02-Good Arguments

Philosophy 105
Fall 2005
Lecture Notes
Good Arguments

The first quiz will be Friday. It will cover material from Ch. 1 and Ch. 2, as well as what’s been discussed in class. It will be during the second half of the class. You can get an idea of what the questions will be like by looking at the following exercise sets in the text: p. 14, #3-5 (but not 1, 2, 6-8); p. 17, 1, 3 (not 2, 4); p. 20, #1; p. 32: 3, 7, 9 (not 4, 8); p. 38: 1, 7 (not 3, 4); p. 48: 1, 2, 6.

Preliminary Comment on the Organization of the Course:

Four parts - i ) conceptual foundations - what arguments are, what makes them good ones, logic; ii) reconstructing arguments - how to read something in ordinary prose and restate it in a prescribed form that makes assessment easier; iii) applications to specific kinds of cases. Part (i) requires learning a bunch of definitions and rules. It will be a nuisance, and at times confusing because it will be unclear just why things are defined in the way they are. I’ll try to explain. But you have to just learn this stuff. Part (ii) involves a skill. I’ve tried to break things down into small and understandable parts, but it is hard. It requires lots of practice. Part (iii) introduces some complexity in the examples. Part (iv) requires putting all the pieces together.

I. What is an Argument? When is an Argument a Good Argument?

One way to gain understanding of an idea is to look at confused explanations of it, and see how they go wrong. (Successive approximation is often helpful. The contrast helps you to see what's important. Sometimes I will ask quiz questions about why one explanation was replaced by another.)

A. From Point Counterpoint, edited by Andersen and Forrester

This is a book of essays for analysis for a course like this one. It also includes some discussion of what arguments are and how to analyze them. Here's how it begins.

Preachers argue that we’d best change our ways if we want to get into Heaven. Advertisers argue that we ought to buy more widgets. Environmentalists argue that we ought to stop buying those abominable widgets. Ardent poets try to reason their coy mistresses into bed. Coy mistresses argue that there is world enough and time enough for that. As children, we argue that time will never pass and we’d better open the Christmas presents now. As old people, perhaps will argue as Goethe did on his deathbed, that time passes too quickly and we need more time and light. W.C. Fields argued on his gravestone that he’d be better off in Philadelphia.

What it said on his gravestone was, “All things considered, I’d rather be in Philadelphia.” The book continues:

When Samuel Johnson heard that there was a women preaching the gospel in eighteenth century London, he huffed to his drinking companions, “Sir, a woman preaching is like a dog’s walking on his hind legs. It is not done well, but you are surprised to find it done at all.” You women out there! How do you like Johnson’s argument. It’s quite sound, don’t you think?

Comment: These are not arguments. Go over the examples. Notice absence of premises. These author’s think that one gives an argument by making a controversial assertion. That’s wrong.

Key point: Arguments differ from mere controversial assertions.

Where there are arguments, there has to be some defense of a claim. Had Samuel Johnson somehow defended the claim that women are not capable of preaching well, there would have been an argument.

B. From The Elements of Argument, edited by Rottenberg

This is another book of readings, with accompanying explanations of what arguments are and how they work. The author, Annette T. Rottenberg defines argument as follows:

Argumentation is the art of influencing others, through the medium of reasoned discourse, to believe or act as we wish them to act.

A little later she says:

If you've ever been dissatisfied with your attempt to prove a case, you might have wondered how good arguers, the ones who succeed in persuading people, construct their cases.

People can be persuaded by stirring music, rhetorical tricks, a winning smile. What Rottenberg seem to be talking about is rhetorical effectiveness.

Rhetoric: the art of effective expression and the persuasive use of language. (American Heritage Dictionary).

Persuasive use of language - language that gets listeners to think or do what the speaker wants.

Typical connotation: works by means of deception, trickery, etc. It may be that restricting the def. to persuasive use of language is too restrictive. Language + images - eg., advertising. Advertisers use language with a particular goal - getting you to buy the product. Politicians have the goal of getting elected. They are often effective - they can bring about the desired beliefs and actions.

Key point: There is a difference between rhetorical effectiveness and rational strength.

Persuasiveness is one thing, good reasons are another.

C. My View

Arguments present reasons to believe things. Good arguments present good reasons to believe things.

An argument is a series of statements intended to establish the truth of one the statements. The components of the argument are its conclusion (what it is intended to establish) and its premises.

Some things to note about the text: key words like “argument” are listed in checklists at the end of each chapter. One way to test yourself about your understanding of the chapter is to see if you understand those words. When those words first appear, and are explained, they are in boldface. (See p. 6 for “argument”.) They are also in the glossary beginning on p. 447.

Good arguments (as we will use this term) are arguments that succeed in supporting their conclusion. But not because they persuade people. Rather, because they provide logically strong reasons.

An argument is rationally strong iff it provides good reason to believe that its conclusion is true.

Note that rationally strong arguments can be rhetorically ineffective. People may not pay attention; the arguments can be boring or difficult. It follows from all of this that the mark of a good argument, in our sense, is not its persuasiveness. One way to see the goal of the course: to make it so that the two ideas converge - you are persuaded by rationally strong arguments.

II. Truth

A. Introduction

To understand the general idea of a good argument and to grasp the method of argument analysis that we develop later on, it is important that we clearly understand the components of the idea. The first of these that we’ll discuss is truth.

B. Philosophical Issues

Many of the topics we cover in this beginning part are taken up elsewhere in philosophy, in more detail. This stuff is in "theory of knowledge" or "epistemology." Our goal here is not a full discussion of these topics. Take another course for that. I do expect you to understand what's in the book. Some of it will sink in as we go along. I want to be able to say later on, "Remember what we learned at the beginning." Emphasize remember.

C. The Simple Idea: there is a definite way the world is.

Here’s the central idea: there’s a definite way things are. A statement is true if it corresponds to the way things are, false if it fails to correspond to the way things are. See (CP) on p. 26.

Simple examples: “There are more than 35 people in the room.” “Saddam Hussein is still alive.”

Some implications of this:

i) What’s true is not up to us. This may seem perfectly obvious to some, weird to others. As we'll see, some more explanation is needed. [Some things are up to us. E.g., it is up to me what color shirt I wore today. So, by my actions, I can make it true that I’m wearing a blue shirt. I’m not denying that we have this kind of control.]

ii) A clear statement cannot be true for one person and not true for another. Consider ancient school children who say:

1. The earth is flat.

Is their sentence false? You might feel uneasy saying so. It looked flat, their experts said it was flat. They were reasonable in believing what they did. It seems harsh to say that it is simply false. You might say that is was "true for them." You might say similar things about controversial topics today. But the ancient school children were wrong. They earth didn't change shape!

Key point: There is a difference between truth and reasonable belief or strong conviction.

Some people say that we “construct” the world for ourselves. Perhaps we construct our beliefs about the world. But those beliefs may fail to match the way the world really is. Beliefs are true only when they do match the world.

D. Why Things Get More Complicated

Consider:

2. I am hungry.

I assert (2). You say, well, I am not hungry. Is (2) true?

Distinguish sentences - the marks on the blackboard and the sounds we utter - from the statements (or propositions) they are used to express. You use sentence (2) to make one statement, I use it to make a different statement. We assert different things. But each statement has a definite truth value. Each depends upon the condition - hungry or not - of the relevant person. We’d really disagree if I said “I am hungry” and you said “No, you aren’t.” Then only one of us could be right.

Key point: The same sentences can be used in different contexts to make different statements.

Statements are the fundamental things. See (CP1) on 29. (See key principles and definitions, starting on p. 414.) Sentences are just ways of putting them into words.

This will become important later when we talk about more complicated statements. People may sometimes be using the same sentence to make different statements without realizing it.

Also, sometimes it is hard to know what word to use to describe something. But this doesn’t undermine the basic idea. Use example of odd colored sheet of paper to illustrate this.

E. Truth and Arguments

If you put these points about truth back into the statement about what arguments are, you see that arguments are designed to show that a conclusion really is true, that it accurately describes the world. It’s not designed to show how convinced one is of the conclusion. It’s designed to make a case for its conclusion. And good argument makes a good case for that conclusion, showing that it definitely, or at least most likely, really is true.

III. Rational Belief and Good Reasons

The other concept involved in the notion of a good argument is “good reasons”. More fully, “good reasons to believe a statement.”

Go over (BP), on p. 34.

To believe p is the same as to believe that p is true, that the world really is the way p says it is. There’s a disagreement whenever you believe p and someone else disbelieves it. (There’s also a kind of disagreement when one believes and the other suspends judgments. There is, at least, a failure to agree.) So, given what we’ve said about truth, when there’s a disagreement, one person is right and the other is wrong.

There’s a puzzling question about the extent to which belief is a matter of choice. For a great many acts, I can just choose what to do. Rarely, if ever, can I do this for belief.

The key idea is that reasonable belief is entirely a matter of believing according to one’s evidence. A good reason for something is evidence that it is true.

We can best appreciate the significance of this by noting some of its implications. Here are a few of them, and some comments about related ideas:

● If two people have the same evidence concerning something, then the same beliefs are justified for them. [They ought to believe the same thing.]

● If two people disagree about a proposition, then either they have different evidence or (at least) one of them is unjustified (unreasonable, irrational) with respect to that proposition.

● Being rational, in our sense, is not a matter of being serious, cold-hearted, or inconsiderate of the views of others. It is just a matter of following one’s evidence, wherever it leads. We sometimes use the word “rational” to mean something like “thoughtful” or “considered.” On this usage, if a person thinks carefully and comes to a conclusion on that basis, it’s a rational decision, as opposed to an emotional, ill-considered, or thoughtless decision. But that’s not how we are using the word.

● Whether a reason supports some conclusion is an “objective” matter. You can think that your evidence supports something and be wrong about that. Being sincere and honest in a belief about what your evidence supports is not the same as being right about what it supports.

● Wanting something to be true or it’s being important to you that it is true is not evidence that it (really) is true.

● Sometimes you can have good reasons to believe something, yet it is false - this is “fallibilism.” Here’s a thing that can get people confused: on the one hand, when you think about someone else, or yourself at another time, it is easy to see that fallibilism is right. You can give examples to illustrate the point. But you can never do that for yourself now - you can never sensibly think that you are now justified in believing p, but p is false. You can have the general thought, “some of my justified beliefs are false.” But you can’t pick one out.

● Don’t infer skepticism from fallibilism.

● There’s a difference between having evidence for a proposition and having some motivation to believe that it’s true. Review exercise 3, p. 49.

IV. Conclusions

Arguments: reasons (premises) intended to establish that a conclusion is true.

Good arguments (rationally strong arguments): arguments whose premises provide good reasons to believe that their conclusions are true.

A conclusion is true just in case it corresponds to the facts, just in case the world actually is the way it says it is. Conclusions are not made true by our thinking that they are true or by how we “feel” about them. They are made true, or false, by the facts. The revised correspondence principle gets it right.

Good reasons are evidence that something (really) is true.