HSH1000 Chap.7 Argument Analysis: Premises, Conclusions, Support
Argument Analysis: Premises, Conclusions, Support
Two questions, asked separately
The Meeting 4 outcomes are unusually precise. An argument is a conclusion backed by premises; you must be able to say which is which; and you must hold apart whether the premises are true from whether they support the conclusion.
Merging those two questions is what makes an evaluation useless, because arguments fail in two different ways that need two different replies.
Consider an argument with true premises that establishes nothing: people have always disagreed about what is right, so nobody is right.
Every premise is true, and the support is worthless, because persistent disagreement is also what you would expect if there were a hard-to-find right answer. Now the mirror: if every ruler in this period was cruel, then this one was. The support is impeccable and the conclusion unreliable, because the first premise is false. The first is answered with an alternative explanation, the second with a counterexample.
An answer that says only that the argument is bad has told nobody which reply to make.
Reconstruction comes first
Arguments in real texts are embedded in narrative, interrupted by examples and usually missing the premise that does the most work, because the author thought it too obvious to state. Find the conclusion first by asking what the passage wants you to accept. Strip the decoration.
Number what remains, one claim per line. Then supply the missing premise that would close the gap, and mark it as supplied. Finally check charity: would the author accept your reconstruction, or have you built something easier to knock down?
When the disagreement is about a word
The same week connects argument to semantic drift and to language as something a community makes.
Many disagreements that look like disputes about the world are disputes about a word, and the tradition this course reads took that seriously enough to make the correct use of names a political question.
A convention everyone relies on is not arbitrary in use: once a community has fixed what a term picks out, departing from it silently is a kind of deception, and disputes about categories become disputes about how people are treated.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Conclusion and premises, and telling them apart
- 02
The truth test and the support test as separate investigations
- 03
Two failure modes and the different replies they need
- 04
Stripping decoration and numbering what remains
- 05
Supplied premises and the principle of charity
- 06
Semantic drift and language as a social construct
Reconstructing a short argument from prose
- 1State the conclusion in one sentence.
- 1Number the stated premises.
- 1Supply the missing premise and mark it as supplied.
- 1Say where an opponent should attack, and why.
Key terms
- Conclusion
- The claim an argument is trying to get you to accept, which the other claims are offered in support of.
- Premise
- A statement offered in support of a conclusion. Whether it is true and whether it supports the conclusion are two separate questions.
- Supplied Premise
- An unstated assumption that has to be added before the stated claims reach the conclusion, and which usually carries the argument's weight.
- Support Test
- Granting the premises and asking what follows, which is answered by describing a case where they all hold and the conclusion fails.
- Principle Of Charity
- Reconstructing an argument in the strongest form its author would accept, rather than in the form easiest to refute.
- Semantic Drift
- The movement of a term's meaning over time or across a discussion, which turns an apparent disagreement about the world into one about a word.
Argument Analysis: Premises, Conclusions, Support FAQ
How do I find the conclusion when there is no therefore?
Ask what the passage is trying to get you to accept, and check by testing each candidate: if this sentence were removed, would the rest still have a point? Indicator words help when present, but plenty of arguments put the conclusion first or leave it implied in a final recommendation.
What counts as decoration rather than a premise?
Examples, restatements and rhetorical questions. An example can be evidence for a premise, but the premise is the general claim the example illustrates, and numbering the example instead leaves the real claim unexamined. Restatements are the commonest padding in student reconstructions.
Why do I have to mark a premise as supplied?
Because you added it. Marking it keeps the distinction between what the author wrote and what your reconstruction needs, which matters if the author would reject the addition. An unmarked supplied premise is how a charitable reconstruction quietly becomes a straw one.
If the premises are true, can the argument still be bad?
Yes, and this is the case students most often miss. True premises can fail to discriminate between the conclusion and its denial, which is exactly what happens with arguments from long disagreement. The reply is an alternative explanation of the same evidence, not a dispute about the facts.
Why is a section on words in an argument chapter?
Because a large share of stalled arguments are about a term rather than the world. Once a key word has drifted, the same evidence is being sorted into different categories by each side. Fixing the term for the discussion is often the move that lets the real disagreement appear.
Exam move
Reconstruct one argument a day from something you were going to read anyway, and keep the reconstructions to five lines. Write the conclusion, the numbered premises and the supplied one, then a single line saying which test the argument fails. The habit that transfers to the exam is naming the failure exactly rather than judging the argument overall.
When you write about the set texts, reconstruct before you evaluate, because most misreadings of a position are reconstruction errors.
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