We're right in the middle of reconstruction. We did stage one last week, because that's just close analysis. In the previous lecture, we did stage two, which is to remove excess verbiage and to put the explicit premises and conclusion into standard form. And this lecture is going to focus on stage three. Which is to clarify the premises, and to break them up where possible, without distorting them. Let's start with step 4, which is to clarify the premises and the conclusion when it's needed. So we might need to clarify them, just in order to make them easier to understand. Or to make them less likely to mislead. And. All that sounds pretty good. So let's try on this example. It was hot today, so it will probably be hot tomorrow again. Now we need to clarify that. What exactly counts as today? Is that you know, the time when there's daylight? Well, does it also include night? Even though night is not day. And what exactly do we mean by hot? How hot was it today? And how hot will it be tomorrow? And what, after all, is heat? And what about, it'll probably be hot tomorrow? Probability. That's a tough notion. We're going to spend a whole week on that later on in the course. There are different kinds of probability. I want to know what kinds you're talking about here and when you ask, for example about, will it be hot tomorrow? What is, what is will mean? It means it's going to happen in the future. And what exactly is the future and is the future real, is time real? You can go a long way towards asking how to clarify that argument. But that's ridiculous. You know, we don't have to clarify a simple argument like, it was hot today, so it will probably be hot tomorrow. And it's lucky we don't have to clarify every word in the argument because you couldn't. After all when you explain one of the words or give a definition for it, its going to be in terms of other words, and they have to be clarified and you will never get to the end of it. The search for perfect clarity and absolute precision is impossible. You will never complete that search. You will never find perfect clarity or absolute precision. So give it up. What we should seek is not absolute precision but adequate precision, not absolute clarity but adequate clarity and that means that we ought to try to clear up those parts of the premises and conclusions that are likely to produce confusion later. You have to be able to kind of predict, whether this part of the argument needs to be clarified, because people are going to get confused by it. Now, that's not going to be easy, and there's no simple or mechanical rule to tell you what needs to be clarified and what doesn't need to be clarified. The only way to learn this skill. Is to go through some examples that'll give you models of what needs to be clarified and what done. Sometimes the unclarity lies in a single word. In the 1980s, Nancy Reagan used to say, "Just say 'No' to drugs". What does that mean? Well, she is telling you not to use drugs. To say no when somebody offers you drugs or tries to tell you to use drugs. So in effect she's saying, you ought not to use drugs. That's pretty clear, but now what does she mean by drugs? Does she mean Aspirin? I don't think she's telling me not to use Aspirin? Does she mean prescription drugs? I don't think she's telling me not to follow the advice of your doctor and use the prescriptions that the doctor told you to take. So that can't be what she means. Well maybe she means illegal drugs. Okay. Maybe she means illegal drugs. What about heroin or cocaine? Yes, that's what she's telling you not to do. She's definitely telling you not to take illegal drugs. But then there's somethings in the middle. She might be telling you not to take dangerous drugs, whether they're illegal or not. What about. Nicotine. What about alcohol? Those are both dangerous drugs. At least when you used to excess, alcohol is very dangerous and smoking can lead to lung cancer and that's how most people get nicotine. So maybe she's telling you not to take nicotine or alcohol in addition to illegal drugs like heroine and cocaine. Now it's not clear. So how do we clear it up? Well, you want Nancy Reagan's claim to look as good as possible. Remember, you're always trying to make the argument look as good as possible. And one way to make it look good is to make your claim no more than she has to claim. So, she could be claiming that in addition to heroin and cocaine, you shouldn't take alcohol and nicotine, but probably or at at least more [INAUDIBLE] she's telling you not to take illegal drugs. She had to choose between interpret her as saying don't take any illegal drugs and don't take any dangerous drugs. And it seems like the more charitable interpretation that makes her claim look more plausible is don't take any illegal drugs. So we could clarify her claim, just say "No" to drug, by interpreting it to mean you ought not to take any illegal drugs. So in general then, the lesson is. That, when there are options about how to clarify a certain sentence, we ought to pick the most charitable option that makes the claim look as good as possible. Here's another example, where the unclarity can be traced to a single word, but in this case it's the word that, and it's not clear what it refers to. So imagine that someone argues like this. They say, she claims that our strategy won't work because the enemy knows our plan. But that is a big mistake. What is that refer to? That could refer to, that is the word that could refer to, that the enemy knows our plan. Someone says, that's a mistake, they might be saying it's a mistake to think that the enemy knows our plan, but it could refer to the claim that our strategy won't work. They could be saying it's a mistake to think our strategy won't work or they could be saying, but the mistake is to think that the enemy knowing our plan, is enough to make it not work. They might be saying, it's not that it won't work because the enemy knows the plan. Or, here's a fourth possibility. They could be saying, that is a mistake to think that she claims that. That's not what she claims. So, there're four different ways to interpret this argument. And in order to figure out how to interpret it we have to figure out, which of those is most likely as an interpretation of what the arguer is trying to say. And that's going to depend on which one makes the argument look the best. Now in this example, it's not clear which interpretation is the best because someone might give that argument in a context where they're saying the mistake is to think she claims that, but in other cases they might be saying that the mistake is to think that the enemy knows our plan. They don't really know our plan. And in other cases, they might be claiming that other things, you're mistaken. So, we need to figure out what the person is saying, but that could depend on the particular context and might vary from context to context. Now, these unclarities seem unintentional. But sometimes people use unclarity. To hide problems with their argument. To try to fool you. So imagine a politician says, we need to stop our enemies and stand by our friends. So we must remain strong and resolute. Well, if somebody starts arguing like that you ought to be asking yourself. Who do they think our friends are? Who do they think our enemies are? What do they mean, stop our enemies? Are they calling for military action? How do they think we ought to stop our enemies? And standing by our friends, does that mean we ought to support them no matter what they do? There're lots of questions that you would want to ask to clarify exactly which claim is being made before you accept something like this. Heres another claim that might be made by an opponent of a first politician. "We have to help the needy," wait a minute. Which people are needy? I mean everybody needs something. How needy do you have to be to be needy? And, we ought to help the needy? Well, how are we going to help them? Does that mean we just give them whatever they want? Or, what are we supposed to give them, and when are we supposed to give them, and how much are we willing to spend on giving it to them? Politicians on both sides of the political spectrum make vague claims that need to be clarified. Before you should be willing to endorse one or the other of those claims. If you try to decide, what to believe before you know exactly what the claim means, before you've clarified it, you could end up committing yourself to all kinds of nonsense and all kinds of very problematic positions. You could get yourself into a lot of trouble. That's why we need to clarify the terms in arguments. Now, one special way in which premises need to be clarified, is that they need to be broken up into smaller parts, where you can do that. And the point of this is that the smaller parts are going to be easier to understand, and easier to access whether they are true or not. So step 4, clarify the premises, belongs together with step 5, break up the premises into parts. What needs to be broken up? Well, the explicit premises and sometimes the conclusion, as well. Here's a simple example. That shirt looks great on you and it's on sale. So you ought to buy it. We might put that in standard form like this. That shirt looks great on you and, it's on sale, is the premise. And the conclusion is, you ought to buy it. But notice, that the premise has two parts, joined by an and. So, we could break them up. And have the first premise, that shirt looks great on you, and the second premise, it's on sale. And then the conclusion is, you ought to buy it. Breaking it up like that is supposed to make it easier to asses the premise for truth or falsehood. Now in this case it doesn't make it much easier, because it was so simple to begin with, but we'll see that breaking up premises will really help when we get to more complex examples. So, it makes sense to break up premises. Well, at least sometimes. We should not break up premises when breaking them up distorts the argument. Here's an example of that. We still need to add either one more cup of white sugar or one more cup of brown sugar to complete the recipe, so we've gotta add another cup of ingredients. Then one way to represent that argument would be to say that premises, we still need to add either one more cup of white sugar or one more cup of brown sugar and the conclusion is, we have another cup of ingredients to add. But we could break it up because it's got parts. We could change the argument into, we still need to add one more cup of white sugar. That's the first premise. And the second premise is, we still need to add one more cup of brown sugar and then the conclusion is, we have one more cup of ingredients to add, but that argument doesn't make any sense. If we've got to add one of white and one of brown, we don't just have one more cup of ingredients to add. And as always, we're supposed to be making the argument look good. And that change made it look bad. And the problem is that here, we broke up the word or. Because it's one cup of white or one cup of brown. And presumably you didn't know which it was or maybe you had a choice between the two. But you weren't suppose to both. That would be too much. And the word or signals that. So, in general, you should not break up, when the word that joins the two is or, but it's okay to break up when the word that joins the two is and. You still gotta be careful about context, it's not always going to work that way, but as a general rule. You know, that usually works. Other cases are even trickier. One particularly problematic case is dependent clauses. Here's an example. Nancy finished all her homework because all she had to do was write 25 lines of poetry, and she wrote two sonnets which have 14 lines each. The dependent clause is, which have 14 lines each. And the question is, how do we fit that into standard form? Well, here's one stab. The first premise can say, all she had to do is write 25 lines of poetry. And the second premise can be, she wrote two sonnets which have 14 lines each. And then the conclusion is, Nancy finished all her homework. Now the question is, can we break up that second premise into two different parts, and it seems like we can. We should be able to represent the argument so the first premise is, all she had to do was write 25 lines of poetry and the second premise says she wrote two sonnets, and the third premise says sonnets have 14 lines each, and the conclusion is, she finished all her homework. In this case, breaking down the premise actually helps us understand and assess it. Because we can decide whether it's really true, for example, that sonnets have 14 lines each. That's going to be a question. If the answer is no, then the argument might fail. If the answer is yes, at least for standard sonnets, so the argument looks pretty good. Contrast that example with this one. Our legal system isn't fair, because authorities go easy on white collar criminals who have been allowed to get away with their crimes in recent years. Well the premise could be authorities go easy on criminals who have been allowed to get away with their crimes in recent years, and the conclusion is our legal system isn't fair. Now the question is can we break up that first premise. because it has that deep ended clause who have been allowed to get away with their crimes in recent years. Well, that depends. Because the person giving the argument might be saying that authorities go easy on all white collar criminals. And they might be saying, that authorities only go easy on a certain subset of white-collar criminals. Namely, the subset that have been allowed to get away with their crimes in recent years. If the premise is about all white-collar criminals, then we can break it up. So that one premise says, authorities go easy on white-collar criminals. And the next premise says, white-collar criminals have been allowed to get away with their crimes in recent years. But if the arguer is only talking about some white-collar criminals. And admits that other white-collar criminals have not been allowed to get away with their crime. He's only saying that. Authorities go easy on those white-collar criminals who have been allowed to get away with their crime. That subset of white-collar criminals and then it would distort the argument to break it up, because if you do break it up, then that second premise says white-collar criminals have been allowed to get away with their crimes in recent years. And if some of 'em haven't, then that premise turns out to be false. So if you break it up, you can criticize it by pointing out that it doesn't really apply to all white-collar criminals. But if you leave it as a single premise, then it's not subject to that criticism. So, if you want to be charitable. You probably ought to keep this premise together, unless you know on independent grounds, that the person was making that claim about all white-collar criminals, and not just a subset. So, to make that argument look better, we don't break up the premise. And the general lesson is that with dependent clauses like that, and which, and who. You have to look very carefully to figure out what the speaker wanted to say and what's going to make their argument look best and use that information to determine whether or not to break up the premise. There are no airtight rules as always, so we needed a few exercises to practice this skill.
