PHIL 101 Home Page | Lectures | Standard Argument Form

Steps for reconstructing an argument:

1. Read the selection carefully -- and multiple times. No philosopher reads something once and expects to have understood the argument thoroughly or accurately.

2. Take notes as you read. If you can, make a photocopy of the text -- several of them if possible. Use these "clean" copies to mark up. In your notes jot down important statements that may be used later to reconstruct the author's argument. Mark carefully exactly where you found these gems! You're going to have to justify your including them in the argument reconstruction. These are the citations that must accompany your reconstruction. For Plato we'll use Stephanus page numbers. For everybody else we'll just use the page number or perhaps the paragraph number. The important thing is that you must be able to indicate where you found the statement.

3. After you've read the selection a few time, try to identify the conclusion. Authors are crafty! The conculsion may be in the very first sentence or it could be hidden somewhere in the middle. You might have several candidates for the conclusion. If so, be prepared to reconsider whether there might not be several arguments going on and that each of your contenders is a sub-conclusion of some kind. Strive to find the absolute, rock bottom, ultimate, final conclusion. You will be reconstructing your entire argument to that conclusion, not to the other, sub-conclusions.

4. Look at all the important statements you've gathered from the text. Put these into your own words. Aim for using as few words as possible to restate the position found in the text. Don't just quote the passages. Do not write an "argumentative essay". Your final product will look much more like a shopping list than an essay.

5. Order your statements 1, 2, 3, 4, and so forth. The statements do not necessarily have to be in the order they originally appeared in the text. Remember: the conclusion might have been the very first sentence. Your aim is to make a valid argument if at all possible. Don't worry if it is sound or unsound. Your responsibility is to convey to other philosophers the reasoning the person used in offering the argument in the first place.

6. Read your rough draft of the argument looking especially hard for any "gaps" or "holes". Are there any hidden, implicit assumptions you need to supply? Mostly likely you will. Mark these with an [A]. NO! Do not abbreviate with [Ass]! You'll have to use your own judgment here. The assumptions may be very "obvious". If you were a lawyer trying to convict someone of smothering another person you might have all your "facts" out before the jury, but you may acutally have to make explicit an implicit assumption: "Humans need air to live". "Scooter deliberately deprived Jessica of air when he put the pillow over her face and kept her from breathing air. Therefore, Scooter caused Jessica to die. You must convict Scooter of murder." It's not enough for the lawyer to say, "Scooter put the pillow over Jessica's mouth. Therefore, you must convict Scooter of murder." It's a crucial fact that humans need air to live. To be sure, it is the only fact that makes what Scooter did a crime. Just engaging in pillow fighting does not justify a murder conviction. The jury (and your readers) must have more information.

(Yes. Being a philosopher is a lot like being a lawyer. In fact, a BA in Philosophy, or even a minor in Philosophy is one of the very best things to have in order to get into law school.)

7. Read through the rough draft again. This time make sure your premises actually lead to each sub-conclusion and ultimately to the main conclusion. You might want to use 3x5 cards or your word processor so that you can easily move statements around and edit them in order to produce a compelling argument.

8. Each statement must have a citation indicating where you found the statement. It doesn't matter if you repeat a page over and over and over. This is very important since you probably have rephrased things and changed the words, right? The reader will already have to do some work in re-translating or de-translating your words back into the orginal words of the document.

9. Mark every inference. Think back to the Welfare Queen argument. We know that statement 3, the conclusion, "came from" premises 1 and 2. Similarly, you must indicate for your reader exactly how the argument's premises lead to other statements which in turn become sub-conclusions. You might find that your inference uses many premises. They be right "next to each other" or they might be scattered all over the place. In other words, a particular inference might be drawn on the basis of premises 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 12, and 15. So after the sub-conclusion statement, say, statement 18, you'd write [sub-conclusion, 1-3, 7-8, 12, 15]. That tells the reader that you arrived at statement 18 on the basis of premises 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 12, and 15.

10. If you have the luxury of having a relative, a significant other, or a roommate or even a MUNI bus driver (only when the bus is not moving!) nearby, have that person read your argument. Determine whether the person "gets it". If they're lost -- and I don't mean the MUNI driver! -- then you may have to add an implicit assumption here or there in order to make the argument work. (Think of Project Runway. Make it work!) It you've done your job well, the reader should have all the necessary information in order to "accept" the conclusion or at least "get it"! If you don't have anyone to help you then you'll have to do this "rethinking" work yourself. This isn't a bad thing. Philosophers have to do it anyway so you might as well get used to it. Practice reading the argument reconstruction as though you're coming to the argument fresh with no prior experience with the text.

11. Make your final draft of the argument. Make sure every statement is numbered and has a citation. Make sure every inference is indicated. And, of course, make sure the main conclusion is marked.

12. Here's an example of a fairly complicated argument. Your arguments don't have to be this long. It's not about how many statements you make; it's about how well you convey the argument. If you can do it well in two statements, sweet. If it takes twenty, that's cool, too. Your arguments won't have the sub-letters (a, b, c,) or sub-numbers (i, ii, iii). But this argument analysis should give you an idea of what the document should look like.

*13. I suppose the last thing is that everyone's argument reconstruction will be different. Basically, there never is only one way to reconstruct an argument. There are better ways and more elegant ways. So don't worry if other people's reconstructions look and read very different from yours.