Essential Logic

Ronald C. Pine

Chapter 2: ARGUMENTS AND LANGUAGE

However elegant and memorable, brevity can never, in the nature of things, do justice to
all the facts of a complex situation . . . . Abbreviation (though) is a necessary evil, and the
abbreviator's business is to make the best of the job which, though intrinsically bad, is
still better than nothing. He must learn to simplify, but not to the point of falsification. He
must learn to concentrate upon the essentials of a situation, but without ignoring too
many of reality's qualifying side issues. In this way he may be able to tell, not . . . the
whole truth . . . but considerably more than the dangerous quarter-truths and half-truths
which have always been the current coin of thought. Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Revisited

Recognizing Arguments

In Chapter 1 we saw how logicians use the term argument in a technical way to refer to a
formalized presentation of a reasoning trail. In everyday life, people argue about all sorts
of things, and what they argue about is usually much messier and more involved than the
neatly packaged formalizations found in logic texts. To conduct logical analysis we must
be abbreviators in the sense described by Huxley above. However, abbreviated logical
formalizations can be very important. We also saw in Chapter 1 that when something is
very important to us, it is useful to break up a complex appeal into pieces, to analyze a
perplexing situation into simple parts to see if they fit together correctly.

This implies that we are not just interested in analyzing quarrels or arguments as in "John
and Kym got into an argument." A logical argument is not limited to disagreements
between one person and another, or between one group and another. Arguments can also
be objective, formal presentations of reasoning trails that are studied by people who
already accept the conclusions, as in science and mathematics, where the goal may be
shorter, tighter, more elegant presentations of systems of belief. In mathematics and
logic, proofs or arguments can also be created like an artist creates a beautiful statue, to
try to say something clearly, to bring out a perspective, or to make a discovery for the
appreciation of others. You will be given a taste of this creative activity in some of the
later chapters on symbolic logic (9, 10, 11), where your goal will be to create proofs
(symbolic trails of reasoning) for arguments we already know to be valid.

Analytic thinking is often contrasted with synthetic or holistic thinking. When we

analyze, we take a whole and break into its parts (some would say we destroy it). In
synthetic thinking, we take or are given parts and details and (if we are lucky, brilliant, or
insightful) create a perspective that brings the parts into a new light. Synthetic thinking is

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often associated with so-called artistic thinking, and some philosophers have worried that
too much analytic thinking ruins one's ability for synthetic thinking. This may be so, and
we will adopt the view that both of these ways of thinking are valuable tools that are part
of our potential as human beings, and that like any tool, using one for every task is surely
a mistake.

Clearly though, as the examples from Chapter 1 show, many people reason too
holistically for some situations -- they just react without stopping to see whether they
have good reasons for their reactions. In Chapter 1 we made life easy for you by
structuring arguments into conclusions and premises. In this chapter, you need to begin
the process of recognizing different types of arguments and formalizing them. You will
then practice argument recognition throughout the remaining chapters of this book.

In formalizing arguments and learning other analytic techniques presented in this book,
you will actually be learning more than specific skills. You will also be learning a
strategy or discipline of mind with which to face complexity, a most valuable ability in a
world of increasingly abundant diverse ideas and opinions. Today you will often hear
employers speaking of a person’s “information processing skills.” In our Internet age the
information available to us often appears to be overwhelming. To be able to sort out and
“corral” this information into to useful principles and concepts and to be able to reason
through it all to take appropriate actions are major skills that require being able to create
abstractions and abbreviations. In a democracy, we assume also that a clash of ideas and
opinions is necessary for better ideas to emerge, but we also assume that better ideas can
only emerge if the exchange of ideas is rational and focused.1

To evaluate an argument's reasoning we must first recognize its parts. Every argument
has its "bottom line" or "main thrust," a basic point that its author wants to persuade us to
accept. We call this basic point the conclusion. The elements of persuasion, or the
reasons given for us to accept the conclusion, we call premises. In general, arguments
have a tone like

"This is so (conclusion), because that is so (premises)."

Or

"Because this is so and this is so (premises), therefore you should believe such and
such (conclusion)."

In recognizing an argument's parts, as a strategy of analysis, the first thing you should do
is avoid the temptation to react to individual statements. (Remember the problem with 1-
7 in Chapter 1.) Try to understand before you judge. Ask yourself what the ultimate point
of a passage is; try to determine what the author is trying to get us to accept. What is the

1
Often the formalization or abbreviation process itself helps a great deal to achieve this goal, because
some exchanges of ideas are too "full"; full of excess and tortuous verbiage, that is. See example 2-20
below.

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main point of the argument? Consider the following two arguments and write on some
notebook paper what you think the conclusion is for each one.

EXAMPLE 2-1

We all know a democracy must guarantee freedom of speech to all citizens. However,
some citizens of a democracy use their freedom of speech to attack the concept of a
democracy. At times of great trial, be it war, economic upheaval, or confusion brought on
by rapid change, such attacks can pose a serious threat to a democracy's survival. Thus, a
true democracy will always be vulnerable to destruction from within.

EXAMPLE 2-2

The Bush administration's justification for our military role in the Middle East was that a
small, defenseless country, Kuwait, was brutally invaded by Iraq, which possessed the
fourth largest military force in the world. Should such a justification have been accepted
by anyone? Syria invaded Lebanon, and we did nothing. Turkey invaded Cyprus, and we
did nothing. Israel invaded and pirated land from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, and we did
nothing. The Chinese government brutalized a blossoming democratic movement, and we
not only did nothing, we encouraged it by continuing business and trade as usual. The
former Soviet Union intimidated its Baltic neighbors, and we did nothing. Besides,
Kuwait was a backward dictatorship itself, stole oil from Iraq, and lied to the World Bank
about their monetary support for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. Not to mention that until
shortly before Iraq invaded Kuwait we were supporting Iraq militarily.

Notice that these passages have the tones we talked about above. The first one follows the
pattern of "Because this is so and this is so (premises), therefore you should believe such
and such (conclusion)." The author of this argument helps us identify the parts of the
argument by using the conclusion indicator word 'thus.' The conclusion of the first
argument is, "Thus, a true democracy will always be vulnerable to destruction from
within." The use of language to communicate is not always successful and we need all
the help we can get in understanding each other. Arguments often have "neon lights."
Conclusion or premise indicators, or both, highlight parts of the argument.

Examples of conclusion indicators are:

therefore, so, hence, thus, accordingly, consequently, it follows that, we can infer that,
which entails that, which implies that, it is clear that, it is obvious that.

Examples of premise indicators are:

because, since, in as much as, given that, for the following reasons, follows from, may be
inferred from, may be deduced from, may be derived from.

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Here are some more examples similar to 2-1. Notice how we are helped to see the
argument structure (premises and conclusion) by indicator words.

EXAMPLE 2-3

A necessary condition for universal moral judgment is the existence of universal moral
principles. But the establishment of universal moral principles is possible if and only if
there is an objective method for ethical judgment. If there is one clear anthropological
fact it is that of cultural relativism -- there are vast differences amongst the world's
cultures as to what is considered right and wrong. So, we don't have the right to judge
those societies that still practice female circumcision.

EXAMPLE 2-4

We do have a right to judge any culture that still practices female circumcision. Because
justice is justice and fairness is fairness. It does not matter that judgments of right and
wrong are culturally relative. Slavery is wrong, period. It does not matter that it was once
popular. We have learned over the millennia that there is no inherent difference between
the so-called races of people on this planet. We have also learned that there is no inherent
intellectual difference and moral worth between the sexes.

EXAMPLE 2-5

If you are the chief of intelligence for a tyrant, then you will always be in trouble. This is
so, because if you tell the tyrant the truth and it contradicts his sense of infallibility, you
will be in trouble. If you tell the tyrant only what he wants to hear, time will inevitably
expose your lies and you will be in trouble. A chief of intelligence either has to tell the
truth or lie.

The word 'so' indicates that the author of 2-3 wants this sentence to be his or her main
point (conclusion) supported by all the other sentences as premises. The word 'because'
indicates that the author of 2-4 wants the first sentence to be his or her main point
(conclusion) and that all the sentences after 'because' are the reasons for his or her
conclusion. Like neon lights, the phrase "this is so, because" is particularly helpful in 2-
5. The word 'so' is a conclusion indicator and the word 'this' refers back to the first
sentence. So we know the first sentence is the intended conclusion. Then the word
'because' shows us that the remaining sentences are premises.

Argument 2-2 is much harder to formalize but if you think about it carefully you can see
that it follows the pattern "This is so (conclusion), because that is so (premises)." This
argument is typical of the much less formal situations that we find in everyday exchanges
of ideas. There are no neon lights to tell us exactly what the author has in mind as a
conclusion. In fact, the conclusion is not even explicitly stated, and we must interpret the
author's major point. Identifying the conclusion in such passages tests your

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communication ability -- particularly your understanding of the language used. It also
will often draw on your experience or knowledge of what is being discussed. The less
you know about the world, the more difficult it will be for you to understand what you
read. Because logical ability and language ability are very closely related, the most
important thing you can do to enhance your reasoning ability and your own defensive
verbal skill is to learn to read and write better.

Even being well-informed and reading well will not ensure successful communication
between people. Often, two people can use language correctly and still not understand
each other due to the complexity of their topic, their different perspectives, cultures,
values, or different experiential backgrounds. In such cases, communication is an
ongoing process that takes work. Often follow-up discussion is needed, and sometimes
we just need to ask the author of an argument: "What is your point?" "What conclusion
do you want me to accept?"

What is the author's major thrust in 2-2? The author obviously doesn't think much of the
first Bush administration's (George W's father) justification for our involvement in the
Persian Gulf War (1990). The Bush administration's position is stated and then followed
by the question, "Should such a justification have been accepted by anyone?" This is a
rhetorical question, a question that implies its own answer. In this case the implied
answer is "No." The author is saying that no one ought to have accepted such a
justification, and following the rhetorical question are the author's reasons why we should
not accept such a justification, along with an implied premise that our policy did not
appear consistent. In such cases we must paraphrase the implied conclusion and premise;
we must restate it in our own words in an attempt to capture the essence of what is
implied as best we can. Here is a possible formalization:

EXAMPLE 2-2a

Conclusion (implied):

The Bush administration's justification for our military role in the Middle East was weak.
(We shouldn't believe that the only reason for our involvement was that a small,
defenseless country, Kuwait, was brutally invaded by Iraq, which possessed the fourth
largest military force in the world.)

Premise (also implied):

This justification did not make sense in light of our past and present actions and was too
simplistic in terms of Iraq-Kuwait relations.

Premises (remaining):

Syria invaded Lebanon, and we did nothing. Turkey invaded Cyprus, and we did nothing.
Israel invaded and pirated land from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, and we did nothing. The

55
Chinese government brutalized a blossoming democratic movement, and we not only did
nothing, we encouraged it by continuing business and trade as usual. The former Soviet
Union intimidated its Baltic neighbors, and we did nothing. Kuwait was a backward
dictatorship, stole oil from Iraq, and lied to the World Bank about their monetary support
for Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war. Until shortly before Iraq invaded Kuwait we were
supporting Iraq militarily.

We could disagree about whether this is an accurate presentation of the author's

intentions. We could argue about it, and we could nit-pick over some of the words used.
But in most cases the context and the language used imply at least a focused range of
interpretations that are close to saying the same thing. The interpretation of arguments is
not always a black-and-white process and like most things in life sometimes there is
considerable room for reasoned disagreement. The point is to get down a formalization in
the form of "This is so (conclusion), because that is so (premises)." Then we can begin to
discuss whether the formalization is accurate and evaluate the argument. As soon as the
argument has more focus, then we can be more disciplined in analyzing its parts and the
inferential linkage between its parts.2 Are the premises relevant to the conclusion? Do
they give us good reasons to accept the conclusion? What is the relationship between the
conclusion and the premises? Is a deductive or inductive relationship asserted? Are the
premises true?

Notice that a fully logical approach to such an important matter as a war decision would
require slowing our thinking down considerably.

First we ask, what is the argument? What is the conclusion? What are the premises?
Second, we judge the reasoning. If the premises of 2-2a are true, do they provide a good
basis for the conclusion? Even if they do, do we know the premises are true? Do you
know if it is true that Kuwait stole oil from Iraq? What does the possible lying to the
World Bank have to do with the argument? Was this true? Is it historically true that the
United States once supported Saddam Hussein militarily? So, third, we need to know if
the premises are true. In short, to fully critically appraise such an important matter, one
would need to not only understand a little logical analysis, but to be informed about the
world (history, culture, geography, and so on) and the big picture as well. Hopefully
these are goals of a college education.

Other Uses of Language

Before we go any further, we must recognize the obvious point that we don't argue all the
time. Often, in my logic class, after a few days of analyzing suspect advertisements
similar to those in Chapter 1, some of my students conclude that they can now find bad
arguments everywhere they look. With excited anticipation of reward and confirmation

2
Even if we disagree on the interpretation of an argument, at least the argument interpretation that we do
have can be discussed. Even if we have misunderstood the author's intention, we can learn something by
analyzing the reasoning of our interpretation.

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that they have now achieved a special status above the masses, they sometimes come into
my office after class and share with me what they consider obvious blunders of human
reasoning. "Isn't this the stupidest thing you have ever heard?" one might say. Then I
usually have to disappoint them with something like "Yes, based on what is considered to
be scientific fact, those beliefs are silly. But there is nothing wrong with the logic,
because there isn't any; I don't see a presentation of an argument. Perhaps there is one I
am not seeing. Why don't you look at it again for homework, and see if you can interpret
an argument in terms of premises and a conclusion."

I respond this way because often the passages found by students do not appear to be
arguing about anything, but rather are alleged descriptions, statements of belief or
opinion, or explanations, or bare value judgments without any support offered that the
descriptions are true, the explanations the best possible, or the value judgments
acceptable. Descriptions can be false, explanations can be incorrect, and values poor or
unacceptable, but they are not arguments by themselves. For an argument to be bad we
must have a group of statements that can be analyzed into premises and a conclusion,
where an inferential claim is made that the conclusion, although controversial, should be
accepted because of the evidence offered in the premises.

Here are some examples of the use of language that are not arguments:

EXAMPLE 2-6

The Sun is about 4.6 billion years old. This is a lengthy time, and roughly half the stars in
our galaxy are younger than the Sun. We should also keep in mind that at least half the
stars in our galaxy are part of binary star systems. (Description)

EXAMPLE 2-7

The World Trade Center towers collapsed completely on 9/11, because the large impact
load destroyed the fire resistant foam protecting the steal, and the fire and temperature
(2000 degrees F) then caused a failure of the truss system supporting several floors, and
the floors below could not support the tremendous weight of the floors falling from
above. (Explanation)

EXAMPLE 2-8

Homosexuality is immoral. I can't help being shocked when I see two men walking down
the street with their arms around each other. I am dismayed when I can't help imagine
what they do behind closed doors. (Value judgment)

The first statement is a typical factual description of what astronomers believe to be true
about our sun and galaxy. Although scientists believe there is an enormous amount of

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evidence to substantiate these statements as true, none of that evidence is presented here.
So, there is no argument. However, these statements could become part of an argument,
such as when the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence is discussed or when these
statements are challenged by very conservative fundamentalist Christians who do not
believe the universe can be this old.

Here is an example of how some of the statements in 2-6 can be used as part of an
argument:

EXAMPLE 2-6a

The Sun is about 4.6 billion years old. This is a lengthy time and because the Earth was
formed with the Sun, it follows that on Earth intelligent life took at least this long to
evolve.

Notice that the factual statements are now linked by a conclusion indicator (“it follows
that”) to a relatively bold generalization, that intelligent life on Earth required billions of
years to evolve.

The use of the word because in 2-7 shows that language is flexible and words that we
have designated as conclusion and premise indicators do not always function as
indicators for parts of arguments. In an explanation, that part of a statement that is in the
same apparent location of a conclusion is usually an accepted fact regarding an objective
event that has taken place and is not controversial. In 2-7 no one is arguing about
whether the World Trade Center towers really collapsed. This horrifying scene was seen
by millions of people. But there was much engineering controversy for several months
after 9/11 on the exact causal details. So, here what follows the 'because' is much more
controversial than that accepted fact stated before the 'because.' In an argument, the
situation is reversed: what follows the premises indicators should be less, or at least no
more, controversial than the conclusion.3

Thus, a rule of thumb for separating arguments from explanations is to first formulate the
passage into the form "X, because Y." Then ask yourself if X is more controversial than
Y. If the answer is yes, then it is most likely an argument. If the answer is no, then it is
most likely best analyzed as an explanation.

In 2002, President Bush said that the 9/11 World Trade Center attack occurred in part
because it was "clear that the FBI and the CIA were not cooperating." Bush's statement
would be classified as an explanation, not an argument. Note the form -- X happened
(the 9/11 attack) because Y occurred (lack of FBI and CIA cooperation). Note that X is
not controversial. No one was arguing that 9/11 was a myth or hallucination. It was a

3
In general, when we attempt to persuade logically we should present evidence that we think will be
accepted as true or noncontroversial. Arguments, however, can also be used to test controversial ideas by
deducing or discovering implications to test. But this use of argument is different from direct persuasion.
We will discuss this difference in more detail in Chapter 5 with the fallacy of Slippery Slope.

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very big tragic fact for the United States. What might have been controversial was
Bush's explanation, but he offered no argument for it.

It is easy to get confused on whether something is an argument, an explanation, or a value

judgment, because arguments and explanations can contain value judgments. But
consider this example.

A few days after 9/11, the very conservative religious fundamentalists Jerry Falwell and
Pat Robinson seemed to assert on Robinson’s TV show that an angry God, angry at the
United States, had allowed the terrorist acts to succeed. Falwell then said,

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists and the feminists, and the gays and
the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the A.C.L.U.,
People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point
the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen.’"

Clearly, even though value judgments and controversial beliefs are involved, this
exchange can be rendered as an explanation.

EXAMPLE 2-9

The destruction of the World Trade Center towers by terrorists occurred because God
was angry at the United States for allowing abortion, feminism, and accepting
homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle.

X, because Y

X = The destruction of the World Trade Center towers by terrorists occurred.

Y = Because God was angry at the United States for allowing abortion, feminism, and
accepting homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle.

Because the X-part is not controversial, we have an explanation. The Y-part implies a
value judgment – that abortion, feminism, and the acceptance of homosexuality as an
alternative lifestyle are wrong. But overall we still have an explanation.

Some students will be confused because the value judgment part is so controversial that
they conclude this has to be argumentative and hence an argument. No, argumentative,
yes, in the sense of "inviting" an argument, but an argument no, because there is no
argument yet. If Falwell was challenged on how he knows what God feels about
abortion, feminism, and homosexuality, he might give the following argument.

EXAMPLE 2-10

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Abortion, feminism, and the acceptance of homosexuality as an alternative lifestyle are
wrong, because there are many passages in the Bible that make clear God’s feelings on
these matters, and the Bible is the word of God.

Now we have the argument:

Conclusion: Abortion, feminism, and the acceptance of homosexuality as an alternative

lifestyle are wrong.

Premise: Because there are many passages in the Bible that make clear God’s negative
feelings on these matters and the Bible is the word of God.

Notice the key difference between 2-9 and 2-10. Falwell is not trying to prove that
destruction of the World Trade Center towers by terrorists occurred (2-9), but he is trying
to prove that abortion, feminism, and the acceptance of homosexuality as an alternative
lifestyle are wrong (2-10).

Often, relatively vague passages can be analyzed by testing different interpretations. For
instance, consider the following:

EXAMPLE 2-11

There are no hummingbirds in this area. We haven't seen any hummingbirds all day.

Is this passage a description, an explanation, or an argument? It is probably not a

description, because a link of some sort seems to exist between the two statements. But is
it an explanation or argument? Should we interpret this passage to mean:

EXAMPLE 2-11a

(We can conclude that) There are no hummingbirds in this area. (Because we know that)
We haven't seen any all day. (Argument)

Or

EXAMPLE 2-11b

We haven’t seen any hummingbirds all day (fact to be explained), because there are no
hummingbirds in this area. (Explanation)

Like a blurry picture we are given no context for 2-11, so we must imagine a context in
which this statement was made. There are at least two possibilities. For an argument (2-
11a), perhaps some people have been hiking in a forest and they notice that no one has

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seen any hummingbirds. One of the members of the group infers (generalizes) from this
accepted fact that there are no hummingbirds in this area. For an explanation (2-11b), we
can imagine someone noticing that they have not seen any hummingbirds all day and
asking other members of the group why this is so. Another member then explains that
there are no hummingbirds in this area.

This example shows that although recognizing arguments will not be a simple black-and-
white affair, we can have guidelines for analysis and discussion. In both cases, the
statement, "There are no hummingbirds in this area" is more controversial than "We have
not seen any all day." But in a context of persuasion, when we are identifying arguments,
we are looking for a controversial statement that is supported by reasons for accepting
that statement. Because in 2-11b, no support is offered for the statement "There are no
hummingbirds is this area," this interpretation is not an argument.

Context, background knowledge, experience, and cultural differences can all play roles in
interpreting, recognizing, and understanding arguments. Recognizing arguments is part of
the general task of intelligent and respectful communication, and it will often involve
some work. Furthermore, in today's shrinking, interconnected, multicultural world we
may not always be successful. However, we at least have a general guideline to help us
with some of this complexity. Although technical arguments in logic, science, and
mathematics do not always involve controversy in the same sense that we have been
discussing, in recognizing arguments in the popular media the focus is most often on
controversy. So, in recognizing arguments a helpful guide is to ask, "Is a controversial
statement made (the conclusion), and is some alleged support offered for the acceptance
of that statement (the premises)?"

Speaking of controversy, clearly, discussions of values and moral judgments are a vital
but argumentative part of life. In 2-8 the volatile issue of sexual orientation is raised. But
is this an argument? Although it appears to have something like a conclusion, a bottom
line that the author wants us to accept -- "Homosexuality is immoral" -- the statements
that follow do not appear to be supporting premises, but rather elaboration of the author's
values in sexual matters. No reasons are offered for why we should have the same
reaction to the gay life-style, or why we should not accept it as a permissible life-style,
even if we share the author's heterosexual orientation. At this point, 2-8 is only a bare
value judgment and today an extremely controversial one. Consider that a person making
this statement today would probably be criticized for bigotry or having views that
discriminate against gays. Times change and values change. In the 1960s almost every
state in the United States made homosexual sex illegal and castration for men was the
punishment for homosexual sex in seven states! What is called today "gay rights" was
non-existent. No federal or state laws protected gays from job or housing discrimination.

It does not follow from this example that values cannot be argued about, that they are
merely expressions of subjective feeling, time, and culture, and that they cannot become
part of reasoned discussion. Values can change for good reasons, involving knowledge of
new facts and progress and growth in better understanding.

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Socrates (470-399 B.C.), one of the first Western philosophers, began his famous
questioning with value issues. Prior to his gadfly antics in the city streets of Athens to
make people think, Socrates was a soldier. He witnessed firsthand the violence and
cruelty of which human beings are capable. Prior to Socrates, the philosopher Protagoras
(ca. 485-410 B.C.) had claimed that the values and virtues that a society deem good are
only so relative to that society, and it is presumptuous of a culture to believe that its way
of seeing things is the only right way of living. The values we possess, according to
Protagoras, are the result of our cultural conditioning and individual circumstance; what
is true for you is true for you, and what is true for me is true for me. Socrates agreed with
Protagoras that most people are presumptuous to believe that their values are the best,
especially when we see that if they are forced to defend them, the reasons they give are
very weak, usually based only on appeals to tradition, authority, or popularity. But
because of his life as a soldier, Socrates reasoned that although there may be many
different good ways to live, surely there are also many bad ways to live. If so, he
reasoned, what general idea about what is "good" enables us to judge some particular way
of life as good or bad? If there are no general principles that all people ought to accept,
then "anything goes," and there is no such thing as a bad way to live.

Protagoras and Socrates ultimately disagreed. Protagoras was what philosophers call a
relativist. Relativists believe that objectivity is a myth; that there are no independent
facts or values that everyone ought to accept; that truth and value are relative to the
individual and cultural context. Protagoras believed that we cannot reason about values,
we can only attempt to creatively persuade one another to see a way of looking at things.
For Protagoras, life is a battle of perspectives and the goal of all discussion is more like
art than science and logic -- to mold reality from a particular perspective and to persuade
others to adopt this perspective. Socrates was not a relativist; he established the
foundation for normative ethics. The normative ethicist believes that some values
(norms) can be judged as better than others; that values can be part of an objective
rational discussion.

Many of my students, when hearing this issue for the first time, conclude that they are
relativists, because they believe that Protagoras was right, that cultures do differ, and that
we "ought" to learn to respect and be tolerant of other life-styles. But a little reflection
shows that they are not relativists. They are really adopting a normative principle: We
ought to value, learn from, and be tolerant of different ways of living. A consistent
relativist is committed to saying that this principle is no better than one that says we
ought not to value, learn from, and be tolerant of different ways of living.4

The basic principles of democracy are not based on relativism. Generally people who
support democracy as the best form of government are doing so because like Socrates
they believe we can give some meaning to the phrase “a really right way of living.”

4
A consistent relativist is also committed to believe that any method of inquiry, any method of arriving at
beliefs is as good as any other. This implies that we don't learn about the world or even learn better ways to
learn about the world. Most philosophers of science believe that scientific inquiry and the many
methodologies devised by scientists throughout the centuries since the time of Socrates are examples of
learning better ways of learning about the world. We will discuss this further in Chapter 3.

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Although not all supporters of democracy believe in a personal God (generally Buddhists,
who don't believe in a personal god, also support democracy as the best form of
government), often political leaders in the United States will invoke a connection
between democratic freedom and the objectivity assured if one believes in God. For
instance, during the 2004 Republican National Convention, then president George W.
Bush said, “(Democracy is) the most honorable form of government ever devised by
man. . . . freedom is not America's gift to the world, it is the Almighty God's gift to every
man and woman in this world. . . . we have a calling from beyond the stars to stand for
freedom.” Although there are other ways of supporting normative ethical positions (one
will be defended at the end of this chapter), believing in God, and believing that we know
what He wants, make up a very popular way of defending objectivity in value judgments.

Those who support freedom and democracy do not support absolute freedom. Relativists
argue that because we can’t justify any belief or value as absolutely true, “anything
goes.” But one can support freedom and respect for diversity but still call for a limit to
tolerance.

For instance, in September of 2004 Chechen separatists (a “band of terrorists” for most of
the world) held about a 1,000 children hostage at a school in the Russian town of Beslan.
They were demanding that Russia give up its control of Chechnya. (Chechens are mostly
Islamic and Russians are mostly Eastern Orthodox Christians.) The children were treated
violently by their captors and almost 400 were killed brutally. (Some of the children
were shot in the back as they tried to flee.) Sympathizers with the Chechen cause pointed
to the Russian slaughter of innocent civilians in Chechnya (over 200,000) and the
leveling of cities as an explanation for the violent response. But most of the world,
including many Islamic countries, responded with outrage. A line had been crossed.
Anything does not go. No matter the cause, no matter the prior injustice, there was no
moral justification for brutalizing children this way.

Another source of possible confusion is that a normative ethicist is not saying that all
issues of value must be cases of objective discussion. Many believe that there are "levels"
of evaluation and that some levels are matters of subjective taste as the relativist asserts.
For instance, few normative ethicists would be interested in arguing about whether
chocolate or vanilla ice cream is the best. What most normative ethicists want to argue is
that in matters of ultimate value some commitments are more reasonable than others.

For instance, most normative ethicists would argue that there is a huge difference
between preference for different ethnic foods and the issue of female circumcision
discussed in examples 2-3 and 2-4 above. Many normative ethicists would say that food
preference (excluding perhaps cannibalism) is indeed a matter of subjective taste.5 But
whether or not “genital mutilation” is justified or not as a cultural practice is a debatable
issue. For a normative ethicist we ought to be able to use our brains, discuss this issue,
rise above our own cultural perspectives and decide objectively if such a practice is

5
Many Americans and Europeans will have trouble though accepting the popularity of eating dog meat in
China. Restaurants can be seen in China with cute puppy pictures outside advertising dog dishes served
inside.

63
permissible as simply a cultural variation or a violation of universal human rights and just
wrong.

As an illustration that it is possible to reason about values, we can formulate the

following where the evaluation of the homosexual lifestyle is part of an argument.

EXAMPLE 2-12

The Bible says that homosexuality is a crime against nature and a crime against God. All
crimes against nature are immoral and ought to be prohibited. So, homosexuality is
immoral and ought to be prohibited.

Formulated this way, we now have an argument for a focused discussion. Are the
premises true? Does the Bible really say this about homosexuality? Even if it does, why
should we accept the Bible as authoritative on this issue? Although there do appear to be
passages in the Bible that condemn homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13 for the Old
Testament, and Romans 1:26-27 in the New Testament), critics of this approach to
morality will point out that Leviticus 25:44 appears to approve of slavery in general and
Exodus 21:7 appears to approve of the selling of daughters into slavery in particular. Is
there such a thing as a crime against nature? What if science is able to demonstrate that
sexual orientation is genetically determined, that people are determined at birth to be
homosexual or heterosexual, that we have no choice in the matter as with skin color?

Even if the premises are true, do they offer good reasons (in the sense of a valid
argument) for the conclusion that homosexuality is immoral and ought to be prohibited?
To apply what we have learned thus far about arguments, the focus of discussion should
not be on the reasoning of the argument. This argument is valid; if the premises are true,
then the conclusion is also true. But the premises are clearly controversial, and most
normative ethicists would say that the issues raised in the premises are clearly questions
of ultimate value that need some sort of supportive evidence before we have good reasons
to accept them.6

These premises would need to be conclusions of other arguments. The important point is
that there are "bare" unsupported value judgments and value judgments that are part of
arguments or explanations. We are interested in recognizing arguments, so that focused
discussion is then possible.

Here are some other examples of evaluations that are not yet part of arguments:

6
Although the premises are controversial, the arguer apparently thinks the premises are noncontroversial
or less controversial than the conclusion. Also, this series of statements is an argument and not an
explanation, because the conclusion is not an accepted fact that requires an explanation. Note that a
consistent relativist would be committed to saying that the beliefs expressed in this argument are as good as
ones that would express more tolerance for alternative life-styles.

64
EXAMPLE 2-13

I don't like sports. I don't like baseball, basketball, boxing, football, or golf. Every
weekend the major TV networks in the United States construct their programming to
torture me. No matter what the season there is some sort of "game of the week" that is
supposed to be the focus of everyone's attention. And it is getting worse. Now, no matter
what the country or time of day, there is some big game or contest that one cannot
escape, be it a quiet rural neighborhood in central Kansas, a pub in Great Britain, or a
hotel lobby in Japan. Ahhhh!!

EXAMPLE 2-14

As Americans we believe in our (European) cultural heritage, not just because it is

"ours," but because it is good. But our ability to preserve and transmit that common
heritage depends on the continued existence of a majority population that believes in it.

The first one (2-13) presents no reasons why we should not like sports, so it is not an
argument. The second one (2-14) is an interesting case that deserves elaboration. The first
statement contains the value judgment, "America's European cultural heritage is good."
Out of context, we might interpret the entire statement to contain either an argument (We
ought to believe in our cultural heritage, because it is good.) or an explanation
(Americans believe in our cultural heritage, because they know it is good.). However, the
context from which this passage was quoted indicated that it is best interpreted as a value
judgment being used as a premise for a larger argument with a very controversial
conclusion.

In the original article, "Immigration: Threat to Our Cultural Heritage," Lawrence Auster7
attacked the traditional liberal ideology of blind commitment to cultural diversity. He
attempted to demonstrate (conclude) that this ideology, which has always been assumed
to be an important contributing factor to the goals of democracy is actually "profoundly
inimical to freedom" when translated into the contemporary context of unrestricted U.S.
immigration of Latin American and Asian people. According to Auster, the natural forces
of ethnic and cultural identity, power struggle for self-determination, and the hardship of
assimilation into a new and alien culture have produced and are producing a "dangerous
impetus toward ethnic chauvinism" and a "manifestation of... adversary culture." He
claimed we are finding a "massive assault on Western literature and thought" and a
dangerous weakening of commitment to traditional American ideals that restricts freedom
to express certain ideas. According to Auster, a "new, unfree America (is) being born of
uncontrolled immigration." In other words, because more and more people immigrating
to the United States are from Asian and Latin countries and do not share the political and
philosophical ideals of European-Western culture, those ideals are not only constantly

7
Reprinted from Newsday in the Sunday edition of the Honolulu Star Bulletin and Advertiser, May 19,
1991, B1. See also Auster's "The Path to National Suicide: An Essay on Immigration and
Multiculturalism," (American Immigration Control Foundation, 1990).

65
under attack but are in danger of being overwhelmed in a new atmosphere of intolerance
for other cultures and an overzealous protectiveness of one's own. At various universities
in the United States, according to Auster, this cultural protectiveness became manifest in
the phenomenon of "political correctness," where the ideal of free speech was under
attack. In short, our democracy is being slowly destroyed by too much immigration from
non-European countries.

This issue is a deeply involved and sensitive one of great importance. It touches on one of
the greatest issues of our time, not only for the United States but for the entire world:
How to obtain a unity of purpose and commitment to global or national democratic
values while different ways of living are brought together as never before in history; how
to maintain a sense of unity as a fragile species with a common, contingent evolutionary
history and an uncertain future, while celebrating cultural diversity and the need for
cultural autonomy; how to reap the benefits while moderating the inevitable frictions
produced by cultural differences; how to avoid a destructive "us-vs.-them" attitude when
cultural differences are brought together.

Personally, I disagree with Mr. Auster's conclusion that the commitment to cultural
diversity is hostile to freedom and destroying America. Living in Hawaii as I do and
seeing first hand the positive contribution to society of cultural diversity, I believe that
such diversity enhances human potential and the development of our economy, and it
strengthens democracy and does not weaken it. Although much too involved to describe
in detail here, I can sketch the possible course an argument between myself and Mr.
Auster might take. He would be able to get me to agree that completely uncontrolled
immigration would hurt the economy -- too many people, too soon, competing for too
few jobs would create severe tension. However, I would question what I see as one of his
premises. I would argue that Asian and Latin American immigration need not and ought
not to be a dismantling of European-Western culture and ideals, or a construction of a
philosophical perspective that renders this tradition illegitimate for the twenty-first
century. Rather, I would argue that we need a more humble perspective of the importance
of the European-Western tradition: not only its political concepts, but particularly its
primary products in terms of relating to nature, that of science and technology.

I would argue that this more humble perspective is vital. A greater danger than the
frictions produced from cultural diversity, which are most likely only temporary, is the
wholesale subversion of cultural differences by some of the peripheral values of Western
culture -- the cultural imperialism currently taking place as one culture after another
adopts Western economic values and the engines driving these values, science and
technology. Perhaps Western-European culture needs a good philosophical slap in the
face to recognize its proper place as a most valuable contribution to the human
experience, but not one that is exclusive and absolute. There are other valuable traditions
besides science and technology, and wherever people have congregated on this planet and
formed a society, insightful ways of relating to reality have been discovered.

I would argue that in the long run the advertisements we looked at in Chapter 1, and the
daily unprotected onslaught and uncritical acceptance of such advertisements, are much

66
more dangerous to the health of a society than would be a neighborhood full of families
who speak different languages. I would worry more about all of these families buying the
same digital video recorder at Sam Kung's, and the children of these families laughing at
the "silly" beliefs of their grandparents from the old country. I would worry much more
about the implications of government reports that describe the Japanese people as
"creatures of an ageless, amoral, manipulative, and controlling culture" conspiring to
dominate the world.8 Or, the mental profiling of all Muslims as terrorists. As President
Obama noted in a speech intended to mend relations with the United States and the
Islamic world, “I consider it part of my responsibility as president of the United States to
fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear,"9

I might not be able to persuade Mr. Auster to change his mind, but if Mr. Auster and I
stayed on track, if we both used reasonable arguments for our positions, if we then
identified the nature of our premises -- statements of fact, values, explanations, and such -
- we would both learn a lot from each other. We would have an opportunity of learning
precisely where we disagree and then be directed to a discussion of methodologies that
might be used to resolve disagreements other than logical ones. We might also gain
valuable insights into hidden assumptions we did not realize we were making and
recognize that some of our premises need a great deal more thought. Anyone following
our discussion would likewise benefit from such focus and perhaps be stimulated to
suggest ideas or points of view that we had not considered.

My disagreement with Mr. Auster would no doubt involve explanations, values, and
beliefs, as well as logical arguments. Life is tough, communication difficult, closure on
major philosophical issues most often elusive. But the distinctions we have made thus far
in language use at least give us areas of focus and a discipline of thinking that is surely
better than pointless shouting, especially if our goal is to test our beliefs.

Meaning and Clarification

Because beliefs consist of statements, and statements consist of words, a little reflection
reveals that the task of evaluating an argument and the terms contained in it are linked. In
Chapter 1, I asked you to evaluate the claim, "Dunlop's SP-4 radial tire had the highest
rating in Car and Driver tire test." We recognized that the terms rating and test were
vague. Vague expressions lack clarity; their meanings are unfocused or fuzzy. To
evaluate the claim of this advertisement these terms needed to be defined more precisely.
How was the rating done? What were the specifics of the test? And so on. On the other
hand, we found that the term highest was purposely ambiguous. An ambiguous term has
8
This statement was from a foreword to a CIA report called "Japan: 2000." It was written by M. Richard
Rose, president of the Rochester Institute of Technology. Although the inflammatory foreword was later
removed from the final report, one wonders if the ideas have been removed from the minds of some U.S.
political leaders. The story of this report was a Gannet News Service report reprinted in my daily
newspaper (Jennifer Hyman, "Report to CIA: Japanese are amoral beings," Honolulu Star-Bulletin, May
25, 1991, A-1). At about this same time, Edith Cresson, French prime minister, was describing the Japanese
as "ants" and "little yellow men" who "sit up all night thinking how to screw us."
9
June 4, 2009.

67
two or more distinct meanings in a given context. The advertisers deliberately took
advantage of an ambiguity: In this context, highest could mean either the very highest
rating, meaning all other tires rated lower, or the highest category used, meaning that this
was only a general category and several other tires could rate placement in this category,
some or all rating higher than Dunlop within this category.

In this section we will see that in evaluating arguments and persuasive appeals, we need
to pay attention to how arguments are packaged. We need to be "picky" and pay attention
to the meaning of the words used and the style of presentation. Otherwise, we can easily
be tricked into believing that evidence is presented when it is not, or that evidence is
stronger than it really is. Consider this example:

EXAMPLE 2-15

Any intelligent human being living on the brink of the twenty-first century should
support a woman's right to abortion. Abortion is not murder; it is simply the prevention of
a future person.

The last sentence in this passage shows that we often offer definitions of key terms to
provide clarity for our positions and eliminate vagueness and ambiguity. But it also
shows that the meanings of terms are linked with beliefs, and definitions are as much in
need of critical evaluation as arguments are. It is often appropriate in a discussion to
explore a reasoning trail by asking, "What do you mean by X?" where X is a key term
within an argument. But we also have to ask if there are good reasons for the offered
definition. In 2-15, does the author have a right to define abortion as meaning "the
prevention of a future person"? Is this the way the word abortion is commonly used? If
not, are there good reasons for using the word in such a unique way?

Traditionally, most logic and English books distinguish between denotative and
connotative definitions. A denotative definition of a term involves pointing to or naming
particular objects or instances for which the term applies. This is how we start children
toward language acquisition. If we want to teach a child the meaning of the terms rabbit
and chair, we point to examples of these. An amazing process seems to take place during
such language acquisition. We point to a few different examples of chairs, and fairly
quickly a child "gets it." Even though we show only relatively few of the many different
types of chairs, somehow the child grasps the essence of what all chairs are like.

Eventually, the child seems to understand what has been traditionally called a term's
connotative meaning. Connotative meaning is the package of qualities and attributes
intended by use of the term. For this reason connotative meaning is often called
intentional meaning. When a child understands correctly the use of the word chair, he or
she understands what is intended when a speaker uses the term, in this case an object for
people to sit on that has different types of support. Notice that by merely pointing at
different examples of chairs a child could easily be confused about the denotative
meaning of chair. A child could easily be uncertain as to what we are pointing at. The

68
examples we use could all be chairs made of wood, or with four legs, or of a particular
color. The child must eventually learn that what we intend by the term is more flexible
than these particular instances of chairs; that chairs can have different colors, different
types of support, and can be made out of many different types of material.

Because we are interested in meaning to obtain clarity, and clarity presupposes agreement
on meaning, it is important to see that there are different theories of meaning. Some
philosophers, for instance, have denied that denotative definitions really exist or are ever
very useful. These philosophers argue that only intentional meaning exists for terms and
there never is any absolute, fixed, intended meaning for any term -- that the package of
the qualities and attributes intended by the use of a term is a "fuzzy" package, containing
one set of qualities and attributes in one situation and a slightly different set in another.

For instance, the word 'snow' will mean something different for someone living in
Minnesota and someone living in Singapore. The package of qualities and attributes of
Minnesota snow will probably be larger, containing more distinctions and shades of
meaning. Thus, some philosophers argue that intentional meaning is always relative to a
language-using group -- a culture, subculture, or class of people. This is particularly
apparent when we try to understand other cultures by learning the language of that
culture.

Suppose I am trying to learn a language where the term gavagi is used for what I call
rabbit. After a few days of exchanging pointing gestures with the members of this culture
I conclude incorrectly that I understand what they mean by the term gavagi. Little do I
realize that in this culture what the members intend by gavagi is "sacred, untouchable
object that contains the spirit of one of our ancestors." Perhaps for me, rabbit means
"pesky creature that used to eat grandma's vegetables, but tasted a little like chicken and
was good for a barbecue when grandpa killed one for dinner." Clearly, in spite of our
consistent pointing gestures the situation is unfortunately ideal for major
miscommunication, especially if I ever go hunting with some of the members of this
culture. Although we seem to be pointing at the same object (the rabbit), clearly our
respective connotative meanings for ‘rabbit’ are very different.

This little excursion into the relativity and flexibility of meaning is important. Most logic
and English books claim that types of definitions can be classified and that rules provide
"correct" definitions depending on the classification. For instance, lexical definitions are
considered the essential meaning of a term or the way the word is used by most people.
The goal of a dictionary is to provide the lexical definition of terms. Some examples of
rules for providing lexical definitions would be: avoid circularity, avoid being too broad
or narrow, avoid vagueness and ambiguity, avoid emotional terminology, be affirmative
rather than negative, and indicate the context where appropriate. Such definitions are also
considered classifiable as true or false. But because there are different theories of
meaning, terms such as correct, true, and false may be too strong and subculturally
biased.

69
Much of life's richness is derived from the deliberate use of fuzzy language. For instance,
for someone who regularly watched late-night television in the United States during the
late 1980s and early 1990s, the argument "The David Letterman show is better than that
of Arsenio Hall, because Arsenio Hall is nothing but a long corridor designed by an
Italian architect" might make a lot of sense (as well as being humorous). It implies a
whole host of features about both men and their shows -- how they dress, the depth of
their personalities, the quality of their guests and entertainment, and the kind of people
that watch each show. In logical analysis, our task of being "abbreviators" is not to
inhibit, prohibit, or destroy such fun uses of language, or to limit all the creative ways
that we use words to carve perspectives out of the silence of existence, any more than it is
to ban all emotion from life. Our task is simply to provide clarity. Recognition of the
existence of language using groups and the flexibility of meaning will often be part of
this task. So, if someone uses a term or a phrase in a unique way as part of an argument,
our question is always the same: "Are there good reasons for using the term or phrase in
this unique way?"

Another example found in logic and English books is that of stipulative definitions. A
stipulative definition does not attempt to define a word the way most people use it, but
specifies a relatively arbitrary operational meaning to a term, such as when an instructor
says, "In my class an A grade will mean a course average of between 88 percent and 100
percent of total points." Such a definition is not totally arbitrary, of course. There may be
good reasons why the instructor has chosen 88 percent rather than 90 percent as the low
end for an A grade. Based on the instructor's standards for learning, past student
performance, difficulty of the material in the class, the predictive value of achieving an A
in this class and achieving an A in other classes, and the number of students who achieve
A grades relative to the number of students who achieve other grades, the instructor may
have decided that 88 percent is more appropriate than the stricter and more traditional 90
percent. But choosing 88 percent rather than 87 percent or 89 percent is probably
arbitrary. Some cutoff point is needed, and the instructor has decided that the lower end
for an A grade needs to be relaxed a little.

Notice that what we needed in the Dunlop "highest rating" example to properly evaluate
the advertising claim was a stipulative definition for the phrase highest rating. When we
discovered that an excellent or highest rating could be achieved by scoring between 300
and 350 points on the tire test, Dunlop's tire was placed in a different perspective relative
to its major competitors, which actually scored higher within this category. By arbitrarily
changing the stipulative definition of highest we could render the advertisement claim
false. Suppose Dunlop's major competitors scored 325 points and above, but Dunlop
scored only 310 points. If we arbitrarily changed the stipulative definition of highest to
mean between 325 and 350 points, Dunlop's tire could no longer be given this rating. It
is often the case that a lot of money is riding on stipulative definition decisions.

In the early 1990s, Congress and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) began to
respond to consumer protection group concerns on food package labeling. By this time,
food manufacturers had taken advantage of increasingly health-conscious consumers by
making liberal use of words such as light, low, and free (as in reduced fat, low

70
cholesterol, sugar-free). Without standards and stipulative definitions, these terms could
mean just about anything. Thus, by 1993, the FDA issued rules based on a law passed by
Congress, such that free must mean less than five calories, less than 0.5 grams of sugar,
and less than 5 milligrams of cholesterol and 2 grams of saturated fat per serving. Low
must mean less than 140 milligrams of sodium, less than 40 calories, 20 milligrams or
less of cholesterol, and 3 grams or less of fat with 1 gram or less of saturated fat -- each
per 100 grams per of food. Without such stipulative definitions, a 1991 Lean Cuisine
frozen dinner advertisement was able to claim that Lean Cuisine dinners "skimp on"
calories, fat, and sodium. The advertisement claimed that these dinners contained only 1
gram of sodium per entree, but 1 gram is equal to 1,000 milligrams, 860 milligrams
higher than what the FDA defined as low!10 A similar situation was repeated in 2003-
2004 with the gain in popularity of the Atkins Diet. Advertisements for products
appeared hyping the benefits of products due to being “low-carb,” having a certain
amount of “net-carbs,” “effective carbs,” “fit-carbs,” or “useable net-carbs.”

Consider another similar problem for the twenty-first century -- genetically modified
food. Critics of the biotechnology industry and big food manufacturers claim that such
foods are "Frankenstein foods" and want the government to mandate that all foods be
labeled as either containing any genetically engineered products or free of such products.
Supporters of genetically modified foods claim that many of these products actually help
the environment by requiring less pesticides and producing large quantities of food more
efficiently. Regardless of who is right about this debate even defining what a genetically
modified food is, is not simple and will require a lot of debate before establishing a
stipulative definition.

A large percentage of corn and soybeans are now genetically modified and derivatives of
these vegetables are mixed to varying degrees in a large number of processed foods.
Even with the best intentions it is difficult to make sure that trace amounts of genetically
modified corn and soybeans don't get into foods intended as GM pure. Furthermore, all
processed foods contain major ingredients mixed with minor additives. What if a small
percentage of the additive, itself a very small percentage of the resulting product, was the
result of a genetically modified process somewhere down the line in the manufacturing
process? What if a manufacturer of cheese uses a genetically modified enzyme to set the
cheese or chickens are raised on genetically modified feed. Even though there are no
genetically modified ingredients in the final product, how should these foods be
classified?

In 2001 the European Union decided that products don't require labeling if each of the
ingredients contains 1% bioengineered material or less. Consumer groups wanted a limit
one-tenth of 1%. And speaking of vegetables and trace ingredients, are French fries still
a vegetable if the vegetable oil they are fried in has some "essence of beef" added for
flavoring purposes? Hindu and vegetarian groups sued McDonalds over the issue in
2002.

10
See Exercises, part II, number 4, Chapter 5, to see how the Lean Cuisine advertisement is representative
of a common informal fallacy.

71
One would think that we all know what a disease is. But can a disease be
“manufactured” in a sense by a drug company for profit? Can the definition of a disease
be stretched to the point that people are made to believe an unhealthy condition exists
where previously the same condition was considered normal? In September 2000 class
action lawsuits were filed in California and New Jersey against the maker for Ritalin, a
commonly used drug for "attention-deficit-hyperactivity-disorder” (ADD. The suits
alleged that the makers of this drug conspired with psychiatrists to “create” a disease.
Critics of the widespread use of Ritalin argued that the drug was vastly over-prescribed
for children, many of which were simply normal active but perhaps precocious children
that might be more high maintenance for teachers to control than average. The point is
that definitions for words such as disorder, treatment, and disease, as in attention-deficit-
disorder, treatment, or disease are the result of beliefs that could be the result of bias and
not evidence. How should one define ‘hyperactivity’ in a child that nature has made to
be curious, active, and exploratory? As late as 2010, after many decades of use of drugs
for ADD, medical scientists were still debating whether there was an objective test for
ADD.

Critics of drug companies claim that too often the drug companies are guilty of “disease
branding.” They attempt to medicalize a range of conditions within which a large
percentage is normal. They then take advantage of the insecurity of doctors and their
patients. For instance, in 2010 the giant German drug maker Boehringer Ingelheim
attempted to get approval of a “female Viagra” drug for low libido in women. The
condition was branded as “female sexual dysfunction.” Although a real condition for
some women, critics argued that a nation wide advertising tour featuring a former
Playboy model was surely aimed at having lots of women take this drug, many of which
would surely be in the normal range of sexual function for theirs ages.

One would also think that it would be easy to provide a definition for “being a woman.”
But in an age of routine sex changes, transgendered women, and controversy over
whether intersexed children should have “gender management” surgeries, this is not an
easy matter and has been the subject of controversy in women's sports (tennis and canoe
racing). Should we define who a woman is based on a person's birth certificate? Genetic
testing? Anatomy alone?

The point of these examples shows that providing precise definitions is often a matter of
great consequence. Sometimes, however, bureaucrats can be overzealous in their concern
for precise definitions to protect the public. After the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill that
destroyed the environment along large sections of Alaska's coastline, well-meaning
regulation writers in the Environmental Protection Agency, in implementing the Oil
Pollution Act in the early 1990s, defined oil as "anything that causes a film or sheen on
water." This subjected any product that fit this definition to new rules on the shipments of
hazardous goods, including milk, suntan lotion, and salad oil! The definition was
eventually changed, but these examples underscore the point that providing definitions is
more than just a philosophical ivory tower game of no consequence to business, industry,
and the public.

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In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the U.S. government’s stipulative definition
of "truck" became very controversial and a subject of much debate between the
automobile industry and environmental groups. In an attempt to insure energy security
and lesson the U.S. dependence on foreign oil, the government mandated a particular
level of fuel efficiency in passenger cars and trucks. Because many trucks were used for
essential job related activities, the fuel efficiency levels for trucks were much lower than
for passenger cars. But by the first decade of the twenty-first century the most popular
selling (and profitable for automobile manufacturers) cars were SUVs, which were
classified as "light trucks," and subject to lower standards of fuel efficiency. Hence, fuel
consumption increased 7% in the 1990s in spite of major advances in engine
performance. Environmental groups wanted the definition changed to exclude SUVs.
Most automobile manufacturers resisted any change.

Consider some other famous definition problems. Former president Clinton was asked in
court under oath if he had ever had "sexual relations" with Monica Lewinsky, a White
House intern. The definition he was given of sexual relations did not include oral sex, so
he answered "no." Did he lie? His presidency may have been saved by a poor lexical
definition of sexual relations. About the same time a national survey on teenage attitudes
on sex revealed that many teens did not consider anal sex as sexual intercourse. This was
an alarming revelation for public health officials concerned about the spread of AIDS.
Presumably teens who had been warned about AIDS and unprotected sexual intercourse
would think that they had found a way around the danger.

After the 9/11 World Trade Center attack the Bush administration decided to declare war
on terrorism. But how to define terrorism was no small problem. To give but one
example, the United States needed Pakistan as an ally to help with the war in
Afghanistan. But Pakistan was supporting groups in Kashmir that were viewed as
freedom fighters for the liberation of Kashmir. India, controlling disputed parts of
Kashmir, deemed these groups as terrorists. In a famous speech, the president
consequently defined terrorist organizations as those with a "global reach." Most people
in the United States agreed with a conservative Republican Senator, who said, "We don't
need to quibble about a definition of terrorism. We know it when we see it."

Note that the Senator was saying that a denotative definition is easy. We can simply
"point" to 9/11 and the involvement of Al Qaeda. But how could the President or the
Senator define terrorism connotatively that excluded the actions of the United States itself
as terrorist? At the time the FBI defined terrorism as "the unlawful use of force or
violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a government, the civilian
population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives."
Applying that definition to the actions of the United States in Nicaragua in the 1980s
would classify the CIA and the Nicaraguan "Contras" as terrorists rather than "freedom
fighters" (President Reagan's characterization of the Contras). The CIA "harbored,"
recruited, armed and trained the Contras, in order to "coerce" and overthrow a
government, and terrorize a people, through violent means ("in furtherance of political
[and] social objectives"). U.S. intervention went well beyond "harboring" in 1984, when
the CIA mined three Nicaraguan harbors. When Nicaragua took this action to the World

73
Court, an $18 billion judgment was brought against the U.S. The U.S. response was to
simply refuse to acknowledge the Court's jurisdiction.

Abortion discussions and decisions have involved a stipulative definition for the phrase
"legal abortion." Because brain activity in the fetus can be detected after the first three
months of pregnancy, many supporters of abortion have advocated that legal abortion
should mean "within the first trimester," within the first three months of pregnancy.
When these supporters say that women should have the constitutional right to legal
abortion, they do not mean at any time during pregnancy. For these supporters of legal
abortion, given that the mother is healthy and that the fetus is developing normally, there
is a legal and moral difference between an abortion within the first trimester and one at
eight and one-half months that terminates the fetus's development, just as there would be
a legal and moral difference between an abortion within the first trimester and the
discarding of a newborn baby in a trash can. Proponents have argued that even though
three months is relatively arbitrary, there are good reasons for choosing a cutoff point
around this time: That given the general right of a woman to control her own body and
the general uncertainty of when life begins, and the physiological knowledge that brain
waves can be detected in a fetus after the first trimester, three months is argued to be a
reasonable legal and moral cutoff point.

Those who oppose abortion, of course, object to giving any meaning to the phrase "legal
abortion" by claiming that life begins at conception. This claim of a true lexical
definition of life, if widely accepted, would have huge implications in potentially
restricting cures for many diseases. Advocates of therapeutic cloning argue that the
blastocyst stage of the development of an embryo is just a bunch of undifferentiated
"stem" cells and not a human being. There is no body shape, no brain, heart, etc.
Potentially, however, these stems cells could become hearts, livers, kidneys, spinal
cords, nerve cells, and so on, to be used for transplants without rejection and save
thousands of live a year. So, a lexical definition for human life here is extremely
important and will involve a full range of our beliefs.

The important point about providing definitions is that even if we need to acknowledge
the appropriateness of allowing for a great deal of flexibility in providing meanings for
terms, we can still recognize the need for some flexible rules of thumb that highlight
examples of unfairness in the use of words. For instance, the old television sitcom "All in
the Family" showed a scene in which the star, Archie Bunker, a rather narrowly cultured
man in his fifties who had only a sixth-grade education, was sitting at his kitchen table
allegedly studying for a history test as part of his attempt to finally get his high school
diploma. Rather than studying for the test, however, he was actually practicing a cheating
technique that he planned to use. He was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, and under one
sleeve was a roll of paper with key terms and dates on it. He was practicing to see if he
could slyly slide the paper out without it being seen. When his daughter, Gloria, walked
by and saw what he was doing, the conversation went like this:

74
EXAMPLE 2-16

Gloria: "Daddy, are you going to use those notes on your exam?"

Archie: "I certainly am, little girl."

Gloria: "But Daddy, that's cheating!"

Archie: "It certainly is not, little girl. Cheating is when you are supposed to give
something to someone and you don't. I'm supposed to give them the right answers, so I'm
going to give them the right answers."

Gloria: "But, Daddy, you're not being honest!"

Archie: "I certainly am, little girl. I asked myself an honest question, `Could you pass this
test without these notes?' And I gave myself an honest answer, `No you could not.'"

Clearly, Archie is not being fair in his use of the words cheating and honesty. His
argument is a classic example of what logicians call equivocation, the inconsistent use of
a word or phrase. Equivocations are often deliberately used to create humorous situations,
as in old movie comedies when a butler tells the comedy star to "Walk this way," and the
comedian proceeds to imitate the way the butler is walking rather than just follow him.
But when we argue, and a word or phrase occurs in both a premise and the conclusion,
the reasoning trail will not be valid if the words are used inconsistently. An illusion of
evidence will be created, but with no evidence actually supplied by the premise. Clearly,
Archie has not provided a good case for being honest in the way Gloria is using the
term.11

Does the use of the word intelligent in example 2-15 add anything to the logical support
of the abortion argument? Is it fair? When people argue, they want to be as persuasive as
possible. They therefore choose words that "color" their positions in the most favorable
light possible. But such coloring is not necessarily evidence. Consider this example:

EXAMPLE 2-17
Congress should support the president's request for the Peacekeeper missile. Our
freedom, and the peace and freedom of the entire world for that matter, depends upon a
strong military defense system.

What is a Peacekeeper missile? During the early 1980s, President Reagan wanted a
reluctant Congress to fund his plan for building the MX nuclear missile. For its time, this

11
For practice, can you formalize in terms of premises and conclusion Archie's argument? Hint: Archie's
defense can be reconstructed into two arguments with one conclusion being that he is not cheating and the
other that he is being honest.

75
would be an awesome weapon. It would be mobile, making it hard for an enemy to
destroy before it was launched. It would be very accurate, enabling detonation of a
nuclear bomb precisely over the location of an enemy's nuclear missiles. Also, each
warhead of an individual MX missile would carry as many as fourteen nuclear bombs,
such that once the missile was launched over enemy territory, the warhead would come
apart and be able to independently target fourteen different military sites or cities. It
would also cost tens of billions of dollars to construct, taking that much more money
away from investment in economic development, education, and health care.

For critics of the MX missile, its construction also implied a radical and dangerous
change in our nuclear defense policy. Our previous policy was called "MAD," an
acronym for "Mutually Assured Destruction." As the name implies, by building up a
redundant nuclear force that would enable us to destroy the major cities of a whole
country many times over, our policy was to create a situation where it would be crazy for
anyone to ever attack us. At one time, for instance, thirty-six nuclear bombs were
targeted on Moscow, even though only one was needed to destroy the city and kill
millions of people, and just one of our modern submarines (the Trident) could launch
enough missiles to destroy more than 100 cities. With this policy, we aimed our bombs at
people, hoping that no sane leader would ever want all his or her people dead. This policy
partly reflected the inaccuracy of pre-1980 missile guidance systems; a city is a relatively
big place, and bombs don't have to hit it in the middle to destroy much of the city.

However, to hit reinforced concrete missile launching sites located underground,

accuracy is very important. So, if we have an accurate missile that can knock out the
enemy's missiles, why not aim our terrible weapons at other terrible weapons rather than
at innocent people? The problem, according to Reagan critics, was the new strategy and
psychology implied in this plan. From the other side's point of view, the MX missile was
a "first-strike" weapon -- it could destroy an enemy's missiles before they could be
launched -- implying that the country with such an offensive missile would then not only
be interested in defending itself by ensuring nuclear war would never happen, but in
winning a nuclear war as well. If you were on the other side and you knew that your
enemy could now destroy the only means that you had of defending yourself, you would
be more paranoid and the constraints that you had developed for not launching your own
weapons would be lessened. In short, in an apparently dangerous situation you would be
more "trigger happy," more likely to think "use them or lose them," to launch your
weapons before they were destroyed by accurate incoming missiles. Those opposed to the
Reagan plan argued that we would be spending billions of dollars to recklessly increase
the danger of nuclear war, not lessen it. Supporters of Reagan argued that it not only
made more sense to target weapons rather than people, but in the long run the Soviet
Union would not be able to compete economically with the United States buildup of
weapons.

Given this controversy, the Reagan administration made sure that all public discussions,
speeches, and correspondence by administration officials used the term Peacekeeper
rather than MX missile. What this example shows is that we can distinguish between the
cognitive or descriptive meaning of a term and the emotive meaning or positive coloring

76
added to a term. It is surely a more positive thought to think of peace than the detonation
of a nuclear missile, but coloring the MX missile in this way did not offer evidence that
its construction would bring about a more peaceful and secure world. For critics of the
Reagan plan, the MX missile was not a weapon of defense and peace, but an expensive
offensive weapon of war that would actually make war more likely, reduce economic
investment and competitiveness, and produce fewer jobs and more homeless people.
These critics may have been wrong, but coloring the debate with the word Peacekeeper
was not evidence against the critics.12

Because politics is the art of persuasion, politicians and their speechwriters spend a
considerable amount of time emotively coloring their positions in the most positive light
possible. The Reagan administration referred to the Nicaraguan Contras as "freedom
fighters," but to those Nicaraguans who defended the Sandinista government these
Contras were often seen as "terrorists" who sometimes pillaged farms for food, raped
women, killed innocent men, women, and children, and received illegal and immoral aid
from the United States' CIA, which was interfering in the affairs of a sovereign country.

When the Reagan plan to spend trillions of dollars on building a laser weapon system in
space became controversial -- not only because of its great cost ($6 billion per year) but
also because of its questionable workability -- the administration emphasized that its
proposal was called the "Strategic Defense Initiative," and not "Star Wars" as used by
critics. "Defense" sounds much more positive than "Wars." By the time of the Clinton
administration, although the former Soviet Union was no longer our nuclear adversary,
$3 billion was still being spent annually on the project, the name had been changed to
Ballistic Missile Defense, and the program became part of a policy called Theater Missile
Defense.13 With the George W. Bush presidency funding increased to $10 billion a year
by 2004, and part of the program was called "Theater High-Altitude Area Defense."
Critics still referred to the effort as Star Wars and claimed that the system would not
work and that chemical and biological terrorism were far greater threats. This amount of
money was twice the amount spent on customs and border patrol by the Department of
Homeland Security.

Speaking of the Bush administration, in one of President George W. Bush's state of the
union speeches he called his new-forest initiative the "healthy forest initiative." But

12
After billions of dollars had already been spent on research and development, the MX missile project
was finally discontinued by President Bush and the U.S. Senate in September 1991. A year later the United
States agreed to dismantle, also at great cost, those missiles already built. But the United States built and
deployed 14 Trident II submarines. Just one contained enough missiles and nuclear bombs to blow up
about 200 cities. By 2010, the United States was in the process of building a new class of nuclear
submarine at a cost of about $8 billion each. Critics wondered how these would protect against terrorists
living in caves.
13
Incidentally, our Department of Defense used to be called the "Department of War." In my state, our
prison used to be called "Oahu Prison." After years of controversy on prison conditions and the
embarrassing fact that three-fourths of the prisoners are of Hawaiian ancestry, it is now called the "Oahu
Community Correctional Facility." In China, prisons are called "labor reform departments." Prisoners,
some of them members of the pro-democracy movement, are forced to labor with no retirement benefits
and no union negotiations, for an export economy for products sold to Japan, Germany, and the United
States.

77
many environmental groups claimed it would give a blank check to logging interests to
log our national forests. (There would no longer be public hearings on the decisions the
government makes about the national forests.) He called his proposal for a new type of
fuel-efficient car the "freedom car." But this program was already started by former
President Clinton and Bush's new tax plan gave very generous tax breaks to any business
that bought a big SUV.

The point is, does such emotive coloring add anything to the clarity of the debates on
these issues? Because positive coloring does not necessarily add any positive evidence,
you should be on guard to separate the two.

The example on the building of a weapon system in space also shows that sometimes it is
in a politician's best interest to "neutralize" emotionally charged and controversial issues,
to disguise negative features with a bland coloring or with what are called bureaucratic
euphemisms. Consider these examples:

EXAMPLE 2-18

The United States demonstrated its military and moral superiority during the 1990
Persian Gulf War. Our surgical strikes and smart weapons overwhelmed Iraqi forces
while keeping collateral damage to a minimum and our own loses were mostly from
friendly fire.

EXAMPLE 2-19

The president has fulfilled his campaign promise to the American people. With the
exception of a few items of revenue enhancement, there have been no new tax increases.
And this policy has worked. With the exception of a significant, but temporary, downturn
in the economy we have avoided a serious recession.

The front-line experience of war is a terrible thing. Firsthand experience of death and
bodily mutilation forces us to acknowledge our own fragility and eventual death, and
often at an even deeper level, confront the great puzzling issues of the meaning of life
and death. It is not easy to get the black-and-white support needed to fight a war
efficiently if people are emotionally confused and terrified. So our politicians and
military commanders are trained to use bland phrases such as "collateral damage" to
neutralize the fact that in any war significant numbers of innocent people will be killed
who unfortunately lived in areas next to (lateral to) bomb sites. It also helps support the
voter’s moral self-image to think that these people were killed as the result of a "surgical"
process, implying that military personnel were doing the best they could not to kill them,
even though they knew they would probably kill some anyway. The politicians and
military commanders also don't want to engender emotional confusion by describing the
accidental killing and maiming of our own people by their own "smart" weapons,

78
weapons with one-track robot minds programmed to smash only targets, any targets. So,
they say our people experienced "friendly fire."

It is also hard to maintain clarity of resolve for goals unless a simple "us-versus-them"
attitude is maintained. So, in the case of the Persian Gulf War, the United States
government attempted to neutralize the fact that its forces killed approximately one
hundred thousand Iraqi soldiers, mostly simple farm boys who didn't want to fight
anyone, and that many were killed "surgically" in a "turkey shoot" on a Basra road
attempting to return to their families.14

The world may be an evil place sometimes, and difficult paths may need to be followed
that are often only the lesser of evil paths. A strong military and the U.S. action against
Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11 may be examples of these lesser evils, but bland coloring
with bureaucratic euphemisms does not add to the evidence for the choices the United
States made. Also, emotionally appealing references to “freedom is not free” and the
need to defend the “homeland” against “evil doers,” or vague statements “I am against
terrorism and plan to defend America," do not provide the necessary clarity and evidence
that the United States made the right choices to defend its homeland and freedom from
terrorism for the rest of the world. For instance, critics of the war with Iraq after 9/11 did
not question the basic premise that we have to fight terrorism abroad and seek out and
destroy terrorists before they hurt people in the United States and the rest of the world.
They claimed that the issue was whether the war with Iraq was a fight against terrorism
and the real threat or was it a serious diversion from that war in terms of resources and
world-wide prestige and cooperation needed to fight bin Laden and Al Qaeda?

In heated matters such as this, people will disagree whether the expressions they use are
emotional coloring, bland euphemistic de-coloring, or attempts at being objective. Some
people will protest vociferously when newspaper articles describe what they view as
“Muslim terrorists” as “hostage-takers,” “rebels,” “separatists,” or “militants.” Shouldn’t
a sentence that states, “The Chechen separatists began firing into the backs of fleeing
children,” be better described as “The Chechen terrorists murdered the fleeing
defenseless children by shooting them in the back”? On the other hand, those supporting
the cause of the “Chechen separatists” often refer to them as “holy warriors.”

The favorable coloring of economic conditions and the actions used to deal with them is
also high on the list of political strategies. Politicians do not get elected by promising
taxes and economic hardships. Walter Mondale was clobbered by Reagan in the 1984
U.S. presidential election after candidly telling the voters that raising taxes would be
necessary to reduce the government's enormous deficit that otherwise must be paid by
future generations. George Bush learned this lesson well by dramatically stating
repeatedly during the 1988 presidential elections, "Read my lips, no new taxes." When by

14
Only 7 percent of the bombs used in the first Iraq war were so-called smart bombs, even though
militarily screened and censored media reports left the impression that all were. There are estimates that as
many as fifty thousand Iraqi civilians were killed, mostly women and children. By December 1991, more
than a year after the spectacular media coverage, a Pentagon report admitted that one-fourth of all United
States casualties died from "friendly fire."

79
1990 taxes had been raised on numerous items that affected the entire population, the
Bush administration was careful to refer to these increases as "revenue enhancements."
(See example 2-19 above.) During this same period of time, when the country seemed to
be in a recession -- when economic indicators on employment and business activity based
on traditional stipulative definitions of the term recession seemed to have been reached --
administrative officials were careful not to use the "R-word" and instead referred to a
"significant downturn" in the economy.

These examples are not meant to imply that we know that the economic and military
policies of political leaders are always suspect. But their policies are always
controversial, and clarity of debate is achievable only if we get to the real issues, only if
we are sensitive to the words used and can peel away the surface dazzle of positive
coloring or the obscuring screens of neutralized coloring and understand the positions of
both sides of an issue before we judge them. For more examples of bureaucratic
euphemisms, here are some famous cases: "termination with prejudice" (CIA reference to
killing someone); "health alteration squad" (also used by the CIA, in this case to refer to
an assassination team15); "enhanced radiation device" (US. military reference to a new
type of nuclear bomb, a neutron bomb that would kill more people, but would not be as
destructive to physical facilities).

While we are on this subject, note how lawyers sometimes create a favorable perspective
for their clients. In August of 1991, the news media began covering a story of the Fort
Lauderdale wife of a Broward County sheriff. She had been arrested for prostitution and
having sex with more than fifty different men, many of them prominent figures in the
surrounding communities. However, her lawyer argued that because she was a
nymphomaniac and her husband was impotent, her action was not prostitution but "sexual
surrogacy." Lawyers also help defend medical practitioners against suits with
euphemisms for death. When an anesthesiologist made a mistake and a patient died, a
report of the event referred to a "substantive negative outcome" for the patient. Other
doublespeak phrases sometimes used are: "therapeutic misadventure," "diagnostic
misadventure," and "negative patient-care outcome." And let's hope that if you need an
operation your doctor will not need to write on your chart, "Failed to fulfill his wellness
potential."16

Governments throughout the world make use of bureaucratic euphemisms. In China by

2010 many poor migrants from the impoverished country were flocking to China’s major
cities to participate in a roaring economy. Most often they lived in special low-income
neighborhoods. When the local residents began to feel threatened, the government gated
and locked in the migrants at night. The Chinese government referred to the treatment as

15
In the 1970s during the Carter administration, after a great deal of controversy over the meaning of such
terminology, the CIA was banned by law from engaging in any covert activity that would involve killing
foreign leaders. After the 9/11 World Trade Center attack, the Bush administration rescinded the ban.
16
For more examples of euphemistic doublespeak see William Lutz, Doublespeak: From "Revenue
Enhancement" to "Terminal Living": How Government, Business, Advertisers, and Others Use
Language (New York: Harper & Row, 1989). And, The New Doublespeak: Why No One Knows What
Anyone's Saying Anymore, William Lutz (New York: HarperCollins, 1997); Doublespeak Defined: Cut
Through the Bull**** and Get the Point, William Lutz (Harper Resource, 1999).

80
“sealed management.” However, perhaps the academy award for an unjust euphemism
should go to the Japanese government and its description of the use of young Korean
girls as sexual slaves to "service" Japanese troops during World War II as "comfort
women." During the Japanese occupation of much of Southeast Asia, as many as two
hundred thousand young Korean girls were taken from their families. The girls were as
young as eleven, and the Japanese purportedly preferred young, intelligent girls who did
well in school. In harsh jungle conditions each was made to sexually satisfy sometimes as
many as sixty men per day at special "comfort stations." More than 90 percent of these
young women died, and those who eventually were able to return to their homes were
most often then rejected by their families and lived the rest of their lives as outcasts.

In terms of the treatment of women throughout history, it is worth noting that no criminal
law against male infidelity even existed until an 1810 French law, and this law only
prohibited a married man from keeping a concubine in his house against his wife's
wishes. Women have been killed, shamed, tortured, branded (literally tattooed by a
husband to indicate a date of intercourse to ensure the paternity of his offspring),
circumcised (female circumcision -- a euphemism for removal of the clitoris or most of
the external female genitalia to reduce female interest in the possibility of extramarital
sex), and infibulated (the barbaric sewing up of a woman's labia majora nearly shut, so as
to make intercourse impossible) -- all in the purpose of fidelity to men.17

The example of comfort women should help you realize that being logical and emotional
are not necessarily inconsistent human traits. That sometimes the rational thing to do is to
be outraged over issues of great concern to us. Emotions do not always intrude upon the
reasoning process. Feelings can act consistently with our reasoning skills and often help
guide them.18 Compare the statements: "The Japanese government used comfort women
and stations during World War II to boost the morale of its soldiers" and "The Japanese
government participated in institutional gang rape of children during World War II."
Which statement is the fairest, the most accurate, the most rational? How should one have
reacted to statements regarding "ethnic cleansing" -- the murder of men, women, and
children of a rival religion or ethnic identity during the early 1990s war in Bosnia? It
would not have been illogical to react with moral indignation and outrage.

However, these examples should be sufficient to make you realize that the use of words is
not a neutral activity in arguments, that a great deal of bias, slanting, and unfairness occur
in the use of language and can interfere with objectively following a reasoning trail.
Even an apparently straightforward descriptive statement can contain an entirely slanted
worldview. Consider this statement: "In the future, technology will be advanced to the

17
For these and other examples of cultural double standards in extramarital sex see Jared Diamond, The
Third Chimpanzee: the Evolution and the Future of the Human Animal (New York: Harper Collins,
1992), 85-98.
18
For recent scientific evidence supporting the claim that emotion and reason often work together in
rational human beings, see Antonio R. Damasio, Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human
Brain (New York: Grossett-Putnam, 1994). Descartes is the author of the famous statement, "I think,
therefore I am." Damasio presents neurological evidence that we should replace this statement with "I think
and feel, therefore I am." People who have damage to areas of the brain that affect their ability to produce
emotions also lose the ability to make rational decisions.

81
point that astronauts will be able to take their wives and children with them on long space
voyages." Do you see the not-so-hidden stereotyping? In the future won't some astronauts
be women?

Before we leave this section, note one more common hurdle to the task of understanding
prior to judging -- the use of a jargon style. Here is a typical example:

EXAMPLE 2-20

The belief in an ontologically homogenous relation between statements about UFOs and
extraterrestrial life is not evidentially probative. No one who takes the scientific evidence
seriously should believe that we have been visited by intelligent extraterrestrials.

The use of such language is often a deliberate act of positive coloring in the sense that we
are supposed to be left with the impression that anyone who can use such impressive
language must know what they are talking about. We are so overwhelmed that we forget
that we must understand the argument and its statements before we judge them. The first
statement in 2-20 says only that the evidence linking statements about UFO sightings and
real ETs is weak. So, all this argument amounts to is the claim that we should not believe
that we have been visited by ETs because the evidence that we have is weak. Thus, rather
than just accepting this argument because it is packaged in such an impressive style, the
appropriate question to ask, and the appropriate reasoning trail to follow, would be to
determine the nature of this "weak" evidence. The evidence might not be "evidentially
probative," but the use of such an imposing phrase does not tell us much.

Later in this book we will learn how to use the techniques of formal symbolic logic to
"straighten out" and clarify torturous statements. For instance, interpret this statement: "If
it is not true that marijuana is not widely used or as harmful as alcohol, then we should
follow the example of the state of Alaska and decriminalize its use." Although with a
little thought you should be able to do this now, later we will see how to clarify this
statement mechanically to mean, "If marijuana is widely used, but not as harmful as
alcohol, then we should follow the example of the state of Alaska and decriminalize its
use."19

Here are some more examples that we will learn how to mechanically translate into a
simpler style. Can you restate what these sentences are saying in a simpler style?

EXAMPLE 2-21

"I went into the meeting not believing it would be illegal not to tell Congress the truth."
Oliver North's answer to lawyer's question at his trial for his Iran-Contra role.
19
Notice that in a full discussion of this issue, the term 'decriminalization' would need to be defined. In
Alaska a stipulative definition was used, such that residents were allowed to legally have up to 4 ounces of
marijuana for personal use.

82
EXAMPLE 2-22

It is not true that you can pass the final and not pass the course.

EXAMPLE 2-23

Only if we don't make the car payment this month will we have enough money for both
the medical bills and basic necessities.

EXAMPLE 2-24

The view of the arbitration board that the fine against Johnson was justified but the
suspension from the team was not is mistaken.

EXAMPLE 2-25

It is not true that not being in the neighborhood on the night of the crime is a sufficient
condition for not having knowledge of the crime.

What is Truth?

Up to this point in our discussion of meaning and reasoning we have been using the word
true as if it were clear and uncontroversial what we were talking about. But obviously the
fact that people disagree so often indicates widespread disagreement not only about what
is true, but even over a definition of truth, over a conception of what it is, so we can know
when we have it.

This section will be a little difficult, but in the interest of honesty and completeness we
need to talk about truth. You may require a lot of guidance in this section from your
instructor, but keep in mind that some things you read are difficult because life is
difficult, and you should not expect to understand everything you read immediately.
Many writings on philosophical topics need to be read and reread, discussed, and
contemplated as part of an ongoing process. Just as we do not live in a black-and-white
world, we do not always find closure, agreement, or complete understanding on every
topic even after a lot of thought and discussion. In teaching philosophy, the goal often is
not just the understanding of various answers to a big question, but an understanding of
the significance of the question. Understanding the significance of a question can be just
as valuable as having answers, because once the importance of a question is grasped a
whole new perspective opens up. And from that point on, new ideas and experiences are
possible. Philosophers disagree on what truth is, but by the end of this section you should

83
understand (although controversial) how the term is used in this book, and see the
relevance of this question for the major issues of our time.

First, a little history. The ancient Greek philosopher Plato (427-347 B.C.) was very
concerned about how often people disagree and the negative implications this had for
political harmony and the good life. With this in mind, he felt that the only statements
that deserved the name true would be self-evident truths -- beliefs that just by thinking
about them convey an absolute assurance that they are true and that any alternatives are
false. For Plato, the statement "There are nine planets in our solar system" would not be
considered true in this sense. We could be wrong about this now -- we could discover a
tenth planet tomorrow -- or something could change such that the belief was no longer
true in the future. One of the nine planets could be destroyed by some cosmic
catastrophe.20 For Plato a truth that we could doubt, or was only partially true, or was
only temporary did not make any sense. Truth was a definitive notion. It was a
categorical notion; a statement was really true or it was not. For Plato, we could not say
we had knowledge about anything unless we were certain about what we thought we
knew. So, for Plato only statements such as "2 + 2 = 4" and "There are no round squares"
would qualify as really true. We just know these statements are true by thinking about
them; it is self-evident that 2 + 2 equaling 5 and a round square are impossible.
For Plato, another example of a self-evident truth would be "The shortest distance
between two points is a straight line." Plato believed that we may learn about such self-
evident statements from our experience, but once we do, we seem to have an insight into
an "essence" that will be durable beyond anyone's experience and any human lifetime.
Unlike the planet example, no future experience by any member of the human race,
according to Plato, could show that 2 + 2 is not 4. If we all die, or even if the human race
had never existed, Plato argued, the shortest distance between two points would still be a
straight line and 2 + 2 would still be 4. These would still be objective truths, whether or
not there are any subjective human beings around.

Ever since Plato proposed this conception of truth, Western philosophers have had to
grapple with whether there really are such self-evident truths common to all people and
cultures, and whether, even if there are self-evident truths, there can be any about those
things that are really important to us. Can there be any self-evident truths about what we
should value in life, what we should believe about the meaning of our existence, whether
God exists or not, and so on? Because of Plato's great influence, many Western
philosophers have spent a lot of time attempting to derive important beliefs about values
and meaning in life from alleged self-evident beliefs.21

20
If Plato were alive today he might cite as evidence the fact that during his own time there was
widespread agreement that only five planets existed other than the Earth. Thus, he would argue widespread
agreement over statements such as this one does not guarantee truth. Something more is needed. Plus today
there is intense debate over whether Pluto is a planet or should instead be classified as a dwarf planet. The
majority of astronomers voted for a new definition of ‘planet’ at a meeting of the International
Astronomical Union (IAU) in Prague, in the Czech Republic in August 2006. The new definition excluded
Pluto as a true planet, but the change was and is controversial.
21
We can see the influence of this attempt in the U.S. Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths
to be self-evident. . . ."

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Some contemporary philosophers see this attempt as futile and actually quite biased. A
philosopher starts out as part of a particular culture, searching for self-evident beliefs that
will justify all the important beliefs that people of this culture accept. After constructing
an elaborate philosophical system that serves as a foundation for this culture, small
wonder that the process is judged a success. But the next generation of philosophers, or
those from another tradition, easily spot the transparent ethnocentrism of this alleged
success, and then proceed to construct their own grand system. All of this would be
relatively harmless if these philosophers had not been influential. Unfortunately, most of
these philosophers have been reckoned "great" philosophers by key members of their
culture, and, according to modern critics, their systems have been used as powerful
rationalizing justifications for the actions of the kings, queens, and political shakers of
history. It is easy to go to war, and establish inflexible institutions to enforce a conception
of normalcy and justice, if you firmly believe that your way of life is based on a self-
evident, essential foundation.

Philosophers who call themselves modern realists offer another view of truth. These
philosophers have been influenced by the success of science in Western culture. The
success of science makes it easy to believe in the existence of an objective physical world
that we learn more and more about through the ages. Therefore, these philosophers offer
what is called a correspondence theory of truth. According to this view, beliefs are true
if we have a reasonable basis for believing that the terms used in our beliefs correspond at
least approximately to real things in the objective world. So, when we say "There are nine
planets in our solar system" or "The Earth is spherical" we point to the reasonable
evidence that these beliefs are true. When realists are asked how we can define
"reasonable evidence" they usually point to the methods of science and say that these
methods guarantee that over time our beliefs will correspond more and more to the real
world.

Unlike Plato, most modern realists claim to be fallibilists. They believe that not only is
no belief self-evident, but also any belief could be wrong (fallible). The methods of
science ultimately are founded upon empirical evidence. We must use our experience of
the world to justify our beliefs, and because our experience is never complete, even our
best established beliefs could be wrong. If we keep observing Jupiter as the largest planet
when we investigate our solar system, then it is reasonable to believe that it really is the
largest planet. Furthermore, the realists argue, even though we could be wrong, our best
established beliefs must be at least close to the real truth, they must reflect at least in
some partial way an actual reality, otherwise it would be a miracle that our beliefs
worked at all. Even if we discover some day that there is a larger planet than Jupiter
(unlikely), it will still be true that Jupiter is larger than the other known planets today.
Realists consider their theory simply a commonsense theory of truth.

One of the major problems with this alleged commonsense view of truth, however, is that
we have many important beliefs, such as our value judgments, which contain parts of
sentences that do not seem to correspond to anything physical. In the sentence, "George
W. Bush is a good president," what does the term 'good' correspond to? In 2004 during
the presidential race, political polls showed that the United States people were evenly

85
divided on whether Bush was a “good” president. In fact, the country was polarized
sharply. What could anyone “point to” to resolve such an issue objectively?

The difficulty of answering this question has led philosophers to either postulate some
sort of mystical, nonphysical reality in which objects like good "hang out,"22 or, for those
philosophers who fancy themselves more down to earth, to reject values altogether as
involving anything entitled to the name objective. Thus, the mystic philosophers have the
problem of justifying to the rest of us some sort of hidden, nonphysical reality beyond the
commonsense world we experience every day, and the down-to-earth philosophers must
relegate some of our most important beliefs to statements about a secondary, subjective
illusory reality.

Other criticisms of realism are: (1) How can we ever obtain a kind of "above-it-all,"
godlike view to see whether our beliefs indeed correspond to an objective reality? How
could we ever somehow get outside of our minds and cultures and somehow look "down"
from an above-it-all perspective at some divide and see whether our beliefs on one side
correspond to reality on the other? Won't we always, so to speak, take our beliefs, minds,
and cultures wherever we go? (2) As a symptom of this problem, the methods of science
and the resulting beliefs seem culturally influenced. Different cultures at different times
seem to have had different conceptions of what 'scientific' meant, and this in turn
produced different beliefs about what we should accept as true about the world. At one
time it was thought sufficient to justify the claim that the Earth was spherical, because a
circle was thought to be the most perfect mathematical object created by God. It was
thought that if reality is of divine origin, then it would be simple and elegant, and a circle
is much simpler to work with than some other geometric shape. Today, such a claim
would not be considered scientific; some sort of observational evidence would be needed,
such as pictures from space. Shortly after Newton's theory of gravity became well
established (the early eighteenth century), most scientists of this time credited only
beliefs that contained observable entities as scientific. So, a belief that contained the word
atom would not be considered scientific. Today, scientists theorize about a whole host of
unobservable entities, including atoms, subatomic particles, quarks, and mathematical
"strings" in many spatial dimensions.

For these reasons, some contemporary philosophers, who think of themselves as part of a
"postmodern" philosophical movement, believe that both Plato's quest and that of the
realist are not only futile but in fact have caused terrible harm. They argue that there is
little difference in citing a divine or self-evident right to impose one's views and way of
life on others and doing so by citing so-called objective evidence that one's views are the
most reasonable. Narrow ways of life, self-serving power definitions of normalcy,
inflexible institutions, and cultural imperialism are the result in either case. These
philosophers argue that if you believe you are really right about something, either in the
sense of certainty or objective evidence, then any kind of action becomes possible to

22
Although not a realist in the modern sense, Plato, for instance, believed in a nonphysical reality in which
self-evident thoughts and concepts existed. Our thoughts about good would be true if they corresponded to
concepts in this realm. Plato also ended up believing that the physical world was not even real; that it was
only a kind of "shadow" of this other realm.

86
impose those beliefs you believe are right. The solution, then, is to eliminate once and for
all notions of truth in terms of "really right." In other words, the most honest and humane
approach is to eliminate all notions of truth as objective!

In its place these philosophers offer a pragmatic, consensus, or coherence theory of

truth. These philosophers recognize only beliefs that people have and that these beliefs
can only be justified by other beliefs that people have. Situations never exist where a
belief can be checked directly with a so-called objective world. There are only situations
where one belief is checked against other beliefs to see if they are consistent with each
other. If we believe that the Earth is spherical, and we offer as evidence space shuttle
astronauts who look out the window of their spacecraft and take video pictures for the
evening news that show a spherical Earth, we are not showing a real physical spherical
Earth that corresponds to the belief that the Earth is spherical. Instead, we are comparing
one belief with many others. We are comparing the belief that the Earth is spherical with
the beliefs: (1) From this vantage point in space under the condition of being in the
shuttle, the Earth "appears" spherical; (2) This appearance is reliable because we believe
that our video cameras are reliable, that our beliefs about how reflected light works in
outer space are reliable and nothing "funny," such as distorting optical effects, happens to
light in space; (3) These beliefs are reliable because they are consistent with other shuttle
pictures, pictures taken with different cameras by astronauts who went to the Moon, and
pictures from other spacecraft, such as the Voyager spacecraft that went to the outer
planets, and the Galileo and the Cassini spacecraft that flew by the Earth twice on their
ways to the planets Jupiter and Saturn.

For these philosophers, our perspective is still a human perspective; we are not outside of
our minds and beliefs when we take and interpret these pictures. And no matter how
many particular beliefs of appearance are consistent with our general belief that the Earth
is spherical, we are assuming (another belief) that nothing about the way light rays
operate in space would distort these pictures.

There has not always been a consensus on this belief about light rays in space. Prior to
the sixteenth century, most astronomers believed that light rays and perceptions based on
them would be altered in space. They believed that reality was divided into two spheres,
an earthly terrestrial sphere and an ethereal, god-like, or celestial sphere. On Earth,
physical processes occurred according to certain physical laws, but these same laws did
not apply to motions of objects in space, because the space beyond the Moon was
considered to be a different realm of reality -- essentially spiritual (celestial) stages on the
way to heaven. It was thought absurd to believe that processes in a pure, god-like
celestial realm would obey the laws of motion of an impure, earthly realm. The Moon,
Sun, and planets were not even considered physical places. For this reason, some
important people of this time had a hard time believing the results of Galileo's telescopic
observations, which seemed to show that the Moon had mountains and that Jupiter had
moons of its own. That the telescope worked on Earth, that it revealed distant details of
physical objects, proved nothing to those who believed that the telescope would not work
in a celestial realm because this celestial realm contained no physical objects in the first
place. As evidence for this, those who objected to Galileo's telescopic interpretations

87
would point to the fact that stars appeared smaller when viewed through a telescope. This
provided clear evidence, they thought, that reality operated differently in the different
realms and that the telescope distorted celestial truths. So, before Galileo's telescopic
observations could be considered convincing, other beliefs had to change. People had to
become convinced that there was no celestial realm, that the planets were physical places
like that of Earth, and that the laws of nature operated in outer space as on Earth.
Newton’s great accomplishment was to show that the laws on Earth were truly universal
and they applied in outer space as well. The same law of gravity, for instance, that
applied on Earth applied throughout the universe.

According to the pragmatic or coherence theory of truth, this shows that any particular
belief cannot be considered in isolation from other beliefs. Every belief derives its
meaning from being part of a "web of belief." What we observe through a telescope may
stimulate a new belief, but only other beliefs can be used to justify that belief. If we are
open-minded and observant, we are constantly receiving novel stimuli from the world as
part of our experience of being human. This constant stimulation will constantly pressure
the coherence of our webs of beliefs, as the novel experience of observing something
through a telescope did during Galileo's time. New ideas will emerge that are inconsistent
with the current web of belief, causing a constant process of tense readjustment. To keep
the web of beliefs coherent will require a constant process of questioning which beliefs
need be accepted and which ones rejected.

There is much more to these discussions of truth.23 For our purposes, it is sufficient to
note that the realists and the postmodern pragmatists seem to agree on one thing. We
must dispense with the assumption in Plato's thinking that truth is a categorical notion.
No belief can be considered absolutely certain. Instead, we must replace the categorical
notion with a one that allows for relative degrees of evidence, support, or justification.
Instead of viewing true or false beliefs as statements that are really just categorically true
or false, we need to think of beliefs as either reliable and practical guides or unreliable
and impractical guides for dealing with the physical world and each other. I believe this
view is correct. By a reliable belief we mean, then, a belief that seems to have certain
features of evidence, support, or justification such that, based on past experience of
evaluating beliefs, we find good reason for believing the belief will continue to work with
our other beliefs and with new beliefs that result from novel experiences. For instance, as
we will see in the next chapter, a reasonable person ought to believe that the statement,
"Cigarette smoking is a principal cause of lung cancer" is a reliable belief, even though it
could be found to be false someday.

You will probably need more examples before you understand this concept, and the next
chapter attempts to give you concrete examples of reliable beliefs and techniques of
support for them. For now, consider that what I am describing is an attitude toward truth

23
For further reading on these subjects, see Larry Laudan, Science and Relativism (University of Chicago
Press, 1990); Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth (Cambridge University Press, 1991);
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton University Press, 1981); Truth and Progress: Volume 3:
Philosophical Papers (Cambridge University Press, 1998), and Ronald C. Pine, Science and the Human
Prospect (Wadsworth, 1989; Prentice Hall, 2001, Amazon version, coming soon).

88
as well as a theory of what it is. This attitude is consistent with the general theme of this
book: our disagreements and confusions will have a better chance of resolution if we use
unforced, open, focused discussions, and a free but disciplined following of reasoning
trails. Because there is a little bit of Plato in all of us -- we find it easier to have security,
closure, and finality -- it will be healthy for us to think hypothetically rather than
categorically, and to question, to be open, to be humble about what we think is true. By
hypothetical thinking, I mean a process that says, "We have a good reason to believe that
X is true, because we have a good reason to believe that Y is true, and we have a good
reason to believe that Y is true, because we have a good reason to believe that Z is true."
And then, "OK, if you agree that the reasoning trail just outlined is valid, that we stayed
on track and did not let our biases or any irrelevant coloring tricks distract us, let us now
think together whether we need to question Z also, or do we have good reasons to stop
here?"

This attitude is rare because it implies the need for a mental toughness that is difficult for
most people (including philosophers) to accept. Our need for security makes it difficult to
accept a constant hypothetical tentativeness where at no point along our reasoning trails
can we stop and rest and say this is completely true. By denying that anything is
completely true, we have to be constantly ready to think again, for if something were
completely true no further thinking would be necessary.

The Platonist in the back of our minds usually wants more than this. Just because we
agree tentatively on where to stop, doesn't mean we are correct about what we agree on.
Lots of people agree that God exists, but they could be wrong. And lots of people agree
that God does not exist, and they also could be wrong. But what is advocated here is not
mere agreement. There is a difference between mere agreement that is forced, the result
of a trick, or the result of unanalyzed biases and mere cultural upbringing, on the one
hand, and agreement that is the result of painstakingly following different trails that have
been open to free inquiry. Both kinds of agreement could be wrong. But the one that is
the result of free and disciplined inquiry allows for more opinions and rigorous tests, and
permits the novel stimuli of experience to "speak" to us. This approach may be based on
a kind of faith, but I would argue it is a reasonable faith. We believe that the more a
belief is made to stand up to genuine tests, the more likely it is to be reliable.

In 1616, the Catholic Church decided that Galileo's ideas of a moving Earth and planets
that were physical places should be prohibited from being taught and discussed. Because
the church was one of the most powerful political institutions in the Western world, and
because it funded a great deal of scientific research, this action was of great consequence.
At the time, the church had some good reasons for believing that Galileo's ideas might be
wrong. There were many unresolved issues, and even Galileo was unsure of the exact
mechanism that would move our heavy Earth through space, keeping it in orbit around
our Sun so far away, and keeping all of us from flying off the Earth because of its great
speed of rotation. (No Newtonian conception of gravity yet existed.) But the agreement
achieved by prohibiting Galileo's ideas was then the result of a forced agreement rather
than a free and focused following of alternative reasoning trails. And like the father
discussed in Chapter 1 who was afraid to test his daughter at Little League baseball, the

89
Catholic Church, by cutting off access to a reasoning trail, by not testing an alternative
set of beliefs, was cutting off access to possible experiences of great benefit.

Bottom line time: In this book, we will be using true belief to mean a reliable belief, a
belief so well supported that it serves as a practical guide for dealing with each other
and our experience (past, present, and future). By reliability we will mean a process
of belief formation that is the result of both an ethical process -- tolerance for different
opinions, promotion of open inquiry, and undistorted communication -- and a
justification process: the belief in question has certain features of support that seem to
have worked before in showing us beliefs likely to be reliable in the future.24

Let's simplify. For the notion of truth, we have three choices.

Relativism -- Everything is relative. All beliefs are true. No beliefs are wrong, because
there can be no universal, certain, objective justification for any belief. All beliefs are
based upon cultural influences.

Absolutism -- Some beliefs are certain, universal, and objective. See the discussion of
Plato above.

Reliable Beliefs -- This concept is being advocated in this Chapter as the correct
interpretation of truth. It is based on the philosophies of pragmatism and fallibilism.
Some beliefs are universal and objective, but no belief is certain. Some beliefs have so
much evidence for them that we should be able to say that they are probably true and that
they serve as a practical basis for action. That is, the evidence is so overwhelming for a
particular belief that a reasonable person would act as if the belief were true.

And let's take a concrete example. Suppose you are on the roof of a six story building.
What do you think would happen to you if you jumped?

A relativist would make the technical point that we cannot be certain as to what would
happen. If we are honest we cannot say with certainty that we know if the law of gravity
is true everywhere on earth. We can't be certain, because our generalization has not been
completely tested everywhere. There are billions of potential places that people could fall
and these places have never been tested! There might be places where if a person jumped
off a building a person would not fall. Furthermore, a relativist would say that gravity
only seems true, because we have been brainwashed by our culture to believe it is true. It
is possible to overcome any cultural belief by learning a different way of seeing reality,
by learning or participating in a different culture for instance. In some cultures people
practice meditation and claim that one can learn to change one's thoughts and defy
gravity by levitating.

An absolutist would say the idea of relativism applied to gravity shows how silly
relativism is. We know with certainty that if anyone jumps off a building, they will fall

24
Philosophers call the study of this justification process epistemology: Literally, the study of, or
justification of, knowledge.

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regardless of what culture they are from. It is known absolutely and universally that
gravity applies everywhere on earth. The law of gravity is an objective truth, and this
truth is totally independent of one's culture. Take human beings from any culture and
push them off a 6th story building. We know what will happen. They will fall. Case
closed.

Followers of the concept of a reliable belief would say that both the relativists and the
absolutists are partly right. First of all, they would agree with the relativists on the
technical logical point about certainty. This agreement may surprise you. But we have to
be logically honest. The case-closed argument of the absolutist may feel good, but
technically we can't say that we know every possible place on this planet will obey the
law of gravity when we have not tested those places. Our belief in gravity is a huge
generalization and no generalization can be certain. But, the supporters of the concept of
a reliable belief would say that the belief in gravity is objective and universal, that we
have an overwhelming amount of evidence -- from the personal experiences of childhood
falling off beds to watching tragic events, such as the people jumping out of the windows
of the World Trade Center towers and plane crashes -- that anyone, no matter what
culture they are from, would probably fall from a tall building if they jumped. We have
an overwhelming amount of evidence to know that the practical way to live your life is
not to jump off buildings.

This distinction between a belief that has certainty and a belief that appears to be
practical to believe is not just an ivory tower distinction of no consequence. As we will
show in Chapter 3 a common trick used to get people to reject beliefs they should accept
is to argue that the beliefs are not certain. For instance, many people don’t believe that
the well-supported theory of natural selection (Darwin’s theory of evolution) is true. But
scientists believe that the evidence for this theory is so overwhelming and its truth has
such vast implications for our health and survival, that not thinking of the theory as a
reliable guide is like not believing in gravity.

With this in mind, we must now examine what it means for a belief to have certain
features such that it is likely to continue to be reliable in the future, what it means to say
that a belief is reliable given the evidence. How do we establish long-term reliability?
This will be the subject of Chapter 3.

Before we switch to this subject, however, we can make a few important comments on
the nature of logic and values from this perspective of the nature of truth.

Logic is defined in most logic textbooks as a study of the principles used in correct
thinking. But what is the status of these principles? Are they Platonic principles? Are
they self-evident, necessarily true for all times and cultures? If Plato's conception of truth
is unrealistic and unjustifiable, then such a conception of logic that gives an above-it-all,
timeless, inhuman quality to its principles will be difficult to justify as well. Better will
be a perspective that defines logic as a practical set of principles, or a shared set of
thinking tools painstakingly derived from history and experience, that we have found
beneficial for arriving at unforced agreement through the disciplined following of

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reasoning trails. Techniques of logical analysis are habits of adaptation that work in
keeping us on track when we want to test our beliefs in an arena of open and respectful
inquiry.

For the issue of values consider the example of female circumcision. In some cultures,
young girls have areas of their genitals surgically removed with razor blades or pieces of
glass without any anesthesia. These areas would allow girls to experience pleasure
during sexual intercourse and this is exactly what the men in those cultures want not to
happen, believing that the girls and later women will either stay virgins until they are
married or remain faithful to their husbands when they are married. In the United States
when this procedure is conducted by families immigrating, the people are arrested for
child abuse. If you are a relativist, the families are doing nothing objectively wrong; they
are simply following their cultural tradition. On the other hand, if you are an absolutist
you would support the notion of Universal Human Rights. Some ways of living are
wrong and some are right, period. Young girls would have certain rights no matter what
culture they are from.

The concept of a reliable belief also supports universal rights and the goal of normative
ethics, but differs significantly with the absolutist approach on justification. We
definitely should endorse universal rights, but not because Tom Jefferson (“We hold
these truths to be self-evident”) or George W. Bush are right (“we have a calling from
beyond the stars to stand for freedom”). They might be, but the argument here is that
reason alone, without a controversial and unproven appeal to a particular religion, can be
used to justify universal rights. The connection between universal rights and reliable
beliefs is that the just treatment of all people is the most practical way of living on this
earth. We argue that the evidence is overwhelming that this is so.

There are many cultural traditions, but some of these traditions are “lost” traditions, such
as slavery. They are lost traditions for good reason. The scientific evidence became
overwhelming in the 17th century that the Earth was not the center of the universes and
that the Earth moved around the sun. The evidence became overwhelming that it was no
longer practical to believe that the Earth did not move. Similarly, the evidence over time
became overwhelming that slavery was wrong, that there is only one race – the human
species.

The point of thinking about values and believing in universal rights is to decide on what
we would like all people to do -- not necessarily what they do now, but what they should
do, what is really right, and what we would like to see in the future. Believing in
universal rights also does not mean that we have to have a law for everything. For
instance, a basic agreed upon universal right is freedom of religion. But it is a matter of
deciding on basic fairness for people who live on the same planet and then doing all that
we can to instill in the minds of people (via education and moral understanding) this
sense of fairness and promoting the appropriate behavior whenever possible.

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Key Terminology

Arguments Protagoras
Premises Normative ethics
Conclusion Vague usage
Premise indicators Ambiguous usage
Conclusion indicators Denotative meaning
Connotative or intentional
Descriptions
meaning
Explanations Lexical definitions
Value judgments Stipulative definitions
Relativist Cognitive meaning
Socrates Emotive meaning
Correspondence theory of
Bureaucratic euphemisms
truth
Understanding vs. Judging Fallibilists
Jargon Empirical evidence
Plato Coherence theory of truth
Self-evident truth and
Reliable belief
Absolutism

Concept Summary

In appraising reasoning trails logicians slow our thinking down by formalizing such trails
into arguments. Rather than just reacting quickly to an act of persuasion, logicians break
the reasoning down into parts to see if the parts fit together well. First, we look for the
main thrust of the argument, called the conclusion, and then identify the evidence
offered, called the premises. Sometimes, indicator words help us in this process. Words
such as because and since often indicate premises, and words such as therefore and so
often indicate conclusions. We next judge the reasoning and then the truth of the
premises.

Not all uses of language involve arguments, so we must first distinguish arguments from
other uses, such as descriptions, explanations, and unsupported value judgments.
Descriptions can be true or false, but until an attempt is made to prove that what is
described is true, no argument is involved. Explanations often use the same indicator
words as arguments, but what follows apparent premise-indicating words such as because
is a debatable set of reasons why an agreed-upon event happened. Explanations attempt
to give reasons why something happened; they don't attempt to prove that something

93
happened. In expressions such as "X, because Y," X is accepted in an explanation,
whereas in an argument X is a controversial conclusion that is being argued for. Value
judgments made without support are also not arguments, but they usually express
concerns of great importance to us, and so they are often parts of arguments. Relativists
believe that it is impossible to rationally argue for the acceptance of one value judgment
over another. Normative ethicists believe that it is possible to argue for some value
judgments; that some values are more rational to have than others are.

In argument analysis it is also important to pay attention to the meaning of words,

otherwise we can easily be tricked into believing evidence is presented when it is not, or
that evidence is stronger than it actually is. Vague or ambiguous usage of words easily
invites incorrect inferences. Much can be assumed unfairly in the uncritical acceptance of
particular meanings of words. A vague word or phrase can have many meanings. An
ambiguous word or phrase has two or more meanings in a given context. The acceptance
of definitions is linked with beliefs, and hence can be controversial and is often in need of
independent argumentation. Words can also be used to emotionally "color" controversial
persuasive appeals, but such coloring must be distinguished from evidence. From this it
should not be inferred that emotion lacks a valuable role in deciding proper courses of
action. Often, politicians and bureaucrats use a neutralized coloring with euphemisms to
dull or desensitize matters of great concern to us. Such neutralization also should not be
confused with evidence. Denotative and connotative meaning, cognitive and emotive
meaning, and lexical and stipulative definitions, are some of the distinctions logicians
use to regulate the fairness of language use in argumentation. The important point to
remember is that bias, slanting, and unfairness in the use of words can interfere with the
objective appraisal of a reasoning trail. We sometimes must be very picky and pay close
attention to the words used in an argument, to get to the real issues that are often
obscured behind the surface dazzle or neutralizing screens of tricky word usage.

At a deeper philosophical level, because we have distinguished between a reasoning trail

and the truth content of that trail, we must also pay some attention to the meaning of the
word true. The nature of truth is a great, perennial philosophical issue. The decisions
philosophers have made about this concept have not just been part of a detached,
philosophical, ivory-tower game, but have influenced the movers and shakers of history.
In this book, I claim that a judicious and unpretentious conception of truth is assumed,
one that sees our goal as accepting beliefs that are reliable or practical guides for life. By
following disciplined reasoning trails and encouraging unforced, open discussion, it is
possible to identify features of evidence, support, and justification for some beliefs such
that these beliefs should be accepted as more likely reliable than others. This conception
of truth implies an experimental attitude, a willingness to accept fallibility and self-
correction, of valuing hypothetical thinking and tentative acceptance, rather than
categorical thinking and a search for absolutes. From this perspective, logic is likewise
viewed as a practical set of principles derived from past experience, principles that help
us stay on track when we want to test for reliable beliefs. Similarly, value judgments on
matters of great importance can be viewed as judgments on the most practical way of
living and interacting on this planet given the evidence.

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Exercises

EXERCISE I -- True or False

1. Before a trail of reasoning can be logically appraised it must be formalized as an

argument.

2. * From a logical point of view it is always best to judge the premises as being true
or false before judging the reasoning of the argument.

3. A logical argument is the same thing as a verbal quarrel.

4. In formalizing arguments there is always one absolute, black-and-white

interpretation.

5. In analyzing reasoning trails into arguments, the word 'because' is most often a
premise indicator.

6. * The word 'because' is always a premise indicator.

7. The word 'so' is often a conclusion indicator, but it is not always a conclusion
indicator or an indication that an argument is involved.

8. Value judgments can stand alone as bare value judgments, but they also can be
part of arguments.

9. In an explanation, what is to be explained is less controversial than the

explanation.

10. * Clarifying the meanings of terms is not linked with our beliefs about what is
true.

11. The goal of logical analysis is to avoid all creative and emotive uses of language.
Being logical is always inconsistent with being creative or emotional.

12. The goal of clarifying terminology is to provide understanding prior to judging.

13. The principles of democracy are based on the philosophy of relativism and the
belief that no set of values can be judged objectively as better than another.

14. In this book, a true belief will mean only those beliefs that are self-evidently true.

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 15. In this book, it is assumed that being logical is good, because logical analysis
helps provide a focused way of testing our beliefs and arriving at reliable beliefs.

EXERCISE II

Determine which of the following passages contain arguments and which do not. For
those that are arguments, structure each into premises and conclusions. For those that are
not arguments, label each as a description, explanation, or bare value judgment. Explain
(make a case for) your answers. Identifying which ones are arguments is most important.

1. Last summer I visited Great Britain and France. This summer I plan to visit Japan
and Taiwan. When this trip is completed I hope to make a decision about which
country to specialize in for my international relations degree. I'm having fun and
am really in no hurry to make up my mind.

2. * Answer from military spokesman to a news reporter's question during Persian

Gulf War concerning why the Stealth fighter operates in complete radio silence
during wartime: "The stealth fighter operates in complete radio silence in
wartime, because it flies at night at high subsonic speed, can't be picked up on
radar and therefore is not monitored by AWACS early-warning radar planes."

3. If there is any implication that is clear from the U.S. Constitution it is that each of
us has a right to control the processes that take place in our own bodies. This right
to self-determination obviously covers everything that takes place in our bodies.
A medical doctor can advise me on when to have an operation, but he or she
cannot force me to have one. A woman has this same right to self-determination.
Hence, abortion should be legal.

4. The government has a duty to protect the individual rights of all citizens. Because
an unborn baby is as much a citizen as anyone else, the elimination of this
citizen's life is tantamount to murder. Therefore abortion should be illegal.

5. People may think that I am strange, but I don't like ice cream and I don't like
candy. I also don't like desserts. I also don't like sugar or cream in my coffee, and
can't stand the sickly sweet taste of sodas.

6. * The greatest emotion that can be experienced by a human being is that of love,
be it the bond between a parent and a child, two romantically involved people, or
the brotherly feeling toward humankind in general. There is no higher value, no
greater achievement, and no greater sense of fulfillment in life.

7. The latest test results on the educational achievement of U.S. students have again
demonstrated poor performance compared to Japanese students of the same age.
This is not surprising, because Japanese students know far more about the world,

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 are more proficient in science and mathematics, and are more often fluent in a
second language. The reasons for this are obvious: Japanese students watch far
less TV per week than US. students, and Japanese teachers are paid and honored a
lot more. In Japan, teaching is a venerable profession; in the United States it is
better to be a basketball player and make a million dollars a year than to be a
teacher and make only thirty to forty thousand.

8. * A human being becomes truly happy only when natural potential is developed.
Because a feeling of other-directedness rather than a sense of selfishness is a
natural potential that seems to be developed after basic necessities are met, and
because the unconditional love for another is an act of other-directedness, it
follows that we ought to value and encourage conditions that promote love.

9. Most cable television seems to offer nothing but sex, violence, and teen-age self-
indulgent music. The TV in every American house in this day and age is nothing
but an idiot box offering passive cheap thrills for narrow-minded bit brains.

10. Contrary to popular opinion, from a scientific point of view it is very unlikely that
extraterrestrial intelligent life exists in our galaxy. This is so, for the following
reasons: The Sun is a star that is about 4.6 billion years old. The Earth was formed
with the Sun, and intelligent life took at least this long to evolve on Earth. In
assessing another star's chances for having planets with intelligent life, the star
must be at least as old as the Sun. However, roughly half the stars in our galaxy
are younger than the Sun. If intelligence takes 4 to 5 billion years to develop,
these young stars cannot have intelligent life around them yet. We should also
keep in mind that at least half the stars in our galaxy are part of binary star
systems, and lifebearing planets could not survive the monstrous gravitational
forces of binary systems. Accordingly, only a very small percentage of stars in
our galaxy are suitable for planets with intelligent life.

11. * All planetary bodies in our solar system have received their fair share of
meteorite hits throughout history, and scientists use the number of still-visible
craters as a rough measure of the age of the surface. New observations of Venus
from the Magellan spacecraft indicate that Venus is relatively free of blemishes
created by meteorite impacts. By contrast, Mars and the Earth's moon wear old,
pockmarked faces. The Magellan spacecraft has detected evidence of massive
volcanic activity on Venus. Thus, recent volcanic activity on Venus must have
resurfaced the entire planet.

12. John must have AIDS, because all people who have AIDS constantly have flu and
cold symptoms and have an abnormal white blood cell count. John has had flu
and cold symptoms for some time now and has an abnormal white blood cell
count.

13. For more than forty years Congress has been controlled by the Democratic party,
and look at the state of the country. It is time for a change. Vote Republican this

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 November.

14. Frogs and other species of amphibians are disappearing in alarming numbers on
Earth, because they are being eaten by aliens from another galaxy who have
established secret outposts on Earth.

15. The 9/11 World Trade Center attack was allowed to occur because God took
away His circle of protection due to the United States support for gays and
abortionists.

16. This week Aljazeera.net examines the viewpoint of several prominent Arab
thinkers who champion an array of views and interpretations on Arab reform and
democratization, each with a unique position on whether change needs to come
solely from within, whether the United States and/or Europe should be involved at
all, and whether Islam itself is in need of reform.

17. In this world of change, some things (should) not change….Our society (ought to
rest) on a foundation of responsibility and character and family commitment.
George W. Bush, speech to the Republican National Convention, 9/02/2004

18. Vote Barack Obama for president. People of color it is our time now. It is time
for an historic change. Think of what black people have been through in this
country and think of the opportunity we have now to elect the first African-
American president. Imagine we have the chance to vote for a Hawaiian born,
grandson-of-a-son from Middle America Kansas.

19. * Support the president and don't listen to his critics. Those who criticize the
president's foreign policy, his development of a new class of offensive-deterrent
nuclear weapons, and his plans to drill for oil in Alaska are just the usual suspects
of left-wing crybabies who don't realize what the real world is like. It is a violent
world with very real evil people in it. We will sometimes need to kill people
before they have a chance to kill us. We need also to be more self-sufficient in
terms of energy production so that we don't have to rely on people (Arab
countries) who don't like us because we support Israel.

20. The child died because the parent's religious beliefs prohibited them from seeking
medical attention. The parents believed that illness or health is a matter of God's
will and one must have faith in God's decisions. They believed that prayerful
communication with God is the only approach one with sincere faith can take in
such matters, and that we must have faith in a higher power and a higher reality
than this transient Earthly existence.

21. In a poll done for Newsweek magazine this week, 42 percent of the respondents
continue to believe that Saddam Hussein was directly involved in the Sept. 11
attacks.

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 22. We are winning the battle against terrorism. We know this, because the United
States is safer now than it was on September 10, 2001. Saddam Hussein is gone
and Libya has renounced terrorism and weapons of mass destruction. Every few
months we see the fruits of better intelligence and cooperation with the allies of
civilization with significant arrests of Al Qaeda members. Al Qaeda is on the run
and no longer has a sanctuary to train for more attacks on the United States.

23. We are losing the battle against terrorism. Only those subject to massive self-
deception fail to see that this is so. Our own State Department warns Americans
on the dangers of traveling to many countries. Most of the world would like to
see our President defeated this November. The invasion of Iraq was a huge gift to
Al Qaeda recruiters and is consistent with the key problem – we were attacked not
because of who we are but for what we have done. In 1953 we overthrew a
democratically elected government in Iran for control of Middle East oil. We
tried unsuccessfully to overthrow the Syrian government. In Lebanon our CIA
helped create a civil war. We supported Saddam Hussein when he was killing his
own people with chemical weapons. The list goes on and on as to why we are
hated by most people in the Middle East. We continue to send billions of dollars
to Israel no matter what they do to the Palestinians.

24. Shop at Amazon.com. Everything that you need -- from computers, software,
TVs, to books. And for a limited time, free shipping for any purchase over $25.

25. The world is becoming much warmer because the world’s appetite for oil and
fossil fuel burning continues unabated, the amount of carbon dioxide in the
atmosphere continues to increase year by year at an alarming rate, and no country
seems to be serious in developing renewable sources of energy.

For more practice in structuring arguments, and to prepare for the analysis of informal
fallacies, provide an interpretation in terms of premises and conclusion for some of the
section II exercises in Chapters 4 and 5.

EXERCISE III

Analyze the passages below and identify key words or phrases that are ambiguous,
vague, controversial, or unfair. Explain why these words or phrases need further
discussion and how they could lead to mistaken inferences.

1. The administration's latest attempt to stimulate the economy and moderate the
inflation rate was an incomplete success.

2. In March 2011, the United States, as part of a UN mandate for a no fly zone,
began bombing Libya military targets. Since the United States was already
involved in two wars (Iraq and Afghanistan), there was great concern about

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 adding another military involvement in a Muslim country. When an Obama
administration figure was asked if we were in another war, he said:

“It’s not a war; it’s a kinetic military action that is time-limited and contribution-
limited on the front end. It is a frontloaded combat mission that will recede into a
coalition. Our military efforts will be discrete and limited in their nature,
duration, and scope.”

3. * In order to complete the glorious victory against the American led infidels, the
brave Iraqi forces strategically withdrew toward Baghdad.

4. As part of Operation Iraqi Freedom, after the surgical strikes in Fallujah many
non-operative personnel were discovered due to the inadvertent destruction of soft
targets.

5. In 1968, the Soviet Union invaded Prague with tanks. This action was described
as “fraternal internationalist assistance to the Czechoslovak people.”

6. When NASA's $264 million Genesis mission came to a sudden and violent end
because a capsule returning with samples of the Sun slammed into the desert at
nearly 200 miles an hour after its parachutes failed to open, a mission scientist
told reporters that “we have an unquantified scientific degradation.”

7. Famous statement from an administration official during the Nixon-Watergate

scandal, after the discovery and release of secret tape-recorded conversations with
Nixon and his staff. "All former statements as to the level of administrative
involvement and knowledge of the Watergate break-in are now inoperative."

8. In preparation for a nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet
Union, the United States has adopted a policy of mutually assured
discontinuation, whereas the Soviet Union has adopted a policy of counterforce
and anticipatory retaliation.

9. * Famous statement from Betty Ford, wife of former president Gerald Ford, on
why she was at a special hospital for drug abuse: "I over-medicated myself (with
alcohol and valium)."

10. Statement from the Vietnam War: “The misadventure of the termination of
friendly force's live function was due to some incontinent ordnance.”

11. * All intelligent people living on the brink of the twenty-first century, concerned
with the moral growth of our nation, know that reproductive freedom for women
is crucial for fulfilling the dream of our founding fathers. We should support on-
demand abortion.

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12. The anti-abortionists say that we are murderers. But as pro-choice advocates, our
goal is the defense of freedom and liberty.

13. The abortionists say that we want to restrict the freedom of others. But as pro-life
advocates, our goal is the defense of the right to self-determination for those who
cannot yet speak on their own behalf.

14. A 1993 statement from the managing director of the French Atomic Energy
Commission urging a resumption in nuclear testing on Mururoa Atoll in
Polynesia: "From a scientific and technical point of view, the resumption is
necessary to maintain the means and the development of nuclear dissuasion."

15. For the January 2004 State of the Union speech, Bush speech writers needed to
make a case that it was not a mistake to invade Iraq, even though no weapons of
mass destruction were found. After contemplating that they could have Bush say
that Saddam Hussein possessed large stock piles of weapons of mass destruction
(at one time), or that the Kay report had identified new programs to build
weapons of mass destruction – the first was true at one time but was no longer
true and the second was not true – the decision was made to say “the Kay Report
identified dozens of weapons of mass destruction-related program activities. . .”

16. It is not true that Senator Kerry has flip-flopped on his support for the Iraq War.
He has simply adjusted his position.

17. "Had we to do it over again, we would look at the consequences of catastrophic

success – being so successful, so fast, that an enemy that should have surrendered
or been done in, escaped and lived to fight another day." President George W.
Bush, explanation to Time magazine (August 29, 2004) why the Iraqi resistance to
American troops was underestimated.

18. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (terrorist suspect): "The holy warriors made the
international coalition taste humiliation (in Fallujah and Najaf, Iraq). . . lessons
from which they are still burning."

19. “Yasser E. Hamdi is not a prisoner of war. He is an enemy combatant.”

Note: Hamdi was kept in prison for almost three years. During that time he was
denied due process and a chance to contest the accusations against him at a
judicial hearing, until the Supreme Court decision in June, 2004 ruled that Mr.
Hamdi and enemy combatants like him had to be given the chance to challenge
their detention. The court declared that "a state of war is not a blank check for the
president." Hamdi was eventually released and allowed to return to Saudi Arabia,
even though technically he was a United States citizen. No formal charges were
made against Hamdi during the entire time of his detention.

"Enemy Combatant" is a phrase used by the US Government in the aftermath of

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 9/11. In the judgment of the U.S. government if the president designates a person
an enemy combatant they can be detained indefinitely without charge or trial by
the authorities, with no right to appeal and no right to a lawyer - even if they are a
US citizen. A prisoner of war is subject to just treatment under the Geneva
Conventions which states in part that judgments of guilt should be “pronounced
by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are
recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.”

20. The president of the United States did not sanction the torture of suspected al-
Qaida terrorists, Iraqi prisoners, or other captives. Approved were exceptional
interrogation practices for terrorism-related captives for the purposes of national
security.

21. The Taliban terrorists retreated to their Pakistan sanctuary after the surprise attack
on coalition forces attempting to secure the country for the upcoming democratic
elections. (Hint: Suppose the word ‘terrorists’ was replaced with ‘troops,’ and
‘sanctuary’ was replaced with ‘stronghold’? How would this change the meaning
of the statement?

22. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and
shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning." Washington Post,
August 14, 2005. An unidentified senior Bush administration official involved in
policy since the 2003 Iraq invasion, commenting on the lowering of expectation
on what could be expected to be accomplished in Iraq given deteriorating
conditions in the summer of 2005. The original goals were purportedly a model
new democracy for the Middle East, a vibrant market economy based on a self-
supporting oil industry with vast oil reserves, and a grateful people free from
Saddam Hussein and serious security or economic challenges. Critics claimed
that the Bush administration never understood or even made an effort to
understand the historical and cultural complexities of Iraq.

EXERCISE IV -- Essays

Write a descriptive essay addressing each of the following.

1. In July of 1991, Jeffrey L. Dahmer, a convicted child molester, was arrested for
murder. At his apartment parts of eleven bodies were found. Police found skulls
in a file cabinet and a closet, three headless torsos in a vat, three heads in a
refrigerator, boxes filled with body parts, and a dresser stuffed with photos and
drawings of mutilated bodies. Neighbors said that they experienced an
overpowering stench coming from the apartment for months, and that from time
to time they heard what sounded like a buzz saw and screams. Dahmer eventually
confessed to the murders, plus cannibalism. From a moral point of view, explain

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 how a relativist and a normative ethicist would interpret the actions of Dahmer.

2. Search the Internet on articles on female circumcision. In a couple of paragraphs

explain the difference between normative ethics and relativism. How would a
relativist and a normative ethicist approach the issue of female circumcision?
(Hint: A WRONG answer would be to claim that a normative ethicist would have
ethical objections to female circumcision and a relativist would not.)

3. This chapter contains several controversial passages and analyses of examples. In

your judgment, are any of the words or phrases that I have used ambiguous,
vague, controversial, or unfair? If so, identify them and explain why you think
they are unfair.

4. Explain the difference between truth as a categorical notion and as a hypothetical

notion. Include in your essay a discussion of the following conceptions of truth:
Plato's notion of self-evidence, the realist's correspondence theory, the
pragmatist's coherence theory, and the notion of beliefs as reliable guides.

5. Do some research on the reasons given for and the reasons against the 2003
invasion of Iraq by the United States. Separate out as best you can from the
emotional appeals and vague statements the good reasons given for both
positions. Describe these reasons in a short essay.

ANSWERS TO STARRED EXERCISES:

I.

2. False.

We should resist reacting to the statements in the argument based on our personal
beliefs. We should first identify the argument structure. What is the conclusion? What
are the premises? Then we should judge the reasoning. If the premises are true, do they
provide good reasons for the conclusion? Then we should discuss and examine whether
the premises are true.

6. False.

The word because can also indicate an explanation.

10. False.

Meaning is linked with beliefs and the worldviews of language using groups. Hence, the
uncritical acceptance of definitions of terms is as presumptive as the uncritical acceptance
of beliefs.

II.

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2. Explanation.

Although the words because and therefore are used in this passage, the fact that a Stealth
fighter operates in complete radio silence seems accepted and an explanation is being
offered for it. Because we don't know for sure the intent of the reporter's question, it is
possible that this is an argument and the spokesman is attempting to justify the radio
silence. The radio silence is agreed upon as occurring, but whether it is controversial or
not is not clear. Most likely it is not controversial and is just being explained.

6. Value judgment.

Although controversial, there is no attempt to justify love as the highest value. Compare
this one with # 8. The same value is noted, but in #8 the value of love is argued for as
something everyone should have and promote.

8. Argument.

Unlike number 6, there is an explicit attempt to justify and encourage love as supreme
value for all people. Unlike #6, the person is not just expressing their personal values,
but arguing about values that all people ought to have. The phrase it follows that is a
conclusion indicator.

Conclusion: We ought to value and encourage conditions that promote love.

Premise: A human being becomes truly happy only when natural potential is developed.
Premise: Developing other-directedness is a natural potential.
Premise: The unconditional love for another is an act of other-directedness.

11. Argument.

This passage is most likely an argument for a best explanation. That Venus has very few
craters is being explained by resurfacing due to volcanic activity, and an argument for
why this is the best explanation is offered. The conclusion is controversial; there could be
other explanations, but evidence is being offered that this is the best explanation. The
word thus serves as a conclusion indicator. Here, "X (Venus has few craters), because Y
(recent volcanic activity)" is the conclusion.

Conclusion: Recent volcanic activity on Venus must have resurfaced the entire planet.
Premise: All planetary bodies in our solar system have received their fair share of
meteorite hits throughout history.
Premise: Unlike some other planetary bodies in our solar system, Venus is relatively free
of craters.
Premise: The Magellan spacecraft has detected evidence of massive volcanic activity on
Venus.

19. Argument.

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Conclusion: Support the president and don't listen to his critics.
Premise: Those who criticize the president's foreign policy, his development of a new
class of offensive-deterrent nuclear weapons, and his plans to drill for oil in Alaska are
just the usual suspects of left-wing crybabies who don't realize what the real world is like.
Premise: It is a violent world with very real evil people in it.
Premise: We will some times need to kill people before they have a chance to kill us.
Premise: We need also to be more self-sufficient in terms of energy production so that we
don't have to rely on people (Arab countries) who don't like us because we support Israel.

III.

3. The phrase strategically withdrew is being used to color the fact that the Iraqi forces
were being forced to retreat. A conclusion that Iraqi forces were victorious should not be
inferred from such colored descriptions.

9. The phrase over-medicated is used to imply that the wife of a president of the United
States was not doing something as serious (because her drugs were legal) as that of drug
addicts who become addicted to illegal drugs. How would it sound if someone said, "I
have been over-medicating myself with heroin, cocaine, and marijuana"?!

11. Although the phrases intelligent people and moral growth are presumptive, the phrase
reproductive freedom is the most in need of argumentation. Those who are for legal
abortion believe that a women should be free to choose to have an abortion or not, but
those who oppose abortion believe that the fetus is a person and thus has a right
(freedom) of self-determination. The use of this phrase colors the abortionists' position in
a positive way without giving any evidence for the conclusion.

Essential Logic
Ronald C. Pine

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