Argument vs. Statements vs. Explanation
August 30 Homework
pp. 9-11
2) Premise: It’s easier and inexpensive to buy your friend a paperback copy.
Conclusion: What stops many people from photocopying a book and giving it to a pal is not integrity but logistics.
5) Premise: White and Asian students score, on average, markedly higher than their black and Hispanic peers. This is true for fourth-grade tests, college entrance exams, and every other assessment on the books.
Conclusion: Standardized tests have a disparate racial and ethnic impact
6) Premise: For everybody thinks himself so abundantly provided with it that even those most difficult to please in all other matters do not commonly desire more of it than they already possess.
Conclusion: Good sense is, of all things in the world, the most equally distributed.
8) Premise 1: In New York State alone taxpayers spent more than $200 million in our state’s failed death penalty experiment, with no one executed.
Conclusion 1: The death penalty is too costly.
Premise 2: The strongest reason remains the epidemic of exonerations of death row inmates upon post-conviction investigation, including ten New York inmates freed in the last 18 months from long sentences being served for murders or rapes they did not commit.
Conclusion 2: In addition to being too costly, capital punishment is unfair in its application.
13) Premise: Without forests, orangutans cannot survive.
Conclusion: They spend more than 95 percent of their time in the trees, which, along with vines and termites, provide more than 99 percent of their food.
pp. 22-26
3) This is primarily an explanation of why sex feels good. The explanation is that animals that reproduced continued their lineage while those without reproductive traits eventually became extinct. Most would agree that the statement “sex feels good” is a truth that does not need to be established or confirmed. Consequently, the surrounding statements are probably intended to offer an explanation for why “sex
pp. 9-11
2) Premise: It’s easier and inexpensive to buy your friend a paperback copy.
Conclusion: What stops many people from photocopying a book and giving it to a pal is not integrity but logistics.
5) Premise: White and Asian students score, on average, markedly higher than their black and Hispanic peers. This is true for fourth-grade tests, college entrance exams, and every other assessment on the books.
Conclusion: Standardized tests have a disparate racial and ethnic impact
6) Premise: For everybody thinks himself so abundantly provided with it that even those most difficult to please in all other matters do not commonly desire more of it than they already possess.
Conclusion: Good sense is, of all things in the world, the most equally distributed.
8) Premise 1: In New York State alone taxpayers spent more than $200 million in our state’s failed death penalty experiment, with no one executed.
Conclusion 1: The death penalty is too costly.
Premise 2: The strongest reason remains the epidemic of exonerations of death row inmates upon post-conviction investigation, including ten New York inmates freed in the last 18 months from long sentences being served for murders or rapes they did not commit.
Conclusion 2: In addition to being too costly, capital punishment is unfair in its application.
13) Premise: Without forests, orangutans cannot survive.
Conclusion: They spend more than 95 percent of their time in the trees, which, along with vines and termites, provide more than 99 percent of their food.
pp. 22-26
3) This is primarily an explanation of why sex feels good. The explanation is that animals that reproduced continued their lineage while those without reproductive traits eventually became extinct. Most would agree that the statement “sex feels good” is a truth that does not need to be established or confirmed. Consequently, the surrounding statements are probably intended to offer an explanation for why “sex