Week 4 Discussion #1

Exercise on the structure of arguments #2:
1) I’m on my way to school. 2) I left five minutes late. 3) Traffic is heavy. 4) Therefore, I’ll be late for class. 5) So I might as well stop and get breakfast.

Argument: Yes.
Conclusion: I’ll be late for class, so I’ll stop and get breakfast.
Additional premises needed: I left for school five minutes late and traffic would make me even later. I’m going to miss most of my first class, so I might as well get breakfast to help energize me for the rest of my classes.
Identify any subargument: 1-3 support 4. 4 supports 5.
Good argument: This is not a good argument because the premises are vague. If the statement included how bad traffic was, how late the person would be to class, and how breakfast can benefit the rest of the day, then this argument can be stronger. Furthermore, this argument would be bad if the person would be late only five minutes because the person would most likely be able to catch up during class since five minutes is not that long of a time.

This exercise was particularly useful to me because I always make this argument. The way I look at it is: if I’m going to be late, then I’d rather be really late instead of sort of late. Obviously, this is not a good argument because being late is not the only factor in this argument, but rather other components such as the content of the class that I will miss. This exercise has shown me the importance of being specific and adding strong premises to strengthen my conclusion and argument overall.