The Language of Argument

1 0

C H A P T E R 1 ■ U s e s o f A r g u m e n t s

Combinations: An Example

Although justification and explanation are distinct uses of arguments, we

often want to know both what happened and also why it happened. Then we

need to combine justifications and explanations. We can see how this works

by considering a fictional crime.

Imagine that Madison was arrested for murdering her husband, Victor.

Now she is on trial, and you are on the jury. Presumably, the police and the

prosecuting attorneys would not have arrested and prosecuted her if they

did not believe that Madison committed the murder, but are their beliefs

justified? Should she be convicted and sent to prison? That’s up to you and

the other jurors to decide.

You do not want to convict her arbitrarily, of course, so you need

arguments to justify you in believing that Madison is guilty. The goal

of prosecuting attorneys is to provide such justification. Their means of

reaching this goal is to present evidence and arguments during the trial.

Although their ultimate conclusion is that you should find Madison guilty

of murder, the prosecutors need to justify lots of little claims along the way.

It might seem too obvious to mention, but the prosecution first needs an

argument to show that the victim died. After all, if nobody died, nobody

was killed. This first argument can be pretty simple: This person was walk-

ing and talking before he was shot in the head; now his heart has stopped

beating for a long time; so he must be dead. There can be complications,

since some gunshot victims can be revived, but let’s assume that an argu-

ment like this justifies the claim that the victim is dead.

We also want to know who the victim was. The body was identified by

several of Victor ’s friends, we assume, so all the prosecution needs to argue

is that identifications like this are usually correct, so it was Victor who died.

This second argument also provides a justification, but it differs from the

first argument in several ways. The first argument referred directly to the

facts about Victor that show he died, whereas this second argument does

not say which features of the victim show that it was Victor. Instead, this ar-

gument relies on trusting other people—Victor’s friends—without knowing

what it was about the victim’s face that made them think it was Victor. Such

appeals to authority will be discussed in more detail in Chapters 3 and 15.

The third issue is the cause of death. Here it is common to appeal to a

medical authority. In our case, the coroner or medical examiner makes

It is sometimes said that science tells us how things happen but does not tell us

why they happen. In what ways is this contention right, and in what ways is it

wrong?

Discussion Question

97364_ch01_ptg01_001-016.indd 10 11/14/13 1:51 PM

some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s). Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materiallyCopyright 201^3 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights,

affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.