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The Making of Arguments. J. H. Gardiner
Читать онлайн.Название The Making of Arguments
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isbn 4057664098177
Автор произведения J. H. Gardiner
Жанр Языкознание
Издательство Bookwire
31. This city should elect its municipal officers by preferential voting.
32. This city should establish playgrounds in the crowded parts of the city, notably in Wards—— and——.
33. Boys should be allowed to play ball in unfrequented streets.
34. This city should set apart—— mills on the tax rate each year for building permanent roads.
35. The laws and regulations governing the inspection and the sale of milk should be made more stringent.
36. This city should buy and run the waterworks.
37. This city should build future extensions of the street railway system and lease them to the highest bidder.
38. This city should buy and operate the street railway system.
38. The street railway company in this city should be required to pave and care for all the streets through which it runs.
40. A committee of business men should be appointed by the mayor to conduct negotiations for bringing new industries to the city.
41. This city should establish municipal gymnasiums.
42. This city would be benefited by the consolidation of the two street railway systems.
43. This state should adopt a ballot law similar to that of Massachusetts.
44. This state should adopt the "short ballot."
45. This state should tax forest lands according to the product rather than the assessed value of the land.
46. The present rules of football are satisfactory.
47. This college should make "soccer" football one of its major sports.
48. Unnecessary talking by the players should be forbidden in games of baseball.
49. Coaching from the side lines should be forbidden in baseball.
50. "Summer baseball" should be regarded as a breach of amateur standing.
51. An intercollegiate committee of graduates should be formed with power to absolve college athletes from technical and minor breaches of the amateur rules.
52. This college should make an effort to return to amateur coaching by proposing agreements to that effect with its principal rivals.
53. This university should not allow students with degrees from other institutions to play on its athletic teams.
54. The managers of the principal athletic teams in this college should be elected by the students at large.
55. The expenses of athletic teams at this college should be considerably reduced.
7. The Two Kinds of Arguments. With the subject you are going to argue on chosen, it will be wise to come to closer quarters with the process of arguing. A large part of the good results you will get from practice in writing arguments will be the strengthening of your powers of exact and keen thought; I shall therefore in the following sections try to go somewhat below the surface of the process, and see just what any given kind of argument aims to do, and how it accomplishes its aim by its appeal to special faculties and interests of the mind. I shall also consider briefly the larger bearings of a few of the commoner and more important types of argument, as the ordinary citizen meets them in daily life.
We may divide arguments roughly into two classes, according as the proposition they maintain takes the form, "This is true," or the form, "This ought to be done." The former we will call, for the sake of brevity, arguments of fact, the latter arguments of policy. Of the two classes the former is addressed principally to the reason, the faculty by which we arrange the facts of the universe (whether small or great) as they come to us, and so make them intelligible. You believe that the man who brought back your dog for a reward stole the dog, because that view fits best with the facts you know about him and the disappearance of the dog; we accept the theory of evolution because, as Huxley points out at the beginning of his essay (see pp. 233, 235), it provides a place for all the facts that have been collected about the world of plants and animals and makes of them all a consistent and harmonious system. In Chapter III we shall come to a further consideration of the workings of this faculty so far as it affects the making of arguments.
Arguments of policy, on the other hand, which argue what ought to be done, make their appeal in the main to the moral, practical, Or aesthetic interests of the audience. These interests have their ultimate roots in the deep-seated mass of inherited temperamental motives and forces which may be summed up here in the conveniently vague term "feeling." These motives and forces, it will be noticed, lie outside the field of reason, and are in the main recalcitrant to it. When you argue that it is "right" that rich men should endow the schools and colleges of this country, you would find it impossible to explain in detail just what you mean by "right"; your belief rises from feelings, partly inherited, partly drawn in with the air of the country, which make you positive of your assertion even when you can least give reasons for it. So our practical interests turn in the end on what we want and do not want, and are therefore molded by our temperament and tastes, which are obviously matters of feeling. Our aesthetic interests, which include our preferences in all the fields of art and literature and things beautiful or ugly in daily life, even more obviously go back to feeling. Now in practical life our will to do anything is latent until some part of this great body of feeling is stirred; therefore arguments of policy, which aim to show that something ought to be done, cannot neglect feeling. You may convince me never so thoroughly that I ought to vote the Republican or the Democratic ticket, yet I shall sit still on election day if you do not touch my feelings of moral right or practical expediency. The moving cause of action is feeling, though the feeling is often modified, or even transformed, by reasoning. We shall come back to the nature of feeling in Chapter V, when we get to the subject of persuasion.
An important practical difference between arguments of fact and arguments of policy lies in the different form and degree of certitude to which they lead. At the end of arguments of fact it is possible to say, if enough evidence can be had, "This is undeniably true." In these arguments we can use the word "proof" in its strict sense. In arguments of policy on the other hand, where the question is worth arguing, we know in many cases that in the end there will be men who are as wise and as upright as ourselves who will continue to disagree. In such cases it is obvious that we can use the word "proof" only loosely; and we speak of right or of expediency rather than of truth. This distinction is worth bearing in mind, for it leads to soberness and a seemly modesty in controversy. It is only in barber-shop politics and sophomore debating clubs that a decision of a question of policy takes its place among the eternal verities.
With these distinctions made, let us now consider a few of the chief varieties of these two classes of arguments, dealing only with those which every one of us comes to know in the practical affairs of life. It will be obvious that the divisions between these are not fixed, and that they are far from exhausting the full number of varieties.
8. Arguments of Fact. Among the commonest and most important varieties of arguments of fact are those made before juries in courts of law. It is a fundamental principle of the common law under which we live that questions of fact shall be decided by twelve men chosen by lot from the community, and that questions of the law that shall be applied to these facts shall be decided by the judges. Accordingly in criminal trials the facts concerning the crime and the actions and whereabouts of the accused are subjects of argument by the counsel. If the prisoner is attempting to establish an alibi, and the evidence is meager or conflicting, his counsel and the prosecuting officer must each make arguments before the jury on the real meaning of the evidence. In civil cases likewise, all disputed questions of fact go ordinarily to a jury, and are the subject of arguments by the opposing lawyers. Did the defendant guarantee the goods he sold the plaintiff? Was undue influence exerted on the testator? Did the accident happen through the negligence of the railroad officials? In such cases and the countless others that congest the lists of the lower courts arguments of fact must be made.
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