We're right in the middle of reconstruction. We did stage one last
week, cuz 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 nico tine 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 gonna 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 an d 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 cuz 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 premis e 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, cuz 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