GIS 3260: Methods of Thought
and Critical Thinking
Week 3
(Adapted from Gerald M. Nosich, Reasons and Arguments (Wadsworth,
1982).)
In evaluating arguments, you may sometimes know the meanings of all the words in a sentence, and yet the meaning of the whole statement will still be unclear to you. If this is the case, you need to try paraphrasing the sentences. When you paraphrase a statement, you restate it carefully and accurately using different words. Both the paraphrase itself and the activity of thinking up the paraphrase helps make you better able to figure out whether the sentence is true and the pattern of the argument is a good one.
Some arguments may contain general belief statements, such as slogans and clichés, that need clarification. For example, what exactly is meant by the expressions, “Life is what you make it,” or “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.” If these are included as premises in an argument, you might need to determine just what meaning they hold in the argument’s structure before you can evaluate the strength of the argument.
Another problem connected with clarifying the meaning of a statement involves ambiguity, that is, containing words whose meaning may vary depending on context. A term is ambiguous if it is capable of being understood in more than one sense. For example, the term poet can mean (1) “one who writes verse,” or be used more specifically to denote (2) “one who writes good poems.” When you encounter ambiguous or vague terms, the only general solution is to paraphrase the sentence, rewriting it using different words and paying close attention to meaning.
Paraphrasing requires sensitivity to what could reasonably be meant by a statement or phrase. It requires thinking critically about how to interpret a statement, limiting the meaning to a certain range of possibilities. Most statements, for instance, assert that something is true if that state of affairs exists; it will be false if another, different state of affairs exists. In such a case, a correct paraphrase would clearly indicate that certain specifiable events would make the statement true and certain specifiable events would make it false. The goal in writing out a paraphrase is always to try to make the statement more clear with respect to truth and falsity.
In general, we always unconsciously interpret every sentence we are able to understand. Paraphrasing is doing the same kind of task, only doing so in a more conscious and precise way. In a paraphrase you actually write out what you interpret the sentence to mean. In addition, when you paraphrase something, you must steer a middle course between extremes. That is, you have to avoid paraphrasing statements so strictly and narrowly that almost any state of affairs will make them false, or, alternatively, true. If the weatherman says, “It will be in the middle 90s tomorrow,” you know what this statement means and implies. You interpret the words, “the middle 90s” to mean temperatures roughly between 93° and 97° F (not necessarily 95°); you interpret “tomorrow” to mean not one minute after midnight, but some hours during the afternoon. Such an interpretation steers a middle course; it is neither too loose nor too narrow. Under certain weather conditions the sentence will be clearly true; under certain other weather conditions the statement will be clearly false; under still others, it will neither be clearly true nor clearly false (since “the middle 90s” is vague). In short, you need to guard against distorting the statement with a paraphrase that is either too loose or too narrow. You have to keep in mind what the speaker could have plausibly and reasonably meant by the statement in a given situation.
Although there is no way to guarantee that a paraphrase will be correct, there are ways to test it. The major test is to see whether the paraphrase and the original statement match. Because a paraphrase is supposed to state the meaning of a sentence, it should be applicable in all of the situations where the sentence itself would apply, and vice versa. Take the familiar statement: “The Surgeon General has determined that cigarette smoking is dangerous to your health.” Which of the following paraphrases best fits the intended meaning?
(1) Smoking cigarettes will invariably do physical damage to the smoker.
(2) Smoking cigarettes may do physical damage to the smoker.
(3) It is highly likely that a person who smokes cigarettes will be physically damaged by it.
Interpretation #1 is too strong, since not all people who smoke cigarettes will suffer averse health consequences; #2 is too weak, since lots of things other than smoking, such as crossing the street, may do physical damage to smokers. Interpretation #3, on the other hand, expresses the significant probability that smokers will suffer health problems as a result of their habit. One way to decide between two different paraphrases is to think up new situations and see whether if one applies, the other doesn’t. Whenever they both apply or neither applies–that is, whenever they match–it is further corroboration of the correctness of the paraphrase. But one clear case of failure to match will be very good evidence of the incorrectness of the interpretation.
Exercises: Evaluate each of the following paraphrases by taking each one in turn and judging whether it captures accurately the meaning of the original, and why or why not.
(1) An oil company ad: “Our business is people helping people.”
a. Our main concern is to assist people
b. The main concern of the stockholders and employees of this company is to help people.
c. Our company discovers, processes, and sells oil products for profit, and that helps people.
d. The people who work for the company are helping to better living conditions for the population.
e. Our business is people working together for their own benefit as well as the benefit of others.
(2) A person should always be given the benefit of the doubt.
a. You should always have trust in people.
b. If you are not sure whether a person is right or wring, you should assume he or she is right.
c. When you do not know for sure whether someone is telling the truth or lying, you should act on the supposition that it is the truth.
d. A person is innocent until proven guilty.
e. If there is any question about a person’s actions or character, you should never make a final judgment against that person.
(3) Lenin was a dirty communist.
a. Lenin was a communist who did not wash enough.
b. Lenin was a communist and being a communist is bad.
c. Lenin was a corrupt communist.
d. Lenin founded communism in Russia. Under communism all private property was seized and is now under state control. Russia is our archenemy; it threatens our way of life. Therefore, Lenin, who began communism in Russia, is a threatening figure to most people in the United States.
(4) If you believe something, it’s true for you.
a. If you think something is true, then it is.
b. If you think something is true, then you think it is true.
c. If you accept something as true, then as far as you are concerned, it is true.
(5) Morality is just a matter of opinion.
a. If someone believes something is right, then it is right.
b. Individuals have their own personal opinions about what is moral and what is not.
c. Right and wrong are determined only by the individual’s judgment.
d. If you believe in your own mind that your beliefs about morality are true, then they are true for you.