In chapter five of Giving Reasons, Morrow points out that arguments that have a normative
conclusion require at least one normative premise.
Here I want to give you a couple of examples of arguments for normative conclusions.
I want to point out their descriptive and normative premises and offer this as a model
that you can imitate for upcoming writing assignments.
So let's consider first an argument that appears earlier in Morrow's book, the general argument
of the Declaration of Independence, which goes like this: King George the third has
badly mistreated the American colonies, therefore the colonies should be free and independent
of the king.
Now our conclusion, the American colonies should be independent, is a normative conclusion;
it uses the word “should.”
But the premise that's been given us is a descriptive premise: the American colonies
have been badly mistreated.
What we need here is a hidden premise which is a normative premise, something like: colonies
that have been badly mistreated should be independent of their sovereign.
Once we realize that there is both a descriptive and a normative premise to this argument,
we can evaluate the argument in two different ways.
We can evaluate the accuracy of its descriptive claims: Are the list of charges given in the
declaration in the body of the Declaration accurate representations of reality?
Has the King in fact withheld his assent from necessary laws, has he failed to defend the
frontiers, etc.
Secondly, we can ask about the truth of the normative claim or the philosophical or moral
principle that's being appealed to to back up the normative conclusion.
Is it the case that colonies that have been badly mistreated in these specific ways and
that have a political culture sufficient to make their own laws to govern themselves should
be independent?
So someone who is skeptical about the conclusion might reject the conclusion either by rejecting
the descriptive premises or by rejecting or disagreeing with the normative premise.
So a British a French observer in 1776 might say: I agree with you that colonies that are
mistreated should be independent, but I disagree with your descriptive claims.
I think you're not accurately representing the relationship between the American colonies
and the British Parliament and the Crown.
I think that you're exaggerating the evidence or leaving out some crucial facts.
Or I might say: as an observer I agree with your list of facts, the king has badly mistreated
the colonies.
But I disagree with your normative premise, I think it's not actually true that colonies
who have been mistreated in this way deserve independence.
My standard for deserving independence is somewhat higher and it hasn't been met.
So those are two different ways that one might challenge the conclusion of an argument with
a normative conclusion: either by challenging the descriptive premises or by challenging
the normative premises.
Let's go to a second example.
Here's one that I've made up: Carlos is bad at time management, therefore he should not
go to law school.
As before, we have a normative conclusion, Carlos should not go to law school, but only
a descriptive premise that's been given explicitly, Carlos is bad at time management.
This describes some facts about Carlos, but it doesn't give us the moral principle that
we require in order to draw this normative conclusion.
The normative premise that's hidden should be pretty obvious, you've probably seen it
already, is that people who are bad at time management should not go to law school.
This is a claim about the way things should be, about a relationship between certain skills
in time management and being worthy of or advisable to go to law school.
I could challenge the truth of that, or I could ask somebody give me an argument in
favor of that, and you might give me an argument to back up that normative premise, making
it the conclusion of its own argument by talking about the way in which time management skills
are necessary for success in law school, about people who fail out of law school tending
to have poor time management skills, or take a look at some data about and some testimony
about what kind of time management skills are necessary to succeed and thrive in law school.
You'd also need a normative premise in that argument, something like: if you don't have
the skills necessary to thrive in law school then you should not go to law school.
So there's another example of a normative conclusion which has both descriptive and
normative premises backing it up in the argument.
Here's a third example.
In this case I'm going to start with the conclusion.
Here's the normative conclusion: hate crime laws should be repealed.
If I were to going to try to construct an argument in favor of that conclusion, how
would I do it?
Well I would need both descriptive and normative premises to pull it off.
So my descriptive premises might be something like: hate crime laws do more harm than good
to society in general, and my normative premise would then have to be something like: any
law that does more harm than good to society in general should be repealed.
Now you might ask me to give a further argument proving either one of these two premises.
You might say, well what do you mean by harm to society in general?
What's a good justification for believing that?
Where's the data that would back up that claim?
And that might be the subject of a whole nother argument to try to prove that descriptive premise.
The normative premise then also would be subject to challenge and to further argument and proof.
How could I establish that that principle: that any law that causes more harm than good
should be repealed?
Is a true principle that people should embrace?
Also notice that one might disagree with my conclusion that hate crime laws should be
repealed either by challenging its descriptive evidence, that I just simply don't believe
that you've established that they do more harm than good,
or by challenging the normative claim by saying that they may do more harm than good to society
in general but I think your normative premise is false, that it's not the case that any
law that does more harm than good in general should be repealed.
It may do enough good for a small subset of society that it's still justified and being
kept on the books despite its overall harm to society in general.
So what I've done here is give you a quick look at three different examples of a normative
conclusion backed up by both descriptive and normative premises.
I think you'll find this helpful for some assignments that are coming up in this course.
Thanks for watching today; goodbye.