Understanding arguments an introduction to informal logic 9th edition pdf

Australia • Brazil • Mexico • Singapore • United Kingdom • United States

97364_fm_ptg01_i-xvi.indd 2 15/11/13 8:36 PM

Understanding Arguments

97364_fm_ptg01_i-xvi.indd 1 15/11/13 8:36 PM

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.

Australia • Brazil • Mexico • Singapore • United Kingdom • United States

97364_fm_ptg01_i-xvi.indd 2 15/11/13 8:36 PM

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.

Understanding Arguments

An Introduction to Informal Logic

NINTH EDITION

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong Duke University

Robert J. Fogelin Dartmouth College

Australia • Brazil • Mexico • Singapore • United Kingdom • United States

97364_fm_ptg01_i-xvi.indd 3 15/11/13 8:36 PM

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.

Australia • Brazil • Mexico • Singapore • United Kingdom • United States

97364_fm_ptg01_i-xvi.indd 2 15/11/13 8:36 PM

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.

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.

© 2015, 2010, 2005 Cengage Learning

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.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013952536

Student Edition:

ISBN-13: 978-1-285-19736-4

ISBN-10: 1-285-19736-4

Cengage Learning 200 First Stamford Place, 4th Floor Stamford, CT 06902 USA

Cengage Learning is a leading provider of customized learning solutions with office locations around the globe, including Singapore, the United Kingdom, Australia, Mexico, Brazil and Japan. Locate your local office at international.cengage.com/region.

Cengage Learning products are represented in Canada by Nelson Education, Ltd.

For your course and learning solutions, visit www.cengage.com.

Purchase any of our products at your local college store or at our preferred online store www.cengagebrain.com.

Instructors: Please visit login.cengage.com and log in to access instructor-specific resources.

Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic, Ninth Edition Walter Sinnot-Armstrong and Robert Fogelin

Product Manager: Debra Matteson

Content Developer: Ian Lague

Content Coordinator: Joshua Duncan

Media Developer: Christian Biagetti

Associate Marketing Manager: Shanna Shelton

Rights Acquisitions Specialist: Shalice Shah-Caldwell

Manufacturing Planner: Sandee Milewski

Art and Design Direction, Production Management, and Composition: PreMediaGlobal

Cover Image: © DEA PICTURE LIBRARY/De Agostini Picture Library / Getty Images

For product information and technology assistance, contact us at Cengage Learning

Customer & Sales Support, 1-800-354-9706

For permission to use material from this text or product, submit all requests online at www.cengage.com/permissions.

Further permissions questions can be emailed to permissionrequest@cengage.com.

Printed in the United States of America 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 17 16 15 14 13

97364_fm_ptg01_i-xvi.indd 4 15/11/13 10:11 PM

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.

WCN: 02-200-203

Proudly sourced and uploaded by [StormRG] Kickass Torrents | TPB | ExtraTorrent | h33t

To Eric, John, Lars, Miranda, and Nicholas

and the colleges of their choice

97364_fm_ptg01_i-xvi.indd 5 15/11/13 8:36 PM

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.

97364_fm_ptg01_i-xvi.indd 6 15/11/13 8:36 PM

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.

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

97364_fm_ptg01_i-xvi.indd 7 15/11/13 8:36 PM

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.

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

97364_fm_ptg01_i-xvi.indd 8 15/11/13 8:36 PM

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.

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

97364_fm_ptg01_i-xvi.indd 9 15/11/13 8:36 PM

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.

x

Contents

Chapter 10 Causal Reasoning 215

Reasoning About Causes 215

Sufficient Conditions and Necessary Conditions 217 The Sufficient Condition Test  220

The Necessary Condition Test  221

The Joint Test  222

Rigorous Testing  225

Reaching Positive Conclusions  226

Applying These Methods to Find Causes 228 Normality  228

Background Assumptions  229

A Detailed Example  230

Concomitant Variation 234

Chapter 11 Chances 239

Some Fallacies of Probability 239 The Gambler’s Fallacy  239

Heuristics  241

The Language of Probability 243

A Priori Probability 244

Some Rules of Probability 246 Probabilities of Negations  246

Probabilities of Conjunctions  247

Probabilities of Disjunctions  248

Probabilities in a Series  249

Permutations and Combinations  250

Bayes’s Theorem 253

Chapter 12 Choices 263

Expected Monetary Value 263

Expected Overall Value 266

Decisions Under Ignorance 268

97364_fm_ptg01_i-xvi.indd 10 15/11/13 8:36 PM

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.

x i

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

97364_fm_ptg01_i-xvi.indd 11 15/11/13 8:36 PM

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.

x i i

Contents

Chapter 17 Refutation 333

What Is Refutation? 333

Counterexamples 334

Reductio Ad Absurdum 337

Straw Men and False Dichotomies 341

Refutation by Parallel Reasoning 343

Part V Areas of Argumentation 351

Chapter 18 Legal Reasoning 353

Components of Legal Reasoning 354 Questions of Fact  354

Questions of Law  355

The Law of Discrimination 361 The Equal Protection Clause  361

Applying the Equal Protection Clause  362

The Strict Scrutiny Test  363

The Bakke Case  364

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke  366

Legal Developments Since Bakke  368

Grutter v. Bollinger 369

Gratz v. Bollinger  375

Burden of Proof 381

Chapter 19 Moral Reasoning 383

Moral Disagreements 383

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

“Pro-Choice” Responses   387

Analogical Reasoning in Ethics 392

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

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

97364_fm_ptg01_i-xvi.indd 12 15/11/13 8:36 PM

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.

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

97364_fm_ptg01_i-xvi.indd 13 15/11/13 8:36 PM

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.

97364_fm_ptg01_i-xvi.indd 14 15/11/13 8:36 PM

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.

xv

PREFACE

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

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

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

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

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

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

97364_fm_ptg01_i-xvi.indd 15 15/11/13 8:36 PM

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.

xv i

Preface

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

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

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong Robert J. Fogelin

97364_fm_ptg01_i-xvi.indd 16 15/11/13 10:20 PM

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.

1

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.

97364_ch01_ptg01_001-016.indd 1 11/14/13 1:51 PM

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.

97364_ch01_ptg01_001-016.indd 2 11/14/13 1:51 PM

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.

3

1

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”).

97364_ch01_ptg01_001-016.indd 3 11/14/13 1:51 PM

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.

4

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

97364_ch01_ptg01_001-016.indd 4 11/14/13 1:51 PM

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.

5

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

97364_ch01_ptg01_001-016.indd 5 11/14/13 1:51 PM

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.

6

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

97364_ch01_ptg01_001-016.indd 6 11/14/13 1:51 PM

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.

7

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

97364_ch01_ptg01_001-016.indd 7 11/14/13 1:51 PM

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.

8

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

97364_ch01_ptg01_001-016.indd 8 11/14/13 1:51 PM

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.

9

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

97364_ch01_ptg01_001-016.indd 9 11/14/13 1:51 PM

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.

10

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

97364_ch01_ptg01_001-016.indd 10 11/14/13 1:51 PM

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.

11

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.

97364_ch01_ptg01_001-016.indd 11 11/14/13 1:51 PM

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.

12

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

97364_ch01_ptg01_001-016.indd 12 11/14/13 1:51 PM

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.

13

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.