Phil 148

Chapter 5Stuff to include in and leave out of

the standard form argument

Tangents

• Not all statements a person makes in the course of an argument are necessary for stating their argument.

• Many claims are related but are tangential. • It is not necessary to put these claims in the

standard form argument

Repetition

• Whether from awkwardness or rhetorical purpose, repeating the same idea several times in the course of an argument does not add anything to the standard form argument.

Make terms consistent

• Say someone discusses “economic troubles”, “financial hardships”, a “credit crisis”, “poor stock market performance”, etc. all in the same article but at different points.

• People often use synonymous words or phrases just for variety. When they do this, it is okay to condense them to make the standard form argument look neater

• Sometimes, however, authors use similar but distinct language to be precise.

Condensing:

Main argument:P1. Spendthrift government policy has led to a credit crisis.P2. Bad economic performance always generates more government spending.C. If the cycle isn’t broken, then financial hardship will continue.

Cleaned up:P1. Deficit spending has caused bad economic performanceP2. Bad economic performance will cause additional deficit spendingC. If deficit spending continues, then bad economic performance will result.

Example (claims that work together):

• (1) Bill is a student at Yale. (2) No student at Yale has won the Nobel Prize. (3) Therefore, Bill has not won the Nobel Prize.1 + 2

3

Example (independent claims):

• (1) The president is soft on the environment. (2) He has weakened clean-air regulations (3) and lifted restrictions on logging in the West.

2 3

1

Example: (complex arguments)• Conclusion: (3) The idea that God is required to be the enforcer of the moral law is not

plausible. Premises: (4) In the first place, as an empirical hypothesis about the psychology of human beings, it is questionable. (5) There is no unambiguous evidence that theists are more moral than nontheists. (6) Not only have psychological studies failed to find a significant correlation between frequency of religious worship and moral conduct, but convicted criminals are much more likely to be theists than atheists. (7) Second, the threat of divine punishment cannot impose a moral obligation. (8) Might does not make right.

Unstated premises:

• Sometimes an argument can appear to have only one premise. This is what happens when the person supplying the argument assumes some fact that is (usually) too obvious to be stated directly.

• There is usually nothing wrong with this, but in this course we will make a habit of filling in unstated premises.

Kinds of Suppressed Premises:

• Factual: facts that are left unstated because they are assumed to be common knowledge.

• Linguistic: these are facts about how certain words and concepts relate to one another that are left unstated because it is assumed that any competent user of the language is aware of them.

• Evaluative: these are phrases that imply a value judgment without directly stating that value judgment.

Example

1. The news media are not in the business of endorsing or validating lifestyles.

C. The media should not endorse lifestyles. This argument is missing the claim that people

should not do what they are not in the business of doing.

Example (continued)

1. News media abandons its objectivity when it endorses lifestyles.

C. News media should not endorse lifestyles.This argument is missing the claim that the news

media should not abandon its objectivity.

Example (continued)

1. Endorsing lifestyles means the news media destroys what respect people have for it.

C. The news media should not endorse lifestyles.Can you spot the unstated premise?

A common argument structure:

1. Statement of a particular state of affairs2. Normative principle (contains the word ‘should’,

‘ought’, ‘must’, etc.)C. Connects the two statements in a logical wayExample:1. The new construction proposal would break the

state budget2. The state should not break its budgetC. The state should reject the new construction

proposal.