Tuesday, September 27, 2011

argument repair.

"AJ writes scripts for television shows. So AJ must be good at writing."

You can already tell by just reading this argument that it’s weak. You can try adding an additional premise stating, “He graduated with a degree in Media” to repair the argument, but that wouldn’t really make any difference. He may have graduated from it, but that doesn’t really “glue” the premise to the conclusion. Also, you can’t really believe in the conclusion. It’s pretty dubious. Is he good at casual writing? How about formal writing? There are a lot of different possibilities for this particular statement. Not only that, but the premise is also very ambiguous. How do we know if the television show he’s writing for is actually doing well, screenplay-wise?

Although, you can make this a valid argument by adding, “Currently, he writes for the television show Modern Family.” This way, the premise and the conclusion are glued, which can make the argument good.

Overall, I think this is a pretty weak argument.

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