Another type of pseudo-argument can be found in the following examples:
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9. You must do your duty to God, your Creator.
10. We must stop the government from interfering with people’s private property.
11. People must make sure that international corporations don’t get too much power.
None of these are really arguments, either — in fact, they aren’t even propositions. A proposition is something which can be either true or false, and an argument is something offered to establish the truth value of the proposition. But the statements above are not like that. They are commands, and cannot be true or false — they can only be wise or unwise, justified or unjustified.
Similar to commands are warnings and suggestions, which are also not arguments:
- 13. You should take foreign language classes while at college.
Something that is sometimes confused with an argument is an explanation. Contrast the following two statements:
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14. I am a Democrat, so I voted for the Democratic candidate.
15. She didn’t vote in the Republican primary, so she must be a Democrat.
In the first statement, no argument is being offered. It is an explanation of an already-accepted truth, that the speaker voted for the Democratic candidate. Statement #13, however, is a bit different — here, we are being asked to infer something (“she must be a Democrat”) from a premise (“She didn’t vote...”). Thus, it is an argument.
Statements of belief and opinion are also often presented as if they were an argument. For example:
- 16. I think that abortion is a horrendous procedure. It violently kills a young, innocent human life and the extent of abortions in this country constitutes a new holocaust.
There is really no argument here — what we have are emotive statements rather than cognitive statements. No effort is made to establish the truth of what is said nor are they being used the establish the truth of something else. They are expressions of personal feelings. There is nothign wrong with emotive statements, of course — the point is that we must understand when we are looking at emotive statements and that they are not genuine arguments.
Of course, it will be common to find arguments which have both emotive and cognitive statements. Often, the statements in #16 might be combined with other statements which would constitute an actual argument, explaining why abortion is wrong or why it should be illegal. It is important to recognize this and learn how to disengage the emotional and value claims from the logical structure of an argument.
It is easy to be distracted by language and miss what is really going on, but with practice you can avoid that. This is especially important not just when it comes to religion and politics, but especially in advertising. The entire marketing industry is dedicated to using language and symbols for the purpose of creating particular emotional and psychological responses in you, the customer.
They would rather you just spend your money than think too much about the product, and they design their advertising based on that premise. But when you learn how to set aside your emotional responses to certain words and images and get right at the logical — or illogical - heart of what is being claimed, you’ll be a much better informed and prepared consumer.
