Download e-book Will A Horse Eat A Hamburger (Critical Thinking Kids Book 1)

Contents:

Horsemeat or beef: how to ensure you know what's in your burger

The central concept that you will learn in logic is the concept of validity. Reconstructing and analyzing arguments how well the premises support the conclusion, and it is the golden standard that every argument should aim for. A valid argument is an argument whose conclusion cannot possibly be false, assuming that the premises are true. Another way of putting this is as a conditional statement: A valid argument is an argument in which if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true.

Here is an example of a valid argument: Violet is a dog 2. All that matters for validity is whether the conclusion follows from the premise. And we can see that the conclusion, Violet is a mammal, does seem to follow from the premise, Violet is a dog. That is, given the truth of the premise, the conclusion has to be true. We can illustrate this with another example, where the premises are clearly false: Everyone born in France can speak French 2. Barack Obama was born in France 3. Therefore, Barak Obama can speak French from This is a valid argument.

Because when we assume the truth of the premises everyone born in France can speak French, Barack Obama was born in France the conclusion Barack Obama can speak French must be true. Notice that this is so even though none of these statements is actually true. So we have a valid argument even though neither the premises nor the conclusion is actually true. That may sound strange, but if you understand the concept of validity, it is not strange at all.

Reconstructing and analyzing arguments true. George was President of the United States 2. Therefore, George was elected President of the United States from 1 This argument is invalid because it is possible for the premise to be true and yet the conclusion false. Here is a counterexample to the argument. In other words, it is possible for the premise of the argument to be true and yet the conclusion false. And this means that the argument is invalid.

If an argument is invalid it will always be possible to construct a counterexample to show that it is invalid as I have done with the Gerald Ford scenario. A counterexample is simply a description of a scenario in which the premises of the argument are all true while the conclusion of the argument is false. To apply the informal test of validity ask yourself whether you can imagine a world in which all the premises are true and yet the conclusion is false. If you can imagine such a world, then the argument is invalid. If you cannot imagine such a world, then the argument is valid.

It will help to better understand the concept of validity by applying the informal test of validity to some sample arguments. Joan jumped out of an airplane without a parachute 2. Therefore, Joan fell to her death from 1 To apply the informal test of validity we have to ask whether it is possible to imagine a scenario in which the premise is true and yet the conclusion is false if so, the argument is invalid. Reconstructing and analyzing arguments jumped out of an airplane without a parachute and yet did not fall to her death?

Think about it carefully before reading on. As we will see, applying the informal test of validity takes some creativity, but it seems clearly possible that Joan could jump out of an airplane without a parachute and not die—she could be perfectly fine, in fact. All we have to imagine is that the airplane was not operating and in fact was on the ground when Joan jumped out of it. If that were the case, it would be a true that Joan jumped out of an airplane without a parachute and yet b false that Joan fell to her death. Thus, since it is possible to imagine a scenario in which the premise is true and yet the conclusion is false, the argument is invalid.

Joan jumped out of an airplane travelling mph at a height of 10, ft without a parachute 2. Joan fell to her death from 1 Is this argument valid? You might think so since you might think that anyone who did such a thing would surely die. But is it possible to not die in the scenario described by the premise? For example, maybe someone else who was wearing a parachute jumped out of the plane after them, caught them and attached the parachute-less person to them, and then pulled the ripcord and they both landed on the ground safe and sound.

Or maybe Joan was performing a stunt and landed in a giant net that had been set up for that purpose. Or maybe she was just one of those people who, although they did fall to the ground, happened to survive it has happened before. All of these scenarios are consistent with the information in the first premise being true and also consistent with the conclusion being false. Thus, again, any of these counterexamples show that this argument is invalid. Notice that it is also possible that the scenario described in the premises ends with Joan falling to her death.

And if it is possible, what we have shown is that the conclusion does not logically follow from the premise alone. And that means that the argument is not valid i. Obama is President of the United States. Kenya is not in the United States. Therefore, Obama was not born in Kenya from In order to apply the informal test of validity, we have to ask whether we can imagine a scenario in which the premises are both true and yet the conclusion is false. Can you imagine such a scenario?

The reason is that if you are imagining that it is a true that a person can be President of the United States only if they were born in the United States, b true that Obama is president and c true that Kenya is not in the U. Thus we know that on the assumption of the truth of the premises, the conclusion must be true. And that means the argument is valid. In this example, however, premises 1, 2, and 3 are not only assumed to be true but are actually true.

However, as we have already seen, the validity of an argument does not depend on its premises actually being true. Here is another example of a valid argument to illustrate that point. A person can be President of the United States only if they were born in Kenya 2. Obama is President of the United States 3. Therefore, Obama was born in Kenya from Clearly, the first premise of this argument is false. And this means that the argument is valid.

We cannot imagine a scenario in which the premises of the argument are true and yet the conclusion is false. Rather, validity depends only on the logical relationship between the premises and the conclusion. In the next section we will address this topic. Reconstructing and analyzing arguments Exercise 5: Determine whether or not the following arguments are valid by using the informal test of validity.

If the argument is invalid, provide a counterexample. Katie is a human being. Therefore, Katie is smarter than a chimpanzee. Bob is a fireman. Therefore, Bob has put out fires. Gerald is a mathematics professor. Therefore, Gerald knows how to teach mathematics. Monica is a French teacher. Therefore, Monica knows how to teach French. Bob is taller than Susan. Susan is taller than Frankie.

Therefore, Bob is taller than Frankie. Therefore, Craig loves Monique. Orel Hershizer is a Christian. Therefore, Orel Hershizer communicates with God. All Muslims pray to Allah. Muhammad is a Muslim. Therefore, Muhammad prays to Allah. Some protozoa are predators. No protozoa are animals. Therefore, some predators are not animals. Charlie only barks when he hears a burglar outside. Therefore, there must be a burglar outside.

Soundness is defined in terms of validity, so since we have already defined validity, we can now rely on it to define soundness. A sound argument is a valid argument that has all true premises. That means that the conclusion of a sound argument will always be true. Because if an argument is valid, the premises transmit truth to the conclusion on the assumption of the truth of the premises.

But if the premises are actually true, as they are in a sound argument, then since all sound arguments are valid, we know that the conclusion of a sound argument is true. Compare the last two Obama examples from the previous section. While the first argument was sound, the second argument was not sound, although it was valid. The relationship between soundness and validity is easy to specify: Reconstructing and analyzing arguments sound arguments are valid arguments, but not all valid arguments are sound arguments.

Although soundness is what any argument should aim for, we will not be talking much about soundness in this book. The reason for this is that the only difference between a valid argument and a sound argument is that a sound argument has all true premises. But how do we determine whether the premises of an argument are actually true? Well, there are lots of ways to do that, including using Google to look up an answer, studying the relevant subjects in school, consulting experts on the relevant topics, and so on. But none of these activities have anything to do with logic, per se.

The relevant disciplines to consult if you want to know whether a particular statement is true is almost never logic! Since this is a logic textbook, however, it is best to leave the question of what is empirically true or false to the relevant disciplines that study those topics. And that is why the issue of soundness, while crucial for any good argument, is outside the purview of logic.

Thinking time. . . how philosophy can enable children's imagination to flourish?
Little Girls Lost: The Stories of Four of Australias Most Horrific Child Murders - and Their Families Fight for Justice.
Where the Community Gathers: A Tour of Our Church!
Thinking time. . . how philosophy can enable children's imagination to flourish - www.farmersmarketmusic.com.
Le Docteur noir (Autrement mêmes) (French Edition).
Little Wonder Woo!

For a deductive argument to fail to do this is for it to fail as a deductive argument. Here is an example of an inductive argument: Tweets is a healthy, normally functioning bird and since most healthy, normally functioning birds fly, Tweets probably flies. Tweets is a healthy, normally functioning bird 2. Most healthy, normally functioning birds fly 3. Therefore, Tweets probably flies Given the information provided by the premises, the conclusion does seem to be well supported. That is, the premises do give us a strong reason for accepting the conclusion. This is true even though we can imagine a scenario in which the premises are true and yet the conclusion is false.

For example, suppose that we added the following premise: Tweets is 6 ft tall and can run 30 mph. Were we to add that premise, the conclusion would no longer be supported by the premises, since any bird that is 6 ft tall and can run 30 mph, is not a kind of bird that can fly. That information leads us to believe that Tweets is an ostrich or emu, which are not kinds of birds that can fly. As this example shows, inductive arguments are defeasible arguments since by adding further information or premises to the argument, we can overturn defeat the verdict that the conclusion is well-supported by the premises.

Inductive arguments whose premises give us a strong, even if defeasible, reason for accepting the conclusion are called, unsurprisingly, strong inductive arguments. In contrast, an inductive argument that does not provide a strong reason for accepting the conclusion are called weak inductive arguments. Suppose that instead of saying that most birds fly, premise 2 said that all birds fly. Tweets is a healthy, normally function bird.

All healthy, normally functioning birds can fly. Therefore, Tweets can fly. Reconstructing and analyzing arguments argument is valid. This is true even if we add that Tweets is 6 ft tall because then what we have to imagine in applying our informal test of validity is a world in which all birds, including those that are 6 ft tall and can run 30 mph, can fly.

Although inductive arguments are an important class of argument that are commonly used every day in many contexts, logic texts tend not to spend as much time with them since we have no agreed upon standard of evaluating them. In contrast, there is an agreed upon standard of evaluation of deductive arguments. We have already seen what that is; it is the concept of validity. In chapter 2 we will learn some precise, formal methods of evaluating deductive arguments. There are no such agreed upon formal methods of evaluation for inductive arguments.

This is an area of ongoing research in philosophy. In chapter 3 we will revisit inductive arguments and consider some ways to evaluate inductive arguments. In such a case, we can supply the premise s needed in order so make the argument valid. Making missing premises explicit is a central part of reconstructing arguments in standard form. We have already dealt in part with this in the section on paraphrasing, but now that we have introduced the concept of validity, we have a useful tool for knowing when to supply missing premises in our reconstruction of an argument.

In some cases, the missing premise will be fairly obvious, as in the following: Gary is a convicted sex-offender, so Gary is not allowed to work with children. The premise and conclusion of this argument are straightforward: Gary is a convicted sex-offender 2. Reconstructing and analyzing arguments However, as stated, the argument is invalid. Before reading on, see if you can provide a counterexample for this argument.

That is, come up with an imaginary scenario in which the premise is true and yet the conclusion is false.

Up for something a little trickier?

Here is just one counterexample there could be many: Gary is a convicted sex-offender but the country in which he lives does not restrict convicted sex-offenders from working with children. We can and should state that premise explicitly in our reconstruction of the standard form argument. The obvious one is that no sex- offenders are allowed to work with children, but we could also use a more carefully statement like this one: Where Gary lives, no convicted sex-offenders are allowed to work with children.

It is more careful because it is not so universal in scope, which means that it is easier for the statement to be made true. For more on strong and weak statements, see section 1. So here is the argument in standard form: Gary is a convicted sex-offender. Therefore, Gary is not allowed to work with children. This was a fairly simple example where the missing premise needed to make the argument valid was relatively easy to see. As we can see from this example, a missing premise is a premise that the argument needs in order to be as strong as possible.

Typically, this means supplying the statement s that are needed to make the argument valid. Reconstructing and analyzing arguments addition to making the argument valid, we want to make the argument plausible. When it comes to supplying missing premises, this means supplying the most plausible premises needed in order to make the argument either valid for deductive arguments or inductively strong for inductive arguments.

Although in the last example figuring out the missing premise was relatively easy to do, it is not always so easy. Here is an argument whose missing premises are not as easy to determine: Since children who are raised by gay couples often have psychological and emotional problems, the state should discourage gay couples from raising children.

Children who are raised by gay couples often have psychological and emotional problems. Therefore, the state should discourage gay couples from raising children. However, as it stands, this argument is invalid because it depends on certain missing premises. The conclusion of this argument is a normative statement— a statement about whether something ought to be true, relative to some standard of evaluation.

Normative statements can be contrasted with descriptive statements, which are simply factual claims about what is true. That is, it is simply a claim about what is in fact the case in Russia today. An important idea within philosophy, which is often traced back to the Scottish philosopher David Hume , is that statements about what ought to be the case i.

Reconstructing and analyzing arguments statements about what is the case i. This is known within philosophy as the is-ought gap. The problem with the above argument is that it attempts to infer a normative statement from a purely descriptive statement, violating the is-ought gap. We can see the problem by constructing a counterexample. Suppose that in society x it is true that children raised by gay couples have psychological problems.

However, suppose that in that society people do not accept that the state should do what it can to decrease harm to children. In this case, the conclusion, that the state should discourage gay couples from raising children, does not follow. Thus, we can see that the argument depends on a missing or assumed premise that is not explicitly stated.

That missing premise must be a normative statement, in order that we can infer the conclusion, which is also a normative statement. There is an important general lesson here: Many times an argument with a normative conclusion will depend on a normative premise which is not explicitly stated.

The missing normative premise of this particular argument seems to be something like this: The state should always do what it can to decrease harm to children. Thus, we can reconstruct the argument, filling in the missing normative premise like this: In order to show this, we just have to imagine a scenario in which both the premises are true and yet the conclusion is false.

Here is one counterexample to the argument there are many. Suppose that while it is true that children of gay couples often have psychological and emotional problems, the rate of psychological problems in children raised by gay couples is actually lower than in children raised by heterosexual couples. In this case, even if it were true that the state should always do what it can to decrease harm to children, it does not follow that the state should discourage gay couples from raising children. For example, it could be that the reason that children of gay couples have higher rates of psychological problems is that in a society that is not yet accepting of gay couples, children of gay couples will face more teasing, bullying and general lack of acceptance than children of heterosexual couples.

In that case, the state should not necessarily discourage gay couples from raising children. Here is an analogy: But for the government to discourage black Americans from raising children would have been unjust, since it is likely that if there was a higher incidence of psychological and emotional problems in black Americans, then it was due to unjust and unequal conditions, not to the black parents, per se. Thus, one way of making the argument at least closer to valid would be to add the following two missing premises: The rate of psychological problems in children of gay couples is higher than in children of heterosexual couples.

The higher incidence of psychological problems in children of gay couples is not due to any kind of injustice in society, but to the fact that the parents are gay. So the reconstructed standard form argument would look like this: Their addition makes the argument much stronger, but making them explicit enables us to clearly see what assumptions the argument relies on in order for the argument to be valid.

This is useful since we can now clearly see which premises of the argument we may challenge as false. The important lesson from this example is that supplying the missing premises of an argument is not always a simple matter.

In the example above, I have used the principle of charity to supply missing premises. Mastering this skill is truly an art rather than a science since there is never just one correct way of doing it cf. Supply the missing premise or premises needed in order to make the following arguments valid.

Try to make the premises as plausible as possible while making the argument valid which is to apply the principle of charity. Therefore, Ed is a cowboy. Tom was driving over the speed limit. Therefore, Tom was doing something wrong. If it is raining then the ground is wet. Therefore, the ground must be wet. All elves drink Guinness, which is why Olaf drinks Guinness.

Instead, he invited his friend Alexia. So he must like Alexia more than me. The watch must be broken because every time I have looked at it, the hands have been in the same place. Reconstructing and analyzing arguments 7. Olaf drank too much Guinness and fell out of his second story apartment window.

Therefore, drinking too much Guinness caused Olaf to injure himself. Mark jumped into the air. Therefore, Mark landed back on the ground. Therefore, as of , the United States was still a racist nation. The temperature of the water is degrees Fahrenheit. Therefore, the water is boiling. Capital punishment sometimes takes innocent lives, such as the lives of individuals who were later found to be not guilty. Therefore, we should not allow capital punishment. Allowing immigrants to migrate to the U. Therefore, we should not allow immigrants to migrate to the U.

Prostitution is a fair economic exchange between two consenting adults. Therefore, prostitution should be allowed. Colleges are more interested in making money off of their football athletes than in educating them. Therefore, college football ought to be banned. Edward received an F in college Algebra. Therefore, Edward should have studied more. But in practice people do not always give further reasons or argument in support of every statement they make.

Sometimes they use certain rhetorical devices to cut the argument short, or to hint at a further argument without actually stating it. There are three common strategies for doing this: Reconstructing and analyzing arguments Guarding: Why would we want to assure our audience? This is one way of assuring our audience: There are many ways to cite authorities, some examples of which are these: The rhetorical effect is that by commenting on how sure you are that something is true, you imply, without saying, that there must be very strong reasons for what you believe—assuming that the audience believes you are a reasonable person, of course.

One common way to do this is by implying that every sensible person would agree with the claim. Here are some examples: Everyone with any sense agrees that… Of course, no one will deny that… There is no question that… No one with any sense would deny that… Another common way of doing this is by implying that no sensible person would agree with a claim that we are trying to establish as false: It is no longer held that… No intelligent person would ever maintain that… You would have to live under a rock to think that… Assurances are not necessarily illegitimate, since the person may be right and may in fact have good arguments to back up the claims, but the assurances are not themselves arguments and a critical thinker will always regard them as somewhat suspect.

Next, we will turn to guarding. Guarding involves weakening a claim so that it is easier to make that claim true. Here is a simple contrast that will make the point. Consider the following claims: Presidents were monogamous B. Presidents were monogamous C. Presidents were monogamous D. Presidents were monogamous E. Reconstructing and analyzing arguments The weakest of these claims is E, whereas the strongest is A and each claims descending from A-E is increasingly weaker.

President who was monogamous. In contrast, A is much less likely than E to be true because it require every U. President to have been monogamous. One way of thinking about this is that any time A is true, it is also true that B-E is true, but B-E could be true without A being true. That is what it means for a claim to be stronger or weaker. A weak claim is more likely to be true whereas a strong claim is less likely to be true.

E is much more likely to be true than A. Likewise, D is somewhat more likely to be true than C, and so on. So, guarding involves taking a stronger claim and making it weaker so there is less room to object to the claim. Finally, we will consider discounting. Discounting involves acknowledging an objection to the claim or argument that one is making, while dismissing that same objection.

Contrast the following two claims: The worker was inefficient, but honest. The worker was honest, but inefficient. We can imagine A continuing: By introducing the claim to be dismissed, we are discounting that claim. Which rhetorical techniques assuring, guarding, discounting are being using in the following passages? Although drilling for oil in Alaska will disrupt some wildlife, it is better than having to depend on foreign oil, which has the tendency to draw us into foreign conflicts that we would otherwise not be involved in.

Let there be no doubt: Privatizing the water utilities in Detroit was an unprecedented move that has garnered a lot of criticism. Nonetheless, it is helping Detroit to recover from bankruptcy. Most pediatricians agree that the single most important factor in childhood obesity is eating sugary, processed foods, which have become all too common in our day and age. Abraham Lincoln was probably our greatest president since he helped keep together a nation on the brink of splintering into two.

No one with any sense would support Obamacare. Even if universal healthcare is expensive, it is still the just thing to do. While our country has made significant strides in overcoming explicit racist policies, the wide disparity of wealth, prestige and influence that characterize white and black Americans shows that we are still implicitly a racist country. Reconstructing and analyzing arguments Recent studies have show that there is no direct link between vaccines and autism. Evaluative language can be contrasted with descriptive language.

Whereas descriptive language simply describes a state of affairs, without passing judgment positive or negative on that state of affairs, evaluative language is used to pass some sort of judgment, positive or negative, on something. Contrast the following two statements: Rather, it is a purely descriptive term that does not pass any sort of judgment, positive or negative, on the fact that Bob is tall.

A more interesting kind of term is one that is partly descriptive and partly evaluative. Reconstructing and analyzing arguments Evaluative language is rife in our society, perhaps especially so in political discourse. If you can get a person to think of someone or some state of affairs in terms of a positively or negatively evaluative term, chances are you will be able to influence their evaluation of that person or state of affairs. That is one of the rhetorical uses of evaluative language. Compare, for example, Bob is a rebel. Bob is a freedom fighter. Both words, however, have the same descriptive content, namely, that Bob is someone who has risen in armed resistance to an existing government.

Table 3 below gives a small sampling of some evaluative terms. John is too honest. Not so when he is simply described as honest. Like assuring and discounting section 1. As such, it is more concerned with non-rational persuasion than it is with giving reasons. Non-rational persuasion is ubiquitous in our society today, not the least of which because advertising is ubiquitous and advertising today almost always uses non-rational persuasion. Think of the last time you saw some commercial present evidence for why you should buy their product i.

Philosophy has a complicated relationship with rhetoric—a relationship that stretches back to Ancient Greece. Socrates disliked those, such as the Sophists, who promised to teach people how to effectively persuade someone of something, regardless of whether that thing was true. Although some people might claim that there is no essential difference between giving reasons for accepting a conclusion and trying to persuade by any means, most philosophers, including the author of this text, think otherwise.

If we define rhetoric as the art of persuasion, then although argumentation is a kind of rhetoric since it is a way of persuading , not all rhetoric is argumentation. The essential difference, as already hinted at, is that argumentation attempts to persuade by giving reasons whereas rhetoric attempts to persuade by any means, including non-rational means.

If I tell you over and over again in creative and subliminal ways to drink Beer x because Beer x is the best beer, then I may very well make you think that Beer x is the best beer, but I have not thereby given you an argument that Beer x is the best beer. The rhetorical devices surveyed in the last two sections—especially assuring, discounting and the use of evaluative language—may be effective ways of persuading people, but they are not the same thing as offering an argument.

And if we attempt to see them as arguments, they turn out to be typically pretty poor arguments. One of the many things that psychologists study is how we are persuaded to believe or do things. As an empirical science, psychology attempts to describe and explain the way things are, in this case, the processes that lead us to believe or act as we do. Logic, in contrast, is not an empirical science. Logic is not trying to tell us how we do think, but what good thinking is and, thus, how we ought think.

Reconstructing and analyzing arguments one. They key standard of evaluation of arguments that we have seen so far is that of validity. In chapter 2 we will consider some more precise, formal methods of understanding validity. In addition to creating the excerpt, the only addition I have made to the speech is numbering each paragraph with Roman numerals for ease of referring to specific places in my analysis of the argument.

My fellow Americans, tonight I want to talk to you about Syria, why it matters and where we go from here. Over the past two years, what began as a series of peaceful protests against the repressive regime of Bashar al-Assad has turned into a brutal civil war. Over a hundred thousand people have been killed. Millions have fled the country. In that time, America has worked with allies to provide humanitarian support, to help the moderate opposition and to shape a political settlement.

But I have resisted calls for military action because we cannot resolve someone else's civil war through force, particularly after a decade of war in Iraq and Afghanistan. The situation profoundly changed, though, on Aug. The images from this massacre are sickening, men, women, children lying in rows, killed by poison gas, others foaming at the mouth, gasping for breath, a father clutching his dead children, imploring them to get up and walk.

On that terrible night, the world saw in gruesome detail the terrible nature of chemical weapons and why the overwhelming 4 We encountered normative concepts when discussing normative statements in section 1. Reconstructing and analyzing arguments majority of humanity has declared them off limits, a crime against humanity and a violation of the laws of war. This was not always the case. Because these weapons can kill on a mass scale, with no distinction between soldier and infant, the civilized world has spent a century working to ban them.

And in , the United States Senate overwhelmingly approved an international agreement prohibiting the use of chemical weapons, now joined by governments that represent 98 percent of humanity. No one disputes that chemical weapons were used in Syria. The world saw thousands of videos, cellphone pictures and social media accounts from the attack. And humanitarian organizations told stories of hospitals packed with people who had symptoms of poison gas.

Moreover, we know the Assad regime was responsible. In the days leading up to Aug. They distributed gas masks to their troops. Then they fired rockets from a regime-controlled area into 11 neighborhoods that the regime has been trying to wipe clear of opposition forces. Shortly after those rockets landed, the gas spread, and hospitals filled with the dying and the wounded.

We know senior figures in Assad's military machine reviewed the results of the attack. And the regime increased their shelling of the same neighborhoods in the days that followed. We've also studied samples of blood and hair from people at the site that tested positive for sarin. When dictators commit atrocities, they depend upon the world to look the other way until those horrifying pictures fade from memory. But these things happened. The facts cannot be denied. The question now is what the United States of America and the international community is prepared to do about it, because what happened to those people, to those children, is not only a violation of international law, it's also a danger to our security.

Let me explain why. If we fail to act, the Assad regime will see no reason to stop using chemical weapons. As the ban against these weapons erodes, other tyrants will have no reason to think twice about acquiring poison gas and using them. Over time our troops would again face the prospect of chemical warfare on the battlefield, and it could be easier for terrorist organizations to obtain these weapons and to use them to attack civilians.

Reconstructing and analyzing arguments XIII. If fighting spills beyond Syria's borders, these weapons could threaten allies like Turkey, Jordan and Israel. And a failure to stand against the use of chemical weapons would weaken prohibitions against other weapons of mass destruction and embolden Assad's ally, Iran, which must decide whether to ignore international law by building a nuclear weapon or to take a more peaceful path. This is not a world we should accept. This is what's at stake. And that is why, after careful deliberation, I determined that it is in the national security interests of the United States to respond to the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons through a targeted military strike.

The purpose of this strike would be to deter Assad from using chemical weapons, to degrade his regime's ability to use them and to make clear to the world that we will not tolerate their use. That's my judgment as commander in chief. The first question to ask yourself is: What is the main point or conclusion of this speech? What conclusion is Obama trying to argue for? This is no simple question and in fact requires a good level of reading comprehension in order to answer it correctly. One of the things to look for is conclusion or premise indicators section 1. There are numerous conclusion indicators in the speech, which is why you cannot simply mindlessly look for them and then assume the first one you find is the conclusion.

Rather, you must rely on your comprehension of the speech to truly find the main conclusion. If you carefully read the speech, it is clear that Obama is trying to convince the American public of the necessity of taking military action against the Assad regime in Syria. So the conclusion is going to have to have something to do with that. One clear statement of what looks like a main conclusion comes in paragraph 15 where Obama says: Here is my paraphrase of that conclusion: Before Obama argues for this main conclusion, however, he gives an argument for the claim that Assad did use chemical weapons on his own civilians.

Reconstructing and analyzing arguments what is happening in paragraphs of the speech. The reasons he gives for how we know that Assad used chemical weapons include: The evidence strongly supports, but does not compel, the conclusion that Assad was responsible. For example, even if all these facts were true, it could be that some other entity was trying to set Assad up. Thus, this first subargument should be taken as a strong inductive argument assuming the premises are true, of course , since the truth of the premises would increase the probability that the conclusion is true, but not make the conclusion absolutely certain.

Although Obama does give an argument for the claim that Assad carried out chemical weapon attacks on civilians, that is simply an assumption of the main argument. We can clearly see this conclusion stated in paragraph Thus, the conclusion Obama argues more directly for is: Reconstructing and analyzing arguments Intermediate conclusion: So, if that is the conclusion that Obama argues for most directly, what are the premises that support it?

Obama gives several in paragraphs If the ban on chemical weapons erodes, then other tyrants will be more likely to attain and use them. If other tyrants attain and use chemical weapons, U. The main threats to national security that failing to respond to Assad would engender, according to Obama, are that U. There is a missing premise that is being relied upon for these premises to validly imply the conclusion. Here is a hint as to what that missing premise is: Are all of these things truly a threat to national security?

For example, how is Iran having a nuclear program a threat to our national security? It seems there must be an implicit premise—not yet stated—that is to the effect that all of these things are threats to national security. Here is one way of construing that missing premise: An increased likelihood of U. Reconstructing and analyzing arguments We can also make explicit within the standard form argument other intermediate conclusions that follow from the stated premises.

For example, we could explicitly state the conclusion that follows from the four conditional statements that are the first four premises: We can do the same thing with the inference that follows from premises, 1, 7, and 8 i. Reconstructing and analyzing arguments 6. The only thing now missing is how we get from this intermediate conclusion to what I earlier called the main conclusion.

The main conclusion i. It seems that Obama is relying on yet another unstated assumption. For example, maybe we could respond with certain kinds of economic sanctions that would force the country to submit to our will. Furthermore, maybe there are some security threats such that responding to them with military force would only create further, and worse, security threats. The only way that the United States can adequately respond to the security threat that Assad poses is by military force. It is in the national security interests of the United States to respond adequately to any national security threat.

Reconstructing and analyzing arguments These are big assumptions and they may very well turn out to be mistaken. Nevertheless, it is important to see that the main conclusion Obama argues for depends on these missing premises—premises that he never explicitly states in his argument.

So here is the final, reconstructed argument in standard form. This is just another way of representing what I have already represented in the standard form argument, using parentheses to describe the structure. So while statement 11 is a premise of the main argument for the main conclusion statement 14 , statement 11 is also itself a conclusion of a subargument whose premises are statements 5, 6, 9, and And although statement 9 is a premise in that argument, it itself is a conclusion of yet another subargument whose premises are statements 1, 7 and 8. Almost any interesting argument will be complex in this way, with further subarguments in support of the premises of the main argument.

Psychology of eating meat

This chapter has provided you the tools to be able to reconstruct arguments like these. As we have seen, there is much to consider in reconstructing a complex argument. As with any skill, a true mastery of it requires lots of practice. Reconstructing and analyzing arguments many ways, this is a skill that is more like an art than a science. The next chapter will introduce you to some basic formal logic, which is perhaps more like a science than an art.

In chapter 1 we introduced the concept of validity and the informal test of validity. According to that test, in order to determine whether an argument is valid we ask whether we can imagine a scenario where the premises are true and yet the conclusion is false. The informal test relies on our ability to imagine certain kinds of scenarios as well as our understanding of the statements involved in the argument. Because not everyone has the same powers of imagination or the same understanding, this informal test of validity is neither precise nor objective.

For example, while one person may be able to imagine a scenario in which the premises of an argument are true while the conclusion is false, another person may be unable to imagine such a scenario. As a result, the argument will be classified as invalid by the first individual, but valid by the second individual. That is a problem because we would like our standard of evaluation of arguments i.

What are the precise success conditions for having imagined a scenario where the premises are true and the conclusion is false? The goal of a formal method of evaluation is to eliminate any imprecision or lack of objectivity in evaluating arguments. As we will see by the end of this chapter, logicians have devised a number of formal techniques that accomplish this goal for certain classes of arguments.

What all of these formal techniques have in common is that you can apply them without really having to understand the meanings of the concepts used in the argument. Furthermore, you can apply the formal techniques without having to utilize imagination at all. Thus, the formal techniques we will survey in this chapter help address the lack of precision and objectivity inherent in the informal test of validity.

In general, a formal method of evaluation is a method of evaluation of arguments that does not require one to understand the meaning of the statements involved in the argument. Formal methods of evaluating arguments introduced the formal methods, you will understand what it means to evaluate an argument without knowing what the statements of the argument mean. By the end of this chapter, if not before, you will understand what it means to evaluate an argument by its form, rather than its content.

However, I will give you a sense of what a formal method of evaluation is in a very simple case right now, to give you a foretaste of what we will be doing in this chapter. Suppose I tell you: It is sunny and warm today. This statement is a conjunction because it is a complex statement that is asserting two things: It is sunny today. It is warm today. Here is that simple argument in standard form: It is sunny today and it is warm today. Therefore, it is sunny today.

It is not sophistry, rather making and finding meanings. Often there are many understandings at the end of a session and children learn that many questions have no one 'right' answer. Topics for discussion can be based on children's own questions and curiosities: Was there a time before time began? How can you be sure something exists if you haven't seen it? The list is endless and often stories, poetry, works of art can all be the stimuli for a philosophy session.

The teacher or parent takes on a Socratic role by encouraging, supporting and modelling thinking and dialogue through the use of such phrases as I wonder, is it always so? I'm not sure, I agree with, I disagree with agreements and disagreements are with the thoughts not the person I have a question, maybe, because, although, perhaps.

A useful book in starting philosophy with children is David A. White's Philosophy for Kids The questions are common to what children often ask and importantly each one is connected into the thinking of major philosophers such as Plato, Kant, Sartre and de Beauvior. Philosophy gives children an opportunity to think and talk within and beyond the curriculum and could form part of the oral strand of the language curriculum.

Importantly, children are now recognised as citizens with their own rights in our constitution. Having a voice is part of citizenship. George Berkeley once said "all men have opinions but few think". Philosophy complements and extends the good work already happening within Irish primary schools to educate children to have and express opinions based on deep thinking, dialogue and shared understanding. Sarah Knapton in London It has long been assumed that childhood is a time of innocence, free from the shackles of social conformity, when youngsters act naturally on instinct rather than by convention.

Just the kids love it, but not the teacher or mams and dads. Philomena Donnelly May 7 2: Dr Philomena Donnelly is a former director of the graduate diploma in education primary teaching , St Patrick's College, Drumcondra. Advice for the new kids: Most Read Most Shared. Life Newsletter Our digest of the week's juiciest lifestyle titbits. Emma Murphy on the silent damage of psychological Meet the class of A dad who left school at 16 said the birth of his young A former taxi driver who was illiterate until he was Rory O'Neill, famous for his drag queen persona Panti Bliss, Are boarding schools really a home from home?

more on this story

Therefore, Israel is not safe. Passage 1 Homeschooling is a valid concept if the parent makes teaching a full- time job and has the insight, knowledge, and patience to do so. As you create your list of values, focus on those that are so significant that they affect your opinions and behavior in many ways. President to have been monogamous. At Lansing Community College, my place of employment, we have undertaken an initiative to reduce the cost of textbooks. She wants you to believe the conclusion on the basis of her other statements. Notice that it is also possible that the scenario described in the premises ends with Joan falling to her death.

The broadcaster Ivan Yates once said of his boarding school experience that