There was almost no mention of domestic policy in the 5th Republican debate. Instead, the focus was on national security. I predicted that candidates would argue about who had the best plan to defeat terrorism and who would be the toughest. After watching the debate, three aspects stood out for me: Revealing moments, language choices [...]
Remember that one of Aristotle’s “available means of persuasion was logic, or what I refer to as “argument” in blog postings. To better understand how to judge the strength of an argument, it helps to have some tools at hand, so in this post I look at the structure and constituent parts. To effectively analyze [...]
I once had a colleague, who when she heard something she found difficult to believe, would exclaim: “Oh, tell the truth!” How I now wish she was asking the candidates questions, trying to weed through their fallacies. A fallacy is a mistake or deliberate misuse of one of the parts of argument. Fallacies often seem persuasive [...]
The post on the DNA of Argument introduced the role reasoning played in argument. I wrote that reasoning connected the evidence someone presents to the assertion someone makes. You could also think of reasoning as a bridge or a link. In this post, we take a closer look at some different types of reasoning and [...]
I begin with a caveat: If you ever read a book on argumentation or take a course in argument, you’ll likely see more distinctions among the different types of evidence than what I’m about to present. I’ve condensed the many different types into three general categories: 1) examples 2) statistics and 3) expertise. I chose [...]
So far, the primary debates have contained lots of assertions, but very little argument Most have conveyed little evidence, confused the nature of facts and conflated the different types of assertions. Before we delve any deeper into the rhetorical toolbox and look at the role assertions play in a logical argument, let me offer three general [...]