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Understanding Arguments

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Understanding Arguments

An Introduction to Informal Logic

NINTH EDITION

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong Duke University

Robert J. Fogelin Dartmouth College

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v i i

CONTENTS

Preface XV

Part I How to Analyze Arguments 1

Chapter 1 Uses of Arguments 3

What Arguments Are 3

Justifications 4

Explanations 7

Combinations: An Example 10

Chapter 2 The Web of Language 17

Language and Convention 17

Linguistic Acts 19

Speech Acts 22 Performatives  23

Kinds of Speech Acts  26

Conversational Acts 28 Conversational Rules  31

Conversational Implication  33

Rhetorical Devices  36

Summary 38

Chapter 3 The Language of Argument 41

Argument Markers 41 If . . . , then . . .  43

Arguments in Standard Form 45

A Problem and Some Solutions 47 Assuring  48

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v i i i

Contents

Guarding  49

Discounting  51

Evaluative Language 54

Chapter 4 The Art of Close Analysis 59

An Extended Example 59 Clerk Hire Allowance, House of Representatives  59

Chapter 5 Deep Analysis 79

Getting Down to Basics 79

Clarifying Crucial Terms 83

Dissecting the Argument 83

Arranging Subarguments 85

Some Standards for Evaluating Arguments 90 Validity  91

Truth  93

Soundness  94

Suppressed Premises 96 Contingent Facts  97

Linguistic Principles  99

Evaluative Suppressed Premises  100

Uses and Abuses of Suppressed Premises  100

The Method of Reconstruction 102

An Example of Reconstruction: Capital Punishment 105

Part II How to Evaluate Arguments: Deductive Standards 111

Chapter 6 Propositional Logic 113

The Formal Analysis of Arguments 113

Basic Propositional Connectives 114 Conjunction  114

Disjunction  122

Negation  122

Process of Elimination  125

How Truth-Functional Connectives Work  126

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i x

Contents

Testing for Validity  128

Some Further Connectives  132

Conditionals 134 Truth Tables for Conditionals  136

Logical Language and Everyday Language  142

Other Conditionals in Ordinary Language  145

Chapter 7 Categorical Logic 151

Beyond Propositional Logic 151

Categorical Propositions 152 The Four Basic Categorical Forms  154

Translation into the Basic Categorical Forms  156

Contradictories  159

Existential Commitment  161

Validity for Categorical Arguments 162 Categorical Immediate Inferences  164

The Theory of the Syllogism  166

Part III How to Evaluate Arguments: Inductive Standards 177

Chapter 8 Arguments To and From Generalizations 179

Induction versus Deduction 179

Statistical Generalizations 183 Should We Accept the Premises?  184

Is the Sample Large Enough?  185

Is the Sample Biased?  186

Is the Sampling Procedure Biased?  187

Statistical Applications 189

Chapter 9 Inference to the Best Explanation and from Analogy 195

Inferences to the Best Explanation 195 Which Explanation Is Best?  198

Context Is Crucial  200

Arguments from Analogy 204 Are Analogies Explanations?  207

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x

Contents

Chapter 10 Causal Reasoning 215

Reasoning About Causes 215

Sufficient Conditions and Necessary Conditions 217 The Sufficient Condition Test  220

The Necessary Condition Test  221

The Joint Test  222

Rigorous Testing  225

Reaching Positive Conclusions  226

Applying These Methods to Find Causes 228 Normality  228

Background Assumptions  229

A Detailed Example  230

Concomitant Variation 234

Chapter 11 Chances 239

Some Fallacies of Probability 239 The Gambler’s Fallacy  239

Heuristics  241

The Language of Probability 243

A Priori Probability 244

Some Rules of Probability 246 Probabilities of Negations  246

Probabilities of Conjunctions  247

Probabilities of Disjunctions  248

Probabilities in a Series  249

Permutations and Combinations  250

Bayes’s Theorem 253

Chapter 12 Choices 263

Expected Monetary Value 263

Expected Overall Value 266

Decisions Under Ignorance 268

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Contents

Part IV Fallacies 273

Chapter 13 Fallacies of Vagueness 275

Uses of Unclarity 275

Vagueness 276

Heaps 278

Slippery Slopes 280 Conceptual Slippery-Slope Arguments  280

Fairness Slippery-Slope Arguments  282

Causal Slippery-Slope Arguments  285

Chapter 14 Fallacies of Ambiguity 291

Ambiguity 291

Equivocation 295

Definitions 299

Chapter 15 Fallacies of Relevance 307

Relevance 307

Ad Hominem Arguments 308 Inconsistency  311

Genetic Fallacies  311

Appeals to Authority 314

More Fallacies of Relevance 318 Appeals to Popular Opinion  318

Appeals to Emotion  319

Chapter 16 Fallacies of Vacuity 323

Circularity 323

Begging the Question 324

Self-Sealers 328

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x i i

Contents

Chapter 17 Refutation 333

What Is Refutation? 333

Counterexamples 334

Reductio Ad Absurdum 337

Straw Men and False Dichotomies 341

Refutation by Parallel Reasoning 343

Part V Areas of Argumentation 351

Chapter 18 Legal Reasoning 353

Components of Legal Reasoning 354 Questions of Fact  354

Questions of Law  355

The Law of Discrimination 361 The Equal Protection Clause  361

Applying the Equal Protection Clause  362

The Strict Scrutiny Test  363

The Bakke Case  364

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke  366

Legal Developments Since Bakke  368

Grutter v. Bollinger 369

Gratz v. Bollinger  375

Burden of Proof 381

Chapter 19 Moral Reasoning 383

Moral Disagreements 383

The Problem of Abortion 384 The “Pro-Life” Argument  385

“Pro-Choice” Responses   387

Analogical Reasoning in Ethics 392

Weighing Factors 394 “Abortion,” by Mary Anne Warren  397

“An Argument that Abortion Is Wrong,”     by Don Marquis  409

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Contents

Chapter 20 Scientific Reasoning 423

Standard Science 423

Scientific Revolutions 425 “Molecular Machines: Experimental Support for the Design

Inference,” by Michael J. Behe  427

“Living with Darwin,” by Philip Kitcher  440

Chapter 21 Religious Reasoning 449

“Five Reasons to Believe in God,” by William Lane Craig  450

“Seven Deadly Objections to Belief in the Christian God,”     by Edwin Curley  456

Chapter 22 Philosophical Reasoning 465

“Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility,”     by Susan Wolf  469

“A Defence of Free Will Skepticism,”     by Derk Pereboom  483

Index 495

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xv

PREFACE

Traditionally, logic has been considered the most general science dealing  with arguments. The task of logic is to discover the fundamental principles  for distinguishing good arguments from bad ones.

For certain purposes, arguments are best studied as abstract patterns  of reasoning. Logic can then focus on these general forms rather than on  particular arguments, such as your attempt to prove to the bank that they,  not you, made a mistake. The study of those general principles that make  certain patterns of argument valid and other patterns of argument invalid is  called formal logic. Two chapters of this work are dedicated to formal logic.

A different but complementary way of viewing an argument is to treat it  as a particular use of language: Presenting arguments is one of the important  things we do with words. This approach stresses that arguing is a linguistic  activity. Instead of studying arguments as abstract patterns, it examines them  as they occur in concrete settings. It raises questions of the following kind:

What is the place of argument within language as a whole? What words or phrases are characteristic of arguments? How do these words function? What task or tasks are arguments supposed to perform?

When an approach to argument has this emphasis,  the study is called  informal logic. Though it contains a substantial treatment of formal logic,  Understanding Arguments, as its subtitle indicates, is primarily a textbook in  informal logic.

The ninth edition of Understanding Arguments differs from the eighth  edition in a number of ways. The most important change is simplification.  Many chapters have been shortened and streamlined. Our goal was to  remove tangents and complexities that confuse students so that the main  points could be understood more easily. In addition, the different kinds of  inductive arguments have been reordered to provide a better flow between  topics. Several sections have been split up and reorganized for clarity.  Some of the more difficult and confusing topics have been dropped. This  edition also contains new readings on moral and philosophical reasoning in  Chapters 19 and 22. These new readings make the text more accessible and  relevant to popular debates. Finally, we updated many examples, exercises,  and discussion questions throughout the text.

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xv i

Preface

Another major innovation that begins with this Ninth Edition is that readers of Understanding Arguments will also have free access to detailed lectures, exercises, and quizzes on all of the material in Chapters 1–17. There are over 100 mini-lectures keyed to almost 1000 corresponding questions. These supplementary materials are available for free on the Coursera website (https://www.coursera.org/) in a MOOC titled Think Again: How to Reason and Argue. We hope that these lectures and exercises help readers get the most out of this book.

This new edition has been influenced by our teaching of this material with various colleagues. In this regard, we would especially like to thank Ram Neta, who co-taught with Walter Sinnott-Armstrong on the Coursera website, as well as to many people at Coursera and in the Office of Instructional Technology at Duke University, who taught us to make these topics more accessible and lively. We received invaluable help from two student assistants—Joe Metz and Jason Bowers—in addition to the many others who helped us on previous editions. We are also indebted to the following reviewers: Dan Berger, Simpson University; William Brunson, University of Nevada–Las Vegas; Aaron Cobb, Auburn University– Montgomery; Nathaniel Goldberg, Washington and Lee University; Deke Gould, Augustana College; Robert Bruce Kelsey, Thomas College; Jung Kwon, Long Beach City College; Judith Little, SUNY–Potsdam; Diane Michelfelder, Macalester College; Rachel Mohr, University of Nebraska–Lincoln; Dennis Montgomery, Norfolk State University; Patrice Nango, Mesa Community College; Kurt Nutting, San Francisco State University; Michael Patton, University of Montevallo; Marc Pugliese, Saint Leo University; Eric Rovie, Georgia Perimeter College–Newton; and Catherine Womack, Bridgewater State University. At Cengage Learning and PreMediaGlobal, we received expert advice and assistance from Joann Kozyrev–Senior Sponsoring Editor, Debra Matteson–Product Manager, Prashanth Kamavarapu–Project Manager, Ian Lague–Development Editor, Kristina Mose-Libon–Art Director, and Joshua Duncan–Assistant Editor. Without all of these people, this book would contain many more mistakes than it undoubtedly still does.