Enthymemes

Another difficulty in identifying arguments lies in the fact that they are very commonly presented with one of their premises or their conclusion left unstated. Such arguments are called enthymemes.

No material being can be self-active, and I perceive that I am so [i.e., self-active].

Here Rousseau is inviting us to infer from these two statements a conclusion that he regards as too obvious to need stating. You should be able to work out what it is. Any such statement that the Principle of Charity would dictate as being understood in the context to be the unstated conclusion of an inference or argument is called an implicit conclusion of that reasoning. Similarly, people often leave out premises that again would be understood to be assumed in the context, implicit premises. Natural reasoning often involves both. Consider, for instance, this passage from Monty Python’s “Argument Sketch”:

Mr. B: Well, you didn’t pay.

Cust: Aha! If I didn’t pay, why are you arguing? I’ve got you!

Mr. B: No, you haven’t.

Cust: Yes, I have. If you’re arguing, I must have paid!

Here our long-suffering customer seems to be arguing that he must have paid. He does not state this conclusion explicitly, since this is precisely what they are arguing about: it is understood, or implicit. Instead he adduces one premise only: “If you are arguing, I must have paid.” But it seems that something else is needed in order for the argument to have force (can you see what?).

This will be clearer if we lay out the argument with the convention that premises are stated on separate lines, and the conclusion below a solid line, preceded by the three-dot symbol :. for therefore:

If you’re arguing, I must have paid.

:. I must have paid, [implicit]

What is missing is the premise “You are arguing.” But it is clear from the context that, even by his own devious criteria, Mr.

If you’re arguing, then I must have paid.

You are arguing, [implicit] :. I must have paid, [implicit] Again, as always, we shall have to exercise some judgement in determining whether an argument is being offered in cases like these.

SUMMARY ________________________________________________________________

• An argument occurs wherever someone is trying to convince someone of some­thing (the conclusion) by giving grounds or reasons for it. The statements giving these purported grounds or reasons are called the premises.

• Whenever a conclusion is drawn from some premises, we say that an inference has occurred.

• Certain key words often indicate that an inference has been made or is being invited: words such as since, because, and for are premise indicators; words such as therefore, hence, so, and consequently indicate that a conclusion is about to appear. All such words indicating an inference is being made are called inference indicators.

• An explanation is an account intended to show how it came to be that a fact or event is the way it is. Many philosophers claim that not all explanations are argu­ments. But here we are concerned with explanations only insofar as they can be construed as arguments.

• Principle of Charity: If you can construe a given passage as containing an argu­ment, make it the strongest argument compatible with the available evidence, i.e., that argument you believe the author would be most likely to accept as capturing his or her intentions.

• An enthymeme is an argument in which one or more premises or the conclusion (or both) is left unstated. These are called implicit premises or conclusions.

EXERCISES 1.2

7. Each of the following passages contains an argument. In each case, identify any infer­ence indicators, as well as the main conclusion of the argument, restating it as a statement if necessary:

(a) Logic is a matter of profound human importance precisely because it is empirically founded and experimentally applied.—John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy

(b) Time heals all wounds.

(c) These gentlemen maintain... that space is a real absolute being. But this involves them in some difficulties; for such a being must be eternal and infinite. Hence some have believed it to be God himself, or one of his attributes, his immensity. But since space consists of parts, it is not a thing which can belong to God.— Gottfried Leibniz, Third Letter to Clarke, §3

(d) Infinite space is immensity; but immensity is not God; and therefore infinite space is not God.—Samuel Clarke, Third Reply to Leibniz, §3

(e) Neither a borrower nor a lender be;

For loan oft loses both itself and friend,

And borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry.—Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act 1, Scene 3

8. Identify which of the following passages contains an argument. For those that do, identify the conclusion.

(a) Tapestries are made by many artisans working together. The contributions of separate workers cannot be discerned in the completed work, and the loose and false threads have been covered over. So it is in our picture of particle physics.— Sheldon Glashow, 1979 Nobel Lecture “Towards a Unified Theory”

(b) For once it was not raining and the sun that came was bright and mildly warm. The air was humid. There were plenty of puddles and mud all along the untarred bits of the road. Since it was the season of heavy rainfall, the tarred roads had developed gaping holes in many places.—Buchi Emecheta, Double Yoke, p. 43

(c) It’s a beautiful thing, the destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn’t only the synonyms, there are also the antonyms. After all, what jus­tification is there for a word which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take ‘good,’ for instance. If you have a word like ‘good,’ what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘Ungood’ will do just as well...—George Orwell, 1984, p.

(d) If there were any community which rejected the doctrines of modem physics, phys­icists employed by a hostile government would have no difficulty in exterminating it. The modem physicist, therefore, enjoys powers far exceeding those of the Inqui­sition in its palmiest days, and it certainly behooves us to treat his pronouncements with due awe.—Bertrand Russell, My Philosophical Development, p. 13

(e) There is no portion of matter that is not actually divided into further parts, so that there is no body so small that there is not a world of infinitary creatures in it.— Gottfried Leibniz, Pacidius to Philalethes, 1676

(f) Since time is number, the now and before and so on are in time in the same way that a unit and odd and even are in number: the latter are aspects of number, while the former are aspects of time.—Aristotle, Physics, 221al3

(g) The prohibition [of suicide] is ridiculous; for what penalty can frighten a person who is not afraid of death itself?—Arthur Schopenhauer, “On Suicide,” 1851

(h) According to the dogmatic decrees of the Council of Trent, at the consecration in the Mass the substance of the bread and wine are changed into the Body and Blood of Christ, while the accidents of the bread and wine remain. But if, as Des­cartes held, extension is identical with corporeal substance, and if qualities are subjective, it seems to follow that there are no real accidents which remain after the conversion of the substance.—Frederick Copleston, SJ., A History of Philos­ophy, vol. IV, p. 126

(i) “This has occurred once, and will occur again,” said Euphorbus. “It is not one pyre you are lighting, it is a labyrinth of fire. If all the fires on which I have been burned were brought together here, the earth would be too small for them, and the angels would be blinded.”—Jorge Luis Borges, “The Theologians,” The Aleph, p. 203

Example:

(i) Euphorbus declares all these things to be so, but he gives no reasons. There is no argument for his having been burnt at the stake many times.

9. The following passages contain arguments in which the conclusion is left unstated. Identify the missing conclusion:

(a)... the law does not expressly permit suicide, and what it does not expressly per­mit, it forbids.—Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics

(b) Venantius... said that Aristotle had dedicated the second book of the Poetics to laughter, and that if a philosopher of such greatness had devoted a whole book to laughter, then laughter must be important.—Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose, p. 126

(c) Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.—George Orwell, 1984

(d) If there were no empty space, everything would be one solid mass.—Lucretius, On the Nature of Things

(e) If—as I believe I have shown—quantitative data are as subject to cultural con­straint as any other aspect of science, then they have no special claim upon final truth.—Stephen Jay Gould, Mismeasure of Man, p. 59

10. The following passages contain arguments in which one or more of the premises is left unstated. Identify the missing premises:

(a) Man tends to increase at a greater rate than his means of subsistence; consequently he is occasionally subject to a severe struggle for existence.—Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man

(b) I am an idealist, since I believe that all that exists is spiritual.—J. McT. E. McTag- gart, Philosophical Studies

(c) No enthymemes are complete, so this argument is incomplete.—Copi and Cohen, Introduction to Logic

(d) Epicurus maintained that no man had ever seen reason but in a human figure; therefore, the gods must have a human figure.—David Hume, Dialogues Con­cerning Natural Religion

11. The following arguments are enthymemes. In each case, identify the premise or con­clusion that has been left unstated:

(a) When Blair can say, as he did the moment the Chilcot report was published, that it should “lay to rest allegations... of bad faith, lies and deceit”..., then you can be sure that his successors will have no hesitation in swindling the public again and again.—Robert Fisk, The Independent, July 6, 2016

(b) Now I know, as the doctor says, that love can harm the lover when it is excessive.

(c) It is probably true that the least destructive nuclear weapons are the most danger­ous, because they make it easier for a nuclear war to begin.—Freeman Dyson, “Weapons and Hope,” The New Yorker, February 1984

(d) If humanism were right in declaring that man is bom to be happy, he would not be bom to die. Since his body is doomed to die, his task on earth must evidently be of a more spiritual nature.—Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Calgary Herald, July 6, 1978

(e) Dictionaries cannot settle all questions about how words are to be used, nor are they intended to. If they were, then such heated debates as the current one about abortion could be settled by looking up definitions for ‘human being’ or ‘per­son.’—Joan Hoaglund, Critical Thinking

(f) A child who has received no religious instruction and has never heard about God is not an atheist—for he is not denying any theistic claims.—Ernest Nagel, “A Defence of Atheism”

1.3