11.4 Practice with Extractions
The only way to get better at extracting arguments is practice. This module offers practice in extracting arguments.
Table of Contents
- 11.4 Practice with Extractions
11.4.1 Extractions from Simple Prose
Some texts make it easy to identify premises and conclusions.
Extractions: Do and Don’t
This page presents some “Do” and “Don’t” rules of thumb for extractions, followed by an opportunity to practice them on simple prose passages. Here are four good rules to follow:
DO: Make the conclusion the controversial claim in the passage, the ‘thesis’ it is arguing for.
DON’T: Make the conclusion a claim in the passage that nobody would disagree with.
EXAMPLE: If the passage is arguing against the death penalty, “The death penalty must end”, or “We should end the death penalty” are good conclusions. “The death penalty kills people”, or “Some states still have the death penalty”, might be premises, but they are not good conclusions.
DO: Make the premises single, declarative sentences.
DON’T: Have multiple sentences in one premise, or use rhetorical questions.
EXAMPLE: If somebody is arguing in favor of the death penalty, a good premise might be “Killers have surrendered their right not to be killed.” A bad premise would be:
- A rhetorical question, like “Why not kill a killer?”
- A pair of sentences, like “Killers don’t have rights. Killers can be killed.”
- An incomplete sentence, like “The death penalty.”
DO: State premises and a conclusion that can be true or false based on how the external world is.
DON’T: State premises or a conclusion that are true or false based on whether someone believes them or not, such as “One may consider…” or “It is widely believed that…”
EXAMPLE: If somebody is arguing in favor of banning veal, a good premise would be “Baby lambs feel pain” or “It is good for sheep to fulfill their natural lifespan” or “sheep have rights”, because those are presumably true or false independent of what people believe. A bad premise would be “Some people think lambs feel pain” or “One may consider sheep to have rights”, or “It is held that the lifespan of a sheep is 10-12 years”, because those refer to what somebody thinks, considers, or holds to be true, rather than what is true. Likewise, a conclusion of “People shouldn’t believe X isn’t true” would be better stated “X isn’t true”
DO: Make sure the conclusion is a single concise, explicit, and precise one-sentence claim.
DON’T: Use words like “since” or “because” in the conclusion. If these are reasons to believe the conclusion is true, they should be premises.
EXAMPLE: If someone is arguing that Columbus Day should not be a Federal Holiday, good conclusions would be “Columbus Day must end” or “Columbus Day should not be a Federal Holiday” or “We should cease celebrating Columbus Day”. Bad conclusions would be:
- non-statements, like “End Columbus Day Now!”
- non-concise statements, like “Columbus Day may need to be reconsidered in light of alternative choices for a Federal Holiday”
- non-explicit statements, like “Columbus Day is outdated”
- non-precise statements, like “Columbus Day should be celebrated less.”
- statements that put a premise in the conclusion, like “Columbus Day must end because it celebrates a terrible man”, or “Columbus Day must end since it is unlike our other worthy holidays.”
Practice Activity
Now, practice extracting arguments from these two short passages below. These passages are deliberately written in such a way as to make it easy to see what the premises and conclusions are, although the arguments themselves may be quite complicated to put together.
Text 1
First, read the text carefully:
“If baseball is the greatest American sport, that would mean both basketball and football are inferior. But basketball is not inferior, it’s a great sport, and football will get good again in a few years, trust me on that. I don’t even know why people think that America needs just one sport to define it, we have so many amazing sports. So people should stop saying that baseball is the greatest American sport.”
What is the conclusion of this paragraph? The word ‘so’ is a hint. But remember that the premises and conclusion shouldn’t be about what people believe or say, but about how the world is.
Now, what’s the main reason offered in the paragraph? What do you think?
How can you bridge the gap between that premise and the conclusion to make it valid?
Text 2
First, read the text carefully:
“We need to kill off all the mosquitoes since that’s the only way to eradicate Zika fever, which produces terrible birth defects. What other options are there? We could make sure no one gets pregnant, or we could make sure no one who is pregnant gives birth, or we can make sure no one who is pregnant and gives birth gets Zika fever. We can’t regulate pregnancy and no one would accept making abortion mandatory. The only option left is to make sure that no one giving birth gets Zika fever.”
What is the conclusion of this passage? What is the ultimate thing it’s trying to persuade someone to do, support, or believe?
What is the main reason the author thinks this? Many supporting reasons are given, but what is the main reason?
Now, what other premises are needed in order to make the argument valid? What structure does the argument seem to have intuitively? (Hint: it looks like a process of elimination). Be sure to link the first premise up with the premises you add, and to link up the conclusion with the premises you add. (Hint: you’ll probably have to add some conditionals to do that).
11.4.2 Extractions from Complex Prose
Some texts make it hard to identify premises and conclusions.
Extractions: Do and Don’t
This page presents more “Do” and “Don’t” rules of thumb for extractions, followed by an opportunity to practice them on more complex prose passages. Here are four more good rules to follow:
DO: Make sure the premises are claims which are reasons for someone to believe the conclusion is true.
DON’T: Make the premises reasons that only apply to you personally.
EXAMPLE: If somebody is arguing that Valentine’s Day should be a Federal Holiday, a good premise might be “Love is the principle most worthy of celebration” or “St. Valentine better represents the Italian community than Christopher Columbus”. A bad premise would be, “My wife and I had our first date on Valentine’s Day” or “I really like getting Valentines”.
DO: Include every premise which is necessary to reach your conclusion.
DON’T: Include unnecessary premises which are not required to reach your conclusion using the inference rules. Instead, consider if they are perhaps evidence for the other premises, or background context for the argument as a whole.
EXAMPLE: Suppose that you are arguing against polygamy, and “Polygamy is only practiced in America within a small community on the Arizona-Utah border” is something it might be useful for your reader to know. It shouldn’t necessarily be a premise in the argument unless you use that premise, with other rules of inference, to reach the conclusion. Instead, it may be background information or context which needs to be explained before the argument, or it may be part of your explanation of the reasons to believe a premise in the argument.
DO: After presenting a formal argument, explain and justify your premises with examples, illustrations, and evidence.
DON’T: Include examples, evidence or illustrations in your premises themselves. Those are to support the premises, they aren’t part of the premises.
EXAMPLE: If someone is arguing that polygamy should be legalized, and one premise is that “The state should not interfere with love”, then when explaining that premise, you would want to give examples of other cases were we don’t accept state interference in love or marriage, or evidence that limiting marriage has harmed people in the past, or a story or “thought experiment” that helps somebody see why this principle is true. You would not put these in the premises themselves, however. “For example, even though many people think it is gross for an 80 year old to marry an 18 year old, it is still legal” would not be a premise in an argument; instead, it is an example of why the premise is true.
DO: Make sure your premises are less controversial than your conclusion.
DON’T: Beg the question.
EXAMPLE: If you are arguing that the death penalty is wrong, “The death penalty is wrong”, or “We should not have a death penalty” would not be a good premise, because it’s just a restatement of the conclusion, and that would make the argument question-begging.
Practice Activity
Now, practice extracting arguments from these passages below. Unlike the texts on the previous page these passages do not make it obvious or easy to see what the premises or conclusion of the argument are. Some of the text is irrelevant, and many things are only indirectly suggested. Your task is more difficult, because now you need to read into the passage a bit, and try to interpret what the real conclusion is, and what the real premises are. You will often have to rephrase things in your own words.
Text 1
For our first example of a complex text, let’s use a political speech given at the United Nations General Assembly by former President Donald Trump. Political speeches often make it difficult to extract an argument, because the main idea isn’t always plainly stated, much is often implicated indirectly, and parts of the text are written to appeal to specific members of the audience who might hear it. Furthermore, this political figure in particular (who was impeached twice, and publically promoted a number of conspiracy theories) was a polarizing and controversial figure who prompted strong emotional reactions, and this interference can make it especially difficult to put emotion aside and extract an argument to evaluate whether or not the argument is sound. So, here is a challenge:
“The United States is stronger, safer, and a richer country than it was when I assumed office less than two years ago. We are standing up for America and for the American people. And we are also standing up for the world. This is great news for our citizens and for peace-loving people everywhere. We believe that when nations respect the rights of their neighbors, and defend the interests of their people, they can better work together to secure the blessings of safety, prosperity, and peace. Each of us here today is the emissary of a distinct culture, a rich history, and a people bound together by ties of memory, tradition, and the values that make our homelands like nowhere else on Earth. That is why America will always choose independence and cooperation over global governance, control, and domination. I honor the right of every nation in this room to pursue its own customs, beliefs, and traditions. The United States will not tell you how to live or work or worship. We only ask that you honor our sovereignty in return.” (September 2018)
What is the conclusion of this argument? Many claims are made in the paragraph, both claims about what Americans believe and claims about what Americans will do. Some of these claims, while spoken to the entire United Nations, may be intended for a domestic audience back home, or to suggest agreement or disagreement with specific foreign leaders. Focus instead on the claim which is being made to the General Assembly. What does the speaker want those attending from other nations to conclude?
Now, what is the main reason that the speaker thinks the audience should support the conclusion? Again, many claims are made in the paragraph, and many beliefs are expressed. What one do you think is the main reason? Restate it in simpler words. (There are many possible answers.) [Note that the exercise below may have an error on it, saying “Bacon” instead of “Trump”]
Now, it’s time to make the argument valid. What could you add to bridge the gap between the premises and the conclusion, using a valid rule of inference?
Text 2
For our second example of a complex text, let’s use a historical text by Francis Bacon (1561-1626), the founder of the modern scientific method. Historical texts are a challenge to read and make sense of, but you can use the method of extracting an argument to help.
“Those who have handled sciences have been either men of experiment or men of dogmas. The men of experiment are like the ant, they only collect and use; the reasoners resemble spiders, who make cobwebs out of their own substance. But the bee takes a middle course: it gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own. Not unlike this is the true business of philosophy; for it neither relies solely or chiefly on the powers of the mind, nor does it take the matter which it gathers from natural history and mechanical experiments and lay it up in the memory whole, as it finds it, but lays it up in the understanding altered and digested. Therefore from a closer and purer league between these two faculties, the experimental and the rational (such as has never yet been made), much may be hoped.” (Francis Bacon, Novum Organum)
How do we find the conclusion of Bacon’s argument? First, look at the first and last sentence of the paragraph. Those are places where a conclusion tends to go. Second, look for words which indicate a conclusion, like “therefore”, “thus”, “as a result”, “so”, whereas words like “because” or “since” tend to indicate a premise. What do you think the conclusion is? Reword it for simplicity.
Next, we need to find the premises for our argument. What reasons does Bacon give for that particular conclusion? We’ll need to ignore the aspects of Bacon’s writing that are more metaphorical and simplify or reinterpret the passage to get to his core reasoning. Not everything in the paragraph has to appear as a premise, after all. In fact, looking at the paragraph above, it seems like Bacon repeats the same argument twice, first by analogy to ants and spiders, and then more directly speaking of philosophers. His main positive analogy seems to involve the bee: the bee is the example Bacon wants us to follow. It would be better to state plainly what Bacon means. What do you think his main reason to believe the conclusion is?
Now, add premises to make the argument valid. Consider using one of the strategies for conditionals discussed earlier. You may need to rewrite or rephrase the conclusion to help it to follow from a rule of inference.
11.4.3 Extracting your Own Arguments
Now it’s time to do it yourself.
Your Turn
Now, it’s your turn to try to extract an argument for a view you hold on an issue. You may pick any issue you like for this exercise, but the examples will involve somebody arguing that the drinking age should be raised to age 25.
Step 1: Identify the Conclusion
Set the conclusion of the argument to be the main point you want to prove. Example:
C. The drinking age for alcohol should be raised to 25.
Step 2: Identify First Premise(s)
Set your initial premise(s) as the main reasons to believe the argument is true. Label it “(Basic)” Example:
1. The brain is not finished growing until age 25. (Basic)
C. The drinking age for alcohol should be raised to 25.
Step 3: Repair the Argument and Make it Valid
Add premises which intuitively seem necessary to make the argument valid, and then use rules of inference to guarantee that the conclusion follows from these premises. Remove any premises which are not necessary for the conclusion.
Example:
1. The brain is not finished growing until age 25. (Basic)
2. If the brain is not finished growing until age 25, then the drinking age for alcohol should be raised to 25. (Basic)
C. The drinking age for alcohol should be raised to 25. (1, 2 MP)
Do it Again!
Now, practice extracting a second argument, using the same steps:
Keep practicing! The more often you do it, the easier it will become and the less time it will take each time.
Submodule 11.4 Quiz
Licenses and Attributions
Key Sources:
- Watson, Jeffrey (2019). Introduction to Logic. Licensed under: (CC BY-SA).
Next Page: 12.1 Direct Evidence