Close Analysis (Part II)
Think Again I: How to Understand Arguments
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課程 1(共 4 門,Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking 專項課程)
In this course, you will learn what an argument is. The definition of argument will enable you to identify when speakers are giving arguments and when they are not. Next, you will learn how to break an argument into its essential parts, how to put them in order to reveal their connections, and how to fill in gaps in an argument by adding suppressed premises. By the end of this course, you will be better able to understand and appreciate arguments that you and other people present. Suggested Readings: Students who want more detailed explanations or additional exercises or who want to explore these topics in more depth should consult Understanding Arguments: An Introduction to Informal Logic, Ninth Edition, Concise, Chapters 1-5, by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Robert Fogelin. Course Format: Each week will be divided into multiple video segments that can be viewed separately or in groups. There will be short ungraded quizzes after each segment (to check comprehension) and a longer graded quiz at the end of the course.
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Evaluation, Interpretation, Language, Linguistics
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This is a very very engaging and applicable course, and is truly presented with 10/10 efficacy! I couldn't be more sincere and adamant in my recommendation, no matter who you are or what you do.
This course has helped me breakdown the structure of arguments and I think it is very useful if you struggle with essay writing as this course helps you understand the fundamentals of arguments.
How to Untangle an Argument
This week's material will focus on the special language in which arguments are formulated. We will investigate the functions of particular words, including premise and conclusion markers plus assuring, guarding, discounting, and evaluative terms. Identifying these words will enable students to separate arguments from the irrelevant verbiage that surrounds it and then to break the argument into parts and to identify what each part of an argument is doing. The lectures end with a detailed example that uses these tools to closely analyze an op-ed from a newspaper. LEARNING OUTCOMES: By the end of this week's material, you will be able to: understand three levels of meaning. identify argument markers OPTIONAL READING: If you want more examples or more detailed discussions of these topics, we recommend Understanding Arguments, Ninth Edition, Chapters 3-4.
Close Analysis (Part I)20:05
Close Analysis (Part II)13:17
More Close Analysis17:11
Dr. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
Dr. Ram Neta
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On to the second paragraph. The first sentence is really simple, "Not so". Of course, it's referring back to the last sentence of the first paragraph, which said, now we thought at least some it was safe, and saying, no, it wasn't safe. So, what are we going to say about this sentence? Well, what about the wor- little word "so". So, can be an argument marker. It can indicate that what follows it, is a conclusion. But is that what it's doing here? I don't think so. As we just saw, like in, I don't think so, the word "so", can be used in many ways where it's not an argument marker, and this is saying it's not so. It's not that way. So there's no argument here, so that would get marked with a big N for nothing. Now, what about "shocking", as it sounds shocking. Well, is shocking always bad? Remember, we saw in the first paragraph, the word "stunning". Well, stunning stuns you, and shocking shocks you, and it's telling you that you have some kind of reaction, but it's not telling you whether that reaction is due to the thing being good, or the thing being bad. You can get shocked by something good or bad. It can be shockingly good, or shockingly bad. And so the word "shocking" by itself, doesn't indicate that it's E plus or E minus, so again, you get a nothing. I mention it only because, it's clear that Robert Redford thinks that "shocking" is bad, that this should not have happened. He's suggesting that it's bad, but the word "shocking" in itself is not an evaluative word. What about "as it sounds"? Well, he's saying that it sounds that way. He's not saying that it is that way. He's not saying that it may sound that way. He's saying that it does sound that way, which is to say, it seems that way to him. Which is not to say it really is true, so he's guarding the claim. He's not saying that it really is shocking. He's saying that it seems shocking, so he's guarding the claim, in order to avoid someone objecting that it's really not all that shocking after all. You say, well it sounds shocking. And in order to make that part of his argument more defensible, because it's not really essential to his argument that it's shocking or not. So it's supposed to be shocking. Clinton's Bureau of Land Management or BLM, has approved oil drilling within the monument. Notice, that there's no guarding at all here. He just states it. They did it. They approved oil drilling within the monument. And that's because it's not really something he's arguing for. He's actually opposed to it. It's something that his opponents might support, but he doesn't. So he doesn't want to guard it, since he wants to say it just happened as a matter a fact, that they approved it. So there's nothing that we need to mark in that particular sentence. Next sentence, BLM, or the Bureau of Land Management, has given Conoco Incorporated, a subsidiary of the corporate giant DuPont, permission to drill for oil and gas in the heart of the new monument. Well, there's a lot going on here that we could mention. You know BLM has given Conoco a subsidiary. That explains how they got permission, by siding the BLM. It's a subsidiary of the corporate giant DuPont. He's certainly suggesting that, "giant" suggested he's the small guy, you know, up against the big corporate giant. I-It might even have some connotation of corporate giants being bad, but it doesn't actually say that. And so again, "giant" should be marked as nothing. What about "permission"? To say that someone's permitted to do something, is to say that it's not wrong. That's what permitted means. Now of course, if you're talking about a legal permission? Then to say that it's permitted, is to say that's not legally wrong. It's not forbidded by law. It still might be morally wrong, but at least it's legally permitted; means it's not legally forbidden. And so if forbidden and wrong are evaluative words, to deny them and say it's not wrong, looks like an evaluative as well. But one of the interesting things about this evaluative word, is it's not clear whether it's positive or negative. It means it's not wrong, but that don't mean it is good or is right. It simply means it's not forbidden. So it's not clear whether to put plus or minus. So I'll just leave it as a plain E in that case, okay? Now, what did they have permission to do? To drill for oil and gas in the heart of the new monument, okay? That's what the permission was a permission to do. The word "to" there is not being used as an argument marker in this case, because you can't say, they get permission in order to, right? What they gave them permission to do, was to drill, okay? What about "drill"? Well, clearly Robert Redford doesn't want them to drill, so he thinks that's bad, but he donen't say that's bad. He just calls it "drilling". .And they're drilling for oil and gas. Well a lot of people think that oil and gas are good things, but they don't say here that they're good. They're simply saying that they're oil and gas. The coolest part of this sentence ,I think, is that metaphor at the end. I mean, you got this image that there's this, this, poor monument, and somebody's drilling right in it's heart. You know, like what could be crueler, than to drill in the heart of a young monument. The poor innocent thing. So this metaphor of the heart, is a nice rhetorical device, that fits with the drilling, and is building up people's opposition to what Redford wants them to be opposed to, but it doesn't actually give an argument. It's just stating it in a flowery or metaphorical way, that'll get their feelings going, okay? You may wonder, notice he doesn't say, you do wonder. He says, you may wonder. So this is, tell me? A guarding term, so you should mark it with G. You may wonder, as I do, "as" is sometimes used as an argument marker, but here you're not saying that you wonder because I do, or I wonder because you do. The word "because" can't be substituted for as. So to say "as I do," is simply to conjoin the two and say, you wonder and I also wonder or you may wonder, because I don't know whether you are or not, and I do. And what we wonder is, how can this happen? Now, we have a rhetorical question. How can this happen? Well, that's obviously suggesting, it shouldn't have happened. Now, how could something have gone so wrong, as it did in this case? But he doesn't actually say that. He simply asks the rhetorical questions, and that's really the trick of rhetorical questions. Notice there are a bunch of them here. Wasn't the whole purpose this? Didn't the president say he was doing this? Then these three sentences in a row, are all rhetorical questions. So what's the trick of rhetorical questions? The point of a rhetorical question, is to get you to give the answer. If I say, how can this happen? And someone thinks to themself, well the government messes up all the time. Then you've got that audience member who answered the question, to be saying it themselves. And there's nothing more forceful in an argument than to get your audience to say it themselves, when you don't have to say it. And that's the trick of a rhetorical question. And what Redford's doing here, is putting three of 'em right in a row, so that you'll have to go along with him three times in a row. And then, that obviously has an effect on your feeling, like you're with him, or you feeling like you agree with him. That's the effect he's trying to create by using these rhetorical questions. Okay, what's the whole purpose of creating? Notice, the whole purpose is to preserve. That phrase "the whole purpose," goes with it, because we say the purpose is to preserve. And there as before, in the previous paragraph, we're signaling an explanation, because if you want to explain why Clinton created the monument, then the answer was, to preserve the colorful cliffs and sweeping arches and so on. So, this is going to be an explanation, and to say, that's the purpose, is to say that, you created it because you wanted to preserve, or in order to preserve. Then this whole purpose, marks the conclusion, and the "to preserve" marks the premise. And we have a little argument. He wanted to preserve his colorful cliffs, therefore he created the monument. And we've got the conclusion marked by the whole purpose, and the premise, or the reason, marked by the word "to," okay? Preserve, we've already seen a word a lot like that, namely "protect". And we saw that when you protect something, it has to be good. Preserved also means, to preserve it against the things that would harm it. If harms bad, then preserving and protecting against harm must be good. So we can mark that as E plus. It's colorful cliffs, "colorful" sounds good, but of course colorful just means it's colorful. Sweeping arches, broad and sweeping in curves; well that sounds good. It sounds beautiful, the way he describes it. And it surely is, as you can see in any picture, but sweeping doesn't itself say its good or beautiful, or so on. Another "extraordinary"; we already saw extraordinary. So colorful, sweeping, and extraordinary, they're certainly being used here by Redford, to suggest that these are good, but they're not openly saying they're good. So we don't want to mark those as evaluative words. But resources, that resources are things that can give you abilities. When you have more resources, you are able to do more. So abilities sounds like a good thing, and resources are the things that make you more able. They give you more freedom and more power, so at least, many people would want to mark that as an E plus word. Some of these are going to be questionable. They're not as obvious as others, so I'm suggesting one way of interpreting this passage, and I hope you're following along? But if you have some questions about the particular cases, that's going to be natural. It's partly because our language is not totally precise, okay? Large scale mineral development; well that's not bad if it's done in the right places, so I don't think that's evaluative either. Didn't the president say that he was saving these lands? Well didn't the president say, that he was saving these lands? Well that suggests that he's assuring you, that in fact, he was saving these lands. He should know whether that's what he was doing, since after all, that's what he, you know, did himself, so he should be able to say what he did and why. Didn't the president say he was saving? Saving, could be marked as E plus just like protect and preserve, because it saves it from something bad happening; these lands from mining companies for our children and grandchildren. Now, what about the word "for"? This explains again, why he's saving these lands. He's saving them for our grandchildren and children. That means, the reason for saving these lands, is to benefit our grandchildren and children. So "for" is going to be a reason or a premise marker. It marks the reason or premise that justifies saving the lands, and explains why in fact the president did want to save the lands, okay? So now we're through with paragraph two and I hope you're kind of getting the feel for how to do close analysis. And so what I want to do now, is give you a chance to practice the skill on your own. We'll put up paragraph three. Mark certain words, and your task in the exercise will be, to put the right letter next to, or to indicate, the function of that word in the paragraph. And the letter you put, should be: either R or P for premise marker, C for conclusion marker, A for assuring, G for guarding, D for discounting, E plus/ E minus for positive and negative evaluation. And you can go through the third paragraph yourself, in the exercise.