INSTITUTE OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND MANAGEMENT

UNIVERSITY OF SIERRA LEONE

FOUNDATION STUDIES UNIT
APPLIED ACCOUNTING, AUDIT & FINANCIAL ECONOMICS

SEMESTER : FIRST SEMESTER

MODULE : CRITICAL THINKING

MODULE CODE : FOS113

LECTURE TWO : RECOGNISING ARGUMENTS

LECTURERS : Mr Albert Beah & Mr Shekou Ansumana Nuni

ARGUMENTS
As we saw in the previous lectures, critical thinking is centrally concerned with reasons:
identifying reasons, evaluating reasons, and giving reasons. In critical thinking, passages that
present reasons for a claim are called arguments. In this lecture we explore the concept of an
argument and explain how to distinguish arguments from nonarguments.

What is an Argument?

When people hear the word argument, they usually think of some kind of quarrel or shouting
match. In critical thinking, however, an argument is simply a claim defended with reasons.

Arguments are composed of one or more premises and a conclusion.

Premises are statements in an argument offered as evidence or reasons why we should accept
another statement, the conclusion. The conclusion is the statement in an argument that the
premises are intended to prove or support.

An argument, accordingly, is a group of statements, one or more of which (called the premises)
are intended to prove or support another statement (called the conclusion).

A statement is a sentence that can be viewed as either true or false. Here are some examples
of statements:

Red is a colour.
Canada is in South America.
God does not exist.
Abortion is morally wrong. .

Some of these statements are clearly true, some are clearly false, and some are controversial.
Each of them is a statement, however, because each can be prefaced with the phrase “It is true
that” or “It is false that.”

Four things should be noted about statements. First, a sentence may be used to express more
than one statement. For example, the grammatical sentence

Roses are red and violets are blue

expresses two distinct statements (“roses are red” and “violets are blue”). Each of these is a
statement because each is capable of standing alone as a declarative sentence.

Second, a statement can sometimes be expressed as a phrase or an incomplete clause, rather

than as a complete declarative sentence. Consider the sentence

With mortgage interest rates at thirty-year lows, you owe it to yourself to consider
refinancing your home. (radio ad)

Grammatically, this is a single declarative sentence. The speaker’s intent, however, is clearly
to defend one assertion (“You owe it to yourself to consider refinancing your home”) on the

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basis of another (“Mortgage interest rates are at thirty-year lows”). The fact that we have to
rephrase the sentence slightly to make this explicit should not obscure the fact that two
statements are being offered rather than one.

Third, not all sentences are statements, that is, sentences that either assert or deny that
something is the case. Here are some examples of sentences that are not statements:

What time is it? (question)

Hi, Dad! (greeting)
Close the window! (command)
Please send me your current catalog. (request)
Let’s go to Paris for our anniversary. (proposal)
Insert tab A into slot B. (instruction)
Oh, my goodness! (exclamation)

None of these is a statement because none of them asserts or denies that anything is the case.
None says, in effect, “This is a fact. Accept this; it is true.” Consequently, sentences like these
are not parts of arguments.

Finally, statements can be about subjective matters of personal experience as well as

objectively verifiable matters of fact. If I say, for example,

I feel a slight twinge in my left knee

this is a statement because it is either true or false (I might be lying, after all), even though
other people may have no way of verifying whether I am telling the truth.

Not all sentences, however, are as they appear. Some sentences that look like nonstatements
are actually statements and can be used in arguments. Here are two examples:

Alyssa, you should quit smoking. Don’t you realize how bad that is for your health?

Commencement address: Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you
feel ugly. (Mary Schmich)

The first example contains a rhetorical question. A rhetorical question is a sentence that has
the grammatical form of a question but is meant to be understood as a statement. In our
example, the person asking the question isn’t really looking for information. She’s making an
assertion: that smoking is very bad for one’s health. This assertion is offered as a reason
(premise) to support the conclusion that Alyssa should quit smoking.

The second example includes an ought imperative, that is, a sentence that has the form of an
imperative or command but is intended to assert a value or ought judgment about what is good
or bad or right or wrong. Grammatically, “Do not read beauty magazines” looks like a
command or suggestion. In this context, however, the speaker is clearly making an assertion:
that you shouldn’t read beauty magazines. Her statement that reading such magazines will only
make you feel ugly is offered as a reason to support this value judgment.

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How can we tell when a sentence that looks like a command or suggestion is really an ought
imperative? The key question to ask is this: Can we accurately rephrase the sentence so that it
refers to what someone should or ought to do? If we can, the sentence should be regarded as a
statement.

Consider two further examples. Suppose a drill sergeant says to a new recruit,

Close that window, soldier! It’s freezing in here!

In this context it is clear that the sergeant is issuing an order rather than expressing an ought
judgment (“You ought to close that window, soldier!”). On the other hand, if one roommate
were to say to another,

Don’t blow-dry your hair in the tub, Bert! You could electrocute yourself!

It is likely that the roommate is expressing an ought judgment (“You shouldn’t blow-dry your
hair in the tub!”), rather than issuing an order or making a mere suggestion.

As these examples make clear, it is always important to consider the context in which an
expression is used. A sentence such as “Eat your vegetables” might be a command (non-
statement) in one context and an outrightt imperative (statement) in another.

To recap: Imperative sentences are not statements if they are intended as orders, suggestions,
proposals, or exhortations. They are statements if they are intended as pieces of advice or value
judgments about what someone ought or ought not to do.

IDENTIFYING PREMISES AND CONCLUSIONS

In identifying premises and conclusions, we are often helped by indicator words. Indicator
words are words or phrases that provide clues that premises or conclusions are being put
forward. Premise indicators indicate that premises are being offered, and conclusion
indicators indicate that conclusions are being offered.

Here are some common premise indicators:

Since because
for given that
Seeing that considering that
Inasmuch as as
In view of the fact that as indicated by
Judging from on account of

The following examples illustrate the use of premise indicators:

Having fun can be the spice of life but not its main course, because when it is over, nothing of
lasting value remains. (Harold Kushner)

Since effective reasoning requires reliable information, it’s important to be able to distinguish
good sources and trustworthy experts from less useful ones. (Drew E. Hinderer)

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Women are not by any means to blame when they reject the rules of life, which have been
introduced into the world, seeing that it is men who have made them without their consent.
(Michel de Montaigne)

I think that, as life is action and passion, it is required of a man that he should share the passion
and action of his time, at peril of being judged not to have lived. (Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.)

And here are some common conclusion indicators:

Therefore thus
Hence consequently
So accordingly
It follows that for this reason
That is why which shows that
Wherefore this implies that
As a result this suggests that
This being so we may infer that

These examples illustrate the use of conclusion indicators:

There’s probably no God, so stop worrying and enjoy your life. (ad on London bus)

Rapid economic improvements represent a life-or-death imperative throughout the Third

World. Its people will not be denied that hope, no matter the environmental costs. As a result,
that choice must not be forced upon them. (Al Gore)

Your life is what your thoughts make it. That is why it is important for all of us to guard our
minds from unhealthy habits of thinking, habits that hold us back from what we could be
accomplishing. (Tom Morris)

As our birth brought us the birth of all things, so will our death bring us the death of all things.
Wherefore it is as foolish to weep because a hundred years from now we shall not be alive, as
to weep because we were not living a hundred years ago. (Michel de Montaigne)

Understanding arguments would be easier if the expressions just listed were used only to signal
premises or conclusions. That is not the case, however, as the following examples illustrate:

I haven’t seen you since high school.

You’ve had that jacket for as long as I’ve known you.
Thus far everything has been great.
It was so cold that even the ski resorts shut down.
I wouldn’t mind seeing that movie again.
There is water on the floor because the sink overflowed.

In none of these examples does the italicized term function as an indicator word. This shows
once again why it’s so important to consider the context when determining the meaning of an
expression.

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Many arguments contain no indicator words at all. Here are two examples:

Cats are smarter than dogs. You can’t get eight cats to pull a sled through snow. (Jeff
Valdez)

I can’t be completely responsible for my life. After all, there are many factors outside
my control, people and forces that create obstacles and undermine my efforts. And we
are subject to pressures and influences from within ourselves: feelings of greed, fear
of death, altruistic impulses, sexual compulsions, need for social acceptance, and so
on. (John Chaffee, emphasis omitted)

In these passages, there are no indicator words to help us identify the premises and conclusions.
Reading carefully, however, we can see that the point of the first passage is to support the claim,
“Cats are smarter than dogs,” and the point of the second passage is to support the claim, “I
can’t be completely responsible for my life.”

How can we find the conclusion of an argument when the argument contains no indicator
words? The following list provides some helpful hints.

Tips on Finding the Conclusion of an Argument

 Find the main issue and ask yourself what position the writer or speaker is taking on
that issue.
 Look at the beginning or end of the passage; the conclusion is often (but not always)
found in one of those places.
 Ask yourself, “What is the writer or speaker trying to prove?” That will be the
conclusion.
 Try putting the word therefore before one of the statements. If it fits, that statement is
probably the conclusion.
 Try the “because” trick. That is, try to find the most appropriate way to fill in the blanks
in the following statement: The writer or speaker

believes……….(conclusion) because…………(premise). The conclusion will naturally come

before the word because.

What is not an Argument?

We encounter arguments everywhere in daily life—at school, at work, in magazine ads, in

newspaper editorials, in political discussions, in television documentaries, and on radio talk
shows. Of course, people don’t use language only to offer arguments: they also use it to tell
jokes, sing songs, recite poetry, express feelings, report events, ask questions, offer
explanations, say prayers, give orders, and exchange wedding vows. How, then, can we
distinguish arguments from nonarguments?

The basic test is quite simple. Something counts as an argument when (1) it is a group of two
or more statements and (2) one of those statements (the conclusion) is claimed or intended to
be supported by the others (the premises). By applying this simple test, we can usually tell

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whether a given passage is or is not an argument. Now let’s look at five types of
nonargumentative discourse that are sometimes confused with arguments:

 Reports
 Unsupported assertions
 Conditional statements
 Illustrations
 Explanations

Reports

The purpose of a report is simply to convey information about a subject. Here is an example of
a report:

Sweeping changes occurred in demographics, economics, culture, and society during

the last quarter of the 20th century. The nation aged, and more of its people gravitated
to the Sunbelt. Sprawling “urban corridors” and “edge cities” challenged older
central cities as sites for commercial, as well as residential, development. Rapid
technological change fuelled the growth of globalized industries, restructuring the
labour force to fit a “post-industrial” economy.

In this passage, the authors are simply reporting a series of events; their aim is to narrate and
inform, not to offer reasons why one statement should be accepted on the basis of others.

Caution is needed, however, with reports about arguments. Here is an example of such a
passage:

Government is legitimate, according to Hobbes, because living under a government is

better than living in a state of nature. The advantages of government are so great that
it is worth sacrificing some of our freedom in order to bring about these advantages.
For this reason, rational people would consent to sign a social contract and subject
themselves to the laws and powers of a government.

This is not an argument because the author is merely reporting another person’s argument, not
endorsing it or putting it forward as his own.

Unsupported Assertions

Unsupported assertions are statements about what a speaker or writer happens to believe. Such
statements can be true or false, rational or irrational, but they are parts of arguments only if the
speaker or writer claims that they follow from, or support, other claims. Here is an example of
a series of unsupported assertions:

I believe that it is not dying that people are afraid of. Something else, something more
unsettling and more tragic than dying frightens us. We are afraid of never having lived,
of coming to the end of our days with the sense that we were never really alive, that we
never figured out what life was for.

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Because there is no claim that any of these statements follow from, or imply, any other
statements, this is not an argument.

Conditional Statements

A conditional statement is an if-then statement. Here are several examples:

If it rains, then the picnic will be cancelled.

You must speak French if you grew up in Quebec.
If at first you don’t succeed, don’t try skydiving.

Conditional statements are made up of two basic parts. The first part, the statement(s) following
the word if, is called the antecedent. The second part, the statement(s) following the word
then, is called the consequent.

Conditional statements need not be explicitly in if-then form; in fact, in modern usage, then is
usually dropped. For example, the following statements are conditional statements:

Should it rain, the picnic will be cancelled.

In the event of rain, the picnic will be cancelled.
Pete will graduate, provided he passes Critical Thinking.

Conditional statements are not arguments, because there is no claim that any statement follows
from any part of a conditional statement. Thus, if I say, “If it rains, the picnic will be cancelled,”
I’m not asserting either that it will rain or that the picnic will be cancelled. I’m only asserting
that if the first statement is true, the second statement will also be true. Because there is no
claim that any statement follows from, or supports, this conditional statement, no argument has
been given.

Illustrations

Illustrations are intended to provide examples of a claim, rather than prove or support the claim.
Here is an example:

Many wildflowers are edible. For example, daisies and day lilies are delicious in salads

Even though the second statement does provide some evidence for the first, this passage is an
illustration rather than an argument. Its purpose is not to provide convincing evidence for a
conclusion but merely to provide a few notable or representative examples of a claim.

Distinguishing arguments from illustrations can be tricky for two reasons. First, phrases like
for example and for instance sometimes occur in arguments rather than in illustrations. For
example:

Purists sometimes insist that we should say between when two and only two objects are
present, among if there are more than two. This, however, is an oversimplification. For

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 example, no one would object to between in “The main stumbling block in the present
delicate exchanges between Paris, Athens, London and Ankara. . . .”

Second, there is sometimes a fine line between illustrating a claim and providing sufficient
evidence for the claim. Consider the following:

Many of the world’s greatest philosophers were bachelors. For instance, Descartes,
Locke, Hume, and Kant were all unmarried.

This is a borderline case between an argument and an illustration.

Explanation
An explanation tries to show why something is the case, not to prove that it is the case.
Consider the following two statements:

Titanic sank because it struck an iceberg.

Capital punishment should be abolished because innocent people may be mistakenly

executed.

On the surface, these two statements look very much alike. Both give reasons, and both
use the indicator word because. There is, however, an important difference between the
two: The first statement is an explanation, and the second is an argument.

Dinosaurs became extinct because of the impact of a large asteroid.

Explanations have two parts. The statement that is explained is the explanandum. The
statement that does the explaining is the explanans. Thus, in the explanation.

I fell down because I tripped

The statement “I fell down” is the explanandum, and the statement “I tripped” is the
explanans.

Distinguishing Explanations from Argument.

There are four basic tests:

1. The Common-Knowledge Test. First, is the statement that the passage seeks
to prove or explain a matter of common knowledge? If it is, the passage is probably an
explanation rather than an argument.

The North won the American Civil War because it had a larger population and a
greater industrial base

It is clearly an explanation rather than an argument because it is common knowledge

that the North won the Civil War.

2. The Past-Event Test . Second, is the statement that the passage is seeking to
prove or explain an event that occurred in the past? If so, the passage is probably an
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explanation rather than an argument because it is much more common to try to explain
why past events have occurred rather than to prove that they occurred. Thus, the
passage

Mel flunked out because he never went to class

It is best viewed as an explanation because the speaker is referring to a past event, and
we usually try to explain such events rather than provide convincing evidence that they
have happened.

3. The Author’s Intent Test. Is it the speaker’s or writer’s intent to prove or

establish that something is the case—that is, to provide reasons or evidence for
accepting a claim as true ? Consider this example:

Kevin is majoring in critical thinking because he wants to go to law school.

Here it is unlikely that the speaker is trying to prove that Kevin is majoring in political
science, for the “evidence” offered (the fact that Kevin wants to go to law school)
would clearly be insufficient to establish that conclusion. It is therefore more likely that
the speaker is offering an explanation rather than an argument.

4. The Principle of Charity Test. “When interpreting an unclear passage, always

give the speaker or writer the benefit of the doubt. Never attribute to an arguer a
weaker argument when the evidence reasonably permits us to attribute to him or her a
stronger one. And never interpret a passage as a bad argument when the evidence
reasonably permits us to interpret it as not an argument at all.” The principle of charity
requires that we always interpret unclear passages generously and, in particular, that we
never interpret a passage as a bad argument when the evidence reasonably permits us to
interpret it as not an argument at all. This test often proves helpful when the other tests
yield no clear answer. For example:

Jeremy won’t come to the frat party tonight because he has an important exam
tomorrow.

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