Let’s face it: we don’t always make decisions perfectly.
Maybe a salesperson convinced us to get a cell phone warranty even though we didn’t
mean to buy one.
I know I probably won’t drop it, but like what if?
Or we’ve resolved to say ‘no’ when Mandy asks us to be treasurer of the PTA at our
kid’s school this year,
but here we are, tallying up the profits at the bake sale.
Or maybe we aren’t huge fans of writing, but we find a series of videos about writing
so good that we start to change our minds.
Salespeople and pushy moms and YouTube channels can be so convincing sometimes,
but other times it’s just annoying when someone tries to tell us to do something.
In evaluating the arguments of others, we’ll also get better at writing arguments ourselves.
That’s what we’ll discuss today in Study Hall: Composition, presented by
Arizona State University and Crash Course.
I’m Yumna Samie. Let’s get started in our new space for the rest of the series.
We’re going back to the Toulmin model of arguments we discussed in our last video.
Not only is it a useful model for evaluating arguments, it’s also, you know, the one
we already know.
To review, a Toulminian argument consists of three parts.
First, a claim, or the position that the argument is trying to prove or establish.
Second, the grounds, or the reasons, facts, or evidence that supports the claim.
And third, the warrant, which is an essential connection between the grounds and the claim,
usually left unstated.
We can recognize a bad argument if we see holes in any of those three elements:
the claim might be too vague to be understood,
or there are barely any grounds at all,
or the claim and grounds aren’t connected by a warrant that makes sense.
Reasoning, or the logic-driven thinking that allows us to create and evaluate potential
knowledge, guides our arguments.
Super-strict reasoning happens in a deductive argument, where the grounds and warrants guarantee
the claim.
You mostly see these in math or logic contexts:
think of those geometry proofs you might have done in high school.
We’re not focused on these today.
A lot of the writing we do deals with a world with many more gray areas than a graph or proof.
Instead, we’ll focus on inductive arguments, which use grounds and warrants to support
a claim but not to guarantee it.
Most of the real-world questions we tackle in writing are nuanced, complex, and always
open to new perspectives.
So inductive arguments are used in many writing projects.
For example, when a teacher tells their class to write about a potential improvement to
their city’s parks system,
each student will come up with a different claim supported by different grounds.
These are inductive arguments, since they aim for strong grounds but can’t definitively
say which improvement is best.
Because few inductive arguments are true without exceptions 100% of the time, we usually avoid
universal and categorical language.
If you remember, this language includes things like all, none, always, or never.
It’s hard to come up with situations where these kinds of blanket statements are true
enough to hold up.
“A new playground is a good use of parks department funding” is easier to prove than
“A new playground is the only way to improve the city’s parks.”
One of the fastest ways to identify an iffy argument is to look for categorical language
and identify a counterexample,
a time in life when that statement isn’t true.
For the claim “a new playground is the only way to improve...”
I might think of a counterexample where filling in a dangerous, deep pit in the middle of
the town baseball field is a bigger priority than a new playground.
Because of the categorical phrase “the only way to improve,” even one example of another
option pokes a hole in that argument.
While it's pretty easy to find categorical language in a claim, we should also keep an
eye out for it in the grounds of an argument.
If that student uses the statement “all people want more playgrounds” to support
their pro-playground agenda, we can question or reject it.
A counterexample is easy to find: surely, somebody in town is already satisfied with
the playgrounds they have.
For the most part, using categorical language makes your argument less nuanced than reality
and harder to support.
Grounds and claims aren’t the only places where we can find flaws in arguments, though.
Warrants can also be the issue:
Saying “there are 356 species of turtles, therefore it’s time for a turtle president”
isn’t enough.
If something seems off between the evidence and the claim, it’s worth articulating,
or stating outright, what the warrants are.
If there’s a counterexample that makes the warrant untrue, the argument needs some revision.
Something has to improve to make the warrant stronger, whether it’s changing the claim
or adding new grounds.
To see how each part of an argument can be evaluated for flaws or holes and made stronger,
let’s look at a couple Writers in Action.
Morris knows he can get overly enthusiastic when debating his friends on the internet.
His excitement leads to some categorical claims, flawed grounds, and even missing warrants.
Luisa, his friend, is a smidge calmer than Morris, so she often helps refine his arguments
in their chat rooms online.
In the Beverages subreddit, Morris claims, “No one should drink coffee at night!
It’s obvious!”
He adds a GIF of a person pouring coffee on the ground for effect.01
Luisa comments, “why do you say that?” to draw out the grounds for his claim.
After all, he’s using ‘no one,’ which is categorical language and means it’s a
pretty broad argument.
Morris thinks about it and says, “well, coffee keeps people alert and awake.”
Morris is, after all, an avid sleeper, explaining his anti-coffee agenda.
Luisa points out that her friend Jana can drink coffee and pass out immediately
as a counterexample.
Morris revises his grounds, saying, “Coffee keeps a lot of people awake and alert.”
Luisa notices a potential flaw in Morris’ warrant.
“Play this out for me: why is that a problem?” she writes.
Morris types, “I guess I’m saying that since coffee keeps a lot of people awake and
alert, that will prevent them from doing what they are supposed to do at night,
which is sleep.”
“That makes a pretty big assumption that everyone sleeps at night,” says Luisa.
“Oh yeah,” Morris acknowledges.
“I guess people who work at night might drink coffee then.”
“But then they should never drink it in the morning!
Honestly, coffee is gross.”
Luisa realizes Morris still has a lot to learn.
It’d be great if every set of Internet arguers were as self-aware and pleasant as Morris
and Luisa.
Morris and Luisa are Writers in Action!
Even calm discussions don’t always sound like Morris and Luisa’s did.
There are other ways to convince people in argument, and not everyone chooses their techniques
in good faith.
Informal fallacies occur when arguments either intentionally or unintentionally mislead audiences
and push them to accept a conclusion without properly evaluating it.
If an argument contains an informal fallacy, it’s usually not a good argument, even if
the argument feels convincing on the surface.
For one thing, people don’t like to be tricked, and informal fallacies use incorrect assumptions
that often trick us.
We can catch informal fallacies by learning to recognize the most common ones.
There are many fallacies out there, but here are three to keep in mind:
The ad hominem fallacy encourages audiences to stop evaluating the strength of an argument
and instead evaluate the trustworthiness of the person arguing it.
Let’s say Libby suggests that cellphones should be allowed in classrooms,
because they’re useful to look up facts and data and add context to the lesson.
If Ali argues that Libby is addicted to social media on her phone, and so shouldn’t be
giving advice,
he’s trying to invalidate her argument because of who she is rather than because of the argument itself.
That’s the ad hominem fallacy at work.
Then there’s the false dichotomy fallacy.
This is when someone offers only two options in an attempt to control what someone else
can choose, especially by adding one really bad option.
Picture a computer engineer who gets frustrated with her child and says,
“You can either have no job prospects ever, or you can start learning to code.”
She’s focusing on one, awful alternative to make coding seem like the only option.
Finally, there’s the unqualified authority fallacy.
This is when someone’s authority in one area is used to give them unearned trust in
another area.
Let’s say Hannah is a famous astrophysicist with a doctorate.
She makes some extra cash by calling herself “Dr. Hannah” on commercials selling wheatgrass
and spinach capsules that claim to give you supersonic hearing.
She’s using unqualified authority because though she is technically a doctor, her authority
is focused on physics and outer space.
In reality, a medical doctor or nutritionist would have the appropriate authority to promise
the supplement’s ability to help you eavesdrop through walls.
While remembering these named fallacies can give us a shortcut to evaluating arguments,
we can still use the Toulmin model on them when we forget or on other fallacies we don’t
recognize yet.
We can also use the Toulmin model to work through arguments that have complex claims,
lots of grounds, and multi-faceted warrants with a technique called diagramming arguments.
This process helps us narrow our focus and avoid getting distracted by shiny or loud
parts of the argument instead of its core components.
If you encounter an argument when reading that you want to give some extra thought to,
try writing out each of its parts with labels: claim, grounds, warrant.
If the warrant isn’t stated explicitly, you might write what you think it is in the
margins.
Once you’ve done this, note any categorical or universal language that makes the claim
or grounds a little too broad or certain.
Finally, think of any stories or facts that contradict some part of the argument, and
write them down as counterarguments.
After you’ve completed these steps, you can see whether there are holes in different
parts of the argument and decide whether to accept or reject it.
Finding holes in each part of an argument is even more helpful when you diagram an argument
of your own.
Making arguments visual in this way helps you notice any areas where revision could
be helpful.
You can make changes to take counterexamples into account, and you can cut out or soften
categorical language to more accurately reflect reality.
With all this knowledge, we might feel overwhelmed by how often claims are made during political
debates, in advertisements,
or even by our favorite Twitter celebs without sufficient grounds and warrants.
Some arguments are intimidating or deliberately tricky, making us feel under-equipped, but
if we take our time,
we can use critical thinking to figure out the quality of those arguments.
Plus, practicing the Toulmin model draws attention to holes in our own arguments.
So we’re more likely to support our claims well and express ideas in complex ways,
without taking everything to the universal level.
So when you’re facing a fast-talking club president or insistent salesperson,
take a deep breath.
Then, identify a core counterexample - “I don’t need another vacuum cleaner” or
“I don’t have time to organize the school dance” or anything else -
and you too can push back against faulty arguments.
Join us next time to learn about what rhetoric is, what it has to do with persuading people,
and how we use it in our writing.
Thanks for watching Study Hall: Composition, which is produced by Arizona State University
and the Crash Course team at Complexly.
If you liked this video and want to keep learning with us here in Study Hall, be sure to subscribe.
You can learn more about ASU and the videos produced by Crash Course
in the links in the description.
See you next time!