Topic 9: Background Information

PHI332 : The Class : Argument ID : Background Info

Topic 9: Background Information

Human beings have figured out how to program computers to play chess, but not to diagram arguments. Notice how I occasionally appeal to your common sense of the meaning or context of a word or passage. That is what no one has figured out how to program into a computer. It remains a matter of judgment, not a matter of rule-following: argument-identification in natural languages like English is a humanistic not mechanical skill.

When you search for the argument in an essay or paragraph, do not try to diagram background information or asides. Background information is found in the opening paragraphs of most of the essays in our textbook. But you often find it inside of paragraphs containing argument. Background information might explain technical information, or tell us who is stating the argument, or it might connect the argument in this paragraph with the bigger argument of an essay. Do not try to diagram background information. If you really want to put it into your diagram, consider if it is a restatement of something already in the argument. If not, and you still think it is relevant to the argument, always link it to another relevant premise; never make it an independent premise.

You usually need to study the whole paragraph or section to tell what is background information. So I will wait to give you exercises till you are ready to consider whole unadulterated paragraphs of argument from our textbook. You are almost ready!

To complete this topic successfully, do as many of the following exercises as you find necessary to acquire the relevant skill. You have acquired the relevant skill when your answers to exercises are reliably either the same as the given answers or are alternative answers you can explain and defend:

No Exercises

Once you have completed this module you should:

Go on to Topic 10: Illustration and Examples
or
Go back to Argument ID

E-mail George Rudebusch at George.Rudebusch@nau.edu
or call (520) 523-7091