additional premise in full to see if it's really plausible. (Don't get lazy when the
argument gets long— that's a sure way to get conned.
That argument for 1 is pretty good. 'But how does he get from 1 to 7? 'Well, he
adds 6. Then 6 + 1, together with some glue will get him 7. 'But what does he need?
Something like "If education is the most important function of state and local
government, and if it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed
in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education, then when the state undertakes
to provide education, it must be made available to all on equal terms." That isn't
obvious. But you can see how Justice Warren supported that claim with the 14th
Amendment in the full decision at:
Exercises on the Structure of Arguments 225
Exercises on the Structure of Arguments _________________________________________________________
For each exercise below, analyze the structure by answering the following:
Argument! (yes or no) If an argument, number each part that might be a claim.
Conclusion:
Additional premises neededl
Identify any subargument:
Good argument!
1. My neighbor should be forced to get rid of all the cars in his yard. People do not like
living next door to such a mess. He never drives any of them. They all look old and
beat up and leak oil all over the place. It is bad for the neighborhood, and it will
decrease property values.
2. I'm on my way to school. I left five minutes late. Traffic is heavy. Therefore, I'll be
late for class. So I might as well stop and get breakfast.
3. Las Vegas has too many people. There's not enough water in the desert to support
more than a million people. And the infrastructure of the city can't handle more than a
million: The streets are overcrowded, and traffic is always congested; the schools are
overcrowded, and new ones can't be built fast enough. We should stop migration to the
city by tough zoning laws in the city and county.
4. Dr. E: I took my dogs for a walk last night in the fields behind my house. It was very
dark. They started to chase something—I could hear it running in front of them. It
seemed like it was big because of the way the bushes were rustling, and they came back
towards where I was in a U-turn, which suggests it wasn't a rabbit. Rabbits almost
always run in more or less one direction. I think they killed it, because I heard a funny
squeaky "awk" sound. It didn't sound like a cat, but it didn't sound like a big animal
either. And I don't think rabbits make that kind of sound. I'm puzzled what it was,
but one thing I am sure of after the dogs returned: It wasn't a skunk.
5. Maria: Really it was Einstein's wife who was the great genius. She was the one who had
the ideas that went into those early papers "he" wrote about relativity. They were
working together. But he got the honors because he was a man. And she had the
child and had to keep the house.
Harry: Look, there weren't two geniuses like Einstein. That's beyond probability. And
after those earlier papers, he continued to make incredible scientific break -
throughs. He would have been considered one of the greatest minds of all time
for just the work that came after those early papers. While his wife never did
anything scientifically important again.
Maria: That was because she was keeping house, 'till that chauvinist pig divorced her.
Harry: I don't doubt that she had some input into those early works, maybe even did
equal work with him at the beginning. But it was Einstein who saw the ideas
through and made them real to people and who continued to do great work.
It wasn't his wife.
226 COMPLEX ARGUMENTS
Examples of Analysis
Here's an example from a letter to the editor:
Pet owners need to take responsibility for their animals. 1 Not only is it unsafe
for these pets to wander, 2 it is very inconsiderate to other neighbors. 3
Many of us are tired of the endless, nauseating piles we have to shovel from our
lawns and dead flowers caused by dogs passing by. 4 Children in our
neighborhoods cannot walk to a friend's house to play for fear of aggressive
dogs. 5 Pets should be in a fenced yard or on a leash, 6 not just to protect
pets, 7 not just out of consideration for your neighbors, 8 but also because it
is the law. 9 Claudia Empey, The Spectrum, 1996
I've labeled every clause that might be a claim.
First we need to identify the conclusion, though there's no indicator word.
The choice seems to be between 1 and 6. Looking at all the other claims, it seems
to me they best support 6. If I believed all the others, I'd have more reason to
believe 6. Indeed, 1 supports 6, though weakly.
We have the conclusion, but that doesn't give us the structure. First, let's see if
there's any noise or problematic sentences.
Sentence 2 is ambiguous: Does it mean "unsafe for the pets" or "unsafe for
people"? Those two readings are made separately in 5 and 7, so we can ignore 2.
Also 3 and 8 are the same, so let's ignore 8.
What do we have? Just lots of independent premises. But the weight of them
doesn't give the conclusion. We are missing the glue. Why should we care about
our neighbors? Why protect the pets? Each of these needs some further premise to
help us get 6. I'll let you finish this analysis by trying to repair the argument.
A debate about affirmative action between Betsy Hart and Bonnie Erbe that
appeared in newspapers gives a much more complex example. Here is the
introduction and Betsy Hart's argument. Bonnie Erbe's reply is one of the
arguments you can try below.
Affirmative action debate heads for ballot box
Question: Affirmative action is under attack. In California and Texas, such
programs have been largely ended in state university systems-pending court
challenges-by school regents or the lower courts. A fall ballot initiative will
determine whether other such programs in California should go. Affirmative
action will be a hot topic everywhere on the campaign trail. What's going on?
(Bonnie Erbe and Betsy Hart provide differing views on current issues. Erbe is
host of the PBS program "To the Contrary." Hart is a frequent commentator on
CNN and other national public affairs shows.)
Betsy Hart: What's going on is that affirmative action is counterproductive or
useless, 1 and it's time for it to end. 2
First, consider its legacy for blacks. Since the civil rights laws of 1964
Examples of Analysis 227
were passed, aggregate black-white unemployment gaps haven't contracted, and
they've expanded in some markets! 3 That's because holding a space open at
Yale or a prestigious law firm for a minority doesn't help the people who need
help most—the inner-city drop-out with no future. 4
Why not fight the real problems instead? 5 For instance, rampant crime
in the inner-city. 6 Studies repeatedly show crime is one of the biggest
inhibitors to business and job creation where it's most needed. 7 But liberals
are loath to truly fight this insidious destroyer of lives and futures. 8
Solid education is fundamental to helping disad
vantaged minorities. 9
That means early on in life, as well as at the college level. 10 Yet today, the
publicly ran inner-city schools, which the education establishment refuses to
honestly reform, 11 are rarely anything but violence-ridden cesspools. 12
Families, too, have to be repaired. 13 The No. 1 indicator of crime rate in
any neighborhood is not income or education, but the level of single-parent headed
households. 14 The high rates of such families in the inner city show why
many such kids are prepared for a life of violence, not a life of achievement. 15
All the affirmative action programs in the world can't fix these problems. 16
But focusing on affirmative action allows the liberal do-gooders to avoid doing
anything about the real issues facing the disadvantaged. 17
Middle-class minorities and women no longer need affirmative action
programs, if they ever did. 18 Black college educated women, for instance,
make more than their white counterparts in the aggregate. 19 When factors
such as age and their own parental status are controlled for, women make 98
percent of what men do. 20 And disadvantaged minorities are hurt by these
programs 21 because their real problems are overlooked. 22
Yes, it's time for affirmative action programs to go. 25
Scripps Howard News Service, March, 1996
The first thing to do in analyzing this passage is decide if it's an argument.
It seems to be, with conclusion, "It's time to end affirmative action." So we need to
number every sentence or clause that might be a claim.
But what exactly does Betsy Hart mean by "affirmative action"? Does it mean
different standards for entrance into university? Does it mean that some places
should be reserved for minorities in universities and businesses? Does it mean that
contracts should be set aside for minority people in business? Unless we are clear
about that, she's whistling in the wind. What exactly are we encouraged to end?
This is a problem that is fatal to her argument, unless we can infer how we should
interpret those words from the rest of what she says.
1 Affirmative action is counterproductive or useless.
This is a claim. If she can prove this, then the conclusion, 2, will follow with
an additional prescriptive claim like "We should end any government or private
program that is counterproductive or useless." But we have to ask "Counter -
productive to what?" Let's hope she makes that clear.
228 COMPLEX ARGUMENTS
3 Since the civil rights laws of 1964 were passed, aggregate black-white
unemployment gaps haven't contracted, and they've expanded in some markets.
This is a claim, and if true would be some support for affirmative action being
useless or counterproductive, if we add as a premise "One of the goals of affirmative
action is to lessen the unemployment gap between blacks and white." Do we have
any reason to believe 31 Betsy Hart doesn't back it up. Maybe it's true, maybe not.
We should suspend judgment.
4 Holding a space open at Yale or a prestigious law firm for a minority
doesn't help the people who need help the most—the inner-city drop-out
with no future.
This is a claim. It sounds plausible, but what reason do we have to believe it?
For it to be true, the word "help" must be understood as "help immediately
financially" or something like that. Is that the goal of affirmative action?
5 We should fight the real problems instead.
I've taken the rhetorical question as a claim. I guess from context and 6 we
can understand "real problems" to be the financial and crime problems of minorities
in the ghettos. But are those the only problems we should deal with? This is an
implicit false dilemma: We can fight the real problems or continue affirmative
action, but not both.
Claim 7 we can dismiss because we don't know what studies she's talking
about. And 8 is just noise: Who are these liberals?
Claims 9 and 10 are highly plausible. But then we have 11: "The education establishment refuses to honestly reform inner city-schools." This is just noise:
What is the "education establishment"? What does "honestly reform" mean? And
12, highly overstated, is what a lot of people believe. But how does that support
the conclusion? Its only value is through the false dilemma, just as with 13-15.
But now we come to the crucial part. Betsy Hart is going to show that her
argument isn't based on a false dilemma. First, affirmative action can't fix these
"real" problems (16) (as if the problems that affirmative action can fix are not
"real"). And then the most important part of her argument:
1 7 Focusing on affirmative action allows the liberal do-gooders to avoid
doing anything about the real issues facing the disadvantaged.
This is supposed to show that there isn't a false dilemma. But who are these
"liberal do-gooders"? Can she name anyone who avoids trying to deal with these
"real" problems because he or she supports affirmative action? That's implausible,
and without some serious support for this very vague sentence, we shouldn't even
consider it a claim.
Finally, Betsy Hart tries to show affirmative action isn't needed anyway (18),
Examples of Analysis 229
assuming as an unstated premise, "The only goal of affirmative action is immediate
financial equality." (a) The "immediate" came earlier; now it's beginning to look like a perfectionist dilemma. But she doesn't tell us where the statistics in 19 and
20 come from, and she's not an unbiased source. Finally, 21 and 22 rehearse what she's already said, and 23 restates her conclusion.
In summary, much of what Betsy Hart has said is too vague to be taken as a
claim, is unsupported, or relies on a false dilemma. Nor do we ever find out what
she means by "affirmative action," though it seems to be a. It's a weak argument, if it's an argument at all.
By taking the effort to see if there is a good argument here, we have uncovered
what appears to be Betsy Hart's unstated assumption, which will help us read not
only what she says here, but also see whether similar assumptions lie behind other
writings on this subject. Here's the steps we've gone through.
The steps in analyzing complex arguments
1. Read the entire passage and decide if it's an argument. If so, identify
the conclusion, then number every sentence or clause that might be
a claim.
2. For each numbered part:
a. Is it ambiguous or too vague to be a claim?
b. If it's vague, could we clear that up by looking at the rest of
the argument? Are the words implicitly defined?
c. If it's too vague, scratch it out as noise.
d. If it uses slanters, reword it neutrally.
3. Identify the claims that lead directly to the conclusion.
4. Identify any subarguments that are meant to support the claims that
lead directly to the conclusion.
5. See if the obvious objections have been considered.
a. List ones that occur to you as you read the passage.
b. See if they have been answered.
6. Note which of the claims in the argument are unsupported, and evaluate
whether they are plausible.
7. Evaluate each subargument as valid or on the scale from strong to weak.
a. Note if the argum
ent is a valid type or fallacy we've seen.
b. If it is not valid or strong, can it be repaired?
c. If it can be repaired, do so and evaluate any added premises.
8. Evaluate the entire argument as valid or on the scale from strong to weak.
a. Note if the argument is a valid type or fallacy we've seen.
b. If it is not valid or strong, can it be repaired?
c. If it can be repaired, do so and evaluate any added premises.
9. Decide whether the argument is good.
230 COMPLEX ARGUMENTS
That's a lot to do. But not all the steps are always needed. If you spot that the
argument is one of the bad types we've discussed, you can dismiss it. If key words
are too vague for the conclusion or crucial parts to be claims, you can dismiss the
argument. But often you will have to go through all these steps.
Before you start analyzing the complex arguments offered below, look at how
Maria used this method.
Morass of value judgments
Well-intentioned DU1 law chips away at individual rights
Editorial, Las Vegas Review-Journal, October 1, 1995
When a new state law goes into effect today, police will be allowed to use
"reasonable force" to obtain blood samples from first-time drunken driving
suspects who refuse to take a breath test. 1
Defense attorneys plan to challenge this law, citing the potential for
unnecessary violence resulting from attempts to enforce it. 2 The law's
proponents say it is necessary to obtain adequate evidence to lock up violators
of drunken driving laws and force is already allowed against repeat offenders. 3
One supporter of the law was quoted on television recently saying that people
who are suspected of driving drunk give up their rights. 4
There is a hidden danger with laws that chip away at the Fourth Amendment
prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures. 5
Yes, we need to vigorously fight drunken driving, take away driver's
licenses of those who refuse breath tests, and lock up repeat offenders who are
obviously impaired according to eyewitness testimony. 6 But our hard-won
individual rights, freedoms and protections should not be flippantly squandered,
even in the name of public safety. 7
The danger is that once we begin to buy into the concept that the rights of
society as a whole are superior to the rights of the individual, then we begin to
Richard L Epstein Page 28