Exercise4.2.18

PHI332 : The Class : Argument Evaluation : Analogy : Exercise4.2.18

Exercise4.2.18

Pollen-like people argument (from 4.2.5 (5))

Background information for this analog: People seeds drift about in the air like pollen. If you open your windows, one may drift in and take root in your carpets or upholstery You don't want children, so you fix up your windows with fine mesh screens, the very best you can buy. As can happen, however, and on very, very rare occasions does happen, one of the screens is defective; and a seed drifts in and takes root.

1. If [you voluntarily [open a window to air your room, knowingly kept carpets and upholstered furniture, and knew that screens were sometimes defective, and because of a defect in the mesh a people seed does enter and takes root], then [my] partial responsibility for the [innocent person's] being there DOES itself give it a right to the use of [my room].
3. Thus [killing the person] would be doing it an injustice.
4. Then . . . if [you] voluntarily [opened your windows] you can NOT now kill [or expel] it, even in self-defense.

Hint: see Warren, para. 3, p. 342.

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Once you have completed this excercise you should:

Go on to Exercise4-2-19
or
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E-mail George Rudebusch at George.Rudebusch@nau.edu
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