Commonsense Guide to Current Affairs

The Issues We Hear About Every Day From the Standpoint of What the Politicians Have Forgotten—Common Sense

Bedogne, Everest

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781498274425
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

From clones, family, abortion, terrorism, and the concept of the collective to economics, nuclear power, cap and trade, renewable energy, and the politics of climate change, Everest and Bedogne do something much needed and remarkably absent in today's media. They strip away the layers of liberal and conservative ideology to look at the most talked about topics of our time from the standpoint of what the politicians have forgotten--common sense. Brought to light by logic, history, and science, the book filters the issues that in today's world every citizen, student, and educator needs to understand through what we know to be sound--that which we have gained through our day-to-day trials--our all-too-often repressed ability to see things in a practical and matter-of-fact way.

1

Argument

To apply our common sense to the issues of today, we need certain skills. First off is the technique that writers and debaters call the argument. By argument, we don’t mean what goes on when we’re angry with our kids, spouse, or parents. Argument isn’t a shouting match or a fistfight. Formally, it’s the technique we use and that is used by others countless times every day to make a point. The better we understand how an argument works, the better we can get our points across and determine the soundness of those made by others.

Technically, argument falls into the area of philosophy called logic, and every argument has a specific form. Arguments consist of statements, of which one or more, the premises, provide support for, or reasons to believe the others, the conclusions.

Premise: This quarter’s leading economic indicators are up.

Conclusion: Therefore, the economy is doing better.

How many times have we heard this argument or its converse: This quarter’s leading economic indicators are down, therefore the economy isn’t doing as well. In either case, a premise or statement of fact, the economic indicators, supports a conclusion, the economy is getting better or worse.

Arguments always have at least one premise and one conclusion, but they aren’t always as easy to pick out of an article or discussion as our economics example might suggest. Consider the following example, derived from a 2003 National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases report1 with regard to AIDS, or Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, and the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, HIV, believed to cause it:

A government and pharmaceutical industry cover-up prevents the use of an HIV vaccine. A recent study says that 48 percent of Hispanics, 28 percent of African Americans, and 20 percent of the general population believe an HIV vaccine exists.

In this example, the argument is implied by the overall statement.

Premises: An HIV vaccine exists and is not in use.

Conclusion: Therefore, the government and pharmaceutical industry have conspired to cover it up.

Premises and conclusions rarely stand out but are entwined with facts, examples, and background. This may be done to mask an unsound argument but most often is done to provide context and to make the prose easier to read. As writers, we want the words to flow.

As by now you may have figured, there are two categories of arguments: good arguments and bad arguments. A good argument is one in which the premises support the conclusions. A bad argument is one in which the premises claim to support the conclusions but fail to do so. Our HIV and economics examples illustrate good arguments. You may disagree with their conclusions, but as stated they logically follow from the premises. In contrast:

Global meteorological monitoring the last fifty years indicates that the earth’s average temperature has increased. Therefore, sport utility vehicles should be banned.

In this argument—one that if you drive a sport utility vehicle, or SUV, you hear more than perhaps you’d like—the premise, the earth’s temperature has increased, doesn’t support the conclusion, SUVs should be banned. There is no direct or stated relationship between the two—unless, as you may have unconsciously done, one fills in the blanks with certain preconceptions about global warming.

A bad argument is always bad. A good argument, logical though it may be, however, need not be a sound argument, one that gets the point across in a way we accept or feel confident making. For an argument to be sound, the premises must be true, or such that we can reasonably assume they’re true, and the argument must embody a clear line of reasoning that leads to the conclusion.

Derived from an opinion survey, our HIV argument is predicated on the statement that a vaccine for the disease exists. But fact and belief aren’t necessarily the same. Is the premise self-evident? Is it supported by research? Can we be confident of its validity? Of course not. Our HIV example is a “good” but not a “sound” argument. An argument based on a false premise may be valid from the standpoint of logic but will support a false conclusion.

Similarly, as our SUV example illustrates, a sound argument must embody a reasoning process that leads from the premises to the conclusions. What if we rewrite our SUV argument?

Premises: Global meteorological monitoring the last fifty years indicates that the earth’s average temperature has increased. Global warming adversely affects climate. In the lab, carbon dioxide creates a greenhouse effect, which increases temperature. Sport utility vehicles emit carbon dioxide.

Conclusions: Sport utility vehicles increase global warming and should be banned.

Stated as such, a coherent line of logic leads from the premises to the conclusions. We have turned a bad, logically incorrect, argument into a good argument and, at least from the standpoint of a reasoning process, into a sound argument.

Taken as whole, however, our SUV argument is still weak. Carbon dioxide does in some instances, specifically with regard to certain wavelengths of light, create a greenhouse effect in the lab, and SUVs do emit carbon dioxide. These are observed phenomena, facts. The earth’s temperature change, the detrimental climatic effects of global warming, the extent to which natural as opposed to manmade variables come into play, and the behavior of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as opposed to the lab are open for discussion, not facts.2

We can further refine our understanding of the argument by incorporating two additional concepts: deductive and inductive reasoning. A deductive argument is one in which, if the premises are assumed to be true, the conclusion must be true. An inductive argument is one in which, if the premises are assumed to be true, it’s probable but not certain that the conclusion is true.

Our economics example illustrates a deductive argument. Because we measure economic strength with indicators, if they go up or down, the economy by definition gets better or worse. This is not to say that economic indicators such as inflation and unemployment are necessarily valid. Looked at critically, their accuracy is debatable. But if we take them to be a measure of economic activity, the conclusion definitively follows the premise.

Though unsound, our HIV example illustrates an inductive argument. If we take the premise to be true and assume a vaccine for the diseases exists, we infer, rather than deduce, that since our doctor hasn’t heard about it certain factions are conspiring against its use. Paranoia and late-night talk-radio aside, this is a possible but not an absolute conclusion. The vaccine could be unavailable because it’s hard to produce or has yet to be proven safe and effective.

Every day we make arguments and we face arguments. An argument has premises and conclusions. If the premises support the conclusions it’s a good argument, if not it’s a bad argument. Though logical, a good argument isn’t necessarily a sound argument, one that gets the point across in a reasonable way. To be sound, the premises must be true, or such that we can confidently assume they’re true, and the argument must embody a clear line of reasoning that leads from the premises to the conclusions. Moreover, an argument may allow us to deduce or to infer a conclusion. Empowered with the skill of the argument, we know how to get our points across to others, and what we read and hear loses its sense of authority. We have the ability to probe beyond the words, to critically examine the ideas spewed at us every day. And we will do so throughout this book.

1. “Many Americans Think an AIDS/HIV Vaccine Already Exists.”

2. See chapter 31, Global Warming.

2

Science

To make or interpret a point, we apply the skill of the argument. A sound argument rests on a premise that states a fact or something we know or with a high degree of certainty assume to be true. But how do we determine if a premise is actually true? Sometimes it’s self-evident, something we know from experience or common sense. Fire is hot. Ice is cold. The fastest man on earth can’t outrun a bus. Sometimes it’s based on definition. By definition, infinity is infinite. By definition, emptiness is empty. By definition, division by zero is undefined. Sometimes the truth of a premise is based on faith, on conviction. There is a God. There is an afterlife. There is hope for a better future. Most of the time, it’s based on science.

In modern society, science occupies a special place in our lives. What technological advance hasn’t come from science? What poll or survey doesn’t claim to be scientific? What drug or nutritional supplement doesn’t claim to be clinically tested? We invoke the name of science to argue almost every point: technical, political, ideological. Science is at the core of our existence, pivotal to the function of our world. But what is science?

If we think back to our grade school days, we recall that science has something to do with a hypothesis and what our teachers called the scientific method. Further along in school, we learned that there were various areas of science: physics, biology, chemistry, and one that seemed quite different—social science. Under this heading, we found fields like history, sociology, and psychology. In college we learned that there were still more subjects and almost all claimed to be in some way scientific: finance, marketing, accounting, woman’s studies, diversity studies.

In certain respects, science is all these things. In every respect, it’s much more. The world around us behaves in predictable ways. Atoms, molecules, organisms, and human beings display characteristic patterns of movement and association. Science is the tool that over time we’ve developed to identify and describe these patterns. Physics maps the behavior of ma...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Argument
• Chapter 2: Science
• Chapter 3: Statistics
• Chapter 4: Diet
• Chapter 5: Exercise
• Chapter 6: Self
• Chapter 7: Collective
• Chapter 8: Family
• Chapter 9: Society
• Chapter 10: Civilization I
• Chapter 11: Scarcity
• Chapter 12: Civilization II
• Chapter 13: Economics
• Chapter 14: Civilization III
• Chapter 15: Socialism
• Chapter 16: Civilization IV
• Chapter 17: Capitalism
• Chapter 18: Civilization V
• Chapter 19: Today’s Economy
• Chapter 20: World War I
• Chapter 21: Taxes
• Chapter 22: World War II
• Chapter 23: Politics
• Chapter 24: Cold War
• Chapter 25: Democracy
• Chapter 26: Education
• Chapter 27: Healthcare
• Chapter 28: Earth
• Chapter 29: Environment
• Chapter 30: Population
• Chapter 31: Global Warming
• Chapter 32: Cap and Trade
• Chapter 33: Energy
• Chapter 34: Hybrid Cars
• Chapter 35: Renewable Energy
• Chapter 36: Hydrogen
• Chapter 37: Nuclear Power
• Chapter 38: Energy Plan for America
• Chapter 39: The Middle East
• Chapter 40: God
• Chapter 41: Islam
• Chapter 42: Terrorism
• Chapter 43: Darwin
• Chapter 44: Clones
• Chapter 45: Abortion
• Chapter 46: UFOs
• Bibliography