Journal 2
For this week’s journal entry, we will build on the “Questions” chapter from the last journal as we scaffold up to some more complex tools for our box of critical thinking strategies. This means we move on to the chapter on “Argument.” Read Kent Lewis’s introduction to the chapter, Michael Levin’s “The Case for Torture” (ignore the questions at the end; you don’t need to respond to them) and Tom Cotton’s “The Case for Killing Qassim Suleimani.” Lewis itemizes various components related to argument: Unified Proposition; Quality of Evidence (“An argument = position + soundly reasoned evidence” [p. 331]); Logical Structure (Inductive vs Deductive Logic); Logical Fallacies; and Emotional Appeals. Using Lewis’s chapter introductions to “Questions” and to “Argument,” compare and evaluate the persuasive strategies used by Levin and Cotton to persuade readers to their view; determine also the ethical perspective of each author. A beginning might be to frame Levin’s and Cotton’s views according to the three-line syllogism that Aristotle and other philosophers have used to describe the deductive reasoning process, but consider all the main aspects of argument that Lewis details in this chapter introduction (for example, what evidence do the two authors provide for their argument, and what logical fallacies, appeals to emotion, etc., do they use to persuade their readers?). The journal should be between 400-700 words in length.
