ARGUMENTATION EXERCISE I
Instructions: For each of the following passages, determine whether it does or does not contain an argument, and give reasons for your judgment. If the passage does contain an argument, indicate the conclusion.
1. The sun was setting on the hillside when he left. The air had a peculiar smoky aroma, the leaves were beginning to fall, and he sensed all around him the faintly melancholy atmosphere that comes when summer and summer romances are about to end.
2. Any diet poses some problems. Here's why. If the diet does not work, that is a problem. If the diet does work, then the dieter's metabolism is altered. An altered metabolism as a result of dieting means a person
will need less food. Needing less food, the person will gain weight more easily. Therefore, after successful dieting, a person will gain weight more easily.
3. Hockey is an active winter game that is quite popular in northern countries such as Russia and Canada. The game requires strength, good skating, and terrific eye-hand coordination, and it's fun to play.
4. "If all goes well, the reactor and the steam generators in a nuclear power plant of the pressurized-water variety maintain a stable, businesslike relationship such as might obtain between two complementary monopolies. The reactor can be thought of as selling heat to the steam generators" (Daniel Ford, Three
Mile Island Three Minutes to Meltdown [Middlesex, England: Penguin, 1982])
5. "I dwell in a big city, drink lattes, own no guns, and I am against gun registration for three main reasons. First, the criminal use of firearms will not be curbed. Your own story on the smuggling of illegal guns illustrates this horrendous problem. Second, an expensive bureaucracy will be needed, and Canada is still running a deficit. Third, the computerized register will show criminals exactly where the guns are located. It is very naive to think that computer hackers and bribable civil servants do not exist." (Letter to the Toronto
Globe and Mail, May 22, 1995)
II. Instructions: For each of the following passages, state whether it does or does not contain an argument. If you think that the passage does contain an argument, briefly state why and identify its conclusion. If you think that the passage is a non-argument, say why.
1. Background. Time magazine ran an article describing a television show designed by astronomer Carl Sagan, who tries to make science accessible to the public through television shows and public
appearances. The article gave rise to a number of letters, including the following one, which appeared in the November 10, 1980, issue.
"Perhaps Carl Sagan's strongest message in his efforts to bring science to the people is this: Science is the true language of the present and of the future. Only a small fraction of this planet's populace, however, can speak the language. The most significant question facing us is whether our civilization, as a whole, will learn to utilize science for the benefit of mankind. The answer will surely determine our future course: noble greatness or self-inflicted extinction."
2. We know that males and females have different hormones. Now scientists have discovered that these hormones affect verbal and spatial abilities that are connected with different sides of the brain. Given this evidence, it is likely that men's brains are organized differently from women's.
3. Because she was an only child, she did not develop the independence necessary to care for herself Even at seven, she was unable to put on her own skates, for example.
4. If a person knows in advance that his actions risk death, then if he voluntarily takes those actions, he is accepting a risk of death. These conditions surely apply to mountain climbers, so we can see that mountain climbers accept a risk of death.
5. Background. The following passage is taken from Edward C. Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society (Chicago: Free Press, 1958), P. 64. Banfield is describing life among peasant people in a small
Italian village called Montegrano, as it was in the early 1950s.
"In part, the peasant’s melancholy is caused by worry. Having no savings, he must always dread what is likely to happen. What for others are misfortunes are for him calamities. When the hog strangled on its
tether, a laborer and his wife were desolate. The woman tore her hair and beat her head against a wall while the husband sat mute and stricken in a corner. The loss of the hog meant they would have no meat that winter, no grease to spread on bread, nothing to sell for cash to pay taxes, and no possibility of acquiring a pig the next spring. Such blows may fall at any time. Fields may be washed away in a flood. Hail may beat down the wheat. Illness may strike. To be a peasant is to stand helpless before these possibilities."