Introduction
Arguments are the public face of critical thinking. They are the main tools people
use to change each other’s beliefs, and they are the only convenient tools for
changing people’s beliefs rationally. As a result, this course manual will begin by
describing arguments, and showing you how to identify arguments and determine
their structure.
Learning objectives
When you have completed this unit you should be able to:
• describe the theories of the nature of premises, conclusions, and arguments;
and
• identify and interpret simple arguments.
Assigned reading
Jared Diamond, excerpt, Guns, Germs, and Steel
How to proceed
- Read the study notes for unit 1.
- Do the self-test exercises as you come to them. Answers are n the Answers to
practice exercises section. - Do the assigned reading. Read through what Diamond has to say, and:
• identify three arguments;
• for each argument, identify the conclusion, and;
• once you have done that, try to construct an argument of your own, based
on the reading.
In his book, Diamond presents an hypothesis to explain why different groups of
humans developed different technologies over the last 13,000 years, ultimately
leading to the destruction or subjection of many peoples by the few possessing
“guns, germs, and steel.” In the excerpt you are given, however, his arguments
only attempt to eliminate certain other hypotheses commonly put forward to
explain the facts. All you learn about Diamond’s hypothesis is that it claims that
differences in people’s environments, rather than their biological differences, are
responsible for the differences in technological development.
resents an hypothesis to explain why different groups of
humans developed different technologies over the last 13,000 years, ultimately
leading to the destruction or subjection of many peoples by the few possessing
“guns, germs, and steel.” In the excerpt you are given, however, his arguments
only attempt to eliminate certain other hypotheses commonly put forward to
explain the facts. All you learn about Diamond’s hypothesis is that it claims that
differences in people’s environments, rather than their biological differences, are
responsible for the differences in technological development.
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Here is your exercise:
• Try to anticipate Diamond’s hypothesis.
• Write down what you think it might be.
• What environmental differences might explain the differences in
technological development existing ca. AD 1500?
• How would you defend your hypothesis against criticism? That is, how would
you argue for your idea? - Once you have thought about these questions, submit your answers by clicking
on course discussion on the course web site and compose your message.
Fellow students will give feedback, and perhaps ask questions. In addition, your
instructor will respond to comments from students, and may ask for clarification
on student views stated in the discussion.
Study notes
In the introduction to this unit, it was stated that that we will focus on identifying
arguments and determining their structure. But perhaps this is confusing. An
argument is just a shouting match, right? If so, how could you use an argument to
change someone’s beliefs in a rational way? Clearly, this is not what philosophers
have in mind when discussing critical thinking. By “argument” philosophers mean
something more like a discussion than a shouting match. Anytime someone
attempts to convince someone else of something, an argument is taking place.
Imagine that I point out to my friend that, given the heat, an iced coffee might be
more enjoyable than a regular cup of coffee. Even this counts as an argument, in
the sense that interests philosophers. After all, I am trying to convince my friend
that an iced coffee might be better. I am not trying very hard, maybe, and I am not
raising my voice, and I don’t really mind if my friend ignores what I have to say. But
still, I am trying to make a point, and I am mentioning a fact (the heat) that I take to
be relevant support for my point. That is enough to make what I am doing arguing.
In the philosophical sense of “argument”, shouting matches can involve arguments,
but often they do not. Debates tend to contain more arguments than shouting
matches, and academic writing generally contains many arguments. Newspaper
editorials often make arguments, but when they descend to declaring something
“rubbish” without explaining why one should believe it is rubbish, they give up on
making arguments and take up preaching instead.
Basic theoretical claims
It is time to get down to details, and to give theories of the basic things this manual
is all about. We begin with arguments. An argument is a reason or a collection of
reasons offered for believing some thesis, plus the thesis that is supposed to be
supported by the reasons. This is a central idea of this course manual, so it is
worthy of repetition.
An argument is a reason, or collection of reasons, offered for believing some
thesis, plus the thesis one is supposed to reach on the basis of these reasons.
This is not an uncontroversial idea. To tell the truth, almost no positive theory of
anything is uncontroversial in philosophy, as was mentioned back in the
introduction. But controversial as it is, this is also not a crazy theory of argument,
and it will serve our purposes very well.
An argument has two parts, both with standard names. The reasons of an
argument are called “premises”, and the thing they are reasons to believe is
called “the “conclusion.” Thus, an argument is a premise or collection of
premises, plus the conclusion they are meant to justify. Again, this is very
important.
A premise is a reason put forward to believe something.
A conclusion is something reasons have been put forward to believe.
These three things–arguments, premises, and conclusions–are the most basic
things this course will deal with. So study these simple theories closely, and commit
them to memory.
Interpretation: Identifying arguments
Making arguments of your own is easy enough. You begin with something you want
to argue for (your conclusion), and then you come up with something that looks like
evidence in its favour (a premise or two), and there you go–you have a whole
argument in mind. If you want to share your argument with someone else, you just
put your ideas into words. But things get a little more complicated when you listen
to what others have to say, and the first problem that comes up is the problem of
interpretation. Is an argument being made? If so, what are the premises? What is
the conclusion? When you make an argument, you know what you are doing, and
you would not have too much trouble explaining your choice of premises and
conclusion. When you consider the words of others, things get trickier. The process
of determining whether or not an argument is being made by some other person,
and if so what the argument is, can be called argument interpretation.
Argument interpretation begins with identifying what things are arguments. Given
the theory of argument presented earlier, it is clear that nothing is an argument
unless it contains both a premise and a conclusion—an argument just is a set of
premises and the conclusion they are supposed to justify. If someone says, “you’d
have to be completely blind not to believe in God” that is not an argument, although
such a person might be able to give an argument for believing in the existence of
God. If another person answers, “that is not true,” that person is not making an
argument either, although the two people are “getting into an argument” in the nonphilosophical sense. But in the philosophical sense, this is not an argument
because no reasons, no premises, have been advanced by either side to show that
what is being said is right, and nothing that is lacking premises can be an
argument. Similarly, nothing is a premise or a conclusion unless it is part of an
argument. One should never say “Fred’s argument is bad, because he offers no
reason to believe his conclusion.” After all, if no reason is offered to believe
something, then Fred cannot be making an argument. Arguments always have two
parts: the things offered as reasons for believing something, and the something
they are supposed to be reasons to believe—premises and conclusions.
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How can you identify arguments? Not all controversial statements are arguments or
parts of arguments, and not all arguments are controversial, so you cannot rely on
whether or not something “sounds argumentative.” The best way to determine if
something is an argument is simply to ask yourself if the author/speaker is trying to
offer you reasons to believe something, plus a conclusion that is supposed to be
supported by these reasons. If so, an argument is being made; if not, there is no
argument. If this does not work, it may help to look for specific indications that some
statement is meant as a conclusion or as a premise—if so, then there is probably
an argument in the neighbourhood.
One mistake not to make is to assume that all arguments are good arguments; this
is obviously not correct. There can be bad arguments, even stupid arguments; just
as much as there can be good arguments. So do not draw the conclusion that
something is not an argument simply because you do not find it believable. For
something to be an argument, all that is required is that it be aimed at convincing
you to believe the conclusion by providing something you are supposed to think is a
reason. Being convincing is another matter.
Another error to avoid is mistaking explanatory claims for arguments. Suppose that
Cherise comes to work late, and her boss asks what happened. Cherise says, “The
explanation for my lateness is that my car broke down.” This is not an argument.
Cherise is not trying to convince her boss that she is late, and she is not trying to
convince her boss that her car broke down. Instead, Cherise is saying that one fact
(her car breaking down) explains the other fact (her being late). Cherise’s statement
might be true, if her car really broke down and if that is the main reason she is late.
Cherise’s statement might also be false, if she is really late because she was
helping a friend move, say. But the fact that her statement could be true or false
itself shows that her statement is just that: a statement, and not an argument.
Arguments are not the sorts of things that can be true or false, though they can
contain true and false claims. Cherise could make an argument that this
explanation is the correct one, but in the example, she does not actually do so.
Rather, she just makes a claim about what explains her being late. In general,
explanatory claims are not arguments, but simply claims about what is true. Some
arguments are arguments over what explains what, so arguments and explanations
are not totally unrelated. But the fact that one is trying to explain something does
not mean that one is automatically making an argument.
There are many more complications that could be introduced, but these will be
saved for unit 3. You have enough to think about for now!
Practice exercise 1
Look at the following paragraphs. Determine whether or not an argument is being
made. Answers are n the Answers to practice exercises section.
a. God doesn’t exist just because you want him to!
b. When we went to the beach, Aunt Sally got stinking drunk back at the hotel
room. We’d better not leave her alone tonight.
c. Blankets don’t “warm things up,” as some people suppose, but simply trap air,
whether warm (such as the air around a person’s body) or cold (such as that
around a snow sculpture), and keep it from circulating.
d. I haven’t heard from George since we had breakfast together some weeks ago.
I wonder what has happened to him?
e. More Americans believe that aliens are abducting people than believe that
evolution has happened by means of natural selection. It just goes to show:
Americans are nuts!
f. You told me “It could be worse.” But it can’t. There’s nothing blacker than pitch
black, and nothing emptier than an empty room. Once you’ve hit bottom, the
bottom is where you’re at, and there’s nowhere lower to go.
g. The Second World War happened primarily because (a) Germany was resentful
about the Treaty of Versailles; (b) America was openly isolationist throughout
the 1930s.
h. The Earth is flat. All you have to do is look and see that it is.
i. There was no choice but for Trudeau to ram the constitution through without
Quebec’s support. He couldn’t wait for the Parti Québecois to become federalist
any more than he could wait for Hell to freeze over.
j. Since God is dead, everything is permitted.
Interpretation: Identifying premises and conclusions
Arguments are built out of premises and conclusions. Once you have a rough idea
for whether something is an argument or not, the next thing to do is to determine its
premises and conclusions. How can you do this? Sometimes this is trivial. For
example, imagine that you meet Flo, who makes the following argument:
Believe me, Canada is not the best country in which to live. I have three reasons
for saying this: (1) I have a friend who is Swedish and who says Sweden is
much better than Canada; (2) other countries have better health-care systems
than Canada; (3) Canadian popular culture is very vulgar compared with that
found in some other countries.
Now, it is perfectly clear what Flo wants you to believe and it is perfectly clear what
reasons are being offered for you to believe it, thus the conclusion and the
premises are made absolutely clear. The question however is whether or not this is
a good argument. If you wanted to write to someone else and explain, in very
precise detail, what the premises and conclusion were to Flo’s argument, you would
say something like the following.
Flo’s argument is:
Premise 1 Flo’s friend, who is Swedish, says Sweden is much better than
Canada.
Premise 2 Other countries have better health-care systems than Canada.
Premise 3 Canadian popular culture is very vulgar compared with that found in
some other countries.
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Conclusion Canada is not the best country in which to live.
Notice that, in this example, full sentences are always used. Because conclusions
are the ideas people are putting forward to be believed, and premises are the ideas
that are supposed to support belief in the conclusions, conclusions and premises
are most clearly stated in the form of full sentences. Philosophers sometimes say
that premises and conclusions take the form of propositions, a proposition being
(roughly) an idea that requires a full sentence to express, such as “There is good
surfing in Hawaii,” or “Karim is taller than Jamal.” There are some interesting
philosophical points to be made here, but we need not go into them. It will be
enough for present purposes to say that, if you are going to state someone else’s
premise or conclusion, and do so in the clearest form possible, you will always
need to use a full sentence, with both a grammatical subject and a grammatical
predicate.
The above example of Flo’s argument is an easy one. But not every argument
comes with numbered premises. When you are confident that something is an
argument but you are not sure which statements are the premises and which the
conclusion, there is no strategy to use that will guarantee that you reach the right
answers. You have to determine what the author/speaker meant for you to believe
(if anything) and what the author/speaker meant for you to take as reasons (if
anything), and unless you can ask it will not always be easy to find out. (Even if you
ask, it may still not be easy to find out. After all, it might not have been completely
clear in the person’s mind when the argument was made, or the person might be
motivated to lie to you about what the argument was.) Still, there are various things
that may help you make your decisions.
Determining conclusions
Conclusions are sometimes introduced with words such as “thus,” “therefore,” “so,”
“in conclusion,” and the like. Often, however, nothing special is done to distinguish
a conclusion, so one cannot rely on these “indicator words.” In such cases, it may
help to ask yourself, “Why am I being told X?” If the answer comes back “Oh,
because the author/speaker wants me to agree that Angola needs a new capital
city” or something of the sort, then one will have discovered the conclusion of the
argument being presented.
Determining premises
Premises are sometimes introduced with words such as “since,” “because,” “given
that,” “it being the case that,” and so on. As with conclusions, though, such words
are not invariably attached to premises—the premises often arrive unannounced. In
trying to identify premises, it may help to ask yourself “Why does the
author/speaker expect me to believe that?” when thinking of the conclusion. If the
answer is something the author/speaker is telling you in the same argumentative
work, then you have probably identified a premise.
Here is another sample argument, a little more complex than the previous one.
Canada has a large debt. Paying the interest on that debt costs millions of
dollars every year. Those dollars could be much better spent. Thus, Canada
should place a high priority on debt reduction.
In this argument, there are no numbers on the premises, but the word “thus”
appears to help us identify the conclusion. And once we see that the final sentence
expresses the conclusion, then it becomes obvious that the previous sentences are
all intended as support for that conclusion, and so should be considered as
premises. The argument thus looks something like this:
Premise 1 Canada has a large debt.
Premise 2 Paying the interest on that debt costs millions of dollars every year.
Premise 3 Those dollars could be much better spent.
Conclusion Canada should place a high priority on debt reduction.
One thing you might have noticed about this argument and the one before is that,
when the argument is reconstructed in detail, a few words get changed or left out.
For instance, Flo says “I have a friend who is Swedish…” and yet the beginning of
premise one says, instead, “Flo’s friend, who is Swedish…” Why the change? And
in the above argument, the word “thus” is in the original version of the argument but
then is left out of the reconstructed conclusion. Why? The basic answer is the same
in both cases. In both cases, the changes come from the fact that I am reporting
what someone else is arguing. When I reconstruct Flo’s argument, I state what she
means, but I cannot use the same words. After all, if Flo says “I have a friend” and I
want to report what she says, I can’t say I have a friend–it’s Flo’s friend, not mine.
So I have to say “Flo has a friend.” Then, in the case of the missing “thus,” the point
is that the word “thus” is being used to tell us that the conclusion is coming–it is not
a part of the concluding idea itself. So when I report the conclusion, I leave out the
word “thus” as not part of the conclusion. I have my own way of indicating the
conclusion, namely, writing “Conclusion:” in front of it. What is important about
these small changes is that they do not change the meaning of the argument itself.
They are just those changes required for me to give a precise statement of the
argument.
Here is one more sample argument, slightly harder again. Suppose that J.K. argues
as follows:
All best-selling books should be printed on recycled paper. The consumer would
hardly notice the extra cost. And the environmental benefit would be large if they
were all printed on recycled paper.
Again, it is clear that an argument is being made. But what, exactly, is it? The
answer is not easy to determine. There are no words like “in conclusion” to help us
identify the conclusion, and no words like “since” to help us identify her premises.
Nonetheless, it is possible to determine what argument is being made because it is
possible to figure out what J.K. is trying to say to us. J.K. thinks certain books
should be printed on recycled paper, and has two reasons for thinking so. These
two reasons (low cost and large environmental benefit) are being put forward to
convince us that the first sentence is true. So the first sentence must express the
conclusion, and the second and third sentences must be the premises.
Premise 1 The consumer would hardly notice the extra cost of best-selling
books printed on recycled paper.
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Premise 2 There would be a large environmental benefit if all best-selling
books were printed on recycled paper.
Conclusion All best-selling books should be printed on recycled paper.
Once again, a few words have been changed, but only what was necessary for
clarity. The meaning has been left intact.
Organizing premises and conclusions into arguments
Premises and conclusions can be joined in simpler and more complex ways in
order to form arguments. So perhaps it is time to look at a few of these possibilities,
to know what to look for when interpreting arguments. In the simplest argument
possible, one premise is offered as a reason to believe one conclusion.
The sky is greenish. So we can conclude a big thunderstorm is coming.
Premise The sky is greenish.
Conclusion A big thunderstorm is coming.
Often, things are more complicated. For instance, multiple reasons may be given
which are intended to support the conclusion by their combined force.
The existence of cosmic background radiation, red-shifted light from other
galaxies and the apparent age of the oldest stars together suggest that the
universe is expanding from an original explosive event—a “big bang.”
Premise 1 Cosmic background radiation exists.
Premise 2 Light from other galaxies is red-shifted.
Premise 3 The oldest stars appear to have a certain age [which isn’t
mentioned, so we cannot fully state the third premise].
Conclusion The universe is expanding from an original explosive event—a “big
bang.”
It may also happen that an author/speaker will provide multiple independent
reasons for accepting the same conclusion. When this happens, multiple
arguments are created. After all, an argument is a set of reasons aimed at getting
someone to believe a conclusion, and so if one presents independent reasons to
believe something, one has one set of reasons aimed at getting a person to believe
it, and another set of reasons also aimed at the same thing, and so on.
Example
The fact that by 1966 leading advertising agencies were employing symbols of
youth and rebellion demonstrates that the “counterculture” movement of the late
1960s and early 1970s was not as anti-establishment as it thought. The same point
is made by the fact that the counterculture movement, by promoting nonconformity, indirectly promoted the purchase of ever-changing clothes and other
material goods.
First argument
Premise 1 By 1966 leading advertising agencies were employing symbols of
youth and rebellion.
Conclusion The counterculture movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s
was not as anti-establishment as it thought.
Second argument
Premise 1 The counterculture movement, by promoting non-conformity,
indirectly promoted the purchase of ever-changing clothes and
other material goods.
Conclusion The counterculture movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s
was not as anti-establishment as it thought.
It is time that you practised identifying the premises and conclusions of arguments
on your own.
Practice exercise 2
Look at the following arguments, and identify their premises and conclusions, using
the previous examples as models. Answers are n the Answers to practice exercises
section.
a. A Schizophrenia is not properly understood as a biological disease, since
schizophrenics have a way of looking at the world, which often made sense in
the context in which they were raised.
b. Everyone likes pizza, so Glenn should order one.
c. When a company comes to identify itself with some positive image or lifestyle,
and then consumers learn that that company uses exploited labour, or is sexist,
or treats its retail clerks badly, then that creates a consumer anger at the
company’s hypocrisy. Thus, the move in the corporate world toward promoting
one’s brand as an image and a representation of a lifestyle means that
corporations are becoming more vulnerable to consumer outrage at immoral
corporate practices.
d. Acting in TV sitcoms is often really weird. Two characters will stand facing the
kitchen, but kind of looking at each other out of the corners of their eyes, and
have a conversation in that position. No one really talks like that. And characters
are always making wild gestures with their arms, or waving their bodies side to
side, or doing exaggerated things with their heads, and no one does stuff like
that in real life.
e. Since judges are not elected, and since even judges can be greedy, judges
should not have the power to set their own salaries.
f. Kurt Gödel proved that no consistent set of axioms for arithmetic suffices to
derive all of the arithmetic truth’s that can be stated in that system. Thus, there
are truths of arithmetic that cannot be proven.
g. Wayne Gretzky was not the best hockey player ever. Gretzky didn’t face the
high concentration of talent on the opposing team that confronted, say, Maurice
Richard. Gretzky benefited from rules about space behind the net and four-onfour play that came and went in the NHL. And he enjoyed a level of immunity
from body checking that Richard, Lemieux, and the rest never had.
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h. John Lennon’s song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” has psychedelic imagery
and distorted vocals. It was also created shortly after Lennon began using LSD.
And the song forms the initials LSD. It is clear that the song is about LSD.
Besides, some of the particular lyrics (“everyone smiles as you drift past the
flowers/that grow so incredibly high”) can’t be interpreted any other way.
i. Phyllis should order the spanikopita—it’s vegetarian and delicious.
j. One has to be crazy to be an ice-climbing enthusiast. Glaciers have hidden
crevasses, you can never tell when you’re walking on ten meters of ice or a 20-
cm thick ice bridge, the weather at high altitudes is always unpredictable and
there are no permanent, safe climbing routes.