1.2 Argument Recognition

What we want to learn first is how to explicate arguments. Explication involves:

• Writing down a list of declarative sentences that express the propositions in the argument, and
• Clearly marking which of these sentences expresses the conclusion.

Let’s start with a simple example. Here’s an argument:

The passage is clearly argumentative: its purpose is to convince you of something, namely, that you shouldn’t eat at Yum-Burger Fast Food Palace. That’s the conclusion of the argument. The other claims are all reasons for believing the conclusion—reasons for not eating at Yum-Burger’s. Those are the premises.

To explicate the argument is simply to clearly identify the premises and the conclusion, by writing down declarative sentences that express them. We would explicate the Yum-Burger’s argument like this:

We separate the conclusion from the premises with a horizontal line, and we put the special symbol ‘/∴’  in front of the conclusion, which can be read as therefore.

Indicator Words

Speaking of ‘therefore’, it’s one of the words to look out for when identifying and explicating arguments in ordinary language.

• A variety of words or phrases have meanings similar to therefore and may signal the presence of a conclusion.  Here are some examples: accordingly, consequently, [it] follows that, hence, so, thus.
• Similarly, words or phrases that are synonyms for because may indicate that a sentence is a premise and explains why the conclusion is true. Here are a few examples: as, being that, by reason of, due to, for, since, and whereas.

When we encounter these words or phrases, it is important to be mindful of their context to understand if  they are signaling that there is an argument in process. Has a supporting reason been given (a premise), or a conclusion or claim been stated? Words and phrases that can be indicators can also have other meanings and intents, depending on their context.

Sentences with Multiple Propositions

Notice that it is possible for a single declarative sentence to express more than one proposition. For example, suppose we added this sentence to our argument:

We would write down two separate declarative sentences in our explication, expressing the two propositions asserted in the sentence:

Also, it’s possible for a single sentence to express an entire argument; for example:

Here you have a conclusion and a premise at once. An explication would merely separate them.

1.2.2 Paraphrasing

Recall the argument about Yum-Burger’s; it was an easy case. It didn’t have a word like ‘therefore’ to tip us off to the presence of the conclusion, but it was pretty clear what the conclusion was anyway. All we had to do was ask ourselves, “What is this person trying to convince me to believe?” The answer to that question is the conclusion of the argument.

Here’s another way the Yum-Burger’s argument was easy: all of the sentences were declarative sentences, so when we explicated the argument, all we had to do was write them down. But sometimes argumentative passages aren’t so cooperative. Sometimes they contain non-declarative sentences. Recall, that arguments are sets of propositions, and only declarative sentences express propositions; so if an argumentative passage contains non-declarative sentences (questions, commands, etc.), we need to change their wording when we explicate the argument, turning them into declarative sentences that express a proposition. This is called paraphrasing.

Suppose, for example, that the Yum-Burger’s argument was exactly as originally presented, except the first sentence was imperative, not declarative:

We just switched from ‘You shouldn’t eat at Yum-Burger’s’ to ‘Don’t eat at Yum-Burger’s.’ But it makes a difference. The first version of the sentence is declarative; it makes a claim about how things are (morally, with respect to your obligations in some sense) — you shouldn’t do such-and-such. It’s possible to disagree with the claim: ‘Sure I should, and so should everybody else; their fries are delicious!’ On the other hand, ‘Don’t eat at Yum-Burger’s’, is not like that. It’s a command. It’s possible to disobey it, but not to disagree with it. Imperative sentences don’t make claims about how things are; they don’t express propositions that can be true or false.

Still, the passage is clearly argumentative: the purpose remains to persuade the listener not to eat at Yum-Burger’s. We just have to be careful, when we explicate the argument, to paraphrase the first sentence—to change its wording so that it becomes a declarative, proposition-expressing sentence. ‘You shouldn’t eat at Yum-Burger’s’ works just fine.

Let’s consider a different example:

The passage is clearly argumentative: this person is engaged in a dispute about a controversial issue—the minimum wage—and is staking out a position and backing it up. What is that position? Apparently, this person opposes the idea of raising the minimum wage to $15.

There are two problems we face in explicating this argument. First, one of the sentences in the passage—the second one—is non-declarative: it’s an interrogative sentence, a question. Nevertheless, it’s being used in this passage to express one of the person’s reasons for opposing the minimum wage increase—that it would lead to job losses. So we need to paraphrase, transforming the interrogative into a declarative—something like ‘A $15 minimum wage would lead to massive job losses’.

The other problem is that the first sentence, while a perfectly respectable declarative sentence, can’t be used as-is in our explication. For while it’s clearly being used to express this person’s main point, the conclusion of his argument against the minimum wage increase, it does so indirectly. What the sentence literally and directly expresses is not a claim about the wisdom of the minimum wage increase, but rather a claim about the speaker’s personal beliefs: ‘I can’t believe anyone would support a $15 per hour minimum wage’. But that claim isn’t the conclusion of the argument. The speaker isn’t trying to convince people that he believes (or can’t believe) a certain thing; he’s trying to convince them to believe the same thing he believes, namely, that raising the minimum wage to $15 is a bad idea. So, despite the first sentence being declarative, we still have to paraphrase it. It expresses a proposition, but not the conclusion of the argument.

Our explication of the argument would look like this:

1.2.3 Tacit Propositions

So sometimes, when we explicate an argument, we have to take what’s present in the argumentative passage and change it slightly, so that all of the sentences we write down express the propositions that are in the argument. This is paraphrasing. Other times, we have to do even more; occasionally, we have to fill in missing propositions; argumentative passages might not state all of the propositions in an argument explicitly, and in the course of explicating the arguments, we have to make these implicit (i.e., tacit) propositions explicit by writing down the appropriate declarative sentences.

There’s a fancy Greek word for argumentative passages that leave certain propositions unstated: enthymemes. Here’s an example:

Again, the argumentative intentions here are plain: this person is staking out a position on a which film should win the 2023 Oscar for best picture. But notice, that position—that the best picture award should go to Top Gun: Maverick— is never stated explicitly. We get reasons for having that preference—the premises of the argument are explicit—but we never get a statement of the conclusion. But since this is clearly the upshot of the passage, we need to include a sentence expressing it in our explication:

In that example, the conclusion of the argument was tacit. Sometimes, premises are unstated and we should make them explicit in our explication of the argument. Consider this passage:

This person is arguing in favor of labor unions; the second sentence is the conclusion of the argument. The first sentence gives the only explicit premise: the stagnation of middle-class wages. But notice what the passage doesn’t say: what connection there might be between the two things. What do unions have to do with middle-class wages?

There’s an implicit premise lurking in the background here—something that hasn’t been said, but which needs to be true for the argument to go through. We need a claim that connects the premise to the conclusion—that bridges the gap between them. Something like this:

The first sentence identifies a problem; the second sentence purports to give a solution to the problem. But it’s only a solution if the tacit premise we’ve uncovered is true. If unions don’t help raise middle-class wages, then the argument falls apart.

This kind of tacit premise is important to uncover because if it is false, it undermines the argument. Often, premises like this are unstated for a reason: they are controversial claims on their own, requiring a lot of evidence to support them. So the arguer leaves them out, preferring not to get bogged down. When we draw them out, however, we can force a more robust logical exchange, focusing the argument on the heart of the matter. In this case, a discussion about the connection between unions and middle-class wages would be in order.

Other times a premise is omitted not because it is controversial or might tip the balance of credibility, but simply because the premise is so obvious that the speaker/arguer doesn’t bother to state it explicitly.

Here’s an example, of a short argument that is incomplete in that there is an obvious but unstated (tacit) premise

The indicator word “because” signals a given premise: “Plato was human.” The remaining part is the conclusion: “Plato was mortal.”   An explication of the argument looks like this:

Let’s look closely to see what is so obvious that it is unstated as a premise. If we examine the subject and predicate of the given premise and the conclusion, we find three types of “things” involved in the argument:

1. Plato
2. (being) human
3. (being) mortal

The given premise states the connection between “Plato” and “(being) human.” – Plato was human.

The conclusion states the connection between “Plato” and “(being) mortal.”  – Plato was mortal.

But the argument states no connection between “(being) human” and “being mortal”.  And therein lies the tacit premise –  a simple implied connection linking “being human” and “being mortal” –  All humans are mortal.

The explication for the completed argument will look like this:

1.2.4 Arguments vs. Explanations

Here is one final item on the topic of Recognizing and Explicating Arguments. So far, we’ve been focused on “explicating” but this topic addresses the “recognizing” side. Some passages may superficially resemble arguments—they may, for example, contain words like ‘therefore’ and ‘because’, which usually indicate conclusions and premises in argumentative passages—but which are nevertheless not argumentative. Instead, they are explanations. Consider this passage:

This passage has the words ‘because’ (twice), and ‘therefore’, which typically indicate the presence of premises and a conclusion, respectively. But it is not an argument. It’s not an argument because it does not have the rhetorical purpose of an argument: the aim of the passage is not to convince you of something. If it were an argument, the conclusion would be the claim following ‘therefore’, namely, the proposition that Mary Ann Evans adopted the pen name ‘George Eliot’.

But this claim is not the conclusion of an argument; the passage is not trying to persuade us to believe that Evans adopted a pen name. That she did so is not a controversial claim. Rather, that’s a fact that’s assumed to be known already. The aim of the passage is to explain to us why Evans made that choice. The rhetorical purpose is not to convince; it is to inform, to edify. The passage is an explanation, not an argument.

So, to determine whether a given passage is an argument or an explanation, we need to figure out its rhetorical purpose. Why is the author saying these things to me? Is she trying to convince me of something, or is she merely trying to inform me—to give me an explanation for something I already knew? Sometimes this is easy, as with the George Eliot passage; it’s hard to imagine someone saying those things with persuasive intent. Other times, however, it’s not so easy to distinguish between argument and explanation. Consider the following passage:

Unless we understand a little bit more about the context of this passage, it’s difficult to determine the speaker’s intentions. It may appear to be an argument. That atheists should embrace a religious holiday like Christmas is, among many, a controversial claim. Controversial claims are the kinds of claims that we often try to convince skeptical people to believe. If the speaker’s audience for this passage is a bunch of hard-line atheists, who vehemently reject anything with a whiff of religiosity, and who consider Christmas a humbug, then it’s pretty clear that the speaker is trying to offer reasons for them to reconsider their stance; he’s trying to convince them to embrace Christmas; he’s making an argument. If we explicated the argument, we would paraphrase the last sentence to represent the controversial conclusion:

But in a different context, with a different audience, this may not be an argument. If we leave the claim in the final sentence as-is—‘As an atheist, I have no hesitation in embracing the holiday and joining with believers and nonbelievers alike to celebrate what we have in common’—we have a claim about the speaker’s personal beliefs and inclinations. Typically, as we saw above, such claims are not suitable as the conclusions of arguments; we don’t usually spend time trying to convince people that we believe such-and-such. But what is more typical is providing people with explanations for why we believe things. If the author of our passage is an atheist, and he’s saying these things to friends of his, who know he’s an atheist, we might have just such an explanation. His friends know he’s not religious, but they know he loves Christmas. That’s kind of weird. Don’t atheists hate religious holidays? Not so, says our speaker, let me explain to you why I have no problems with Christmas, despite my atheism.

Again, the difference between arguments and explanations comes down to rhetorical purpose: arguments try to convince people; explanations try to inform them. Determining whether a given passage is one or the other involves figuring out the author’s intentions. To do this, we must carefully consider the context of the passage.