![]() But it hurts when, as Quine puts it, those who use it place “the goal of persuasion above the goal of truth. It helps when it is used to make good arguments easy to accept on their own merits. Quine in Quiddities as “the literary technology of persuasion.” It can help or hurt the argument’s clarity. They almost always have a rhetorical purpose as well that is, they intend to persuade. And, second, their intentions are almost always to do more than merely to make it easy to evaluate their reasoning. First, arguers often find it hard to make themselves understood, despite the best of intentions. Why is this usually required? There are at least two reasons. This means that, to achieve clarity, you must reword the argument, highlighting what matters most in determining the merits of the argument-in determining whether the premises are true, the argument is logical, and the argument is conversationally relevant. It is usually necessary for you to paraphrase the argument at the same time you are organizing it into standard clarifying format. So if the business moves from a quantity function to more services and processing, we’ll move with it.’”- Forbes “Says Buntrock of Chem Waste, ‘We’re waste managers, so we have to help our customers manage their waste.Thus an agreement between a Japanese and a foreign businessman should be reduced to its basic elements, and each point thoroughly discussed, to make sure each side understands and actually does agree to what the other side is saying.”-Boyne De Mente, The Japanese Way of Doing Business “Japanese still tend to think in terms of personal relationships and subjective circumstances in their business dealings.“‘The real object of sports writing’, says a friend of mine who does it, ‘is to keep readers away from the horrors in the rest of the paper.’ Thus sports continues its rounds as the Magnificent Evasion, since it also keeps us away from the bad news at home and in one’s own psyche.”-Wilfred Sheed, Harper’s (Look for more than one premise here-inference indicators are there to help you.).“When, at the time of the moon landing, a woman in rural Texas was interviewed about the event, she very sensibly refused to believe that the television pictures she had seen had come all the way from the moon, on the grounds that with her antenna she couldn’t even get Dallas.” -Richard Lewontin, New York Review of Books (Stick to clarifying here-resist the urge to evaluate this as a good or bad argument.).(Paraphrased from the expression “in his favor”) ∴ Judge Truman was the better candidate in the senatorial campaign.There was already too much oratory in the United States Senate. ![]() ![]() Implicit statements are enclosed in square brackets, but otherwise treated like all other statements in the argument. (This provides a simple way of referring to the elements of the argument in your evaluation.) All conclusions-including subconclusions if the argument is complex-are preceded by ∴ in the left margin. When an argument is outlined in this format, the premises (including any premises that may also serve as subconclusions) are numbered and listed immediately above their conclusion, while the main conclusion is indicated not by a number, but by C, for Conclusion. The standard clarifying format that we use in this text provides a simple way of making it obvious which is which. 3.1.1 Standard Clarifying FormatĪs we saw in Chapter 2, when an argument is expressed in ordinary English it is not always obvious which statement is the conclusion and which statements are the premises. Clarifying requires two procedures, performed at the same time: outlining the argument in standard format and paraphrasing the argument. This means you should make sure the argument is expressed as clearly as possible, so that it is as easy as possible to tell whether the premises are true, whether the logic is good, and whether the argument is relevant to the conversation. If you are preparing to evaluate an argument, the first order of business is clarifying. ![]() This chapter is concerned with the clarifying process and with two principles that regulate it, the principle of loyalty and the principle of charity. But arguments in everyday life are often lacking in clarity so before you evaluate an argument, you will be asked to engage in the process of clarifying. Clear arguments are arguments that can be evaluated. ![]()
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