Material covered in this chapter
10.1 Identifying arguments
Counter considerations and counter
10.1 Identifying Arguments
Thus far, we have primarily looked at arguments, but of
course we use language to do more than argue. We use
language to describe, to command, explain, tell jokes,
to promise, and so on. This presents a problem, since
people rarely explicitly announce their intention to
argue. So one of the first tasks we face in applying our
critical thinking skills to some piece of text or speech
is to determine whether something is an argument or not.
We know that arguments are attempts to persuade us to
accept a conclusion on the basis of reasons. This tells
us that if we think some passage or speech is an
argument we should be able to identify at least one
premise and one conclusion. If we can’t, then we should
revise our estimation that we are dealing with an
argument. But this is not sufficient for identifying an
argument. We must also be sure that the author’s
intention is to argue. Consider this passage: “Mark said
that all humans are immortal, so Socrates is not human”.
The author of this passage is not making an argument,
an argument made by Mark.
Arguments are easily confused with explanations. To help
us understand explanations, it will be helpful to have a
little bit of vocabulary. Like arguments, explanations
can be divided into two components. The
the thing being explained, and the
the thing that does the explaining. So, in the passage,
“The tide goes in and out because of the gravitational
pull of the moon”, the explicandum is “the tide goes in
and out” and the explanans is “the gravitational pull of
the moon.” The pull of the moon explains why the tide
goes in and out.
The primary difference between arguments and
explanations is the speaker’s intentions. In arguments
the intention is to persuade. With explanations, the
intention is to make understandable why something is the
case. We can exploit this difference to help us think
about tricky cases where a passage might be interpreted
as either an argument or an explanation. Consider this
engines get hot because there is exploding gas inside.”
Understood as an explanation, the explicandum is
“Car engines get hot”. The explanans is “There is
exploding gas inside”. Understood as an argument, the
premise “There is exploding gas inside” is offered in
support of the conclusion, “Car engines get hot.”
Imagine a child asking why car engines get hot. If we
think of the parent saying the above in response, then
we should understand the passage as an explanation. The
parent is not attempting to persuade that car engines
are hot, but trying to make understandable why they are.
Suppose a parent was trying to convince a child that
things other than the stove get hot. The parent asserts
the premise, “There is exploding gas inside” to support
the conclusion, “Car engines get hot”.
Often a passage will contain several different uses of
language, e.g., a single paragraph might contain a
description, an explanation and an argument. I’m afraid
that there is no easy decision-rule for deciding on any
particular passage how it is best identified. In
general, we should try to be as charitable as possible:
we should look for a reconstruction that makes the most
sense. As noted, this will involve correctly
interpreting the author’s intentions—and this is not
easy. We have all had the experience of misunderstanding
someone’s joke as a serious statement.
Standardizing requires identifying individual premises
and conclusions. In this subsection we learn how to
individuate, how to “chop up”, a passage into individual
premises and conclusions. Many of the examples above
provided the individuation of premises and conclusions,
e.g., sometimes numbers were assigned to individual
premises and conclusions in a passage. Obviously, rarely
will authors number or otherwise “chop up” the premises
and conclusions for you. Hence, this is an important
skill to learn.
Each premise and conclusion we may think of as a
‘proposition’: the smallest unit of argumentation
suitable for logical reconstruction. It will help to
clarify propositions by contrasting them with sentences.
Some propositions are not presented as declarative
For example, a rhetorical question is a declarative
statement in disguise.
Thus in the example “We should go to the concert
tonight. Who wouldn’t want to see the greatest rock and
roll band ever?” the second sentence has the surface
appearance of being a question, but clearly the author
intends to communicate the idea that everyone wants to
see the greatest rock and roll band ever. So, for the
purposes of standardization, we would rewrite the
P1: Everyone wants to see the greatest rock and roll
C: We should go to the concert tonight.
Sometimes sentences and propositions are one and the
same thing. Consider this argument once again: “All
humans are mortal. Socrates is human. Socrates is
mortal.” This argument contains three sentences, and
each is a proposition.
Sometimes a single sentence contains two or more
propositions. There are two cases we should consider.
The first is where a sentence contains both a premise
and a conclusion. Thus, the single sentence, “You should
go to class today since there is a quiz today”, contains
two propositions, “You should go to class today”, and
“There is a quiz today.” The second serves as a premise
for the first. The second case where a sentence contains
more than one proposition is when there are two premises
in a single sentence. Consider this example: “It is
likely that Karl Marx did not own a factory. He was
poor, and a communist.” The sentence “He was poor and a
communist can be broken down into two separate premises
and standardized thus:
P1: Karl Marx was a communist.
P2: Karl Marx was poor.
C: It is unlikely that he owned a factory.
The reason the sentence can be broken down in this way
is that in saying “P and Q” we are committed to the
truth of both P and Q.
The same cannot be said for conditional sentences or
disjunctive sentences (sentences with an ‘or’). If I
say, “If it is rainy, then it is cloudy”, this cannot be
broken down into two propositions “It is rainy” and “It
is cloudy”. This would have the absurd consequence that
every time I assert the conditional “If it is rainy,
then it is cloudy” I am committed to it being rainy and
cloudy. This is clearly false. Imagine a beautiful sunny
summer day. When I say, “If it is rainy, then it is
cloudy”, I am saying something true even though it is
perfectly sunny outside. As we saw in Chapter 3, a
conditional merely asserts that the antecedent is
sufficient for the consequent, and the consequent
necessary for the antecedent; not that the antecedent
and the consequent are true.
Similar remarks apply to sentences with an ‘or’. If I
say, “He is flying to London on Friday or Saturday”,
this cannot be broken down into, “He is flying to London
on Friday”, and “He is flying to London on Saturday.”
For our purposes, conditional and disjunctive
propositions cannot be broken down further.
10.3 Counter Considerations
and Counter Arguments
Counter considerations are claims provided by an author
that provide reasons
not to believe
the argument. Here is an example.
Example 10.1 Example with counter
Although Senator Smith got caught having
affairs, and despite the fact that he is
drunk half the time, you should still vote
for him. He is a member of the Labor Party,
and this country needs every Labor senator
it can get.
The author is attempting to persuade us that we should
vote for Smith. The author begins with two counter
considerations (CC): claims that work against this
CC1: Senator Smith got caught having affairs.
CC2: Senator Smith is drunk half the time.
The words ‘although’ and ‘despite’ indicate that these
claims are acknowledged by the author to count against
the argument. It is a good idea to put the counter
considerations at the beginning to keep track of their
role in the argument. A complete standardization of the
above passage is as follows:
CC1: Senator Smith got caught having affairs.
CC2: Senator Smith is drunk half the time.
MP1: The counter considerations do not outweigh the main
P2: Senator Smith is a member of the Labor Party.
P3: This country needs every Labor senator it can get.
C: You should vote for Senator Smith.
It is clear a charitable understanding of the argument
says that the author does not believe that the counter
considerations outweigh the strength of the main
argument, hence the missing premise (MP1). Any argument
that puts forward counter considerations will have a
premise (either stated or missing) to the effect that
the counter considerations do not outweigh the main
A counter argument is an argument that concludes that
some other argument is defective.
Example 10.2: An example of a counter
I can’t believe you think we should vote for
Senator Smith. The man is a moral
degenerate: you admit he is a drunk and a
philanderer. We should not have moral
degenerates in parliament.
This argument challenges the previous argument.
Specifically, it questions the missing premise: it
argues that drunkenness and philandering are sufficient
reason not to vote for the candidate.
It can be confusing when an author states both the
argument and the counterargument in a single place. For
Example 10.3: Argument and Counter argument
in a single passage
Some say that we should not vote for Smith
because he is a moral degenerate. I agree
that he is a moral degenerate, but
parliament members are supposed to represent
all types of people: men, women, tall,
short, able-bodied, disabled, all skin
colors and moral degenerates. So, drunks and
philanders also need a voice in Parliament,
and Smith is just the representative for
In standardizing this we must be careful to separate out
the argument and the counterargument.
P1: Smith is a moral degenerate.
C: We should not vote for Smith.
P1: All types of people should have representatives in
P2: Being a philanderer and a drunk is to be a type of
P3: Smith is a philanderer and a drunk.
C: We should vote for Smith.