Critical thinking
Chapter 1
Introducing Arguments

To attempt to persuade by giving good reasons is to give an argument.

Beginning to think critically: recognizing arguments

Not all attempts to persuade (using language) are attempts to persuade by argument.

• some are attempts to persuade by means of rhetorical devices

Rhetoric: any verbal or written attempt to persuade someone to believe, desire or do something that does not attempt to give good reasons for the belief, desire or action, but attempts to motivate that belief, desire or action solely through the power of the words used.

An attempt to persuade by argument is an attempt to provide you with reasons for believing a claim, desiring something or doing something.
Arguments appeal to your critical faculties, your reason.

Rhetoric tends to rely on the persuasive power of certain words and verbal techniques to influence your beliefs, desires and actions by appeal to your desires, fears and other feelings.

• threats and bribes are arguments (not rhetorics), for they give a reason to do something

Rhetorical techniques can be manipulative and coercive. Their use should generally be avoided by those who aspire to think critically and to persuade by reason.
When analysing attempts to persuade, we have to perform three tasks:

• Identify the issue being discussed, and determine whether or not the writer or speaker is attempting to persuade by means of argument. Is an argument being presented?
• Reconstructing the argument so as to express it clearly, and so as to demonstrate clearly the steps and form of the argument’s reasoning
• Evaluating the argument, asking what’s good about it and what’s bad about it.

When we put forward an argument we are either advancing an opinion or recommending an action.
In either case we give a number of claims intended to support the claim or the recommendation.
These two types of argument can be collapsed into one.

All arguments can be understood as attempting to provide reasons for thinking that some claim is true (it states how things really are).
To say that a claim is true is to say that what is claimed is how things actually are.

A single claim does not constitute an argument.
An argument needs more than one claim.

• It needs the claim of which the arguer hopes to convince his or her audience.
• Plus at least one claim offered in support of that claim.

There are special terms for the two parts of arguments

• Conclusion: the primary claim, the one we are trying to get others to accept
• Premises: the supporting claims, the ones intended to give us reasons for accepting the conclusion

An argument: a set of propositions of which one is a conclusion and the remainder are premises, intended as support for the conclusion.
A proposition: the factual content expressed by a declarative sentence on a particular occasion. The same proposition may be expressed by different sentences.

• the same proposition can be expressed by different sentences when we change the personal pronoun.  
• the same sentence can express different propositions depending (among other things) who utters it.

Different sets of sentences could express the same argument and a particular sentence within an argument could express more than one proposition.
Which proposition the sentence expresses is usually discernible by careful attention to context.

Indexicals: the meaning of an indexical changes relative to its context of use or relative to the person to whom it refers.

Standard form

Arguments for analysis are set out in a particular style, with the premises listed in the order that they occur in the reasoning process and the conclusion appearing at the bottom.
We can refine this style and further clarify the argument by numbering the premises P1, P2, and so on, and drawing a line between the last premise and the conclusion (which we mark with a C).

Inference bar: the line between the premises.

• Its purpose is to distinguish steps in reasoning.
• The bar should be read as standing for ‘therefore’.

This style of setting out arguments is called the standard form.
It is to maximize clarity.

Reconstructing the argument: setting out arguments in standard form. The result is a reconstruction of the argument or an argument-reconstruction.

When reconstructing arguments, you should take five steps:

1. identify the conclusion
2. identify the premises
3. number the premises and write them out in order
4. draw the inference bar
5. write out the conclusion, placing ‘C’ in front of it.

Identifying conclusions and premises

The question of whether a passage or speech contains an argument is the question of whether the speaker or writer is attempting, by means of that passage or speech, to persuade her audience of some conclusion by offering premises in support of it.

• This is a question about the intentions of the writer or speaker that cannot always be answered unless we know something about the context (the circumstances in which the passage or speech appeared or took place).

When we’ve determined that an argument is being advanced, its premises and conclusion are often buried deep among the other elements of a speech or text, and there are not hard-and-fast rules for distinguishing the propositions that form an argument from those that perform some other function in a text or speech.

Identifying arguments is largely a matter of determining what the author or speaker intends by interpreting her words, and this comes with practice.
Often writers and speakers leave some of their premises unstated because they assume that readers and listeners will know what they have in mind.

• in reconstructing arguments we often have to add premises to make their structure and content complete.
• people do not always express their arguments in very clear language, so we have to clarify each proposition before we can command a clear view of the argument as a whole

Identifying conclusions

Once you have determined that a text or speech contains an attempt to persuade by argument, it is easiest to proceed by identifying its conclusion.

• determining whether a passage contains an attempt to persuade by argument and identifying the conclusion of that argument do not always occur independently.

Several points make the identification of conclusions an easier task

• Once you have decided that a passage or speech contains an attempt to persuade by argument, try to see what he main point of the passage or speech is. Ask what point the speaker or author is trying to establish, that point will be the conclusion. Once you come to reconstruct an argument for analysis, paraphrasing the main point as one simple proposition will make the argument easier to handle. A writer or speaker may make the same point in a number of different ways, so you may have to settle upon one particular way of expressing it.

• Any proposition on any topic can be a conclusion. The type of subject matter of a proposition is not in itself a guide to identifying whether or not that proposition is intended a the conclusion of a passage’s argument. The premisses and conclusions of arguments should ideally be expressed in declarative sentences, but in real-life arguments they may be expressed otherwise. When reconstructing arguments, we may need to rewrite premises and conclusions as declarative sentences in order to clarify the propositions expressed.

• A single text or speech may contain several arguments for several different but connected conclusions. Sometimes we argue for one point, then a second, and then use those conclusions as premises in an argument for a third and final conclusion. These chains of arguments are known as extended arguments.

• A helpful guide to recognizing arguments is provided by those words that usually indicate that a writer or speaker is putting forward and argument. Commonly, a writer or speaker will state the conclusion of their argument before stating the premises. Indicators are not foolproof and should not be treated as a substitute for careful identification of attempts to persuade by argument. Not all arguers will help the critical thinker out by making use of indicator words.

• Indicator words are not parts of the propositions that the argument comprises, rather they introduce or frame the conclusion and premises.

• Conclusions sometimes remain unexpressed. These are implicit conclusions. They are only implied or suggested by the actual text or speech content, not explicitly expressed by it. This usually happens when the speaker or writer thinks that the context is sufficient to make the conclusion obvious so that it literally ‘goes without saying’. This is often a bad idea.

Identifying premises

As you go through the process of identifying an argument’s conclusion, it is likely that you will also spot some or all of its premises.
The identification of an argument’s premises is a search for reasons given by the writer or speaker to think that their conclusion is true.

Guides:

• Ask yourself what the writer or speaker’s reasons for believing their conclusion are. The propositions that you come up with in response are likely to be the premises of the intended argument.
• Premises can have any subject matter whatsoever.
• In most real examples of writing and speech, arguments are embedded within other language that is not intended as part of the argument itself, although some of this language may be used rhetorically.
• There are certain words that usually (but not always) indicate the presence of premises (premise indicators).  
• When writing out the premises of an argument in standard form, take care not to include the indicator words, as they are not part of the proposition that make up the argument.
• A text or speech may not include specific premise indicators. Context is the best means of identifying premises in such cases. It may also help to try inserting premise indicators in form of or between propositions to see if they can be more clearly identified as the premises of an argument.
• Ordinary language can make identifying arguments more difficult than it might otherwise be, because people do not always express all of their premises explicitly. Many attempts to persuade by argument rely on implicit premises.  

Extraneous material

Much of what people say or write when putting forward an argument plays no role in the argument itself.
Before identifying those propositions, the argument’s conclusion and the premises given as support for it, we often have to identify and hive off this material, which has no role to play in the reconstruction of the argument.

Arguments and explanations

Words that function as indicator words can be used for other purposes.

• When giving the explanation, the speaker assumes that his or her audience already accepts the proposition, or at least that the speaker has no need to persuade the audience of a fact.
• When giving an argument for the conclusion, the speaker does not assume that the audience accepts or will accept the proposition. The arguer intends to persuade the audience that this is so by giving them a good reason to believe it.

The distinction between arguments and explanations can be confusing where the explanation of actions is concerned. This confusion arises because, in the case of actions, reasons are the causes.
The explanation of an action normally involves specifying the reason for it.
In asking about reasons for actions, we are sometimes looking for a justification (we want the person to give us an argument for why the action is reasonable or acceptable), and other times we just want an explanation, in the sense of wanting to know the cause.

Intermediate conclusions

The conclusion of one argument may serve as a premise of a subsequent argument. The conclusion of that argument may itself serve as a premise for another argument, and so on.
The intermediate conclusion is used as a premise for a further argument. These are extended arguments.

We give more conclusions numbers. C1 is the conclusion of an argument whose premises are P1 and P2, C2 is the conclusion of an argument whose premises are C1 and P3. So C1 is the conclusion of one argument and the premise of another.

Normally, the last conclusion reached is the proposition that the arguer is most concerned to establish, it is the ultimate target.
This is the conclusion of the argument, whereas any other conclusions, reached as steps along the way, are called intermediate conclusions.

We sometimes want to concentrate for a moment on a particular part of an extended argument. We well sometimes speak of the argument from P1 and P2 to C1, or of the argument from C1 and P3 to C2. We can also speak of the inference from P1 and P2 to C1, and the inference from C1 and P3 to C2.

All reasoning consists of inferences. Each step of reasoning is an inference