Friday, October 1, 2010

Week 4 Post 1: Repairing Arguments

Repairing arguments are really simple if you follow these three steps:
1. The argument becomes stronger or valid. 2. The premise is plausible and would seem plausible to the other person. 3. The premise is more plausible than the conclusion. You can delete the premise only if it doesn’t make the argument worse when you do it.
            “Ivana is a vegetarian. She should plant her own vegetable garden.”
This can be a good argument if we have to add why this make more sense. I could also include that growing her own garden can help her save money instead of buying it from grocery stores. But this can also change due to that fact that the conclusion can be changed. It is because maybe Ivana may change her mind from being a vegetarian to eating meat again. Or it may be because he doesn’t have a yard or an area to grow a vegetable garden. Another reason may be that she doesn’t have the time to grow vegetables and she wants to save time. 

1 comment:

  1. I like how you numbered your points about repairing arguments, it made it a lot easier to read rather than reading a big giant paragraph all clumped together. In chapter 4 epstein says that we need to repair arguments when people leave out information. So in order to repair these arguments we add an unstated premise or an unstated conclusion. Your example makes this concept clear. You wouldn't know why Ivana would need to plant her own vegetable garden just because she's a vegetarian, so you added the unstated premise or different possibilities as to why this would be relevant.

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