1 I'm on my way to school. 2 I left five minutes late. 3 Traffic is heavy. 4 I'll be late for class. 5 I might as well stop and get breakfast.
Argument- Yes
Conclusion- Since I am going to be late for class, I might as well stop and get breakfast.
Additional Premises Needed- Yes, additional premises are needed. The person does not give a reason for why they are going to be five minutes late for class in the first place. Even though they will be late, there is not a good enough reason to go ahead and go to breakfast because all that will do is make them arrive to class even later. This shows that there should be a premise added after claim number four so it can be connected to the fifth claim.
Identify Any Subargument- Claims 1,2, and 3 are subarguments which support the 4th claim that traffic is heavy. Claim 4 and the claim that they might as well be very late or miss the class support the conclusion.
- Since a premise is needed to connect the 4th and 5th claim, this is not a good argument.
- This argument was helpful because I learned how to better analyze complex arguments and think about which premises can connect to conclusions.
I agree with you that this exercise is useful because it helps you break down the argument. I like how you came up with the same ideal for the additional premise as myself. I also believe that there should be additional premise because the argument does not explain why it’s okay for that person to stop and breakfast. In my opinion, I think that if that premise were to be fixed the argument would have been good. I found that exercise two was probably the easiest one out of the five exercise to do; plus it’s short and easy to understand.
ReplyDeleteI thought about using this example as it was a good one, but decided to use the old car one. Good job at breaking it down and figuring out what the argument was missing. This structure the book provided is great in helping an individual see each component separate from the entire argument. When we break down an argument like this, we can clearly see where the subarguments are, the flow of the premises, and the conclusion. We can also determine if the the argument needs to be rewritten if it's too wordy or additional premises are need. It was a good little exercise that helped in evaluating and analyzing arguments that need to be repaired.
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