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chapter 1

Section 1.2 Identify Premises and Conclusions

Exercises on pages 9–11

1. Premise: A well-regulated militia is necessary for the security of a free state.

Conclusion: The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
2. Premises:

(1) It’s easier (than photocopying) to buy your friend a paperback copy of a book.
(2) A paperback copy of the book is inexpensive.

Conclusion: What stops many people from photocopying a book and giving it
to a pal is not integrity but logistics.
3. Premise: Human intelligence is a gift from God.
Conclusion: To apply human intelligence to understand the world is not an
affront to God, but is pleasing to him.
4. Premise: Sir Edmund Hilary dedicated his life to helping build schools and hospitals
for the Sherpas who helped him to climb Mount Everest.
Conclusion: He is, for that reason, a hero.
5. Premises:

(1) Standardized tests have a disparate racial impact, as illustrated by the differ-
ence in the average scores of different ethnic groups.
(2) Ethnic differences arise on all kinds of tests, at all levels.

Conclusion: If a racial gap is evidence of discrimination, then all tests discriminate.

6. Premise: Everybody thinks himself so abundantly provided with good sense that
even those most difficult to please in all other matters do not commonly desire
more of it than they already possess.
Conclusion: Good sense is, of all things in the world, the most equally distributed.
7. Premise: Any words new to the United States are either stupid or foreign.
Conclusion: There is no such thing as the American language; there’s just bad
English.
8. Premise: In New York State alone taxpayers spent more than $200 million in a failed
death penalty experiment, with no one executed.
Conclusion: The death penalty is too costly.
Premise: [There has been] an epidemic of exonerations of death row inmates
upon post-conviction investigation, including ten New York inmates freed in the

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last eighteen months from long sentences being served for murders or rapes they
did not commit.
Conclusion: Capital punishment is unfair in its application, in addition to being
too costly.
  9. Premise: Houses are built to live in, not to look on.
Conclusion: Use is to be preferred before [i.e., above] uniformity.
10. Premises:

(1) A boycott, although not violent, can cause economic harm to many.
(2) The greater the impact of a boycott, the more impressive is the statement it
makes.
(3) The economic consequences of a boycott are likely to be felt by innocent
bystanders, who suffer loss of income because of it.

Conclusion: The boycott weapon ought to be used sparingly.

11. Premises:

(1) In the early part of the 20th century forced population shifts were not
uncommon.
(2) In that period multicultural empires crumbled and nationalism drove the for-
mation of new, ethnically homogenous countries.

Conclusion: Ethnic cleansing was viewed not so long ago as a legitimate tool of
foreign policy.
12. Premises:

(1) If a jury is sufficiently unhappy with the government’s case or the govern-
ment’s conduct, it can simply refuse to convict.
(2) This possibility puts powerful pressure on the state to behave properly.

Conclusion: A jury is one of the most important protections of a democracy.

13. Premises:

(1) Orangutans spend more than 95 percent of their time in the trees, which,
along with vines and termites, provide more than 99 percent of their food.
(2) Their only habitat is formed by the tropical rain forests of Borneo and
Sumatra.

Conclusion: Without forests, orangutans cannot survive.

14. Premise: If God is omniscient, he must already know how he is going to intervene
to change the course of history using his omnipotence.

Conclusion: God cannot change his mind about his intervention.

Premise: God cannot change his mind about his intervention.
Conclusion: If God is omniscient he is not omnipotent.
Premise: If God is omniscient he is not omnipotent.
Conclusion: Omniscient and omnipotence are mutually incompatible.

15. Premises:

(1) Reason never comes to the aid of spiritual things.

(2) More frequently than not, reason struggles against the divine Word, treating
all that comes from God with contempt.
Conclusion: Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has.

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Section 1.4 Arguments and Explanations
Exercises on pages 19–22

1. This is essentially an explanation. What is being explained is the fact that humans

have varying skin colors. The explanation is that different skin colors evolved as
humans came to live at different distances from the Equator and hence needed
different degrees of protection from the rays of the sun. One might interpret the
passage as an argument whose conclusion is that skin color is not a permanent trait
of all humans. Under this interpretation, all the propositions preceding the final
sentence of the passage serve as premises.
2. This is an argument whose conclusion is that the victories of American labor through
the passage of ostensibly neutral laws regulating labor, were seriously adverse to the
interests of blacks, and resulted in the now longstanding gap between black and
white unemployment rates. One might interpret the passage simply as an explana-
tion, in which what is being explained is that gap, but this interpretation leaves
aside the many ramifications of the argument.
3. This is an explanation. What is being explained is why sex feels good. The expla-
nation is that those animals in which it does feel good have more offspring, and
therefore more evolutionary success, than those animals in which sex does not so
effectively motivate. If we did not know that sex feels good, this might be consid-
ered an argument to show that it does; but since the pleasure of sex is a fact not in
serious question here, the passage is best viewed as an explanation of that reality.
4. This is an argument. Its premises are that (1) changes are real and (2) changes are
only possible in time. The conclusion is that time must be something real.
5. This may be interpreted either as an explanation or as an argument. Viewed as an
explanation, what is being explained is the fact, not doubted here, that the nursing
shortage has turned into a crisis. The explanation of that fact is a combination of
observations, including the fact that fewer young people are going into nursing,
that many older nurses are on the verge of retirement, that nurses often report
high rates of job dissatisfaction and plan to leave the profession, and that hospitals
routinely cancel or delay surgical cases because of a lack of nursing staff. Viewed
as an argument, all these factors are premises supporting the conclusion that the
shortage of nurses has indeed turned into a crisis.
6. This is an argument. Dewey is calling attention to the fact that to show what caused
an event is not sufficient to justify it or to condemn it, because justification or con-
demnation comes (in his view) only through the consequences of the event, not
its origin.
7. This passage is mainly an argument, whose conclusion is that a king cannot be
subject to his own laws. Its premises are: (1) it is impossible to bind oneself in
any matter which is the subject of one’s own free exercise of will, and (2) the laws
are no more than the product of the king’s free will. The passage also serves as an
explanation of the words commonly used in completing edicts and ordinances of a
king: “for such is our good pleasure.” This reinforces the argument above, since the
king plainly cannot be bound by that which is determined only by his own good
pleasure.
8. This is a bit of Oscar Wilde’s humor that can be interpreted in various ways—as a sar-
donic argument attacking Wagner’s music, perhaps, or as a lighthearted explanation

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of Wilde’s hidden pleasure in that music. Or perhaps there is nothing seriously
intended in the passage at all!
  9. Although this could be viewed as an argument, it was very probably intended by the
author as an explanation of the increased likelihood of cheating, that explanation
consisting of the enumeration of several aspects of contemporary American society.
10. This is an explanation. What is explained is the fact that Cupid has been tradition-
ally painted as blind. The explanation is that love, which Cupid represents, does
not look with the eyes and therefore does not see.
11. This may be viewed either as an explanation or as an argument. If one takes the
reported suggestion (that it is the greater sexual selection pressure on women that
accounts for their quantity of body hair) as true or known to be highly probable,
then this passage is a more detailed explanation of how this came to pass. If, on
the other hand, one takes the conclusion (that the lesser amount of body hair on
women is due to sexual selection pressure) as in genuine doubt, then this passage
may be interpreted as an argument in support of that conclusion. Of the two inter-
pretations, the former seems the more plausible.
12. This is an argument whose conclusion is that the threat of nuclear war is useless
against Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The premises are: (1) Iran’s lead-
ers do not care about killing their people in great numbers, (2) Ahmadinejad is a
religious fanatic, (3) to such a fanatic, dying while fighting the enemy is a quick
pass to heaven, and (4) the mutually assured destruction that worked so well as a
deterrent during the Cold War would instead be an inducement to war.
13. This is an argument whose conclusion is that interesting life can exist only in three
dimensions. The premises are that (1) blood flow and large numbers of neural con-
nections cannot exist in fewer than three dimensions, and (2) stable planetary orbits
are not possible in more than three dimensions. (The argument makes the unstated
assumption that the conditions described are necessary conditions for interesting
life.)
14. This is an argument but the first sentence in the passage is background material
and not strictly a premise, although it is needed by the reader to understand the
argument that follows immediately. After the conclusion (“we need them”) appears
the traditional Q.E.D.—which is the abbreviation for “quod erat demonstradum,”
meaning “what was to be demonstrated.”
15. This is an argument. Its conclusion is that the Treasury Department has violated
Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act. Its premises are: (1) the Department has failed
to design and issue paper currency that is readily distinguishable to blind and visu-
ally impaired individuals, and (2) (implied) this failure subjects blind and visually
impaired persons to discrimination under an activity by an Executive agency.
16. This is an argument whose conclusion is that acting in ways that fulfill one’s duty
never guarantees the moral goodness of the actor. The premise is that the act may
be done from a motive that is indifferent or bad, and that the act may therefore be
morally indifferent or bad.
17. This is an argument. Its conclusion is that belief in God is not beyond reason. Its
premises are: (1) only the supreme mind of God could create immutable and eternal
laws, (2) human reason can grasp some immutable and eternal laws, such as the
circle or the square or the laws of physics, and (3) in having that capacity, human
reason must possess an innate particle of the mind of God.

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18. This is an explanation. What is explained is the author’s unhesitating celebration
of religious holidays, although he is an atheist. The explanation is that many such
rituals did not originate with Christian practices or beliefs, and that they really
celebrate universal human goods and relationships.
19. This is an argument. Its conclusion is that ethnic movements are “two-edged
swords”—that is, they can serve good and evil ends. The premises are (1) the fact
that such movements are often necessary to repair injured collective psyches, and
(2) the fact that such movements often end in tragedy, especially when they turn
political, as in Germany.
20. This is an argument. Its conclusion is that it is false to say that all who are happy
are equally happy. Its premises are: (1) happiness consists in the multiplicity of
agreeable consciousness, and (2) a peasant does not have the capacity for happi-
ness that a philosopher does (presumably because a philosopher will have a greater
multiplicity of agreeable consciousness), and so cannot be equally happy, although
the peasant can be equally satisfied.

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chapter 2

Section 2.1
Exercises on pages 35–37

1. Premise: The Detroit Pistons are an all-around better team than the San Antonio
Spurs.
  Conclusion: The Pistons did not lose (the NBA finals, in 2005) because of lack of
ability.
  Premise: The Pistons will beat the Spurs two out of every three times; and the
Spurs will win one out of every three times.
  Premise: The Pistons had won the fifth and sixth games of the series—two
in a row—so if they had won the final game they would have won three out of
three.
  Conclusion: The Pistons lost because of the law of averages.
2. Premise: Universities have commonly been offering strange literary theories and
assorted oddities, in place of the writing courses that ought to have been offered.
Students have been shortchanged.
  Conclusion: Vast numbers of students cannot express themselves well in writing.
3. Premise: People divided on ethnic lines tend not to adopt programs that will give
mutual support.
  Conclusion (and premise of the following argument): Therefore nations that are
racially diverse tend to have lower levels of social support than nations that are
racially homogenous.
  Conclusion: A welfare state with a racially diverse population is in tension, and
the more racially diverse a community is, the more difficult it is to maintain com-
prehensive welfare programs.
4. Premise: If freedom were a natural part of the human condition we could expect to
find free societies spread throughout human history.
  Premise: We do not find that, but instead find every sort of tyrannical govern-
ment, from time immemorial.
  Conclusion: It is simply false to say (as Orlando Patterson does) that freedom is
a natural part of the human condition.
5. Premise: If future scientists find a way to signal back in time, their signals would
already have reached us.
  Premise: No such signals have ever reached us.
  Conclusion: Future scientists never will find a way to signal back in time.

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 6. Premise: Japanese and European whale-hunting countries have no need to eat
whales; they can choose their diets.
  Premise: Eskimos live in an environment so harsh that their survival obliges them
to eat whales; they have no choice in dietary matters.
  Conclusion: Permitting primitive Eskimos to kill some whales for survival, while
at the same time demanding that modern societies cease to hunt whales, is fair and
reasonable, not hypocritical.
  7. Premise: The number of atoms in all of space is so huge that we can never count
them or count the forces that drive them in all places.
  Conclusion: There must be other worlds, in other places, with different kinds of
men and animals.
  8. Premise: Where marriages are prearranged, divorce rates are often very low.
Premise: Where marriages are formed on the basis of romantic love, divorce rates
are very high.
  Premise: You can come to love a person you married without love.
Premise: You can fall out of love with a person you married for love (or the marriage
can fail).
  Conclusion (unstated): We ought not suppose that romantic love is a necessary
precondition of successful marriage.
  9. Premise (unstated): Our tax system depends upon the willingness of persons to pay
the taxes they owe.
  Premise: That willingness depends, in turn, upon the widespread belief that
almost everyone, including competitors and neighbors, are also paying the taxes
they owe.
  Conclusion: If the Internal Revenue Service (the IRS) cannot assure us that this
fairness is reasonable for us to suppose, the entire system of voluntary tax payments
is seriously (and perhaps irremediably) threatened.
10. Premise: People and government are obsessed with racism and talk about it endlessly.
  Premise: But we don’t listen and we don’t see, and therefore we remain in a state
of denial, thinking ourselves absolved of all complicity in racism.
  Conclusion: Invariably we conclude that it is the other guy who is in the wrong.

Section 2.2 – A
Exercises on pages 42–44

1. In a recent attack upon the evils of suburban sprawl, the authors argue as follows:

The dominant characteristic of sprawl is that each component of a community—housing, shopping cent-
ers, office parks, and civic institutions—is segregated, physically separated from the others, causing the
residents of suburbia to spend an inordinate amount of time and money moving from one place to the
next. And since nearly everyone drives alone, even a sparsely populated area can generate the traffic of a
much larger traditional town.

Solution
① The dominant characteristic of sprawl is that each component of a
community—housing, shopping centers, office parks, and civic institutions—is seg-
regated, physically separated from the others, causing ② the residents of suburbia
to spend an ordinate amount of time and money moving from one place to the

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next. And since ③ nearly everyone drives alone, ④ even a sparsely populated area
can generate the traffic of a much larger traditional town.

2. ① At any cost we must have filters on our Ypsilanti Township library computers.
② Pornography is a scourge on society at every level. ③ Our public library must
not be used to channel this filth to the people of the area.

3. ① At his best, Lyndon Johnson was one of the greatest of all American presidents. ②
He did more for racial justice than any president since Abraham Lincoln. ③ He built
more social protections than anyone since Franklin Roosevelt. ④ He was probably
the greatest legislative politician in American history. ⑤ He was also one of the most
ambitious idealists. ⑥ Johnson sought power to use it to accomplish great things.

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4. ① Married people are healthier and more economically stable than single people,
and ② children of married people do better on a variety of indicators. ③ Marriage
is thus a socially responsible act. ④ There ought to be some way of spreading the
principle of support for marriage throughout the tax code.

5. ① Vacuum cleaners to ensure clean houses are praiseworthy and essential in our
standard of living. ② Street cleaners to ensure clean streets are an unfortunate
expense. Partly as a result ③ our houses are generally clean and ④ our streets gen-
erally filthy.

6. ① We are part of Europe. ② It affects us directly and deeply. Therefore ③ we should

exercise leadership in order to change Europe in the direction we want.

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7. ① California’s “three strikes and you’re out” law was enacted ten years ago this
month (March 2004). ② Between 1994 and 2002, California’s prison population
grew by 34,724, ③ while that of New York, a state without a “three strikes” law,
grew by 315. ④ Yet during that time period New York’s violent crime rate dropped
20 percent more than California’s. ⑤ No better example exists of how the drop in
crime cannot be attributed to draconian laws with catchy names.

8. ① No one means all he says, and yet ② very few say all they mean, for ③ words
are slippery and ④ thought is viscous.

9. ① The first impression becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy: ② we hear what we

expect to hear. ③ The interview is hopelessly biased in favor of the nice.

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