Class Notes for September 15th

Today in class we first covered the different types of audiences:
-Acceptance- means that you’ve won in some way, your opponent agrees with your argument.
-Dismissal- means you have no way to win, since your opponent refuses to engage you.
-Challenge- must be ready to argue your point against opponent.

WARRANT- is the inferential leap that creates a mental connection between the claim and the grounds, establishing the claim’s legitimacy.

7 Ways to do it,
- Chains of reasoning
- Unstated assumptions
- Presuppositions
- General principles
- Widely held values
- Commonly accepted beliefs
- Appeals to human motives

This answers; where is the author coming from? What is causing the author to think this way? Why does that data mean the claim is true?

-Warrants link the support to the claim by enabling the audience to accept or justify particular evidence as proof of a particular claim.
- Typically, the warrant is IMPLICIT (unstated) it operates at a higher level of generality than claim or grounds (not arguable)
- This puts a demand on the audience because the audience supplies the warrant.
-Warrants establish links between the author and the audience; shared warrants result in successfully establishing common ground.
- Warrants reveal the unspoken beliefs and values of the author, they invite the audience to examine its own beliefs and make comparisons.
-Participating in the process makes the audience feels the development of the argument is cooperative and because they are involved in its composition, they are frequently more likely to buy in and agree.
- There are 6 main argumentative strategies to establish the relationship between claim and grounds.
Generalization
Analogy
Sign
Causality
Authority
Principle
- These are used at different levels of generality within an argument.
- A very common form of reasoning, what is true of a well chosen sample is likely to hold for a larger group or that certain things stay consistent with the sample can be inferred of the group.


- Example of Generalization:
Claim- the dog is probably friendly
Grounds- it is a golden retriever
Warrant- Generalization (most or all golden retrievers are friendly)

Analogy- Extrapolating from one situation based on the nature and the outcome of a similar situation.
- Found in law as ‘case based’ and precedent based reasoning.
- Are there sufficient, typical, accurate, relevant similarities between 2 contexts?
- Example:
“Life is like a box of chocolates...”

- Beware of false analogies: Examples-
I can do (this) well therefore, I can do (that) (unrelated) well
Political candidate says “I am a successful businessman! Elect me mayor and I’ll run a successful town!”
- This isn’t to say that the candidate wont be successful it’s just there is no connection between the two.

Sign/Clue- a notion that certain types of evidence are asymptomatic of some wider principle.
-Example-
- Where there’s smoke, there’s fire
- Students with high SAT scores will do well in college
- Muffin is running a temperature; I’ll bet she has an infection.

Causal- The most complex of the different forms of warrant- the given occurrence or event “X” is the result of or affected by factor “Y”
-Example-
Claim- Needle exchange programs should be abolished
Grounds- They only cause more people to use drugs
Warrant- Causal- more people will engage in risky behavior because you’ve made them safer.


- Dan Beam