IMPLICIT ARGUMENTS

Usually at least one of the above inference indicators will occur when an argument is being offered. But this will not always be so. Sometimes one can only determine the pres­ence of an argument from an examination of its content, or from the surrounding context.

Where everything is good, nothing can be unjust, justice being inseparable from goodness.^[4]

In this one sentence Rousseau is giving an argument. He is trying to convince us that “Where everything is good, nothing can be unjust.” In fact the sentence can be rephrased as two linked statements,

Where everything is good, nothing can be unjust, [since] justice [is] inseparable from goodness.

with the now explicit indicator ‘since’ showing that “justice [is] inseparable from good­ness” is the premise for the first statement.

Here is a longer passage advancing an argument, where we have to concentrate on trying to understand the argument itself in order to work out what the premises and conclusions are:

We are perpetually told that without a God there would be no moral obligation; that the people and even the sovereigns require a legislator powerful enough to constrain them. Moral constraint supposes a law; but this law arises from eternal and necessary relations of things with one another; relations which have nothing in common with the existence of a God. The rules of man’s conduct are derived from his own nature, which he is capable of knowing, and not from divine nature, of which he has no idea.—Baron d⁵Holbach (eighteenth-century French atheist)

D⁵Holbach grants that moral constraint presupposes a law, but denies that this must be a divine law, asserting instead that the law “arises from eternal and necessary relations of things with one another,” and from man’s own nature.

Sometimes, too, arguments are proposed using rhetorical questions instead of state­ments. This is a rhetorical device that should be familiar to anyone from everyday con­versation. Here is an example from the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz’s famous corre­spondence with the English cleric Samuel Clarke in the early eighteenth century:

If space is a property or attribute, it must be the property of some substance. But what substance will that bounded empty space be an affection or property of, which the persons I am arguing with suppose to be between two bodies?—Leibniz, Fourth Letter to Clarke, §8

On the face of it, all we are presented with here is a conditional statement (if... then...) and a rhetorical question. Yet the context (which you do not have here) makes clear that this is intended as an argument against Clarke’s prior claim that space is a property.

Leibniz wants us to infer that since there is nothing in empty space (more accurately, no bounded substance in a bounded empty space), there is nothing that such a space could be a property of. Thus he is presenting an argument. The conclusion is “space is not a property (or affection or attribute),” and the rhetorical question should be construed as equivalent to the statement “there is no substance that a bounded space between two bodies can be a property of.”

In all such cases where there are no explicit inference indicators, you need to ask yourself: Is the author giving or suggesting reasons for accepting a certain proposition? If so, that proposition is the conclusion, and the reasons are the premises. In effect we need to use judgement. If we can construe the passage as an argument without “forcing” this interpretation, then this is what we should do. Also, we should try to make any such argument we impute to the author the strongest possible argument given the evidence at hand, i.e., that argument we believe the author most likely to find acceptable.

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.

This principle needs to be applied with restraint, however. With enough ingenuity, almost any statements can be imagined to be part of an argument. Take the following passage from a newspaper article:

Seizing what may be his best chance to transform and energize his candidacy, Gore reminded a nationwide television audience that he and Clinton have overseen a boom­ing economy. But Gore said that is not enough.—Michael Kranish, Boston Globe

These two statements may suggest all sorts of thoughts to you, depending upon your politics. But no inference is being invited.

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