Argument Analysis

Number two on page 225 is an argument. It has premises that are plausible that support the claim that is also plausible. The claim and conclusion in this case is that the person will be late and might as well stop and get breakfast. Some additional premises that would help this argument are premises stating that this person is always late when they are five minutes late and there is heavy traffic. The subargument for this statement would be that sentence one, two, three support sentence four. Sentence four supports sentence five, the claim. This would be a good argument if there was a statement claiming that this person is always late for class when sentence one, two and three occurs. Other than that it would be considered a good argument, because if the premises were true the conclusion to this statement would be absolutely true also.

This exercise was useful to me, because it helped me break down an argument. Not only did I identify whether it was a good argument or not, I also was able to analyze the weaknesses to this argument. This was a short argument but gave me a lot of insight on how to solidify an argument.