english hw
abzul13
These three images say a lot about the use and place of logic (logos) in Western, and particularly American, culture. The first shows David Caruso as Lt. Horatio Caine in the TV series CSI: Miami, in which crime lab investigators use science to determine the facts behind unsolved murder cases. The second refers to an even more popular TV (and film) series, Star Trek, whose Vulcan officer, Spock, reasons through logic alone; and the third is a cartoon spoofing a logical argument (nine out of ten prefer X) made so often that it has become something of a joke itself.
These images attest to the prominent place that logic holds: like the investigators on CSI, we continue to want access to the facts on the assumption that they will help us make the best arguments. We admire those whose logic is, like Spock’s, impeccable, and we respond to implied arguments suggested when they begin, “Nine out of ten doctors recom- mend . . .” Those are odds that most accept, suggesting overwhelmingly that the next doctor will also agree with the prognosis. But these images also challenge or undercut our reliance on logic alone: Lt. Caine and Spock
Arguments Based on Facts and Reason: Logos
4
55
04_LUN_06045_Ch04_055-073.indd 55 10/1/12 9:09 AM
reading and understanding arguments56
are characters drawn in broad and often parodic strokes; the “nine out of ten” cartoon directly spoofs such arguments. When the choice is between logic and emotion, however, most of us still say we respect appeals to logos — arguments based on facts, evidence, and reason (though we’re inclined to test the facts against our feelings and against the ethos of those making the appeal).
Providing Hard Evidence
Aristotle helps us out in classifying arguments by distinguishing two kinds:
Artistic Proofs Arguments the writer/ speaker creates
Constructed arguments
Appeals to reason; common sense
Inartistic Proofs Arguments the writer/ speaker is given
Hard evidence Facts, statistics, testimo- nies, witnesses, con- tracts, documents
We can see these different kinds of logical appeals at work in the most re- cent attempts of former vice president Al Gore to raise awareness and evoke action on global warming. On September 14, 2011, Gore launched a twenty-four-hour worldwide live-streamed event to introduce the new Cli- mate Reality Project, beginning with a new thirty-minute multimedia pre- sentation shown once an hour for twenty-four hours in every time zone across the globe. The project intends, according to its Web site, to bring
the facts about the climate crisis into the mainstream and engage the public in conversation about how to solve it. We help citizens around the world reject the lies and take meaningful steps to bring about change.
The project, Gore claims, is guided by “one simple truth”:
The climate crisis is real and we know how to solve it.
Note the emphasis on “the facts about the climate crisis”: Gore and his colleagues will have to rely on a lot of hard evidence and inartistic proof in asserting that the “climate crisis is real.” In an essay in Rolling Stone, Gore summarized some of this evidence, saying that today
the scientific consensus [for the reality of global warming] is even stronger. It has been endorsed by every National Academy of science of every major country on the planet, every major professional scien- tific society related to the study of global warming and 98 percent of
04_LUN_06045_Ch04_055-073.indd 56 10/1/12 9:09 AM
C h a p t e r 4 arguments based on facts and reason: logos 57
climate scientists throughout the world. In the latest and most author- itative study by three thousand of the very best scientific experts in the world, the evidence was judged “unequivocal.”
Here Gore refers to testimony, statistics, and facts to carry his argument forward. But he also must rely on less “hard” evidence, as when he says:
Determining what is real can be a challenge in our culture, but in order to make wise choices in the presence of such grave risks, we must use common sense and the rule of reason in coming to an agree- ment on what is true.
Common sense, Gore tells us, shows us that global warming has got to be true: just look around and see the evidence in the melting ice caps and the rising seas — and a lot more. Gore believes that this artistic ap- peal will go as far as the hard scientific evidence to convince readers to take action. (Seeing is believing, after all — or is it? See p. 59.) And action is what he’s after. At the end of this long essay, he uses another bit of constructed reasoning to show that if everyday Americans make their position clear, the leaders will follow:
Why do you think President Obama and Congress changed their game on “don’t ask, don’t tell”? It happened because enough Americans
“Who cares about ice bears?”
04_LUN_06045_Ch04_055-073.indd 57 10/1/12 9:09 AM
reading and understanding arguments58
delivered exactly that tough message to candidates who wanted their votes. When enough people care passionately enough to drive that message home on the climate crisis, politicians will look at their hole cards, and enough of them will change their game to make all the dif- ference we need.
Will Gore and the Climate Reality Project convince global citizens that they are right about what is “true” about climate change? Not if other powerful voices can help it. A quick Google search for “global warming hoax” will take you to weekly updates providing countervailing studies and testimony. And Gore himself has been an often easy target for at- tack, especially after some leaked scientific email from Britain evoked charges that climate scientists were “doctoring” the facts, though inde- pendent critics eventually determined that the email wording was taken seriously out of context and that the email did not undermine the data on global climate change and its causes.
this cartoon suggests that changing the subject is a fallback strategy when the “facts” are inconvenient.
04_LUN_06045_Ch04_055-073.indd 58 10/1/12 9:09 AM
C h a p t e r 4 arguments based on facts and reason: logos 59
This ongoing controversy surrounding global warming is a good ex- ample of how difficult it can be to distinguish the good evidence from the slanted or fabricated kinds and to decide how to make sound deci- sions based on it.
Is sEEIng BElIEvIng?
Some of the debate over climate change centers on photographs, which may be telling “nothing but the truth” — or not. We have known for decades that all photographs in some way shape or inter- pret what they show, but in the age of Photoshop readers need to be even more careful about believing what they see, and writers need to be especially careful that the images they use are trustworthy. Whole books have been devoted to “digital fakery” and photographic manip- ulation, and examples are easy to find. In 2008, Iran was caught red- handed manipulating a photograph of missiles, as you see in the two photographs above: where did the fourth missile (in the right-hand photo) come from? So egregious was this example of manipulation that others like Boing Boing soon got into the act, inviting readers to join in by submitting their own manipulations of the original image on the left.
Today, when we can all slant discussions, cherry-pick examples, and alter images, writers need more than ever to be aware of the ethics of evidence, whether that evidence draws on facts, statistics, survey data, testimony and narratives, or commonsense reasoning.
04_LUN_06045_Ch04_055-073.indd 59 10/1/12 9:09 AM
reading and understanding arguments60
R e s p o n d. Discuss whether the following statements are examples of hard evidence or constructed arguments. Not all cases are clear-cut.
1. Drunk drivers are involved in more than 50 percent of traffic deaths.
2. DNA tests of skin found under the victim’s fingernails suggest that the defendant was responsible for the assault.
3. A psychologist testified that teenage violence could not be blamed on video games.
4. An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
5. “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
6. Air bags ought to be removed from vehicles because they can kill young children and small-frame adults.
Facts
Gathering factual information and transmitting it faithfully practically define what we mean by professional journalism and scholarship. We’ll even listen to people we don’t agree with if their evidence is really good. Below, a reviewer for the conservative National Review praises William Julius Wilson, a liberal sociologist, because of how well he presents his case:
In his eagerly awaited new book, Wilson argues that ghetto blacks are worse off than ever, victimized by a near-total loss of low-skill jobs in and around inner-city neighborhoods. In support of this thesis, he mus- ters mountains of data, plus excerpts from some of the thousands of surveys and face-to-face interviews that he and his research team conducted among inner-city Chicagoans. It is a book that deserves a wide audience among thinking conservatives.
— John J. Dilulio Jr., “When Decency Disappears” (emphasis added)
When your facts are compelling, they may stand on their own in a low- stakes argument, supported by little more than saying where they come from. Consider the power of phrases such as “reported by the Wall Street Journal,” or “according to factcheck.org.” Such sources gain credibility if they have reported facts accurately and reliably over time. Using such credible sources in an argument can also reflect positively on you.
But arguing with facts can also involve challenging even the most reputable sources if they lead to unfair or selective reporting. In recent years, bloggers and other online critics have enjoyed pointing out the
04_LUN_06045_Ch04_055-073.indd 60 10/1/12 9:09 AM
C h a p t e r 4 arguments based on facts and reason: logos 61
biases or factual mistakes of “mainstream media” (MSM) outlets. These criticisms often deal not just with specific facts and coverage but with the overall way that an issue is presented or “framed.” In the following highly rhetorical passage from liberal economist Paul Krugman’s blog, he points out what, from his point of view, is a persistent tendency of the mainstream media to claim they are framing issues in “fair and bal- anced” ways by presenting two opposing sides as if they were equal:
Watching our system deal with the debt ceiling crisis — a wholly self- inflicted crisis, which may nonetheless have disastrous consequences — it’s increasingly obvious that what we’re looking at is the destructive influence of a cult that has really poisoned our political system. . . . [T]he cult that I see as reflecting a true moral failure is the cult of balance, of centrism.
Think about what’s happening right now. We have a crisis in which the right is making insane demands, while the president and Democrats in Congress are bending over backward to be accommodating — offering plans that are all spending cuts and no taxes, plans that are far to the right of public opinion.
So what do most news reports say? They portray it as a situation in which both sides are equally partisan, equally intransigent — because news reports always do that. And we have influential pundits calling out for a new centrist party, a new centrist president, to get us away from the evils of partisanship.
The reality, of course, is that we already have a centrist presi- dent — actually a moderate conservative president. Once again, health reform — his only major change to government — was modeled on Republican plans, indeed plans coming from the Heritage Foundation. And everything else — including the wrongheaded emphasis on aus- terity in the face of high unemployment — is according to the conser- vative playbook.
What all this means is that there is no penalty for extremism; no way for most voters, who get their information on the fly rather than doing careful study of the issues, to understand what’s really going on.
You have to ask, what would it take for these news organizations and pundits to actually break with the convention that both sides are equally at fault? This is the clearest, starkest situation one can imag- ine short of civil war. If this won’t do it, nothing will.
— Paul Krugman, “The Cult That Is Destroying America”
In an ideal world, good information — no matter where it comes from — would always drive out bad. But you already know that we don’t live in an ideal world, so sometimes bad information gets repeated in an echo chamber that amplifies the errors.
04_LUN_06045_Ch04_055-073.indd 61 10/1/12 9:09 AM
reading and understanding arguments62
Many media have no pretenses at all about being reputable. During the 2008 presidential campaign, the Internet blared statements pro- claiming that Barack Obama was Muslim, even after dozens of sources, including many people with whom Obama had worshipped, testified to his Christianity. As a reader and researcher, you should look beyond headlines, bylines, reputations, and especially rumors that fly about the Internet. Scrutinize any facts you collect, and test their reliability before passing them on.
statistics
You’ve probably heard the old saying that “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics,” and, to be sure, it is possible to lie with numbers, even those that are accurate, because numbers rarely speak for themselves. They need to be interpreted by writers — and writers almost always have agendas that shape the interpretations.
Of course, just because they are often misused doesn’t mean that sta- tistics are meaningless, but it does suggest that you need to use them carefully and to remember that your interpretation of the statistics is very important. Consider an article from the Atlantic called “American Murder Mystery” by Hanna Rosin. The “mystery” Rosin writes about is the rise of crime in midsize American cities such as Memphis, Tennes- see. The article raised a firestorm of response and criticism, including this analysis of statistical malfeasance from blogger Alan Salzberg:
The primary statistical evidence given in the article of an association between crime and former Section 8 [housing project] residents, is a map that shows areas with high incidents of crime correspond to areas with a large number of people with Section 8 subsidies (i.e., for- mer residents of housing projects). As convincing as this might sound, it has a fatal flaw: the map looks at total incidents rather than crime rate. This means that an area with ten thousand people and one hun- dred crimes (and one hundred Section 8 subsidy recipients) will look much worse than an area with one hundred people and one crime (and one Section 8 subsidy recipient). However, both areas have the same rate of crime, and, presumably, the same odds of being a victim of crime. Yet in Betts and Janikowski’s analysis, the area with ten thousand people has a higher number of Section 8 subsidy recipients and higher crime, thus “proving” their theory of association.
the New York Times suggests an
argument about bottled water
consumption when it offers visual
representation of statistical data.
lInk to P. 723
04_LUN_06045_Ch04_055-073.indd 62 10/1/12 9:09 AM
C h a p t e r 4 arguments based on facts and reason: logos 63
When relying on statistics in your arguments, make sure you check and double-check them or get help in doing so: you don’t want to be accused of using “fictitious data” based on “ludicrous assumptions”!
R e s p o n d. Statistical evidence becomes useful only when interpreted fairly and rea- sonably. Go to the USA Today Web site and look for the daily graph, chart, or table called the “USA Today snapshot.” Pick a snapshot, and use the information in it to support three different claims, at least two of which make very different points. Share your claims with classmates. (The point is not to learn to use data dishonestly but to see firsthand how the same statistics can serve a variety of arguments.)
© Original Artist. Reproduction rights obtainable from www.CartoonStock.com
the text in the cartoon says it all.
04_LUN_06045_Ch04_055-073.indd 63 10/1/12 9:09 AM
reading and understanding arguments64
surveys and Polls
When they verify the popularity of an idea or proposal, surveys and polls provide strong persuasive appeals because they come as close to expressing the will of the people as anything short of an election — the most decisive poll of all. However, surveys and polls can do much more than help politicians make decisions. They can also provide persuasive reasons for action or intervention. When surveys show, for example, that most American sixth-graders can’t locate France or Wyoming on a map — not to mention Turkey or Afghanistan — that’s an appeal for bet- ter instruction in geography. It always makes sense, however, to ques- tion poll numbers, especially when they support your own point of view. Ask who commissioned the poll, who is publishing its outcome, who was surveyed (and in what proportions), and what stakes these parties might have in its outcome.
Are we being too suspicious? No. In fact, this sort of scrutiny is exactly what you should anticipate from your readers whenever you do surveys to explore an issue. You should be confident that you’ve surveyed enough people to be accurate, that the people you chose for the study were rep- resentative of the selected population as a whole, and that you chose them randomly — not selecting those most likely to say what you hoped to hear.
Cook’s Country’s taste test for
chocolate chip cookies gave the
surveyors a result they did not
expect—homemade cookies didn’t
place first.
lInk to P. 726
USA Today is famous for the tables, pie charts, and graphs it creates to present statistics and poll results. What claims might the evidence in this graph support? How does the design of the item influence your reading of it?
04_LUN_06045_Ch04_055-073.indd 64 10/1/12 9:09 AM
C h a p t e r 4 arguments based on facts and reason: logos 65
On the other hand, as with other kinds of factual evidence, don’t make the opposite mistake by discounting or ignoring polls whose find- ings are not what you had hoped for. In the following excerpts from a column in the Dallas News, conservative Rod Dreher forthrightly faces up to the results from a poll of registered Texas voters — results that he finds ominous for his Texas Republican Party:
The full report, which will be released today, knocks the legs out from under two principles cherished by the party’s grassroots: staunch social conservatism and hard-line immigration policies. At the state level, few voters care much about abortion, school prayer and other hot-button issues. Immigration is the only conservative stand-by that rates much mention — and by hitting it too hard, Republicans lose both the Hispanics and independents that make up what the pollster defines as the “Critical Middle.” . . .
This is not going to go down well with the activist core of the Texas GOP, especially people like me: a social conservative with firm views on illegal immigration. But reality has a way of focusing the mind, forcing one to realize that political parties are not dogma-driven churches, but coalitions that unavoidably shift over time.
— Rod Dreher, “Poll’s Shocking SOS for Texas GOP”
Dreher’s frank acknowledgment of findings that did not please him also helps him to create a positive ethos as a trustworthy writer who follows the facts wherever they lead.
The meaning of polls and surveys is also affected by the way that questions are asked. Recent research has shown, for example, that ques- tions about same-sex unions get differing responses according to how they are worded. When people are asked whether gay and lesbian cou- ples should be eligible for the same inheritance and partner health ben- efits that heterosexual couples receive, a majority of those polled say yes — unless the word marriage appears in the question; then the re- sponses are primarily negative. Remember, then, to be very careful in wording questions for any poll you conduct.
Finally, always keep in mind that the date of a poll may strongly affect the results — and their usefulness in an argument. In 2010, for example, nearly 50 percent of California voters supported building more nuclear power plants. Less than a year later, that percentage had dropped to 37 percent after the meltdown of Japanese nuclear power plants in the wake of the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.
04_LUN_06045_Ch04_055-073.indd 65 10/1/12 9:09 AM
reading and understanding arguments66
R e s p o n d. Choose an important issue and design a series of questions to evoke a range of responses in a poll. Try to design a question that would make people strongly inclined to agree, another question that would lead them to oppose the same proposition, and a third that tries to be more neutral. Then try out your questions on your classmates.
testimonies and narratives
Writers can support their arguments with all kinds of human experi- ence presented in the form of narrative or testimony, particularly if that experience is the writer’s own. In courts, decisions often take into con- sideration detailed descriptions and narratives of exactly what occurred. Look at this reporter’s account of a court case in which a panel of judges decided, based on the testimony presented, that a man had been sexu- ally harassed by another man. The narrative, in this case, supplies the evidence:
The Seventh Circuit, in a 1997 case known as Doe v. City of Belleville, drew a sweeping conclusion allowing for same-sex harassment cases of many kinds. . . . This case, for example, centered on teenage twin brothers working a summer job cutting grass in the city cemetery of Belleville, Ill. One boy wore an earring, which caused him no end of grief that particular summer — including a lot of menacing talk among his coworkers about sexually assaulting him in the woods and sending him “back to San Francisco.” One of his harassers, identified in court documents as a large former marine, culminated a verbal campaign by backing the earring-wearer against a wall and grabbing him by the tes- ticles to see “if he was a girl or a guy.” The teenager had been “singled out for this abuse,” the court ruled, “because the way in which he pro- jected the sexual aspect of his personality” — meaning his gender — “did not conform to his coworkers’ view of appropriate masculine behavior.”
— Margaret Talbot, “Men Behaving Badly”
Personal narratives can support a claim convincingly, especially if a writer has earned the trust of readers. In an essay arguing that people should pay very close attention to intuition, regarding it as important as more factual evidence, Suzanne Guillette uses personal narrative to good effect:
It was late summer 2009: I was walking on a Long Island beach with my boyfriend Mark and some friends. When I saw Mark sit down next
04_LUN_06045_Ch04_055-073.indd 66 10/1/12 9:09 AM
C h a p t e r 4 arguments based on facts and reason: logos 67
to his friend Dana on a craggy rock, a sudden electric shock traveled straight up the center of my body. It was so visceral it made me stum- ble. And then my mind flashed to a recent dream I’d had of Dana sitting on Mark’s lap as he rode a bike. Don’t be crazy, I chided myself, turning to watch the surfers. They’re just friends. But one night nine months later . . . Mark confessed that he and Dana had had an affair. . . . Each time I had a “flash,” I realized that listening to it — or not — had consequences.
— Suzanne Guillette, “Learning to Listen”
This narrative introduction gives readers details to support the claim Guillette is making: we can make big mistakes if we ignore our intu- itions. (For more on establishing credibility with readers, see Chapter 3.)
R e s p o n d. Bring to class a full review of a recent film that you either enjoyed or did not enjoy. Using testimony from that review, write a brief argument to your class- mates explaining why they should see that movie (or why they should avoid it), being sure to use evidence from the review fairly and reasonably. Then exchange arguments with a classmate, and decide whether the evidence in your peer’s argument helps to change your opinion about the movie. What’s convincing about the evidence? If it doesn’t convince you, why not?
Using Reason and Common sense
If you don’t have “hard facts,” you can support claims by using reason and common sense. The formal study of reasoning is called logic, and you probably recognize a famous example of deductive reasoning, called a syllogism:
All human beings are mortal.
Socrates is a human being.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
In valid syllogisms, the conclusion follows logically — and techni- cally — from the premises that lead up to it. Many have criticized syllo- gistic reasoning for being limited, and others have poked fun at it, as in this cartoon:
04_LUN_06045_Ch04_055-073.indd 67 10/1/12 9:09 AM
reading and understanding arguments68
But few people use formal deductive reasoning to support claims. Even Aristotle recognized that most people argue perfectly well using infor- mal rather than formal logic. To do so, they rely mostly on habits of mind and assumptions that they share with their readers or listeners.
In Chapter 7, we describe a system of informal logic that you may find useful in shaping credible arguments — Toulmin argument. Here, we briefly examine some ways that people use informal logic in their every- day lives. Once again, we begin with Aristotle, who used the term en- thymeme to describe an ordinary kind of sentence that includes both a claim and a reason but depends on the audience’s agreement with an as- sumption that is left implicit rather than spelled out. Enthymemes can be very persuasive when most people agree with the assumptions they rest on. The following sentences are all enthymemes:
We’d better cancel the picnic because it’s going to rain.
Flat taxes are fair because they treat everyone the same.
I’ll buy a PC instead of a Mac because it’s cheaper.
NCAA football needs a playoff to crown a real national champion.
04_LUN_06045_Ch04_055-073.indd 68 10/1/12 9:09 AM
C h a p t e r 4 arguments based on facts and reason: logos 69
Sometimes enthymemes seem so obvious that readers don’t realize that they’re drawing inferences when they agree with them. Consider the first example:
We’d better cancel the picnic because it’s going to rain.
Let’s expand the enthymeme a bit to say more of what the speaker may mean:
We’d better cancel the picnic this afternoon because the weather bureau is predicting a 70 percent chance of rain for the remainder of the day.
Embedded in this brief argument are all sorts of assumptions and frag- ments of cultural information that are left implicit but that help to make it persuasive:
Picnics are ordinarily held outdoors.
When the weather is bad, it’s best to cancel picnics.
Rain is bad weather for picnics.
A 70 percent chance of rain means that rain is more likely to occur than not.
When rain is more likely to occur than not, it makes sense to cancel picnics.
For most people, the original statement carries all this information on its own; the enthymeme is a compressed argument, based on what audi- ences know and will accept.
But sometimes enthymemes aren’t self-evident:
Be wary of environmentalism because it’s religion disguised as science.
iPhones are undermining civil society by making us even more focused on ourselves.
It’s time to make all public toilets unisex because to do otherwise is discriminatory.
In these cases, you’ll have to work much harder to defend both the claim and the implicit assumptions that it’s based on by drawing out the infer- ences that seem self-evident in other enthymemes. And you’ll likely also have to supply credible evidence. A simple declaration of fact won’t suffice.
04_LUN_06045_Ch04_055-073.indd 69 10/1/12 9:09 AM
reading and understanding arguments70
Providing logical structures for Argument
Some arguments depend on particular logical structures to make their points. In the following pages, we identify a few of these logical structures.
Degree
Arguments based on degree are so common that people barely notice them, nor do they pay much attention to how they work because they seem self-evident. Most audiences will readily accept that more of a good thing or less of a bad thing is good. In her novel The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
CUltURAl ContExts FoR ARgUmEnt
logos
In the United States, student writers are expected to draw on “hard facts” and evidence as often as possible in supporting their claims: while ethical and emotional appeals are important, logical appeals tend to hold sway in academic writing. So statistics and facts speak volumes, as does reasoning based on time-honored values such as fairness and equity. In writing to global audiences, you need to remem- ber that not all cultures value the same kinds of appeals. If you want to write to audiences across cultures, you need to know about the norms and values in those cultures. Chinese culture, for example, values authority and often indirect allusion over “facts” alone. Some African cultures value cooperation and community over individualism, and still other cultures value religious texts as providing compelling evi- dence. So think carefully about what you consider strong evidence, and pay attention to what counts as evidence to others. You can begin by asking yourself questions like:
• What evidence is most valued by your audience: Facts? Concrete examples? Firsthand experience? Religious or philosophical texts? Something else?
• Will analogies count as support? How about precedents?
• Will the testimony of experts count? If so, what kind of experts are valued most?
04_LUN_06045_Ch04_055-073.indd 70 10/1/12 9:09 AM
C h a p t e r 4 arguments based on facts and reason: logos 71
a demonstrator at an immigrants’ rights rally in new York city in 2007. arguments based on values that are widely shared within a society—such as the idea of equal rights in american culture—have an automatic advantage with audiences.
asks: “If physical slavery is repulsive, how much more repulsive is the concept of servility of the spirit?” Most readers immediately compre- hend the point Rand intends to make about slavery of the spirit because they already know that physical slavery is cruel and would reject any forms of slavery that were even crueler on the principle that more of a bad thing is bad. Rand still needs to offer evidence that “servility of the spirit” is, in fact, worse than bodily servitude, but she has begun with a logical structure readers can grasp. Here are other arguments that work similarly:
If I can get a ten-year warranty on an inexpensive Kia, shouldn’t I get the same or better warranty from a more expensive Lexus?
The health benefits from using stem cells in research will surely out- weigh the ethical risks.
Better a conventional war now than a nuclear confrontation later.
Analogies
Analogies, typically complex or extended comparisons, explain one idea or concept by comparing it to something else.
Christophe pelletier’s “the Locavore’s
Dilemma” depends on arguments
based on degree as he presents the
difficulties involved in the choice to
eat only locally grown food.
lInk to P. 703
04_LUN_06045_Ch04_055-073.indd 71 10/1/12 9:09 AM
reading and understanding arguments72
Here, writer and founder of literacy project 826 Valencia, Dave Eggers, uses an analogy in arguing that we do not value teachers as much as we should:
When we don’t get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don’t blame the soldiers. We don’t say, “It’s these lazy soldiers and their bloated benefits plans! That’s why we haven’t done better in Afghanistan!” No, if the results aren’t there, we blame the planners. . . . No one contemplates blaming the men and women fighting every day in the trenches for little pay and scant recognition. And yet in education we do just that. When we don’t like the way our students score on inter- national standardized tests, we blame the teachers.
— Dave Eggers and Ninive Calegari, “The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries”
Precedent
Arguments from precedent and arguments of analogy both involve com- parisons. Consider an assertion like this one, which uses a comparison as a precedent:
If motorists in most other states can pump their own gas safely, surely the state of Oregon can trust its own drivers to be as capable. It’s time for Oregon to permit self-service gas stations.
You could tease out several inferences from this claim to explain its rea- sonableness: people in Oregon are as capable as people in other states; people with equivalent capabilities can do the same thing; pumping gas is not hard, and so forth. But you don’t have to because most readers get the argument simply because of the way it is put together.
Here is an excerpt from an extended argument by blogger Neil War- ner, in which he argues that the “Arab Spring” of 2011 may not follow the same pattern as its historical precedents:
[“Arab Spring”] is in many respects a fitting name, one that relates not only to the season in which the unrest really began but also captures perfectly the newfound optimism and youthful determination that seems to have embraced the region. Unfortunately, though, “Spring” as a term for popular movements does not have an encouraging history.
The most comparable event with the same title is the so-called “Spring of the Nations” or “Springtime of the Peoples” of 1848–49. In one of the most stunning international events the world has ever witnessed, a wildfire of liberal revolution spread out across Europe following the
04_LUN_06045_Ch04_055-073.indd 72 10/1/12 9:09 AM
C h a p t e r 4 arguments based on facts and reason: logos 73
overthrow of the restored French monarchy in February of 1848. Traditional reactionary regimes fell like dominos and a sense of unity of purpose and hopefulness very comparable in some ways to 2011 in the Arab World embraced the populace, both working class and middle class, of Germany, Italy, the Austrian Empire, and elsewhere. An uprising in November 1848 even forced the Pope to flee Rome.
But by the end of 1849 it had all fizzled out, reactionary forces re assembled and the revolutionaries split, and the old order in Europe settled back down as if nothing had ever happened. . . .
With respect to the Arab world, we can already see the same pat- tern developing. After an initial panic following the overthrow of Mubarak, the Arab dictatorships of the region have consolidated them- selves and clung on for dear life. . . .
— Neil Warner, “The Anatomy of a Spring”
You’ll encounter additional kinds of logical structures as you create your own arguments. You’ll find some of them in Chapter 5, “Fallacies of Ar- gument,” and still more in Chapter 7 on Toulmin argument.
04_LUN_06045_Ch04_055-073.indd 73 10/1/12 9:09 AM