Critical Thinking A Concise Guide

4th edition

Chapter 5

Quiz

5.1 Multiple choice questions
Identify the irrelevant premise.
5.2 Multiple choice questions
Identify the correct connecting premise.
5.3 Multiple choice questions
Identify the best covering generalisation.

Reconstruction Exercises

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Reconstruct each of the following arguments. Be sure to leave out irrelevant material, rephrase when necessary and add connecting premises if needed.

  1. In my opinion cyclists shouldn’t be on the road. It is simply too dangerous for them.
  2. The Copenhagen zoo has demonstrated an utter disrespect for the animals it keeps. Their actions in killing a giraffe are a disgrace: the job of a zoo ought to be to protect and preserve animal life, not to aid in its demise.
  3. It’s not necessary for human health for people to eat meat. So, we shouldn’t do it.
  4. There is simply nothing good on TV anymore! It’s just cooking shows and other reality rubbish. I’m even considering getting cable.
  5. There are three main reasons why people should take public transport: it’s better for the environment, it relieves congestion, and the more people that do it the more cost effective it becomes.
  6. It seems extraordinary to me that this sort of argument even needs to be made. Marriage is clearly, by definition, a union which can only take place between a man and a woman. Other people can form alliances or partnerships if they wish. But they shouldn’t call them ‘marriages’.
  7. The government recently lowered the limit for recreational snapper fishing. It seems absurd that they have done so. It is clearly not recreational fishers who are causing overfishing, but commercial operators. If the government wishes to address overfishing, it needs to throw its net wider.
  8. There’s no point in making drugs like marijuana illegal. People can invent all sorts of chemical concoctions in order to get a high, and you can’t make all of them illegal. There are simply too many variations. Lots of these concoctions are more dangerous than marijuana. We’d be better off with legal pot.
  9. When a disaster strikes, government agencies have an obligation to keep people properly informed, particularly the close family members of those who are hurt and missing. It is unacceptable to fail to properly inform people of developments in the story. People should never have to rely on the media for information.
  10. Many people think it is acceptable to smack children. All the arguments that can be given to defend this were once considered acceptable arguments in support of husbands hitting their wives. We can now see that it was never acceptable for men to assault their wives. So it is also clear that hitting children is wrong. It needs to be illegal to assault children.
  11. ‘President’ Barack Hussein Obama is a liar and a fraud. He promised change, but all we get is the same old corruption. How could anyone have voted for this Kenyan tax-raising terrorist sympathiser? If you promise change, then you should deliver on that promise. I mean, look at Pol Pot. Now there’s someone who promised ‘change you could believe in’ and actually delivered on his promises. Obama won’t even deliver on his promises, so he’s clearly a worse politician than Pol Pot.
  12. Grand Theft Auto is a disgusting game that promotes violence, vulgarity and disrespect for the authorities. Studies have shown that people who play Grand Theft Auto for more than three hours a week are 50 per cent more likely than the average Joe or Jane to commit a major felony, and that Grand Theft Auto is probably responsible. Just this last week three people in my neighbourhood were carjacked, and there was a twelve-year-old kid on Oprah last week who has been sentenced to 756 years in prison for a murderous rampage that he blames on playing Grand Theft Auto. This must be stopped. These kids have no respect anymore.

Reconstruction Weblinks

Further reconstruction practice

Good sources for argument reconstruction include letters to the editor, and opinion columns in newspapers and magazines. Here are some suggestions for newspaper columns, one about posting photographs online and voyeurism, the other about the effect of the internet on participation in religion in the US.

Below are some suggestions for video clips that can be reconstructed. Some of these are quite short; some are longer and include several arguments.

For an example of how to reconstruct a video clip, see the example of reconstruction and commentary in the Chapter 6 material.

On God and science:

On cycling:

And some replies to the above link:

On vegetarianism:

On gay marriage:

An interesting exercise would be to reconstruct the first two of these, and compare the conclusions offered.