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Understanding Arguments

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Copyright 2013 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.

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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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This is an electronic version of the print textbook. Due to electronic rights restrictions, some third party content may be suppressed. Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. The publisher reserves the right to remove content from this title at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it. For valuable information on pricing, previous editions, changes to current editions, and alternate formats, please visit www.cengage.com/highered to search by ISBN#, author, title, or keyword for materials in your areas of interest.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this work covered by the copyright herein may be reproduced, transmitted, stored, or used in any form or by any means graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including but not limited to photocopying, recording, scanning, digitizing, taping, web distribution, information networks, or information storage and retrieval systems, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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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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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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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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x i i i

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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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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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.

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong Robert J. Fogelin

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I How to Analyze Arguments

Arguments are all around us. They bombard us constantly in advertisements; in courtrooms; in political, moral, and religious debates; in academic courses on mathematics, science, history, literature, and philosophy; and in our personal lives when we make decisions about our careers, finances, and families. These crucial aspects of our lives cannot be understood fully without understanding arguments. The goal of this book, then, is to help us understand arguments and, thereby, to understand our lives.

We will view arguments as tools. To understand a tool, we need to know the purposes for which it is used, the material out of which it is made, and the forms that it takes. For example, hammers are normally used to drive nails or to pound malleable substances. Hammers are usually made out of a metal head and a handle of wood, plastic, or metal. A typical hammer’s handle is long and thin, and its head is perpendicular to its handle. Similarly, in order to understand arguments, we need to investigate their purposes, materials, and forms.

Chapter 1 discusses the main purposes or uses of arguments. The material from which arguments are made is language, so Chapters 2 and 3 explore language in general and then the language of argument in particular. Chapters 4 and 5 use the lessons learned by then to analyze concrete examples of arguments in detail. The following chapters turn to the forms of arguments, including deductive forms in Part II (Chapters 6 and 7) and inductive forms in Part III (Chapters 8–12). Each form of argument comes with its own standards of adequacy. Part IV (Chapters 13–17) will then consider the main ways in which arguments can go astray, includ- ing fallacies of clarity, relevance, and vacuity. By the end of this journey, we should understand arguments much better.

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Uses of Arguments

What are arguments? In our view, arguments are tools, so the first step toward understanding arguments is to ask what they are used for—what people are trying to accomplish when they give arguments. This brief chapter will propose a definition of arguments and then explore two main purposes of arguments: justification and explanation. Both justifications and explanations try to provide reasons, but reasons of different kinds. Justifications are supposed to give reasons to believe their conclu- sions, whereas explanations are supposed to give reasons why their conclusions are true. Each of these purposes is more complicated and fascinating than is usually assumed.

WHAT ARGUMENTS ARE

The word “argument” may suggest quarrels or squabbles. That is what a child means when she reports that her parents are having an argument. Arguments of that sort often include abuse, name-calling, and yelling. That is not what this book is about. The goal here is not to teach you to yell louder, to be more abusive, or to beat your opponents into submission.

Our topic is the kind of argument defined by Monty Python in their justly famous “Argument Clinic.” In this skit, a client enters a clinic and pays for an argument. In the first room, however, all he gets is abuse, which is not ar- gument. When he finally finds the right room to get an argument, the person who is supposed to give him an argument simply denies whatever the client says, so the client complains that mere denial is different from argument, be- cause “an argument is a connected series of statements to establish a definite proposition.” This definition is almost correct. As we will see, the purpose of an argument need not always be to “establish” its conclusion, both because some conclusions were established in advance and because many reasons are inconclusive. Nonetheless, Monty Python’s definition needs to be modi- fied only a little in order to arrive at an adequate definition:

An argument is a connected series of sentences, statements, or propositions (called “premises”) that are intended to give a reason of some kind for a sentence, statement, or proposition (called the “conclusion”).

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CHAPTER 1 ■ Uses of Arguments

This definition does not pretend to be precise, but it does tell us what argu- ments are made of (sentences, statements, or propositions) and what their purpose is (to give reasons).

Another virtue of this definition is that it is flexible enough to cover the wide variety of arguments that people actually give. Different arguments are intended to give reasons of very different sorts. These reasons might be justificatory reasons to believe or to disbelieve some claim. They might, in- stead, be explanatory reasons why something happened. They might even be practical reasons to do some act. Because reasons come in so many kinds, arguments are useful in a great variety of situations in daily life. Trying to determine why your computer crashed, why your friend acted the way she did, and whether it will rain tomorrow as well as trying to decide which political candidate to vote for, which play to use at a crucial point in a foot- ball game, where to go to college, and whether to support or oppose capital punishment—all involve weighing and evaluating reasons.

It is inaccurate, therefore, to think of arguments as serving only one single, simple purpose. People often assume that you always use every argument to make other people believe what you believe and what they did not be- lieve before hearing or reading the argument. Actually, however, some ar- guments are used for that purpose, but others are not. To fully understand arguments in all their glory, then, we need to distinguish different uses of argument. In particular, we will focus on two exemplary purposes: justifica- tion and explanation.

JUSTIFICATIONS

One of the most prominent uses of arguments is to justify a disputed claim. For example, if I claim that September 11, 2001, was a Tuesday, and you deny this or simply express some doubt, then we might look for a calendar. But suppose we don’t have a calendar for 2001. Luckily, we do find a calen- dar for 2002. Now I can justify my claim to you by presenting this argument: The calendar shows that September 11 was on Wednesday in 2002; 2002 was not a leap year, since 2002 is not divisible by 4; nonleap years have 365 days, which is 1 more day than 52 weeks; so September 11 must have been on Tuesday in 2001. You should now be convinced.

What have I done? My utterance of this argument has the effect of chang- ing your mind by getting you to believe a conclusion that you did not believe before. Of course, I might also be able to change your mind by hyp- notizing you. But normally I do not want to use hypnosis. I also do not want to change your mind by manufacturing a fake calendar for 2002 with the wrong dates or by fooling you with a bad argument. Such tricks would not satisfy my goals fully. This shows that changing your mind is not all that I am trying to accomplish. I want more than simply to persuade you or convince

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Just if icat ions

you. What else do I want? My additional aim is to show you that you should change your mind, and why. I want my argument to be good and to give you a good reason to change your mind. I want my argument not only to persuade you but also to make you justified in believing my conclusion.

The above example is typical of one kind of justification, but there are other patterns. Suppose that I share your doubts about which day of the week it was on September 11, 2001. Then I might use the same argument to justify my belief as well as yours. Indeed, you don’t even need to be present. If I am all alone, and I just want to figure out which day of the week it was on September 11, 2001, then I might think in terms of this same argument. Here the goal is not to convince anybody else, but the argument is still used to find a good reason to believe the conclusion.

In cases like these, we can say that the argument is used for impersonal normative justification. The justification is normative because the goal is to find a reason that is a good reason. It is impersonal because what is sought is a reason that is or should be accepted as a good reason by everyone capa- ble of grasping this argument, regardless of who they are. The purpose is to show that there is a reason to believe the conclusion, regardless of who has a reason to believe it. Other arguments, in contrast, are aimed at specific peo- ple, and the goal is to show that those particular people are committed to the conclusion or have a reason to believe the conclusion. Such individualized uses of arguments seek what can be called personal justification.

There should be nothing surprising about different people having different reasons. I might climb a mountain to appreciate the view at the top, whereas you climb it to get exercise, and your friend climbs it to be able to talk to you while you climb it. Different people can have different reasons for the same action. Similarly, different people can have different reasons to believe the same conclusion. Suppose that someone is murdered in the ballroom with a revolver. I might have good reason to believe that Miss Peacock did not commit the murder, because I saw her in the library at the time the murder was committed. You might not trust me when I tell you that I saw her, but you still might have good reason to believe that she is innocent, because you believe that Colonel Mustard did it alone. Even if I doubt that Colonel Mustard did it, we still each have our own reasons to agree that Miss Peacock is innocent.

When different people with different beliefs are involved, we need to ask who is supposed to accept the reason that is given in an argument. A speaker might give an argument to show a listener that the speaker has a reason to believe something, even though the speaker knows that the audience does not and need not accept that reason. Suppose that you are an atheist, but I am an evangelical Christian, and you ask me why I believe that Jesus rose from the dead. I might respond that the Bible says that Jesus rose from the dead, and what the Bible says must be true, so Jesus rose from the dead. This argument tells you what my reasons are for believing what I believe, even if you do not accept those reasons. My argument can be used to show you that

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CHAPTER 1 ■ Uses of Arguments

I have reasons and what my reasons are, regardless of whether you believe that my reasons are good ones and also regardless of whether my reasons really are good ones.

The reverse can also happen. A speaker might give an argument to show a listener that the listener has a reason to believe something, even though the speaker does not accept that reason. Suppose that you often throw loud parties late into the night close to my bedroom. I want to convince you to stop or at least quiet down. Fortunately, you think that every citizen ought to obey the law. I disagree, for I am an anarchist bent on undermining all governments and laws. Still, I want to get a good night’s sleep before the protest tomorrow, so I might argue that it is illegal to make that much noise so late, and you ought to obey the law, so you ought to stop throwing such loud parties. This argument can show you that you are committed to its con- clusion, even if I believe that its premises are false.

Of course, whether I succeed in showing my audience that they have a reason to believe my conclusion depends on who my audience is. My argu- ment won’t work against loud neighbors who don’t care about the law. Con- sequently, we need to know who the audience is and what they believe in order to be able to show them what reason they have to believe a conclusion.

In all of these cases, arguments are used to show that someone has a rea- son to believe the conclusion of the argument. That is why all of these uses can be seen as providing different kinds of justification. The differences be- come crucial when we try to evaluate such arguments. If my goal is to show you that you have a reason to believe something, then I can be criticized for using a premise that you reject. Your beliefs are no basis for criticism, how- ever, if all I want is to show my own reasons for believing the conclusion. Thus, to evaluate an argument properly, we often need to determine not only whether the argument is being used to justify a belief but also which kind of justification is sought and who the audience is.

Write the best brief argument you can to justify each of the following claims to someone who does not believe them.

1. Nine is not a prime number. 2. Seven is a prime number. 3. A molecule of water has three atoms in it. 4. Water is not made up of carbon. 5. The U.S. president lives in Washington, D.C. 6. The Earth is not flat. 7. Humans have walked on the moon. 8. Most bicycles have two wheels.

Exercise I

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Explanat ions

EXPLANATIONS

A different but equally important use of arguments is to provide explana- tions. Explanations answer questions about how or why something hap- pened. We explain how a mongoose got out of his cage by pointing to a hole he dug under the fence. We explain why Smith was acquitted by saying that he got off on a technicality. The purpose of explanations is not to prove that something happened, but to make sense of things.

An example will bring out the difference between justification and expla- nation. One person claims that a school’s flagpole is thirty-five feet tall, and someone else asks her to justify this claim. In response, she might produce a receipt from the Allegiance Flagpole Company acknowledging payment for a flagpole thirty-five feet in height. Alternatively, she may put a stick straight up into the ground, measure the stick’s length and its shadow’s length, then measure the length of the flagpole’s shadow, and calculate the length of the flagpole. Neither of these justifications, however, will answer a different question: Why is the flagpole thirty-five feet tall? This new question could be answered in all sorts of ways, depending on context: The school could not afford a taller one. It struck the committee as about the right height for the location. That was the only size flagpole in stock. There is a state law limit- ing flagpoles to thirty-five feet. And so on. These answers help us under- stand why the flagpole is thirty-five feet tall. They explain its height.

Sometimes simply filling in the details of a story provides an explanation. For example, we can explain how a two-year-old girl foiled a bank robbery by saying that the robber tripped over her while fleeing from the bank. Here we have made sense out of an unusual event by putting it in the context of a plausible narrative. It is unusual for a two-year-old girl to foil a bank robbery, but there is nothing unusual about a person tripping over a child when run- ning recklessly at full speed in a crowded area.

Although the narrative is probably the most common form of explana- tion in everyday life, we also often use arguments to give explanations. We can explain a certain event by deriving it from established principles and accepted facts. This argument then has the following form:

(1) General principles or laws (2) A statement of initial conditions

∴(3) A statement of the phenomenon to be explained

The symbol “∴” is pronounced “therefore” and indicates that the premises above the line are supposed to give a reason for the conclusion below the

When, if ever, is it legitimate to try to convince someone else to believe something on the basis of a premise that you yourself reject? Consider a variety of cases.

Discussion Question

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CHAPTER 1 ■ Uses of Arguments

line. By “initial conditions” we mean those facts in the context that, together with appropriate general principles and laws, allow us to derive the result that the event to be explained occurs.

This sounds quite abstract, but an example should clarify the basic idea. Suppose we put an ice cube into a glass and then fill the glass with water to the brim. The ice will stick out above the surface of the water. What will happen when the ice cube melts? Will the water overflow? Will it remain at the same level? Will it go down? Here we are asking for a prediction, and it will, of course, make sense to ask a person to justify whatever prediction he or she makes. Stumped by this question, we let the ice cube melt to see what happens. We observe that the water level remains unchanged. After a few experiments, we convince ourselves that this result always occurs. We now have a new question: Why does this occur? Now we want an explanation of this phenomenon. The explanation turns upon the law of buoyancy, which says that an object in water is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the water it displaces. This law implies that, if we put an object in water, it will continue to sink until it displaces a volume of water whose weight is equal to its own weight (or else the object hits the bottom of the container). With this in mind, go back to the original problem. An ice cube is itself simply water in a solid state. Thus, when it melts, it will exactly fill in the volume of water it displaced, so the water level will remain unchanged.

We can now see how this explanation conforms to the argumentative pat- tern mentioned above:

(1) General principles or laws (Primarily the law of buoyancy) (2) Initial conditions (An ice cube in a glass of water filled to the brim)

∴(3) Phenomenon explained (The level of the water remaining unchanged after the ice cube melts)

This explanation is fairly good. People with only a slight understanding of science can follow it and see why the water level remains unchanged. We should also notice that it is not a complete explanation, because certain things are simply taken for granted—for example, that things do not change weight when they pass from a solid to a liquid state. To put the explanation into perfect argumentative form, this assumption and many others would have to be stated explicitly. This is never done in everyday life and is only rarely done in the most exact sciences.

Is this explanation any good? Explanations are satisfactory if they remove bewilderment or surprise by telling us how or why something happened in a way that is relevant to the concerns of a particular context. Our example does seem to accomplish that much. However, it might seem that even the best explanations are not very useful because they take so much for granted. In explaining why the water level remains the same when the ice cube melts, we cited the law of buoyancy. Now, why should that law be true? What ex- plains it? To explain the law of buoyancy, we would have to derive it from other laws that are more general and, perhaps, more intelligible. In fact, this

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Explanat ions

has been done. Archimedes simultaneously proved and explained the law of buoyancy by deriving it from the laws of the lever. How about the laws of the lever? Can they be proved and explained by deriving them from still higher and more comprehensive laws? Perhaps. Yet reasons give out, and sooner or later explanation (like justification) comes to an end. It is the task of science and all rational inquiry to move that boundary further and fur- ther back. But even when there is more to explain, that does not show that a partial explanation is totally useless. As we have seen, explanations can be useful even when they are incomplete, and even though they are not used to justify any disputed claim. Explanation is, thus, a separate use of arguments.

Houses in Indonesia sometimes have their electrical outlets in the middle of the wall rather than at floor level. Why? A beginning of an explanation is that flooding is a danger in the Netherlands. Citing this fact does not help much, however, unless one remembers that Indonesia was formerly a Dutch colony. We can understand why the Dutch might put their electrical outlets above floor level in the Netherlands. It is safer in a country where flooding is a danger. Is flooding, then, a similar danger in Indonesia? Apparently not; so why did the Dutch continue this practice in Indonesia? The answer is that colonial settlers tend to preserve their home customs, practices, and styles. The Dutch continued to build Dutch-style houses with the electrical outlets where (for them) they are normally placed—that is, in the middle of the wall rather than at floor level. Restate this explanation in the form of an argument (that is, specify its premises and conclusion).

Exercise II

Write a brief argument to explain each of the following. Indicate what facts and what general principles are employed in your explanations. (Do not forget those principles that may seem too obvious to mention.)

1. Why a lighter-than-air balloon rises. 2. Why there is an international date line. 3. Why average temperatures tend to be higher closer to the equator. 4. Why there are usually more college freshmen who plan to go to medical

school than there are seniors who still plan to go to medical school. 5. Why almost no textbooks are more than eighteen inches high. 6. Why most cars have four tires (instead of more or fewer). 7. Why paintings by Van Gogh cost so much. 8. Why wages go up when unemployment goes down.

Exercise III

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CHAPTER 1 ■ Uses of Arguments

COMBINATIONS: AN EXAMPLE

Although justification and explanation are distinct uses of arguments, we often want to know both what happened and also why it happened. Then we need to combine justifications and explanations. We can see how this works by considering a fictional crime.

Imagine that Madison was arrested for murdering her husband, Victor. Now she is on trial, and you are on the jury. Presumably, the police and the prosecuting attorneys would not have arrested and prosecuted her if they did not believe that Madison committed the murder, but are their beliefs justified? Should she be convicted and sent to prison? That’s up to you and the other jurors to decide.

You do not want to convict her arbitrarily, of course, so you need arguments to justify you in believing that Madison is guilty. The goal of prosecuting attorneys is to provide such justification. Their means of reaching this goal is to present evidence and arguments during the trial. Although their ultimate conclusion is that you should find Madison guilty of murder, the prosecutors need to justify lots of little claims along the way.

It might seem too obvious to mention, but the prosecution first needs an argument to show that the victim died. After all, if nobody died, nobody was killed. This first argument can be pretty simple: This person was walk- ing and talking before he was shot in the head; now his heart has stopped beating for a long time; so he must be dead. There can be complications, since some gunshot victims can be revived, but let’s assume that an argu- ment like this justifies the claim that the victim is dead.

We also want to know who the victim was. The body was identified by several of Victor’s friends, we assume, so all the prosecution needs to argue is that identifications like this are usually correct, so it was Victor who died. This second argument also provides a justification, but it differs from the first argument in several ways. The first argument referred directly to the facts about Victor that show he died, whereas this second argument does not say which features of the victim show that it was Victor. Instead, this ar- gument relies on trusting other people—Victor’s friends—without knowing what it was about the victim’s face that made them think it was Victor. Such appeals to authority will be discussed in more detail in Chapters 3 and 15.

The third issue is the cause of death. Here it is common to appeal to a medical authority. In our case, the coroner or medical examiner makes

It is sometimes said that science tells us how things happen but does not tell us why they happen. In what ways is this contention right, and in what ways is it wrong?

Discussion Question

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Comb inat ions : An Example

observations or runs scientific tests that provide premises for another argument that is supposed to justify the conclusion that Victor’s death was caused by a bullet to the head. This argument is also an appeal to an author- ity, but here the authority is a scientific expert rather than a friend.

Yet another argument, possibly based on firing marks on the bullet, can then justify you in believing that the bullet came from a certain gun. More arguments, possibly based on eyewitnesses, then justify the claims that Madison was the person who fired that gun at Victor. And so on.

All of these arguments depend on background assumptions. When you see the marks on the bullet that killed Victor line up with the marks on an- other bullet that was fired from the alleged murder weapon, you assume that guns leave distinctive marks on bullets and that nobody switched the bullets. A good prosecutor will provide arguments for these assumptions, but nobody can prove everything. Arguments always start from assump- tions. This problem will occupy us at several points later, including parts of Chapters 3 and 5. The point for now is just that the prosecution needs to produce several arguments of various kinds in order to justify the claim that Madison killed Victor.

It is also crucial that killing violates the law. If not, then Madison should not be found guilty for killing Victor. So, how can the prosecutor justify the assumption that such killing is illegal? Prosecutors usually just quote a statute or cite a common law principle and apply it to the case, but that argument assumes a lot of background information. In the case of a statute, there must be a duly elected legislature, it must have jurisdiction over the place and time where and when the killing occurred, it must follow required procedures, and the content of the law must be constitutionally permissible. Given such a context, if the legislature says that a certain kind of killing is illegal, then it is illegal. It is fascinating that merely announcing that some- thing is illegal thereby makes it illegal. We will explore such performatives and speech acts in Chapter 2. For now we will simply assume that all of these arguments could be provided if needed.

Even so, Madison might have had some justification for killing Victor, such as self-defense. This justification for her act can be presented in an ar- gument basically like this: I have a reason to protect my own life, and I need to kill Victor first in order to protect my own life, so I have a reason to kill Victor. This justification differs in several ways from the kind of justification that we have been discussing so far. For one thing, this argument provides a reason for a different person—a reason for Madison—whereas the pre- ceding arguments provided a reason for you as a juror. This argument also provides a reason with a different kind of object, since it justifies an action (killing Victor) whereas the previous arguments justified a belief (the belief that Madison did kill Victor). It provides a practical reason instead of an in- tellectual reason. Despite these differences, however, if her attorneys want to show that Madison has this new kind of justification, they need to give an argument to show that she was justified in doing what she did.

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CHAPTER 1 ■ Uses of Arguments

Even if Madison had no justification, she still might have had an excuse. Whereas a justification is supposed to show that the act was the right thing to do, an excuse admits that the act was wrong but tries to show that the agent was not fully responsible for doing it. Madison might, for example, argue that she honestly believed that Victor was going to kill her if she did not kill him first. If she offers this only as an excuse, she can admit that her belief was mistaken, so she had no justification for killing Victor. Her claim is, instead, that she was not fully responsible for his death because she was only trying to defend herself.

Excuses like this are, in effect, explanations. By citing her mistake, Madison explains why she did what she did. If she had killed Victor because she hated him or because she wanted to take his money, then she would have no excuse. Her act is less blameworthy, however, if she was mistaken. Of course, you should be careful before you shoot someone, so Madison could still be guilty of carelessness or negligence. But that is not as bad as killing someone out of hatred or for money. Her mistake might even be reasonable. If Victor was aiming a gun at her, then, even if it turned out not to be loaded, any rational person in her position might have thought that Victor was on the attack. Such reasonable mistakes might reduce or even remove respon- sibility. Thus, by explaining her act as a mistake, Madison puts her act in a better light than it would appear without that explanation. In general, an excuse is just an explanation of an act that puts that act in a better light by reducing the agent’s responsibility.

To offer an excuse, then, Madison’s defense attorneys will need to give arguments whose purpose is not justification but explanation. This excuse will then determine what she is guilty of. Whether Madison is guilty of first-degree murder or some lesser charge, such as second-degree murder or manslaughter, or even no crime at all, depends on the explanation for her act of killing Victor.

Several of the earlier arguments also provided explanations. The medical examiner cited the head wound to explain why Victor stopped breathing. The victim’s identity explained why his friends said he was Victor. The fact that the bullet came out of a particular gun explained why it had certain markings. The legislature’s vote explained why the killing was illegal. And so on.

In this way, what appears at first to be a simple case actually depends on a complex chain of arguments that mixes justifications with explanations. All of these justifications and explanations can be understood by presenting them explicitly in the form of arguments.

One final point is crucial. Suppose that Madison has no justification or excuse for killing Victor. It is still not enough for the prosecutor to give any old argument that Madison killed Victor. The prosecution must prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. This burden of proof makes the strength of the argument crucial. You as a juror should not convict, even if you think Madison is guilty, unless the prosecution’s argument meets this high

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Comb inat ions : An Example

standard. In this case, as in many others, it is not enough just to be able to identify the argument and to understand its purpose. You also need to deter- mine how strong it is.

For such reasons, we all need to understand arguments and to be able to evaluate them. This need arises not only in law but also in life, such as when we decide which candidate to vote for, what course to take, whether to be- lieve that your spouse is cheating on you, and so on. The goal of this book is to teach the skills needed for understanding and assessing arguments about important issues like these.

In his famous testimony to the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003, which was forty-two days before U.S. troops entered Iraq, Secretary of State Colin Powell gave several arguments for his main conclusion that Saddam Hussein was at that time still trying to obtain fissile material for a nuclear weapons program. His arguments mix justification with explanation. For each of his arguments, determine whether it is a justification or an explanation. How does each argument work? How strong is it? How would you respond if you disagreed? How would you defend that part against criticisms? It will, of course, be difficult to answer these questions before studying the rest of this book. However, it is worthwhile to reflect on how much you already understand at the start. It is also useful to have some concrete examples to keep in mind as you study arguments in more depth.

Let me turn now to nuclear weapons. We have no indication that Saddam Hussein has ever abandoned his nuclear weapons program. On the contrary, we have more than a decade of proof that he remains determined to acquire nuclear weapons.

To fully appreciate the challenge that we face today, remember that in 1991 the inspectors searched Iraq’s primary nuclear weapons facilities for the first time, and they found nothing to conclude that Iraq had a nuclear weap- ons program. But, based on defector information, in May of 1991, Saddam Hussein’s lie was exposed. In truth, Saddam Hussein had a massive clandes- tine nuclear weapons program that covered several different techniques to enrich uranium, including electromagnetic isotope separation, gas centrifuge and gas diffusion.

We estimate that this illicit program cost the Iraqis several billion dollars. Nonetheless, Iraq continued to tell the IAEA that it had no nuclear weapons program. If Saddam had not been stopped, Iraq could have produced a nu- clear bomb by 1993, years earlier than most worst case assessments that had been made before the war.

In 1995, as a result of another defector, we find out that, after his invasion of Kuwait, Saddam Hussein had initiated a crash program to build a crude

Discussion Question

(continued)

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CHAPTER 1 ■ Uses of Arguments

nuclear weapon, in violation of Iraq’s UN obligations. Saddam Hussein al- ready possesses two out of the three key components needed to build a nu- clear bomb. He has a cadre of nuclear scientists with the expertise, and he has a bomb design.

Since 1998, his efforts to reconstitute his nuclear program have been fo- cused on acquiring the third and last component: sufficient fissile material to produce a nuclear explosion. To make the fissile material, he needs to develop an ability to enrich uranium. Saddam Hussein is determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb.

He is so determined that he has made repeated covert attempts to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes from eleven different countries, even after inspections resumed. These tubes are controlled by the Nuclear Suppliers Group precisely because they can be used as centrifuges for enriching uranium.

By now, just about everyone has heard of these tubes and we all know that there are differences of opinion. There is controversy about what these tubes are for. Most U.S. experts think they are intended to serve as rotors in centri- fuges used to enrich uranium. Other experts, and the Iraqis themselves, argue that they are really to produce the rocket bodies for a conventional weapon, a multiple rocket launcher.

Let me tell you what is not controversial about these tubes. First, all the experts who have analyzed the tubes in our possession agree that they can be adapted for centrifuge use.

Second, Iraq had no business buying them for any purpose. They are banned for Iraq.

I am no expert on centrifuge tubes, but this is an old army trooper. I can tell you a couple things.

First, it strikes me as quite odd that these tubes are manufactured to a toler- ance that far exceeds U.S. requirements for comparable rockets. Maybe Iraqis just manufacture their conventional weapons to a higher standard than we do, but I don’t think so.

Second, we actually have examined tubes from several different batches that were seized clandestinely before they reached Baghdad. What we notice in these different batches is a progression to higher and higher levels of specifi- cation, including in the latest batch an anodized coating on extremely smooth inner and outer surfaces.

Why would they continue refining the specifications? Why would they go to all that trouble for something that, if it was a rocket, would soon be blown into shrapnel when it went off?

The high-tolerance aluminum tubes are only part of the story. We also have intelligence from multiple sources that Iraq is attempting to acquire magnets and high-speed balancing machines. Both items can be used in a gas centrifuge program to enrich uranium.

In 1999 and 2000, Iraqi officials negotiated with firms in Romania, India, Russia and Slovenia for the purchase of a magnet production plant. Iraq wanted the plant to produce magnets weighing twenty to thirty grams. That’s the same weight as the magnets used in Iraq’s gas centrifuge program before the Gulf War.

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Comb inat ions : An Example

This incident, linked with the tubes, is another indicator of Iraq’s attempt to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program.

Intercepted communications from mid-2000 through last summer showed that Iraqi front companies sought to buy machines that can be used to bal- ance gas centrifuge rotors. One of these companies also had been involved in a failed effort in 2001 to smuggle aluminum tubes into Iraq.

People will continue to debate this issue, but there is no doubt in my mind. These illicit procurement efforts show that Saddam Hussein is very much fo- cused on putting in place the key missing piece from his nuclear weapons pro- gram, the ability to produce fissile material.

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The Web of Language

Arguments are made up of language, so we cannot understand arguments without first understanding language. This chapter will examine some of the basic features of language, stressing three main ideas. First, language is conventional. Words acquire meaning within a rich system of linguistic conventions and rules. Second, the uses of language are diverse. We use language to communicate information, but we also use it to ask questions, issue orders, write poetry, keep score, formulate arguments, and perform an almost endless number of other tasks. Third, meaning is often conveyed indirectly. To understand the significance of many utterances, we must go beyond what is literally said to examine what is conversationally implied by saying it.

LANGUAGE AND CONVENTION

The preceding chapter stressed that arguing is a practical activity. More spe- cifically, it is a linguistic activity. Arguing is one of the many things that we can do with words. In fact, unlike things that we can accomplish both with words and without words (like making people happy, angry, and so forth), arguing is something we can only do with words or other meaningful sym- bols. That is why nonhuman animals never give arguments. To understand how arguments work, then, it is crucial to understand how language works.

Unfortunately, our understanding of human language is far from com- plete, and linguistics is a young science in which disagreement exists on many important issues. Still, certain facts about language are beyond dis- pute, and recognizing them will provide a background for understanding how arguments work.

As anyone who has bothered to think about it knows, language is conven- tional. There is no reason why we, as English speakers, use the word “dog” to refer to a dog rather than to a cat, a tree, or the number of planets in our solar system. It seems that any word might have been used to stand for any- thing. Beyond this, there seems to be no reason why we put words together the way we do. In English, we put adjectives before the nouns they modify. We thus speak of a “green salad.” In French, adjectives usually follow the noun, and so, instead of saying “verte salade,” the French say “salade verte.”

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CHAPTER 2 ■ The Web of Language

The conventions of our own language are so much with us that it strikes us as odd when we discover that other languages have different conventions. A French diplomat once praised his own language because, as he said, it fol- lowed the natural order of thought. This strikes English speakers as silly, but in seeing why it is silly, we see that the word order in our own language is conventional as well.

Although it is important to realize that language is conventional, it is also important not to misunderstand this fact. From the idea that language is con- ventional, it is easy to conclude that language is totally arbitrary. If language is totally arbitrary, then it might seem that it really does not matter which words we use or how we put them together. It takes only a little thought to see that this view, however daring it might seem, misrepresents the role of conventions in language. If we wish to communicate with others, we must follow the system of conventions that others use. Grapefruits are more like big lemons than like grapes, so you might want to call them “mega-lemons.” Still, if you order a glass of mega-lemon juice in a restaurant, you will get stares and smirks but no grapefruit juice. The same point lies behind this famous passage in Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll:

“There’s glory for you!” “I don’t know what you mean by ‘glory’,” Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. “Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant ‘there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!’” “But ‘glory’ doesn’t mean ‘a nice knock-down argument’,” Alice objected. “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” “The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

The point, of course, is that Humpty Dumpty cannot make a word mean whatever he wants it to mean, and he cannot communicate if he uses words in his own peculiar way without regard to what those words themselves mean. Communication can take place only within a shared system of con- ventions. Conventions do not destroy meaning by making it arbitrary; con- ventions bring meaning into existence.

A misunderstanding of the conventional nature of language can lead to pointless disputes. Sometimes, in the middle of a discussion, someone will declare that “the whole thing is just a matter of definition” or “what you say is true by your definition, false by mine.” There are times when defini- tions are important and the truth of what is said turns on them, but usually this is not the case. Suppose someone has fallen off a cliff and is heading toward certain death on the rocks below. Of course, it is a matter of conven- tion that we use the word “death” to describe the result of the sudden, sharp stop at the end of the fall. We might have used some other word—perhaps “birth”—instead. But it certainly will not help a person who is falling to his

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Lingu ist ic Acts

certain death to shout out, “By ‘birth’ I mean death.” It will not help even if everyone agrees to use these words in this new way. If we all decided to adopt this new convention, we would then say, “He is falling from the cliff to his certain birth” instead of “He is falling from the cliff to his certain death.” But speaking in this way will not change the facts. It will not save him from per- ishing. It will not make those who care for him feel better.

The upshot of this simple example is that the truth of what we say is rarely just a matter of definition. Whether what we have said is true or not will depend, for the most part, on how things stand in the world. Abraham Lincoln, during his days as a trial lawyer, is reported to have cross-examined a witness like this:

“How many legs does a horse have?” “Four,” said the witness. “Now, if we call a tail a leg, how many legs does a horse have?” “Five,” answered the witness. “Nope,” said Abe, “calling a tail a leg don’t make it a leg.”

In general, then, though the meaning of what we say is dependent on conven- tion, the truth of what we say is not.

In the preceding sentence we used the qualifying phrase, “in general.” To say that a claim holds in general indicates that there may be exceptions. This qualification is needed because sometimes the truth of what we say is simply a matter of definition. Take a simple example: The claim that a trian- gle has three sides is true by definition, because a triangle is defined as “a closed figure having three sides.” Again, if someone says that sin is wrong, he or she has said something that is true by definition, for a sin is defined as, among other things, “something that is wrong.” In unusual cases like these, things are true merely as a matter of convention. Still, in general, the truth of what we say is settled not by appealing to definitions but, instead, by looking at the facts. In this way, language is not arbitrary, even though it is conventional.

LINGUISTIC ACTS

In the previous section we saw that a language is a system of shared con- ventions that allows us to communicate with one another. If we examine language, we will see that it contains many different kinds of conventions. These conventions govern what we will call linguistic acts, speech acts, and conversational acts. We will discuss linguistic acts first.

We have seen that words have meanings conventionally attached to them. The word “dog” is used conventionally to talk about dogs. Given what our words mean, it would be incorrect to call dogs “airplanes.” Proper names are also conventionally assigned, for Harry Jones could have been named

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CHAPTER 2 ■ The Web of Language

Wilbur Jones. Still, given that his name is not Wilbur, it would be improper to call him Wilbur. Rules like these, which govern meaning and reference, can be called semantic rules.

Other conventions concern the ways words can be put together to form sentences. These are often called syntactic or grammatical rules. Using the three words “John,” “hit,” and “Harry,” we can formulate sentences with very different meanings, such as “John hit Harry” and “Harry hit John.” We recognize that these sentences have different meanings, because we understand the grammar of our language. This grammatical understanding also allows us to see that the sentence “Hit John Harry” has no determinate meaning, even though the individual words do. (Notice that “Hit John, Harry!” does mean something: It is a way of telling Harry to hit John.) Grammatical rules are important, for they play a part in giving a meaning to combinations of words, such as sentences.

Some of our grammatical rules play only a small role in this important task of giving meaning to combinations of words. It is bad grammar to say, “If I was you, I wouldn’t do that,” but it is still clear what information the person is trying to convey. What might be called stylistic rules of grammar are of relatively little importance for logic, but grammatical rules that af- fect the meaning or content of what is said are essential to logical analy- sis. Grammatical rules of this kind can determine whether we have said one thing rather than another, or perhaps failed to say anything at all and have merely spoken nonsense.

It is sometimes hard to tell what is nonsense. Consider “The horse raced past the barn fell.” This sentence usually strikes people as nonsense when they hear it for the first time. To show them that it actually makes sense, all we need to do is insert two words: “The horse that was raced past the barn fell.” Since English allows us to drop “that was,” the original sentence means the same as the slightly expanded version. Sentences like these are called “garden path sentences,” because the first few words “lead you down the garden path” by suggesting that some word plays a grammatical role that it really does not play. In this example, “The horse raced . . .” suggests at first that the main verb is “raced.” That makes it hard to see that the main verb really is “fell.”

Another famous example is “Buffalo buffalo buffalo.” Again, this seems like nonsense at first, but then someone points out that “buffalo” can be a verb meaning “to confuse.” The sentence “Buffalo buffalo buf- falo” then means “North American bison confuse North American bison.” Indeed, we can even make sense out of “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo.” This means “North American bison from Buffalo, New York, that North American bison from Buffalo, New York, confuse also confuse North American bi- son from Buffalo, New York, that North American bison from Buffalo, New York, confuse.”

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Lingu ist ic Acts

Examples like these show that sentences can have linguistic meaning when they seem meaningless. To be meaningful, sentences need to follow both semantic conventions that govern meanings of individual words and also syntactic or grammatical conventions that lay down rules for combining words into meaningful wholes. When a sentence satisfies essential seman- tic and syntactic conventions, we will say that the person who uttered that sentence performed a linguistic act: The speaker said something meaningful in a language.1 The ability to perform linguistic acts shows a command of a language. What the speaker says may be false, irrelevant, boring, and so on; but, if in saying it linguistic rules are not seriously violated, then that person can be credited with performing a linguistic act.

Later, in Chapters 13 and 14, we will look more closely at semantic and syntactic conventions, for they are common sources of fallacies and other confusions. In particular, we shall see how these conventions can generate fallacies of ambiguity and fallacies of vagueness. Before examining the de- fects of our language, however, we should first appreciate that language is a powerful and subtle tool that allows us to perform a wide variety of jobs important for living in the world.

Read each of the following sentences aloud. Did you perform a linguistic act? If so, explain what the sentence means and why it might not seem meaningful.

1. The old man the ship. 2. Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. 3. Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like bananas. 4. The cotton clothing is made of grows in Mississippi. 5. The square root of pine is tree. 6. The man who whistles tunes pianos. 7. “ ’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves did gyre and gimble in the wabe.”

(From Lewis Carroll)

And now some weird examples from Dan Wegner’s Hidden Brain Damage Scale. If these make sense to you, it might be a sign of hidden brain damage. If they don’t make sense, explain why:

8. People tell me one thing one day and out the other. 9. I feel as much like I did yesterday as I do today. 10. My throat is closer than it seems. 11. I’ve lost all sensation in my shirt. 12. There’s only one thing for me.

Exercise I

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CHAPTER 2 ■ The Web of Language

SPEECH ACTS

When asked about the function of language, it is natural to reply that we use language to describe objects and communicate ideas. These are, how- ever, only some of the purposes for which we use language. Other purposes become obvious as soon as we look at the ways in which our language actu- ally works. Adding up a column of figures is a linguistic activity—though it is rarely looked at in this way—but it does not describe any objects (since numbers are not objects) or communicate any ideas to others. When I add the figures, I am not even communicating anything to myself; I am just try- ing to figure something out. A look at our everyday conversations produces a host of other examples of language being used for different purposes. Grammarians, for example, have divided sentences into various moods, among which are:

Indicative: Barry Bonds hit a home run. Imperative: Get in there and hit a home run, Barry! Interrogative: Did Barry Bonds hit a home run? Expressive: Hurray for Barry Bonds!

1. When someone hums (but does not sing) the “Star-Spangled Banner,” does she perform a linguistic act? Why or why not?

2. Can a speaker mispronounce a word in a sentence without performing any linguistic act? Why or why not?

Discussion Questions

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Speech Acts

The first sentence states a fact. We can use it to communicate information about something that Barry Bonds did. If we use it in this way, then what we say will be either true or false. Notice that none of the other sentences can be called either true or false even though they are all meaningful.

PERFORMATIVES

The different types of sentences recognized by traditional grammarians show that we use language to do more than convey information, but they still give only a small sample of the wide variety of things that we can ac- complish using language. Sometimes, for example, we use language to per- form an action. In one familiar setting, if one person says, “I do,” and another person says, “I do,” and finally a third person says, “I now pronounce you husband and wife,” the relationship between the first two people changes in a fundamental way: They thereby become married. With luck, they begin a life of wedded bliss, but they also alter their legal relationship. For example, they may now file joint income tax returns and may not legally marry other people without first getting divorced. The philosopher J. L. Austin labeled such utterances performatives in order to contrast performing an action with simply stating or describing something.2

Performatives come in a wide variety of forms. They are often in the first per- son (like “I do”), but not always. For example, “You’re all invited to my house after the game” is in the second person, but uttering it performs the act of invit- ing. Even silence can amount to a performative act in special situations. When the chairperson of a meeting asks if there are any objections to a ruling and none is voiced, then the voters, through their silence, have accepted the ruling.

Because of this diversity of forms, it is not easy to formulate a definition that covers all performatives, so we will not even try to define performatives here. Instead, we will concentrate on one particularly clear subclass of per- formatives, which J. L. Austin called explicit performatives. All explicit perfor- matives are utterances in the first-person singular indicative noncontinuous3 present. But not all utterances of that form are explicit performatives. There is one more requirement:

An utterance of that form is an explicit performative if and only if it yields a true statement when plugged into the following pattern: In saying “I _____” in appropriate circumstances, I thereby _____.

For example, “I congratulate you” expresses an explicit performative, be- cause in saying “I congratulate you,” I thereby congratulate you. Here a quoted expression occurs on the left side of the word “thereby” but not on the right side. This reflects the fact that the formula takes us from the words (which are quoted) to the world (the actual act that is performed). The say- ing, which is referred to on the left side of the pattern, amounts to the do- ing referred to on the right side of the word “thereby.” We will call this the thereby test for explicit performatives.

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The thereby test includes an important qualification: The context of the utterance must be appropriate. You have not congratulated anyone if you say, “I congratulate you,” when no one is around, unless you are congratulating yourself. Congratu- lations said by an actor in a play are not real congratulations, and so on.

Assuming an appropriate context, all of the following sentences meet the thereby test:

I promise to meet you tomorrow. I bid sixty-six dollars. (Said at an auction) I bid one club. (Said in a bridge game) I resign from this club. I apologize for being late.

Notice that it doesn’t make sense to deny any of these performatives. If someone says, “I bid sixty-six dollars,” it is not appropriate for someone to reply “No, you don’t” or “That’s false.” It could, however, be appropriate for someone to reply, “You can’t bid sixty-six dollars, because the bidding is already up to seventy dollars.” In this case, the person tried to make a bid, but failed to do so.

Several explicit performatives play important roles in constructing arguments. These include sentences of the following kind:

I conclude that this bill should be voted down. I base my conclusion on the assumption that we do not want to hurt

the poor. I stipulate that anyone who earns less than $10,000 is poor. I assure you that this bill will hurt the poor. I concede that I am not absolutely certain. I admit that there is much to be said on both sides of this issue. I give my support to the alternative measure. I deny that this alternative will hurt the economy. I grant for the sake of argument that some poor people are lazy. I reply that most poor people contribute to the economy. I reserve comment on other issues raised by this bill.

We will call this kind of performative an argumentative performative. Studying such argumentative performatives can help us to understand what is going on in arguments, which is one main reason why we are studying performatives here.

In contrast to the above utterances, which pass the thereby test, none of the following utterances does:

I agree with you. (This describes one’s thoughts or beliefs, so, unlike a performative, it can be false.)

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Speech Acts

I am sorry for being late. (This describes one’s feelings and could be false.)

Yesterday I bid sixty dollars. (This is a statement about a past act and might be false.)

I’ll meet you tomorrow. (This utterance may only be a prediction that can turn out to be false.)

Questions, imperatives, and exclamations are also not explicit performa- tives, because they cannot sensibly be plugged into the thereby test at all. They do not have the right form, since they are not in the first-person singu- lar indicative noncontinuous present.

Using the thereby test as described above, indicate which of the following sentences express explicit performatives (EP) and which do not express explicit performatives (N) in appropriate circumstances:

1. I pledge allegiance to the flag. 2. We pledge allegiance to the flag. 3. I pledged allegiance to the flag. 4. I always pledge allegiance at the start of a game. 5. You pledge allegiance to the flag. 6. He pledges allegiance to the flag. 7. He doesn’t pledge allegiance to the flag. 8. Pledge allegiance to the flag! 9. Why don’t you pledge allegiance to the flag? 10. Pierre is the capital of South Dakota. 11. I state that Pierre is the capital of South Dakota. 12. I order you to leave. 13. Get out of here! 14. I didn’t take it. 15. I swear that I didn’t take it. 16. I won’t talk to you. 17. I refuse to talk to you. 18. I’m out of gas. 19. I feel devastated. 20. Bummer! 21. I claim this land for England. 22. I bring you greetings from home.

Exercise II

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KINDS OF SPEECH ACTS

Recognizing explicit performatives introduces us to a kind of act distinct from linguistic acts. We will call them speech acts.4 They include such acts as stating, promising, swearing, and refusing. A speech act is the conventional move that a remark makes in a language exchange. It is what is done in say- ing something.

Speech acts are distinct from linguistic acts, because the same linguistic act can play different roles in different contexts. This is shown by the follow- ing brief conversations.

A: Is there any pizza left? B: Yes. A: Do you promise to pay me back by Friday? B: Yes. A: Do you swear to tell the truth? B: Yes. A: Do you refuse to leave? B: Yes.

Here the same linguistic act, uttering the word “yes,” is used to do four dif- ferent things: to state something, to make a promise, to take an oath, and to refuse to do something.

We can make this idea of a speech act clearer by using the notion of an explicit performative. The basic idea is that different speech acts are named by the different verbs that occur in explicit performatives. We can thus use the thereby test to search for different kinds of speech acts. For example:

If I say, “I promise,” I thereby promise. So “I promise” is a performative, and promising is a kind of speech act.

If I say, “I resign,” I thereby resign. So “I resign” is a performative, and resigning is a kind of speech act.

If I say, “I apologize,” I thereby apologize. So “I apologize” is a performative, and apologizing is a kind of speech act.

If I say, “I question his honesty,” I thereby question his honesty. So “I question his honesty” is a performative, and questioning is a kind of speech act.

If I say, “I conclude that she is guilty,” I thereby conclude that she is guilty. So “I conclude that she is guilty” is a performative, and concluding is a kind of speech act.

The main verbs that appear in such explicit performatives can be called performative verbs. Performative verbs name kinds of speech acts.

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Speech Acts

Still, the same speech act can also be accomplished without any perfor- mative verb. I can deny my opponent’s claim by saying either “I deny that” or simply “No way!” Both utterances perform the speech act of denying, even though only the former is a performative. The latter is not a perfor- mative and does not contain any performative verb, but it still performs a speech act.

Nonetheless, speech acts depend on context in much the same way as performatives. If a baseball umpire during a game shouts, “You’re out!” to a batter then the batter is out. By way of contrast, if someone in the stands shouts, “You’re out!” or “He’s out!” the batter is not thereby out, although the person who shouts this may be encouraging the umpire to call the batter out or complaining because he didn’t. And even an umpire cannot call a player out if the player is not at bat, but is pitching or in the dugout. The identity of the speaker and the audience as well as the circumstances thus determines whether the speech act is accomplished. Similarly, in a less formal setting, I cannot invite someone to your party (unless you gave me permission to do so), and I cannot congratulate you for losing your job (at least not sincerely). This example shows that a speech act will fail to come off or will be void unless certain rules or conventions are satisfied. These rules or conventions that must be satisfied for a speech act to come off and not be void can be called speech act rules.

Which of the following verbs names a speech act?

1. capture the suspect 2. assert that the suspect is guilty 3. stare accusingly at the suspect 4. find the defendant guilty 5. punish the defendant 6. take the defendant away 7. revoke the defendant’s driver’s license 8. welcome the prisoner to prison 9. order the prisoner to be silent 10. lock the cell door

Exercise III

Using a dictionary, find ten verbs that can be used to construct explicit performatives that have not yet been mentioned in this chapter.

Exercise IV

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1. Do the speech acts in which people get married presuppose that the people who are getting married are of different sexes? Should these speech acts pre- suppose this fact? Why or why not?

2. The importance of deciding what kind of speech act has been performed is il- lustrated by a classic case from the law of contracts, Hawkins v. McGee.5 McGee performed an operation on Hawkins that proved unsuccessful, and Hawkins sued for damages. He did not sue on the basis of malpractice, however, but on the basis of breach of contract. His attorney argued that the doctor initiated a contractual relationship in that he tried to persuade Hawkins to have the op- eration by saying things such as “I will guarantee to make the hand a hundred percent perfect hand.” He made statements of this kind a number of times, and Hawkins finally agreed to undergo the operation on the basis of these re- marks. Hawkins’s attorney maintained that these exchanges, which took place in the doctor’s office on a number of occasions, constituted an offer of a con- tract that Hawkins explicitly accepted. The attorney for the surgeon replied that these words, even if uttered, would not constitute an offer of a contract, but merely expressed a strong belief, and that reasonable people should know that doctors cannot guarantee results.

It is important to remember that contracts do not have to be written and signed to be binding. A proper verbal offer and acceptance are usually sufficient to constitute a contract. The case, then, turned on two questions: (1) Did McGee utter the words attributed to him? In other words, did McGee perform the linguistic act attributed to him? The jury decided that he did. (2) The second, more interesting question was whether these words, when uttered in this particular context, amounted to an offer of a contract, as Hawkins’s attorney maintained, or merely were an expression of strong belief, as McGee’s attorney held. In other words, the fundamental question in this case was what kind of speech act McGee performed when trying to convince Hawkins to have the operation.

Explain how you would settle this case. (The court actually ruled in favor of Hawkins, but you are free to disagree.)

Discussion Questions

CONVERSATIONAL ACTS

In examining linguistic acts (saying something meaningful in a language) and then speech acts (doing something in using words), we have largely ig- nored a central feature of language: It is normally a practical activity with certain goals. We use language in order to inform people of things, get them to do things, amuse them, calm them down, and so on. We can capture this practical aspect of language by introducing the notion of a conversational ex- change, that is, a situation where various speakers use speech acts in order to bring about some effects in each other. We will call this act of using a speech act to cause a standard effect in another a conversational act.

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Conversat ional Acts

Suppose, for example, Amy says to Bobbi, “Someone is following us.” In this case, Amy has performed a linguistic act; that is, she has uttered a mean- ingful sentence in the English language. Amy has also performed a speech act—specifically, she has stated that they are being followed. The point of performing this speech act is to produce in Bobbi a particular belief— namely, that they are being followed. (Amy’s utterance might also have other purposes, such as to alert Bobbi to some danger, but it accomplishes those other purposes by means of getting Bobbi to believe they are being followed.) If Amy is successful in this, then Amy has successfully performed the conversational act of producing this belief in Bobbi. Amy, of course, might fail in her attempt to do this. Amy’s linguistic act could be successful and her speech act successful as well, yet, for whatever reason, Bobbi might not accept as true what Amy is telling her. Perhaps Bobbi thinks that Amy is paranoid or just trying to frighten her as some kind of joke. In that case, Amy failed to perform her intended conversational act, even though she did perform her intended linguistic and speech acts.

Here are some other examples of the difference between performing a speech act and performing a conversational act:

We can warn people about something in order to put them on guard concerning it.

Here warning is the speech act; putting them on guard is the intended conversational act.

We can urge people to do things in order to persuade them to do these things. Here urging is the speech act; persuading is the intended conversational act.

We can assure people concerning something in order to instill confidence in them.

Here assuring is the speech act; instilling confidence is the intended conversational act.

We can apologize to people in order to make them feel better about us. Here apologizing is the speech act; making them feel better about us is

the intended conversational act.

In each of these cases, our speech act may not succeed in having its intended conversational effect. Our urging, warning, and assuring may, respectively, fail to persuade, put on guard, or instill confidence. Indeed, speech acts may bring about the opposite of what was intended. People who brag (a speech act) in order to impress others (the intended conversational act) often actually make others think less of them (the actual effect). In many ways like these, we can perform a speech act without performing the intended conversational act.

The relationship between conversational acts and speech acts is confus- ing, because both of them can be performed at once by the same utterance. Suppose Carl says, “You are invited to my party.” By means of this single

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utterance, he performs a linguistic act of uttering this meaningful sentence, a speech act of inviting you, and perhaps also a conversational act of get- ting you to come to his party. Indeed, he would not be able to perform this conversational act without also performing such a speech act, assuming that you would not come to his party if you were not invited. He would also not be able to perform this speech act without performing this linguistic act or something like it, since he cannot invite you by means of an inarticulate grunt or by asking, “Are you invited to my party?”

As a result, we cannot sensibly ask whether Carl’s utterance of “You are invited to my party” is a linguistic act, a speech act, or a conversational act. That single utterance performs all three acts at once. Nonetheless, we can distinguish those kinds of acts that Carl performs in terms of the verbs that describe the acts. Some verbs describe speech acts; other verbs describe con- versational acts. We can tell which verbs describe which kinds of acts by asking whether the verb passes the thereby test (in which case the verb de- scribes a speech act) or whether, instead, it describes a standard effect of the utterance (in which case the verb describes a conversational act).

Indicate whether the verbs in the following sentences name a speech act, a conversational act, or neither. Assume a standard context. Explain your answers.

1. She thought that he did it. 2. She asserted that he did it. 3. She convinced them that he did it. 4. She condemned him in front of everyone. 5. She challenged his integrity. 6. She embarrassed him in front of them. 7. He denied doing it. 8. They believed her. 9. They encouraged him to admit it. 10. She told him to get lost. 11. He praised her lavishly. 12. His praise made her happy. 13. He threatened to reveal her secret. 14. He submitted his resignation. 15. Her news frightened him half to death. 16. He advised her to go into another line of work. 17. She blamed him for her troubles. 18. His lecture enlightened her. 19. His jokes amused her. 20. His book confused her.

Exercise V

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Conversat ional Acts

CONVERSATIONAL RULES

Just as there are rules that govern linguistic acts and other rules that gov- ern speech acts, so too there are rules that govern conversational acts. This should not be surprising, because conversations can be complicated inter- personal activities in need of rules to make them effective in attaining their goals. These underlying rules are implicitly understood by users of the lan- guage, but the philosopher Paul Grice was the first person to examine them in careful detail.6

We can start by examining standard or normal conversational exchanges where conversation is a cooperative venture—that is, where the people involved in the conversation have some common goal they are trying to achieve in talking with one another. (A prisoner being interrogated and a shop owner being robbed are not in such cooperative situations.) Accord- ing to Grice, such exchanges are governed by what he calls the Cooperative Principle. This principle states that the parties involved should use language in a way that contributes toward achieving their common goal. It tells them to cooperate.

This general principle gains more content when we consider other forms of cooperation. Carpenters who want to build a house need enough nails and wood, but not too much. They need the right kinds of nails and wood. They also need to put the nails and wood together in the relevant way—that is, according to their plans. And, of course, they also want to perform their tasks quickly and in the right order. Rational people who want to achieve common goals must follow similar general restrictions in other practical ac- tivities. Because cooperative conversations are one such practical activity, speakers who want to cooperate with one another must follow rules analo- gous to those for carpenters.

Grice spells out four such rules. The first he calls the rule of Quantity. It tells us to give the right amount of information. More specifically:

1. Make your contribution as informative as is required (for the current purposes of the exchange);

and possibly:

2. Do not make your contribution more informative than is required.

Here is an application of this rule: A person rushes up to you and asks, “Where is a fire extinguisher?” You know that there is a fire extinguisher five floors away in the basement, and you also know that there is a fire extin- guisher just down the hall. Suppose you say that there is a fire extinguisher in the basement. Here you have said something true, but you have violated the first part of the rule of Quantity. You have failed to reveal an important piece of information that, under the rule of Quantity, you should have pro- duced. A violation of the second version of the rule would look like this: As smoke billows down the hall, you say where a fire extinguisher is located on each floor, starting with the basement. Eventually you will get around to

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saying that there is a fire extinguisher just down the hall, but you bury the point in a mass of unnecessary information.

Grice’s second rule is called the rule of Quality. In general: Try to make your contribution one that is true. More specifically:

1. Do not say what you believe to be false. 2. Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.

In a cooperative activity, you are not supposed to tell lies. Beyond this, you are expected not to talk off the top of your head either. When we make a statement, we can be challenged by someone asking, “Do you really believe that?” or “Why do you believe that?” That a person has the right to ask such questions shows that statement making is governed by the rule of Quality.

In a court of law, witnesses promise to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The demand for nothing but the truth reflects the rule of Qual- ity. The demand for the whole truth roughly reflects the rule of Quantity. Ob- viously, nobody really tells every truth he or she knows. Here the whole truth concerns all the known truths that are relevant in the context.

This brings us to our next rule, the rule of Relevance. Simply stated, the rule of Relevance says:

Be relevant!

Though easy to state, the rule is not easy to explain, because relevance itself is a difficult notion. It is, however, easy to illustrate. If someone asks me where he can find a doctor, I might reply that there is a hospital on the next block. Though not a direct answer to the question, it does not violate the rule of Relevance be- cause it provides a piece of useful information. If, however, in response I tell the person that I like his haircut, then I have violated the rule of Relevance. Clear-cut violations of this principle often involve changing the subject.

Another rule concerns the manner of our conversation. We are expected to be clear in what we say. Under the general rule of Manner come various special rules:

1. Avoid obscurity of expression. 2. Avoid ambiguity. 3. Be brief. 4. Be orderly.

As an example of the fourth part of this rule, when describing a series of events, it is usually important to state them in the order in which they oc- curred. It would certainly be misleading to say that two people had a child and got married when, in fact, they had a child after they were married.

Many other rules govern our conversations. “Be polite!” is one of them. “Be charitable!” is another. That is, we should put the best interpretation on what others say, and our replies should reflect this. We should avoid quibbling and be- ing picky. For the most part, however, we will not worry about these other rules.

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Conversat ional Acts

Indicate which, if any, of Grice’s conversational rules are violated by the italicized sentence of each of the following conversations. Assume a standard context. More than one rule might be violated. 1. “Did you like her singing?” “Her costume was beautiful.” 2. “The governor has the brains of a three-year-old.” 3. “The Lone Ranger rode into the sunset and jumped on his horse.” 4. “Without her help, we’d be up a creek without a paddle.” 5. “Where is Palo Alto?” “On the surface of the Earth.” 6. “It will rain tomorrow.” “How do you know?” “I just guessed.” 7. “Does the dog need to go out for a W-A-L-K [spelled out]?” 8. “Why did the chicken cross the road?” “To get to the other side.”

Exercise VI

CONVERSATIONAL IMPLICATION

In a normal setting where people are cooperating toward reaching a shared goal, they often conform quite closely to Grice’s conversational rules. If, on the whole, people did not do this, we could not have the linguistic practices we do. If we thought, for example, that people very often lied (even about the most trivial matters), the business of exchanging information would be badly damaged.

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Still, people do not always follow these conversational rules. They with- hold information, they elaborate needlessly, they assert what they know to be false, they say the first thing that pops into their heads, they wander off the subject, and they talk vaguely and obscurely. When we observe actual conversations, it is sometimes hard to tell how any information gets com- municated at all.

The explanation lies in the same conversational rules. Not only do we usually follow these conventions, we also (1) implicitly realize that we are following them, and (2) expect others to assume that we are following them. This mutual understanding of the commitments involved in a conversa- tional act has the following important consequence: People are able to con- vey a great deal of information without actually saying it.

A simple example will illustrate this point. Again suppose that a per- son, with smoke billowing behind him, comes running up to you and asks, “Where’s a fire extinguisher?” You reply, “There’s one in the lobby.” Through a combination of conversational rules, notably relevance, quan- tity, and manner, this commits you to the claim that this is the closest, or at least the most accessible, fire extinguisher. Furthermore, the person you are speaking to assumes that you are committed to this. Of course, you have not actually said that it is the closest fire extinguisher; but you have, we might say, implied this. When we do not actually say something but imply it by vir- tue of a mutually understood conversational rule, the implication is called a conversational implication.

It is important to realize that conversational implication is a pervasive feature of human communication. It is not something we employ only occa- sionally for special effect. In fact, virtually every conversation relies on these implications, and most conversations would fall apart if people refused to go beyond literal meanings to take into account the implications of saying things. In the following conversation, B is literal-minded in just this way:

A: Do you know what time it is? B: Not without looking at my watch.

B has answered A’s question, but it is hard to imagine that A has received the information she was looking for. Presumably, she wanted to know what time it was, not merely whether B, at that very moment, knew the time. Finding B rather obtuse, A tries again:

A: Can you tell me what time it is? B: Oh, yes, all I have to do is look at my watch.

Undaunted, A gives it another try:

A: Will you tell me what time it is? B: I suppose I will as soon as you ask me.

Finally:

A: What time is it? B: Two o’clock. Why didn’t you ask me that in the first place?

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Conversat ional Acts

Notice that in each of these exchanges B gives a direct and accurate answer to A’s question; yet, in all but the last answer, B does not provide A with what A wants. Like a computer in a science-fiction movie, B is taking A’s questions too literally. More precisely, B does nothing more than take A’s remarks literally. In a conversational exchange, we expect others to take our remarks in the light of the obvious purpose we have in making them. We expect them to share our commonsense understanding of why people ask questions. At the very least, we expect people to respond to us in ways that are relevant to our purposes. Except at the end, B seems totally ob- livious to the point of A’s questions. That is what makes B unhelpful and annoying.

Though all the conversational rules we have examined can be the basis of conversational implication, the rule of Relevance is particularly powerful in this respect. Normal conversations are dense with conversational implica- tions that depend on the rule of Relevance. Someone says, “Dinner’s ready,” and that is immediately taken to be a way of asking people to come to the table. Why? Because dinner’s being ready is a transparent reason to come to the table to eat. This is an ordinary context that most people are familiar with. Change the context, however, and the conversational implications can be entirely different. Suppose the same words, “Dinner’s ready,” are uttered when guests have failed to arrive on time. In this context, the conversational implication, which will probably be reflected in an annoyed tone of voice, will be quite different.

Assuming a natural conversational setting, what might a person intend to conversationally imply by making the following remarks? Briefly explain why each of these conversational implications holds; that is, explain the relationship between what the speaker literally says and what the speaker intends to convey through conversational implication. Finally, for each example, find a context where the standard conversational implication would fail and another arise in its place.

1. It’s getting a little chilly in here. (Said by a visitor in your home) 2. Do you mind if I borrow your pen? (Said to a friend while studying) 3. We are out of soda. (Said by a child to her parents) 4. I got here before he did. (Said in a ticket line) 5. Don’t blame me if you get in trouble. (Said by someone who advised you

not to do what you did) 6. Has this seat been taken? (Said in a theater before a show) 7. Don’t ask me. (Said in response to a question) 8. I will be out of town that day. (Said in response to a party invitation)

Exercise VII

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RHETORICAL DEVICES

Many rhetorical devices work by openly violating conversational rules in or- der to generate conversational implications. Consider exaggeration. When someone claims to be hungry enough to eat a horse, it does not dawn on us to treat this as a literal claim about how much she can eat. To do so would be to attribute to the speaker a blatant violation of Grice’s first rule of Quality— namely, do not say what you believe to be false. Consequently, her audience will naturally interpret her remark figuratively, rather than literally. They will assume that she is exaggerating the amount she can eat in order to conversa- tionally imply that she is very hungry. This rhetorical device is called overstate- ment or hyperbole. It is commonly employed, often in heavy-handed ways.

Sometimes, then, we do not intend to have others take our words at face value. Even beyond this, we sometimes expect our listeners to interpret us as claiming just the opposite of what we assert. This occurs, for example, with irony and sarcasm. Suppose at a crucial point in a game, the second baseman fires the ball ten feet over the first baseman’s head, and someone shouts, “Great throw.” Literally, it was not a great throw; it was the opposite of a great throw, and this is just what the person who says “Great throw” is indicat- ing. How do the listeners know they are supposed to interpret it in this way? Sometimes this is indicated by tone of voice. A sarcastic tone of voice usually indicates that the person means the opposite of what he or she is saying. Even without the tone of sarcasm, the remark “Great throw” is not likely to be taken literally. The person who shouts this knows that it was not a great throw, as do the people who hear it. Rather than attributing an obviously false belief to the shouter, we assume that the person is blatantly violating the rule of Quality to draw our attention to just how bad the throw really was.

Metaphors and similes are perhaps the most common forms of figura- tive language. A simile is, roughly, an explicit figurative comparison. A word such as “like” or “as” makes the comparison explicit, and the comparison is figurative because it would be inappropriate if taken literally. To say that the home team fought like tigers does not mean that they clawed the opposing team and took large bites out of them. To call someone as dumb as a post is not to claim that they have no brain at all.

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Conversat ional Acts

With a metaphor, we also compare certain items, but without words such as “like” or “as.” Metaphorical comparisons are still figurative because the vocabulary, at a literal level, is not appropriate to the subject matter. George Washington was not literally the father of his country. Taken literally, it hardly makes sense to speak of someone fathering a country. But the meta- phor is so natural (or so familiar) that it does not cross our minds to treat the remark literally, asking, perhaps, who the mother was.

Taken literally, metaphors are usually obviously false, and then they violate Grice’s rule of Quality. Again, as with irony, when someone says something obviously false, we have to decide what to make of that per- son’s utterance. Perhaps the person is very stupid or a very bad liar, but often neither suggestion is plausible. In such a situation, sometimes the best supposition is that the person is speaking metaphorically rather than literally.

Identify each of the following sentences as irony, metaphor, or simile. For each sentence, write another expressing its literal meaning.

1. He missed the ball by a mile. 2. He acted like a bull in a china shop. 3. The exam blew me away. 4. He had to eat his words. 5. It was a real team effort. (Said by a coach after his team loses by forty points) 6. They are throwing the baby out with the bathwater. 7. This is a case of the tail wagging the dog. 8. “Religion is the opiate of the masses.” (Marx)

Exercise VIII

Unpack the following political metaphors by giving their literal content:

1. We can’t afford a president who needs on-the-job training. 2. It’s time for people on the welfare wagon to get off and help pull. 3. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen. 4. We need to restore a level playing field. 5. The special interests have him in their pockets. 6. He’s a lame duck.

Exercise Ix

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CHAPTER 2 ■ The Web of Language

SUMMARY

In this chapter we have developed a rather complex picture of the way our language functions. In the process, we have distinguished three kinds or levels of acts that are performed when we employ language. We have also examined the rules associated with each kind or level of act. The following table summarizes this discussion:

Three Levels of Language

Kinds of Acts Governing Rules

A LINGUISTIC ACT is an act of saying something meaningful in a language. It is the basic act that is needed to make anything part of language.

Semantic rules (such as definitions) and syntactic rules (as in grammar).

A SPEECH ACT concerns the move a person makes in saying something. Different kinds of speech acts are indicated by the various verbs found in explicit performatives.

Speech act rules about special agents and circumstances appropriate to different kinds of speech acts.

A CONVERSATIONAL ACT is a speaker’s act of causing a standard kind of effect in the listener; it is what I do by saying something—for example, I persuade someone to do something.

Conversational rules (the Cooperative Principle; Quantity, Quality, Relevance, and Manner).

At the start of the U.S. war with Iraq in 2003, some described Iraq as another Vietnam, while others described Saddam Hussein (Iraq’s president) as another Hitler. Which metaphor was used by supporters of the war? Which was used by opponents? How can you tell? How do these metaphors work?

Discussion Question

1. It is late, and A is very hungry. A asks B, “When will dinner be ready?” Describe the linguistic act, the speech act, and some of the conversational acts this person may be performing in this context.

2. Someone is trying to solve the following puzzle: One of thirteen balls is heavier than the others, which are of equal weight. In no more than three weighings on a balance scale, determine which ball is the heavier one. The person is stumped, so someone says to her: “Begin by putting four balls in each pan of the scale.” Describe the linguistic act, the speech act, and the conversational act of the person who makes this suggestion.

Exercise x

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Summary

NOTES

1 J. L. Austin used the phrase “locutionary act” to refer to a level of language closely related to what we refer to as a “linguistic act.” See J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), 94–109. 2 See, for example, J. L. Austin’s How to Do Things with Words. 3 An example of the continuous present is “I bet ten dollars every week in the lottery.” Since this sentence is not used to make a bet, this sentence and others with the continuous present do not pass the thereby test or express explicit performatives. 4 Austin calls speech acts “illocutionary acts.” See How to Do Things with Words, 98–132. 5 Supreme Court of New Hampshire, 1929, 84 N.H. 114, A. 641. 6 This discussion of conversational rules and implications is based on Paul Grice’s important es- say, “Logic and Conversation,” which appears as the second chapter of his Studies in the Way of Words (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). To avoid British references that some readers might find perplexing, we have sometimes altered Grice’s wording.

97364_ch02_ptg01_017-040.indd 39 15/11/13 8:34 AM

97364_ch02_ptg01_017-040.indd 40 15/11/13 8:34 AM

The Language of Argument

Using the techniques developed in Chapter 2, this chapter will examine the use of language to formulate arguments and will provide methods to analyze genuine arguments in their richness and complexity. The first stage in analyzing an argument is the discovery of its basic structure. To do this, we will examine the words, phrases, and special constructions that indicate the premises and conclusions of an argument. The second stage is the study of techniques used to protect an argument. These include guarding premises so that they are less subject to criticism, offering assurances concerning debatable claims, and discounting possible criticisms in advance.

ARGUMENT MARKERS

In Chapter 2, we saw that language is used for a great many different purposes. One important thing that we do with language is construct arguments. Arguments are constructed out of statements, but arguments are not just lists of statements. Here is a simple list of statements:

Socrates is a man. All men are mortal. Socrates is mortal.

This list is not an argument, because none of these statements is presented as a reason for any other statement. It is, however, simple to turn this list into an argument. All we have to do is to add the single word “therefore”:

Socrates is a man. All men are mortal. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

Now we have an argument. The word “therefore” converts these sentences into an argument by signaling that the statement following it is a conclusion, and the statement or statements that come before it are offered as reasons on behalf of this conclusion. The argument we have produced in this way is a good one, because the conclusion follows from the reasons stated on its behalf.

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CHAPTER 3 ■ The Language of Argument

There are other ways of linking these sentences to form an argument. Here is one:

Since Socrates is a man, and all men are mortal, Socrates is mortal.

Notice that the word “since” works in roughly the opposite way that “therefore” does. The word “therefore” is a conclusion marker, because it in- dicates that the statement that follows it is a conclusion. In contrast, the word “since” is a reason marker, because it indicates that the following state- ment or statements are reasons. In our example, the conclusion comes at the end, but there is a variation on this. Sometimes the conclusion is given at the start:

Socrates is mortal, since all men are mortal and Socrates is a man.

“Since” flags reasons; the remaining connected statement is then taken to be the conclusion, whether it appears at the beginning or at the end of the sentence.

Many other terms are used to introduce an argumentative structure into language by marking either reasons or conclusions. Here is a partial list:

Reason Markers Conclusion Markers

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