Professional Documents
Culture Documents
The basic idea of utilitarianism is that whatever makes the most people happy is what is right to do, that is the good of the many outweigh the good of the few. That sounds pretty reasonable, doesn't it? As you can imagine, this could be pushed even further back. How do you know how far back to push it? I tell students to consider the amount of space that they have, how likely their audience is to accept their warrant and backing, and other rhetorical concerns. The final step in the Toulim Model is to consider possible counter-arguments to your claim and offer a rebuttal of those claims. This is essentially where you ask the students to take other perspectives and explanations into account. In the little argument above, a counter-argument could be "Abortion destroys a fetus. A fetus is not a human life. Therefore, abortion is not murder. Therefore, abortion is not wrong." Often in responding to students' writing, I will simply ask them, "What would you say to someone who denies xyz . . . would they accept your argument?" I won't provide an example rebuttal, but I am sure you can imagine some.
One of the favourite strategies of the Buddhists was to show that the entities admitted by the Naiyyika-s cannot be properly defined, and they tried to establish this by pointing out defects in such definitions proposed in the Nyya texts. Another strategy was to point out that the Nyya doctrines were beset with logical difficulties like self-dependence, mutual dependence, infinite regress, etc. The Buddhists also tried to show that in many cases what was regarded as a single or unitary entity by the Naiyyika-s could not be so, since each of them harboured mutually incompatible properties. The adherents of the Nyya school were hard-pressed to find out some way for answering such criticisms, and this more or less compelled them to find out some techniques for formulating precise and immaculate definitions; and also for answering the dialectical arguments of the Buddhists. In some cases, minor modifications in the earlier doctrines were also made, though the basic doctrines and the commitment to realism and pluralism were not compromised in any way.
Then next step is critical, and one I have found requires more instruction and attention. Why does this reason support the claim? How does this evidence warrant the claims you are making? You say some X are Y, and you point to Z as the reason why you think some X are Y. You have to demonstrate just how Z connects to X and Y to warrant your claim. The warrant is usually some sort of argument in itself, but often you have to push students to make this explicit. Consider this ethical argument below:
and
Should you have any questions I would be most happy to help. I can be contacted via e-mail at chagankhulan@comcast.net Via USPS - send to; Karen Summerfelt-Hume, 3607 Young Road, Millers, MD 21102-2353 Currently I have a website under construction which can be viewed at: http://www.freewebs.com/chagankhulan . Sain Morilaa, Chagan Khulan Khatun, Clan White Wing Copyright October, 2007, Karen M. Summerfelt-Hume