I’m on my way to school. (1) I left five minutes late. (2) Traffic is heavy. (3) Therefore, I’ll be late for class. (4) So I might as well stop and get breakfast. (5)
Argument: Yes
Conclusion: So I might as well stop and get breakfast.
Additional premises needed: If you leave five minutes late when there is traffic, you’re going to be late and might as well and get breakfast.
Identify any sub argument: 2, 3, 4 are independent and support the conclusion, 5.
Good Argument: I think this is a reasonable argument. I don’t think it’s a strong argument, but it’s reasonable.
This exercise took me a while to do, actually. I had to read the sentences over and over again to make sense of the whole thing. “I’m on my way to school”, didn’t support the conclusion. This exercise was really useful. It was useful because it helps you pick out what premises do not support your conclusion. When you are trying to support your main point with premises, but it’s easy to rebuttal the premise like, “Cats smell bad.” In the book, the rebuttal can be “So?”. This exercise taught me how to make my premises stronger and better support my conclusion. There needs to be a nice flow of premises, not just random ones put together. I’m still confused about “additional premises”. I don’t really know what that means or what I’m supposed to do with it. I’ve looked at the examples and it’s still a little confusing to me.
I had the same challenge with this exercise as well and it also took me a while to analyze the entire statement, even though it was just a few sentences. It’s comforting to know that not everyone found this exercise super easy and got it right off the bat. Similarly, I’m also still confused about how to determine what possible additional premises are and how you find them – I’m thinking it has to with clarifying some of the statements farther, but there also may be a definition of ‘additional premises’ or ‘premises’ in the glossary in Critical Thinking. However, from what I read, I do think that you did complete the exercise pretty well even though you said you’re still confused about some things. Your responses are the same as what I would have written if I had picked that statement to analyze.
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