Repairing Arguments

Example: I hate cold weather. I am going to Lake Tahoe in December.

Analysis: I believe this is an example of a phony refutation. It is a bad argument because I said that I hate cold weather then went on to say that I am going to a cold place during the winter. Why would I go somewhere where I hate the weather? The argument could be fixed by saying that I have to make the trip for work or a family event. If I add “I have a mandatory company conference in Lake Tahoe at the end of the year” in the middle, it would make sense. Referring to the guide on page 62, the argument has become valid, the premise is plausible to others, and the premise is more plausible than the conclusion. People often do things they do not want to do for work, so it could make it believable.

Organizational Culture

At work, everyone has an individual task but we work as team to give the customer what they want. After going over organizational culture, my work place is a mix between an open/family organization and closed organization. We are a closed organization in the sense that we always have to wear a uniform, have all kinds of policies on how to do things, and if you are on the shy side, you show up, do what you are assigned then leave at the end of the day with the only talking you did was related to an order. I can also see it as an open culture because when we are not busy, we talk about what is going on outside of work, mess around with each other and we occasionally have an “employee of the month” program. Sometimes it just seems like we are hanging out while cleaning something. I have no clue what kind of culture we had when the company first started but 60 years later it is set. New hires adjust to it and policies are made for a reason.

Violating the Principal of Rational Discussion

I chose to discuss begging the question. In the book it says “the point of an argument is to convince that a claim is true. So the premises of an argument have to be more plausible than the conclusion.” If you make an argument and someone does not understand what you said, then there is a fallacy. An example would be “you should turn off the stove before you leave the house.” If the person you are addressing has to ask “why?” then you are violating the principal of reasoning.  By simply making your argument more specific, you can eliminate the question. “You should turn off the stove before you leave the house to avoid a fire” avoids the question because it answers it. A misleading example could be Bob saying “Steve died yesterday” to Emily. Emily could ask “What do you mean he is dead? I just saw him an hour ago.” What Bob meant to say was that Steve died in the video game that they were playing. Bob is not lying, just misleading because he left out the video game part.

Argument Exercise

My neighbor should be forced to get rid of all the cars in his yard. 1 People do not like living next door to such a mess. 2 He never drives any of them. 3 They all look old (4) and beat up (5) and leak oil all over the place. 6 It is bad for the neighborhood, (7) and it will decrease property values. 8

Argument: Yes

Conclusion: My neighbor should be forced to get rid of all the cars in his yard.

Additional Premises Needed? If you do not drive them and have them look messy, you should get rid of them.

Identify any subargument: 3, 4, 5, 6, and 8 are independent and support 7. 7 supports 2, and 2 supports 1.

Good Argument? Yes.

This exercise did help because you take the argument apart and look at what you can use. Identifying subarguments got a little confusing though because it was hard to tell if a claim supported the conclusion directly or not.

Strong and Valid Arguments

Epstein says “an argument is strong if there is some way, some possibility, for its premises to be true and its conclusion false (at the same time), but every such possibility is extremely unlikely.” A valid argument is “if there is no possible way for its premises to be true and its conclusion false (at the same time).” If an argument is not strong, it is not called valid, it would be called a weak argument.  When an argument is not valid it is called invalid. Valid and strong arguments may seem the same, but the way the whole argument is worded separates them.  A strong argument example may be “When my friends and I go to the mall, we see people only wear Vans. Therefore, all shoppers in a mall only wear Vans.” My premise can be true but conclusion may be false because I may not notice people wearing flip flops or I only visit the mall where the Vans store is. A valid version of this argument would be “People at a mall wear Vans. Therefore, every shoe on a shopper at the mall is a Vans shoe.” If people at a mall wear Vans, how can someone wear a different brand? The premise and conclusion match up, so it is a valid argument.

Section C

Argument: My car has never been stolen so it is ok for me to leave the doors unlocked.



According to Epstein, there are three ways to determine if an argument is good. The first way is to test if the premises are plausible. The book has thrown too many definitions at me to remember so I constantly have to check back for their meaning. In other words, the first test is asking if the claims in the argument trying to establish the conclusion is true are believable. My claim is that my care has never been stolen. I think people would believe that. The second test asks if the claims and more true than the conclusion. I think “my car has never been stolen” or more true than “I can leave my doors unlocked.” The last test wants to know if the argument is valid or strong. It is weak because my car could have not been stolen because robbers couldn’t get in. I could also be talking about the doors in my house and not my car.

Interesting Concept

For this week I picked the different kinds of leadership. A leaders style can be either be authoritarian, consultative, participative, or laissez-faire. An authoritarian leader is someone who does not ask what other group members think. They simply make a decision and relay the message. Decisions are made faster in this style but leaves the little people with no voice. In a consultative style, decisions are made based on all the members input. The leader turns to this style when they do not have enough information to make an informed decision. Group members generally do not favor this style because it may seem like they are contributing something but their contributions are rarely used. A participative leadership style has it's group leader and members work together to solve a problem or get to their goal. The leader monitors the group and has as much influence as any group member. Making descisions takes longer but once made they are solid and informed. The last style is laiseez-faire leadership. This has less influence from the group leader than in the last style to none. Satisfaction of members is very low because the leader is not around if a problem comes up. When leading, I like to hear from everybody and make decisions as a group. If there is too much disgreement though, I turn to the authoritarian style.

Definition Concept

I really like the Epstein text for breaking everything down and using all kinds of examples so I am going to go with the definitions concept. A definition is defined as explaining how to use a word. To define things we can use its definition or its synonyms if it has any. A definition is not a claim, just something we can use to clarify things. A persuasive definition “is a claim that should be argued for, masquerading as a definition.” That means when you read something at first, you might think “ok, having a Mercedes means you are rich.” If you think about it, the car might be the only expensive item the owner has. Rich means having a lot of money, not what kind of car you own. In one of my earlier posts, I used an example in which I had to define a “sweep” and a “series.” After reading the definitions section I went back to my post to check if I had used a proper definition. How do you guys think I did?

Vague Sentences

I do not quite understand ambiguous sentences yet so I will use a vague sentence example for this post. A vague sentence is defined as a sentence that makes you think about what it means so much that you have to ask the speaker for clarification. For example, today before I started work a coworker that was on her way out said “I got burned.” Did you burn yourself on the grill? Did oil splash on your arm? Did you touch hot food? Were you outside in the past couple of days and get sunburned? I figured out she meant from leaning on the grill because my boss came over and started talking about how she did cooking. All the questions that popped up in my head categorize it as a vague sentence because I needed clarification that I got from my boss. Vague sentences are pretty common if you think about it but most of the time we get what is meant so we make nothing of it.

Subjective and Objective Claims

When deciding if a claim is subjective, I ask myself if it’s a personal opinion. That is the easiest way for me to remember what a subjective claim is. Objective claims are everything else, like facts. Yesterday I was in class in a room with no air conditioning. The overhead projector was on and its fan was blowing out hot air.  The professor states “It’s hot in here.” The rest of using our notebooks to fan ourselves agreed. I am going to assume that the professor meant the sentence in an “I feel hot when it is hot outside” way. The claim is subjective because it is too vague and because the class agreed with him. That makes it an intersubjective claim. An objective claim I have used was yesterday when I said “The A’s got swept by the Yankees.” My brother and I are A’s fans and we were talking about the last series they played. A sweep in baseball is when one team wins every game in a series against another team. A series is when two teams play each other for 2-4 games in a row. The Yankees series was four games long and the A’s lost all four games. The sweep is fact and the scores prove it. If I had said the A’s are a bad team it would be a subjective claim because of my standards.