#2: (1) I'm on my way to school. (2) I left five minutes late. (3) Traffic is heavy. (4) Therefore, I'll be late for class. (5) So I might as well stop and get breakfast.
Argument: Yes.
Conclusion: Since I am going to be late to class, I might as well stop to get breakfast.
Additional premises needed: There should be a premise in between 4 and 5 which explains why it is okay to go get breakfast and be even more late to class. For example: It does not matter whether I am 5 minutes late or 30 minutes late to class, my teacher will still mark me late.
Identifying any subargument: 1, 2, and 3 are independent and 4 is the result of those 3 subarguments. 5 is the conclusion.
Good argument: Yes I think it is a good argument IF the additional premise is added to the argument. The premises are plausible and do explain why one would be late to school. The argument would then be valid with the new added premise. If the new premise was not added however, the argument is not good because one could very easily say that by stopping to get breakfast, one would be even more late to class which is not good. It would therefore not make it okay to stop for breakfast even if one was already late for class, and the argument would not be good.
This exercise did help me because I learned exactly how an argument is structured and how to break it down. It was also good because I realized how one premise can change an argument completely. This exercise was overall useful.
I used this same example, and I too found the breakdown helpful. I think intrinsically we know when an argument is good or bad, but putting it on paper is a different story. I had an English class in high school that forced us to diagram sentences, and I hated it because it I knew what a sentence should entail but I had a heck of time diagramming in on the chalk board. The only thing that I added was that we needed some form of health related additional premise in order to justify skipping class for breakfast. Otherwise it feels like the student is looking for justification.
ReplyDeleteI used a different example but I do like the way this one is structured. Your evaluation and analysis of the argument seems to be spot on. In terms of student priorities, I completely agree that there needs to be a premise between number 4 and number 5. As if being late is not already a sin, it does not make sense to make matters even worse by arriving to class even later than expected. Journey took the exact words that I was going to use – “it feels like the student is looking for justification” with an additional excuse to his or her tardiness.
ReplyDelete