We're right in the middle of reconstruction.
We did stage one last week, because that's just close analysis.
In the previous section we did stage two, which is to remove excess verbiage,
and to put the explicit premises and conclusion into standard form.
And this lecture is going to focus on stage three, which is the clarify the
premises and to break them up. Where it's possible without distorting
them. Let's start with step four, which is to
clarify the premises and the conclusion, when it's needed.
So we might need to clarify them just in order to make them easier to understand,
or to make them less likely to mislead, and all that sounds pretty good.
So let's try on this example. It was hot today, so it'll probably be
hot tomorrow again. And we need to clarify that.
What exactly counts as today? Is that,
you know, the time when there's daylight, or does it also include night, even
though night is not day? And what exactly do we mean by hot?
How hot was it today, and how hot will it be tomorrow?
And what, after all, is heat? And what about, it'll probably be hot
tomorrow? Probability.
That's a tough notion. We're going to spend a whole week on that
later on in the course. And there are different kinds of
probability, and I want to know what kind you're
talking about here. And when you ask for example, about it
will be hot tomorrow, what is, what does will mean?
It means it's going to happen in the future, and what exactly is the future?
And is the future real? Is time real?
You can go a long way towards asking how to clarify that argument. But that's
ridiculous, you know. We don't have to clarify a
simple argument like it was hot today so it will probably be hot tomorrow.
And it's lucky we don't have to clarify every word in the argument because we
couldn't because after all when you explain one of the words or give a
definition for it, it's going to be in terms of other words and then they have
to get clarified and you'll never going to get to the end of it.
The search for perfect clarity and absolute precision is impossible.
You'll never complete that search. You'll never find perfect clarity or
absolute precision, so give it up. What we should seek is not absolute
precision, but adequate precision. Not absolute clarity, but adequate
clarity. And that means that we ought to try to
clear up those parts of the premises and conclusion that are likely to produce
confusion later. And you have to be able to kind of
predict whether this part of the argument needs to be clarified, because people are
going to get confused by it. Now that's not going to be easy,
and there's no simple or mechanical rule to tell you what needs to be clarified,
and what doesn't need to be clarified. The only way to learn this skill is to go
through some examples that will give you models of what needs to be clarified and
what doesn't. Sometimes, you know, in clarity lies in a
single word. In the 1980's Nancy Reagan used to say,
just say no to drugs. What does that mean?
Well, she is telling you not to use drugs, to say no when somebody offers you
drugs or tries to tell you to use drugs. So, in effect, she's saying you ought not
to use drugs. That's pretty clear but now what does she
mean by drugs? Does she mean aspirin?
I don't think she's telling you not to use aspirin.
Does she mean prescription drugs? I don't think she's telling you not to
follow the advice of your doctor and use the prescriptions that the doctor told
you to take. So that can't be what she means.
Well, maybe she means illegal drugs. Okay.
Maybe she means illegal drugs. What about heroin or cocaine?
Yes, that's what she is telling you not to do.
She is definitely telling you not to take illegal drugs, but then there are some
things in the middle. She might be telling you not to take
dangerous drugs whether they are illegal or not.
What about nicotine? What about alcohol?
Those are both dangerous drugs, at least when you use in excess.
Alcohol is very dangerous, and smoking can lead to lung cancer, and that's how
most people get nicotine. So maybe she's telling you not to take
nicotine or alcohol in addition to illegal drugs heroin and cocaine.
Now it's not clear, so how do we clear it up?
Well, you want Nancy Reagan's claim to look as
good as possible. Remember, you're always trying to make
the argument look as good as possible. And one way to make it look good is to
make her claim no more than she has to claim.
So, she could be claiming, in addition to
heroin and cocaine, you shouldn't take alcohol and nicotine.
But probably, or at least more plausibly, she's telling you not to take illegal
drugs. She had to chose between interpreting her
and saying don't take any illegal drugs and don't take any dangerous drugs.
And it's seems like a more charitable interpretation that makes her claim look
more plausible is don't take any illegal drugs.
So we could clarify her claim, just say no to drugs, by interpreting it to mean
you ought to not to take any illegal drugs.
So in general then, the lesson is that, when there are options about how to
clarify a certain sentence, we ought to pick the most charitable option that
makes the claim look as good as possible. Here's another example, where the
unclarity can be traced to a single word, but in this case it's the word that," and
it's not clear what it refers to. So imagine that someone argues like this.
Let's say, she claims, that our strategy won't work, because the enemy knows our
plan, but that is a big mistake.
What does that refer to? That could refer to, that is the word
that could refer to that the enemy knows our plan.
If someone says, that's a mistake, they might be saying, it's a mistake to think
that the enemy knows our plan. But it could refer to the claim that our
strategy won't work. They could be saying, it's a mistake to
think our strategy won't work. Or, they could be saying that the mistake
is to think that the enemy knowing our plan is enough to make it not work.
He might be saying, it's not that it won't work because the enemy knows the
plan. Or, here's a fourth possibility.
He could be saying, that is a mistake to think that she claims that, that's not
what she claims. So, there are four different ways to
interpret, this argument, and in order to figure out how to
interpret it, we have to figure out which of those is most likely as an
interpretation of what the arguer is trying to say.
And that's going to depend on which one makes the argument look the best.
Now in this example it's not clear which interpretation is the best,
because someone might give that argument in a context where they're saying the
mistake is to think she claims that. But in other cases they might be saying
that the mistake is to think that the enemy knows our plan.
They don't really know our plan, and in other cases that might be claiming
that other things are mistaken. So, we need to figure out what the person
is saying, but that could depend on the particular
context. It might vary from context to context.
Now these unclarities seem unintentional. But sometimes people use unclearity to
hide problems with their argument, to try to fool you.
So imagine, a politician says we need to stop our enemies and stand by our
friends, so we must remain strong and resolute.
Well, if somebody starts arguing like that, you ought to be asking yourself,
who do they think our friends are? Who do they think our enemies are?
What do they mean, stop our enemies? Are they calling for military action?
How do they think we ought to stop our enemies?
And standing by our friends. Does that mean we ought to support'em, no
matter what they do? There are lots of questions that you
would want to ask, to clarify exactly which claim is being made before you
accept something like this. Here's another claim that might be made
by an opponent of the first politician. We have to help the needy.
Well, wait a minute. Which people are needy?
I mean everybody needs something. How needy to you have to be needy?
And we ought to help the needy. Well how are we going to help them?
Does that mean we just give them what ever they want, or what are we suppose to
give them? And when are we suppose to give them and
how much are we willing to spend on giving it to them?
Politicians on both sides of the political spectrum make vague claims that
need to clarified before you should be willing to endorse one or the other of
those claims. If you try to decide what to believe
before you know exactly what the claim means, before you've calrified it, you
can end up commiting yourself to all kinds on nonsense and all kinds of very
problematic positions. You can get yourself in to a lot of trouble.
That's why we need to clarify the terms in arguments.
Now, one special way in which premises need to be clarified, is that they need
to be broken up into smaller parts, where you can do that.
And the point of this, is that the smaller parts are going to be easier to
understand, and easier to assess for whether they're true or not.
So, step four, to clarify the premises, belongs together with step five, break up
the premises into parts. What needs to be broken up?
Well, the explicit premises and sometimes the conclusion as well.
Here's a simple example. That shirt looks great on you and it's on
sale, so you ought to buy it. We might put that in standard form like
this. That shirt looks great on you and it's on
sale is the premise and the conclusion is you ought to buy it.
But notice that the premise has two parts, joined by an and.
So we could break them up and have the first premise, that shirt looks great on
you, and the second premise it's on sale and then the conclusion is you ought to
buy it." Breaking up like that is supposed to make it easier to assess the
premise for truth or falsehood. Now in this case it doesn't make it much
easier cause it was so simple to begin with, but we'll see that breaking up
premises will really help when we get to more complex examples.
So, it makes sense to break up premises. Well, at least sometimes.
We should not break up premises when breaking them up distorts the argument.
Here's an example of that. We still need to add either one more cup
white of suger, or one more cup of brown sugar to complete the recipe.
So we've got to add another cup of ingredients.
Now one way to represent that argument would be to say the premise is, we still
need to add one more cup of white sugar, or one more cup of brown sugar, and the
conclusion is, we have another cup of ingredients to add.
But we can break it up because it's got parts.
We can change the argument into we still need to add one more cup of white sugar.
That's the first premise, and the second premise is we still need
to add one cup of brown sugar. And then the conclusion is we have one
more cup of ingredients to add, but that argument doesn't make any sense.
If we've got to add one of white and one of brown,
we don't just have one more cup of ingredients to add.
And as always we're supposed to be making the argument look good and that change
made it look bad. And the problem is that here we broke up
the word or. Because it's one cup of white or one cup
of brown and presumably you didn't know which it was, or maybe you had a choice
between the two but you weren't suppose to add both.
That would be too much, and the word or signals that.
So in general, you should not break up when the word that joins the two is or,
but it's okay to break up when the word that joins the two is and.
You still got to be careful about context.
It's not always goint to work that way, but as a general rule you know, that
usually works. Other cases are even trickier.
One particularly problematic case is dependent clauses.
Here's an example. Nancy finished all her homework because
all she had to do was write 25 lines of poetry, and she wrote two sonnets, which
have fourteen lines each. The dependent clauses, which have
fourteen lines each. And the question is, how do we fit that
into standard form. Well, here's one stab.
The first premise can say, all she had to do is write 25 lines of poetry.
And the second premise can be, she wrote two sonnets which have fourteen lines
each. And then the conclusion is, Nancy
finished all her homework. Now the question is can we break up that
second premise into two different parts? It seems like we can.
We should be able to represent the argument.
So the first premise is, all she had to do is write 25 lines of poetry and the
second premise says she wrote two sonnets and the third premise is sonnets have
fourteen lines each and the conclusion is she finished all her homework.
In this case, breaking down the premise actually helps us understand and asses
it. Because we can decide whether it's really
true, for example, that sonnets have fourteen lines each.
That's going to be a question. If the answer is no, then the argument
might fail. The answer is yes, at least for standard
sonnets. So the argument looks pretty good.
Contrast that example with this one. Our legal system isn't fair because
authorities go easy on white collar criminals who have been allowed to get
away with their crimes in recent years. Well the premise, could be,
authorities go easy on criminals who've been allowed to get away with their
crimes in recent years. And, the conclusion is, our legal system
isn't fair. Now the question is, can we break up that
first premise, because it has the dependent clause,
who've been allowed to get away with their crimes in recent years.
Well that depends, because the person giving the argument might be saying that
authorities go easy on all white collar criminals.
And, they might be saying that authorities only go easy on a certain
subset of white collar criminals, namely the subset they've been allowed to get
away with their crimes in recent years. If the premises now all white collar
criminals, then we can break it up so that one premises says authorities go
easy on white collar criminals, and the next premise says white collar
criminals have been allowed to get away with their crimes in recent years.
But if the arguer is only talking about some white collar criminals, and admits
that other white collar criminals have not been allowed to get away with their
crime, then he's only saying that authorities go easy on those white collar
criminals who have been allowed to get away with their crime, that subset of
white collar criminals. And then it would distort the argument to
break it up, because if you do break it up then that second premise says white
collar criminals have been allowed to get away with their crimes in recent years.
And if some of them haven't, then that premise turns out to be false.
So if you break it up you can criticize it by pointing out that it doesn't really
apply to all white collar criminals, but if you leave it as a single premise then
it's not subject to that criticism, so if you want to be charitable, you probably
ought to keep this premise together. Unless you know, on independent grounds,
that the person was making that claim about all white collar criminals and not
just a subset. So to make that argument look better we
don't break up the premise and the general lesson is that with dependent
clauses like that and with and who, you have to look very carefully to figure out
what the speaker wanted to say and what's going to make their argument look best.
And use that information to determine whether or not break up the premise.
There are no air tight rules as always, so we need to do a few exercises to
practice the skill.