I argue for some legal change, say the death penalty should be abolished.
Now, there are certain facts about the death penalty, and about things that maybe should or
shouldn't be abolished, that I can cite: the death penalty is *this way* and therefore we
should abolish it, or things *like this* should be abolished and the death penalty is one of them.
What if I just plug the extension cord into itself, so to speak? And say, "Well
the death penalty should be abolished because there's just no place for the death penalty in
in our society today." It sounds like I almost said something interesting
but when I think about it, actually abolishing it and saying "there's no place for it,"
sounds like if they're not exactly the same, they're pretty close together. It sounds like
I'm maybe close to spinning my wheels. Nobody who accepts the first claim would fail to accept the
second, but that's because they're identical or almost identical. What I really want is evidence,
what I really want is (back to this) we want new information, information that is
not already contained in what you told me. Otherwise you're just preaching to the choir.