Good Arguments

Making Your Case in Writing and Public Speaking

Benjamin K. Forrest and Richard A. Holland Jr.

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781493410897
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Logic in Philosophy

This brief introduction to making effective arguments helps readers to understand the basics of sound reasoning and to learn how to use it to persuade others. Practical, inexpensive, and easy-to-read, the book enables students in a wide variety of courses to improve the clarity of their writing and public speaking. It equips readers to formulate firmly grounded, clearly articulated, and logically arranged arguments, avoid fallacious thinking, and discover how to reason well. This supplemental text is especially suitable for use in Christian colleges and seminaries and includes classroom discussion questions.

1
The Basics of Good Arguments

People often have a misconception about arguments. The arguments of everyday conversation are quite different from what we have in mind for this book. When Ben was a doctoral student engaged to his wonderful wife-to-be, Lerisa, he had one of those classic arguments that often take place as two people prepare for marriage. They were sitting in a parking lot arguing, and the more they argued, the louder Ben’s voice grew. As his voice rose, Lerisa looked at him and said, “Arguments aren’t about winning!” It stopped him in the middle of his sentence—not because he suddenly agreed with her side of the argument but because what she said went against everything he believed based on his experience. Growing up in an opinionated family, Ben was conditioned to think that arguing was about winning and that the loudest person always won. What Lerisa revealed to Ben that day stood in sharp contrast to everything he knew about arguing. She pointed out that an argument is not a battle to be fought and won but rather a means for communicating a message.

Rich’s family background is similar. He also grew up in the context of a family dynamic in which the loudest, most forceful person “won” the argument. Perhaps your experience is similar and you too have ingrained in your thinking the idea that arguments are like battles to be fought and won, and the loudest, most aggressive combatants win. Perhaps because of experiences like this, you now recoil at the thought of engaging in an argument.

It is vital to understand that the conception of argumentation we just described is a misconception. Some people do indeed argue that way, but that isn’t what an argument is all about. Our definition of an argument is the process of giving a systematic account of reasons in support of a claim or belief. Instead of thinking about “winning” an argument, we would do better to think about “winning someone over to our side”—that is, we want to persuade someone that the position we are defending really is true, to convince them so that they genuinely change their mind and come to agree with the position we are defending. We aim to persuade, encourage, and prepare, not to win. And if we can’t thoroughly convince someone that our position is true, we can, at the very least, use effective argumentation to defend our position as a reasonable option among various choices. An argument should never be a shouting match, and the loudest participant doesn’t automatically win. In fact, if our main goal is to bring about genuine persuasion, then shouting is the least likely tactic to bring about this goal. Instead, skillful arguers will learn to give clear, straightforward, easy-to-understand reasons that support a claim, without getting into a rhetorical competition or shouting match.

Claims and Beliefs

As we consider this perspective on what an argument is, we must recognize at the outset that claims and beliefs go hand in hand. For anything you believe, you can state that belief in the form of a claim. For example, you may believe that a portion of the film The Hunger Games was filmed in North Carolina. It is easy to recognize that belief when you communicate it in the form of a claim. If you are sitting with friends watching the film, you may say something like, “Part of this movie was filmed in North Carolina.” This statement is a claim and communicates what you believe—in this case, what you believe about The Hunger Games being filmed (in part) in North Carolina. We’ll return to the concept of beliefs in a later chapter; for now it is sufficient to recognize that when we communicate our beliefs to others, we state them in the form of claims. So for most of our discussion, we will use the words claim and belief interchangeably.

Stating a claim by itself is almost never good enough if we want others to understand why we believe what we believe, or if we want to persuade them that we have good reasons supporting our beliefs. Considering the example above, in some contexts it will probably be insufficient to simply make the claim about where The Hunger Games was filmed. Instead of merely stating the claim, we must provide good reasons that help show why we think that claim is true. Sometimes claims don’t need much in the way of supporting reasons. If you are watching The Hunger Games with a group of friends who don’t think your claim is all that important, they might just accept it without any supporting reasons, so you probably don’t need to say much else. This is similar to many everyday claims we make. For example, a claim like “It’s raining” doesn’t need much of an argument for support. We can just point out the window and say, “Look! It’s raining.” But for complicated or contentious claims, or claims made to an audience that is inclined to disagree, an argument is needed to justify and support the claim. The more contentious or divisive the claim, the more careful, well-thought-out, and intentional the argument must be. We don’t need to support unimportant or uninteresting claims with good arguments, but for the important questions of life—such as questions about the morality of capital punishment, the existence of God, and the nature of marriage—being able to argue well becomes an indispensable skill. Claims about important questions will always require good arguments to support them.

Essential Features of a Good Argument

Good arguments are necessary not just for supporting your claims for the benefit of those who are reading or listening to your argument; they are also important as you begin grappling with your own beliefs. In order to argue well, you must first learn how to develop good arguments by yourself, independent of a discussion with someone else; and if you are able to present a rational defense of a claim palatable enough to quench your own skepticism, it is likely that you will be able to present it to others for their edification as well.

But what makes a good argument? At this point it is tempting for us to present an extended discussion of bad arguments and the bad reasoning that goes along with them—because bad reasoning is so common and is often disguised as good reasoning—but we’ll save that for a later chapter. In the remainder of this chapter, we focus on the essential features of good arguments. This is because good reasoning will form the fundamental building blocks of good arguments.

In this book’s introduction, we briefly described the basic components of a short argument: an argument contains a series of statements (premises) that are intended to support another statement (the conclusion). An argument’s conclusion is the claim or belief that is being defended or supported by the premises, and the premises are the reasons that attempt to prove that the claim is true. When arguments are written out formally (as they might appear in textbooks on logic), they start by giving the premises and end by stating the conclusion. Written out in sequence, an argument might appear like this:

Premise (Reason) 1

Premise (Reason) 2

∴ Conclusion (i.e., the claim or belief that is being defended by these two premises)1

However, when arguments are written in ordinary prose or stated orally, they don’t always proceed in such a linear order. Sometimes the conclusion is stated first, and sometimes it is stated in the middle of the premises, so it can be difficult to identify the various parts. When arguments are long and complex, it can be even more difficult to identify the parts and see how they fit together. Long arguments often contain arguments inside other arguments, which further complicates the situation. But no matter how short or long, and no matter what order the various items are presented in, all arguments share the same basic components: claims and reasons that support those claims.

Good Arguments State Clearly All of Their Essential Elements

As we have said, when short arguments are written formally, they often begin with premises and end with the conclusion. Recall the famous example we mentioned in the introduction:

All men are mortal. (Premise)

Socrates is a man. (Premise)

Therefore, Socrates is mortal. (Conclusion)

Writing arguments in this form can indeed be quite helpful when we are engaged in analyzing an argument that someone else has given. That is why introductory textbooks on philosophy and logic are full of example arguments written out just like this. In most cases the purpose is to help the student identify the key parts of the arguments and to differentiate good arguments from bad ones. However, many arguments—indeed most arguments—that we encounter are presented outside the context of the logic textbook. They might be given orally as a part of a public policy speech or a sermon. Or they might be written in ordinary prose in newspaper articles, journals, academic papers, or blog entries. In these varied contexts, it is rather uncommon to have a simple, short argument written out like the one above about Socrates, with two or three premises leading to a simple conclusion. For each argument we encounter, what really matters is whether the essential elements in the argument are stated clearly. No matter the form or the context in which they are presented, good arguments will always clearly state their claims and all relevant supporting reasons. As you learn to develop your own arguments, one of the most important skills to develop is the skill of clearly stating every element that is important to the argument.

Some arguments do not state their premises clearly; this is a characteristic of weak arguments that cannot do what they are intended to do. Premises are designed to be declarative statements that convey some meaningful fact in support of the claim. Sometimes, however, a meaningful fact essential to the argument is not stated at all. Such unstated elements are called hidden premises. Consider again our example argument about Socrates. Someone might put it this way: “Socrates is mortal. After all, he is only a man!” When the argument is stated this way, there is one hidden premise: All men are mortal. Many people will be able to grasp this premise intuitively, so the fact that it is hidden in this particular argument may not do too much harm. However, when a hidden premise is controversial, or when the audience is simply ignorant of the hidden premise, the argument is likely to fail at its intended mission of supporting the claim or persuading the audience. Consider this one: “Of course God exists. Just look at the wonderfully intricate beauty in nature.” In this example, there are several hidden premises, most of which are likely to be controversial or unknown to an audience who does not already believe the claim “God exists.” Some of the hidden premises might be:

• Intricate beauty is objective and recognizable.
• Intricate beauty indicates design.
• Design requires a designer.
• Given the extent of the intricate beauty in nature, the designer must be very powerful.

Hopefully you can see these aren’t the only hidden premises essential to this example argument. Many other premises would need to be stated for this kind of argument to get off the ground. Moreover, most of the hidden premises in this case are so controversial that each would require a persuasive argument of its own for support, which means that almost no one in an objective audience would think that this example argument is good enough when several premises remain unstated and unsupported. Obvious or uncontroversial hidden premises might not make too much of a difference, but failing to state essential premises that are controversial or not obvious to your audience makes for a weak argument. A good argument will not have this weakness. A good argument will clearly state each premise that supports the claim and will not let any other essential premise remain hidden.

While some arguments have hidden premises, other arguments fail to clearly state the main claim. Having a hidden claim is probably a bit rarer than having a hidden premise, but it does happen. Consider this example: Perhaps you have overheard a conversation between friends in response to one friend harming the other or committing some fault against the other. The one who is in the wrong might say, “Well, I’m only human!” It might not look like it at first, but this is a kind of argument. The person who says this is asserting that the other person ought to forgive the wrong that has been committed. This is the main claim that went unstated: “You ought to forgive this wrong that I have committed.” So the argument “I’m only human!” is a weak argument, mainly because the main claim is unstated. Of course there are also at least two hidden premises: “all humans commit these kinds of wrongs” and “one ought to forgive faults that are common to all humans.” Good arguments state the main claim clearly, along with all the essential supporting premises. This should be a fairly easy task to accomplish because, when making an argument, we are all aware of our beliefs and claims. Therefore, stating our beliefs and claims clearly...