{"id":2666,"date":"2022-04-05T16:20:20","date_gmt":"2022-04-05T16:20:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/introtophilosophy\/chapter\/2-10-assuring-guarding-and-discounting-2\/"},"modified":"2024-01-15T16:53:39","modified_gmt":"2024-01-15T16:53:39","slug":"2-10-assuring-guarding-and-discounting-2","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/introtophilosophy\/chapter\/2-10-assuring-guarding-and-discounting-2\/","title":{"raw":"2.10 Assuring, guarding, and discounting","rendered":"2.10 Assuring, guarding, and discounting"},"content":{"raw":"<div class=\"textbox shaded\">\r\n\r\n<strong>LEARNING OBJECTIVES<\/strong>\r\n\r\n<hr \/>\r\n\r\nBy the end of this section you will discover:\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>How to recognize the rhetorical devices of assuring, guarding and discounting in an argument.<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<\/div>\r\nAs we have seen, arguments often have complex structures including subarguments (recall that a subargument is an argument for one of the premises of the main argument). But in practice people do not always give further reasons or argument in support of every statement they make. Sometimes they use certain rhetorical devices to cut the argument short, or to hint at a further argument without actually stating it. There are three common strategies for doing this:\r\n<ul>\r\n \t<li>Assuring: informing someone that there are further reasons although one is not giving them now<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Guarding: weakening one\u2019s claims so that it is harder to show that the claims are false<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Discounting: anticipating objections that might be raised to one\u2019s claim or argument as a way of dismissing those objections<\/li>\r\n<\/ul>\r\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\"><strong>Assuring:<\/strong> a rhetorical strategy for promising to argue a premise at a later time<\/div>\r\nWe will discuss these in order, starting with <strong>assuring<\/strong>. Why would we want to assure our audience? Presumably when we make a claim that is not obvious, and that the audience may not be inclined to believe. For example, if I am trying to convince you that the United States is one of the leading producers of CO2 emissions, then I might cite certain authorities such as the Intergovernmental\r\n\r\nPanel on Climate Change (IPCC) as saying so. This is one way of assuring our audience: by citing authorities. There are many ways to cite authorities, some examples of which are these:\r\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\">\r\n\r\nDentists agree that\u2026\r\n\r\nRecent studies have shown\u2026\r\n\r\nIt has been established that\u2026\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nAnother way of assuring is to comment on the strength of one\u2019s own convictions. The rhetorical effect is that by commenting on how sure you are that something is true, you imply, without saying, that there must be very strong reasons for what you believe\u2014assuming that the audience believes you are a reasonable person, of course. Here are some ways of commenting on the strength of one\u2019s beliefs:\r\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\">\r\n\r\nI\u2019m certain that\u2026\r\n\r\nI\u2019m sure that\u2026\r\n\r\nI can assure you that\u2026\r\n\r\nOver the years, I have become convinced that\u2026\r\n\r\nI would bet a million dollars that\u2026\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nYet another way of assuring one\u2019s audience is to make an audience member feel that it would be stupid, odd, or strange to deny the claim one is making. One common way to do this is by implying that <em>every sensible person<\/em> would agree with the claim. Here are some examples:\r\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\">\r\n\r\nEveryone with any sense agrees that\u2026\r\n\r\nOf course, no one will deny that\u2026\r\n\r\nThere is no question that\u2026\r\n\r\nNo one with any sense would deny that\u2026\r\n\r\nAnother common way of doing this is by implying that <em>no sensible person<\/em> would\r\n\r\nagree with a claim that we are trying to establish as false:\r\n\r\nIt is no longer held that\u2026\r\n\r\nNo intelligent person would ever maintain that\u2026\r\n\r\nYou would have to live under a rock to think that\u2026\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nAssurances are not necessarily illegitimate, since the person may be right and may in fact have good arguments to back up the claims, but the assurances are not themselves arguments and a critical thinker will always regard them as somewhat suspect. This is especially so when the claim isn\u2019t obviously true.\r\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\"><strong>Guarding<\/strong>: a rhetorical strategy for promising to argue a premise at a later time<\/div>\r\nNext, we will turn to <strong>guarding<\/strong>. Guarding involves weakening a claim so that it is easier to make that claim true. Here is a simple contrast that will make the point. Consider the following claims:\r\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\">\r\n\r\nA. <em>All<\/em> U.S. Presidents were monogamous\r\n\r\nB. <em>Almost all<\/em> U.S. Presidents were monogamous\r\n\r\nC. <em>Most<\/em> U.S. Presidents were monogamous\r\n\r\nD. <em>Many<\/em> U.S. Presidents were monogamous\r\n\r\nE. <em>Some<\/em> U.S. Presidents were monogamous\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nThe weakest of these claims is E, whereas the strongest is A and each claims descending from A-E is increasingly weaker. It doesn\u2019t take very much for E to be true: there just has to be at least one U.S. President who was monogamous. In contrast, A is much less likely than E to be true because it requires every U.S. President to have been monogamous. One way of thinking about this is that any time A is true, it is also true that B-E is true, but B-E could be true without A being true. That is what it means for a claim to be stronger or weaker. A weak claim is more likely to be true whereas a strong claim is less likely to be true. E is much more likely to be true than A. Likewise, D is somewhat more likely to be true than C, and so on.\r\n\r\nSo, guarding involves taking a stronger claim and making it weaker so there is less room to object to the claim. We can also guard a claim by introducing a probability clause such as, \u201cit is possible that\u2026\u201d and \u201cit is arguable that\u2026\u201d or by reducing our level of commitment to the claim, such as moving from \u201cI know that x\u201d to \u201cI believe that x.\u201d One common use of guarding is in reconstructing arguments with missing premises using the principle of charity (section 1.9). For example, if an argument is that \u201cTom works for Merrill Lynch, so Tom has a college degree,\u201d the most charitable reconstruction of this argument would fill in the missing premise with \u201cmost people who work for Merrill Lynch have college degrees\u201d rather than \u201ceveryone who works for Merrill Lynch has a college degree.\u201d Here we have created a more charitable (plausible) premise by weakening the claim from \u201call\u201d to \u201cmost,\u201d which as we have seen is a kind of guarding.\r\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\"><strong>Discounting<\/strong>: a rhetorical strategy that acknowledges objections to a claim but dismisses them<\/div>\r\nFinally, we will consider <strong>discounting<\/strong>. Discounting involves acknowledging an objection to the claim or argument that one is making, while dismissing that same objection. The rhetorical force of discounting is to make it seem as though the argument has taken account of the objections\u2014especially the ones that might be salient in a person\u2019s mind. The simplest and most common way of discounting is by using the \u201cA but B\u201d locution. Contrast the following two claims:\r\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\">\r\n\r\nA. The worker was inefficient, but honest.\r\n\r\nB. The worker was honest, but inefficient.\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\nAlthough each statement asserts the same facts, A seems to be recommending the worker, whereas B doesn\u2019t. We can imagine A continuing: \u201cAnd so the manager decided to keep her on the team.\u201d We can imagine B continuing: \u201cWhich is why the manager decided to let her go.\u201d This is what we can call the \u201cA but B\u201d locution. The \u201cA but B\u201d locution is a form of discounting that introduces what will be dismissed or overridden first and then follows it by what is supposed to be the more important consideration. By introducing the claim to be dismissed, we are discounting that claim. There are many other words that can be used as discounting words instead of using \u201cbut.\u201d Table 2 below gives a partial list of words and phrases that commonly function as discounting terms.\r\n<table class=\"grid landscape aligncenter\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse; width: 100%;\" border=\"0\"><caption>Table 2<\/caption>\r\n<tbody>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">although<\/td>\r\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">even if<\/td>\r\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">but<\/td>\r\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">nevertheless<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">though<\/td>\r\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">while<\/td>\r\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">however<\/td>\r\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">nonetheless<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<tr>\r\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">even though<\/td>\r\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">whereas<\/td>\r\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">yet<\/td>\r\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">still<\/td>\r\n<\/tr>\r\n<\/tbody>\r\n<\/table>\r\n<div class=\"textbox textbox--exercises\"><header class=\"textbox__header\">\r\n<h2 class=\"textbox__title\"><strong>Exercise 7<\/strong>: Which rhetorical techniques (assuring, guarding, discounting) are being using in the following passages?<\/h2>\r\n<\/header>\r\n<div class=\"textbox__content\">\r\n<ol>\r\n \t<li>Although drilling for oil in Alaska will disrupt some wildlife, it is better than having to depend on foreign oil, which has the tendency to draw us into foreign conflicts that we would otherwise not be involved in.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Let there be no doubt: the entity that carried out this attack is a known terrorist organization, whose attacks have a characteristic style\u2014a style that is seen in this attack today.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Privatizing the water utilities in Detroit was an unprecedented move that has garnered a lot of criticism. Nonetheless, it is helping Detroit to recover from bankruptcy.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Most pediatricians agree that the single most important factor in childhood obesity is eating sugary, processed foods, which have become all too common in our day and age.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Although not every case of AIDS is caused by HIV, it is arguable that most are.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Abraham Lincoln was probably our greatest president since he helped keep together a nation on the brink of splintering into two.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>No one with any sense would support Obamacare.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Even if universal healthcare is expensive, it is still the just thing to do.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>While our country has made significant strides in overcoming explicit racist policies, the wide disparity of wealth, prestige, and influence that characterize white and black Americans shows that we are still implicitly a racist country.<\/li>\r\n \t<li>Recent studies have shown that there is no direct link between vaccines and autism.<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n<\/div>\r\n<\/div>","rendered":"<div class=\"textbox shaded\">\n<p><strong>LEARNING OBJECTIVES<\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p>By the end of this section you will discover:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>How to recognize the rhetorical devices of assuring, guarding and discounting in an argument.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n<p>As we have seen, arguments often have complex structures including subarguments (recall that a subargument is an argument for one of the premises of the main argument). But in practice people do not always give further reasons or argument in support of every statement they make. Sometimes they use certain rhetorical devices to cut the argument short, or to hint at a further argument without actually stating it. There are three common strategies for doing this:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Assuring: informing someone that there are further reasons although one is not giving them now<\/li>\n<li>Guarding: weakening one\u2019s claims so that it is harder to show that the claims are false<\/li>\n<li>Discounting: anticipating objections that might be raised to one\u2019s claim or argument as a way of dismissing those objections<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\"><strong>Assuring:<\/strong> a rhetorical strategy for promising to argue a premise at a later time<\/div>\n<p>We will discuss these in order, starting with <strong>assuring<\/strong>. Why would we want to assure our audience? Presumably when we make a claim that is not obvious, and that the audience may not be inclined to believe. For example, if I am trying to convince you that the United States is one of the leading producers of CO2 emissions, then I might cite certain authorities such as the Intergovernmental<\/p>\n<p>Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as saying so. This is one way of assuring our audience: by citing authorities. There are many ways to cite authorities, some examples of which are these:<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\">\n<p>Dentists agree that\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Recent studies have shown\u2026<\/p>\n<p>It has been established that\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Another way of assuring is to comment on the strength of one\u2019s own convictions. The rhetorical effect is that by commenting on how sure you are that something is true, you imply, without saying, that there must be very strong reasons for what you believe\u2014assuming that the audience believes you are a reasonable person, of course. Here are some ways of commenting on the strength of one\u2019s beliefs:<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\">\n<p>I\u2019m certain that\u2026<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019m sure that\u2026<\/p>\n<p>I can assure you that\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Over the years, I have become convinced that\u2026<\/p>\n<p>I would bet a million dollars that\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Yet another way of assuring one\u2019s audience is to make an audience member feel that it would be stupid, odd, or strange to deny the claim one is making. One common way to do this is by implying that <em>every sensible person<\/em> would agree with the claim. Here are some examples:<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\">\n<p>Everyone with any sense agrees that\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Of course, no one will deny that\u2026<\/p>\n<p>There is no question that\u2026<\/p>\n<p>No one with any sense would deny that\u2026<\/p>\n<p>Another common way of doing this is by implying that <em>no sensible person<\/em> would<\/p>\n<p>agree with a claim that we are trying to establish as false:<\/p>\n<p>It is no longer held that\u2026<\/p>\n<p>No intelligent person would ever maintain that\u2026<\/p>\n<p>You would have to live under a rock to think that\u2026<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Assurances are not necessarily illegitimate, since the person may be right and may in fact have good arguments to back up the claims, but the assurances are not themselves arguments and a critical thinker will always regard them as somewhat suspect. This is especially so when the claim isn\u2019t obviously true.<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\"><strong>Guarding<\/strong>: a rhetorical strategy for promising to argue a premise at a later time<\/div>\n<p>Next, we will turn to <strong>guarding<\/strong>. Guarding involves weakening a claim so that it is easier to make that claim true. Here is a simple contrast that will make the point. Consider the following claims:<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\">\n<p>A. <em>All<\/em> U.S. Presidents were monogamous<\/p>\n<p>B. <em>Almost all<\/em> U.S. Presidents were monogamous<\/p>\n<p>C. <em>Most<\/em> U.S. Presidents were monogamous<\/p>\n<p>D. <em>Many<\/em> U.S. Presidents were monogamous<\/p>\n<p>E. <em>Some<\/em> U.S. Presidents were monogamous<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>The weakest of these claims is E, whereas the strongest is A and each claims descending from A-E is increasingly weaker. It doesn\u2019t take very much for E to be true: there just has to be at least one U.S. President who was monogamous. In contrast, A is much less likely than E to be true because it requires every U.S. President to have been monogamous. One way of thinking about this is that any time A is true, it is also true that B-E is true, but B-E could be true without A being true. That is what it means for a claim to be stronger or weaker. A weak claim is more likely to be true whereas a strong claim is less likely to be true. E is much more likely to be true than A. Likewise, D is somewhat more likely to be true than C, and so on.<\/p>\n<p>So, guarding involves taking a stronger claim and making it weaker so there is less room to object to the claim. We can also guard a claim by introducing a probability clause such as, \u201cit is possible that\u2026\u201d and \u201cit is arguable that\u2026\u201d or by reducing our level of commitment to the claim, such as moving from \u201cI know that x\u201d to \u201cI believe that x.\u201d One common use of guarding is in reconstructing arguments with missing premises using the principle of charity (section 1.9). For example, if an argument is that \u201cTom works for Merrill Lynch, so Tom has a college degree,\u201d the most charitable reconstruction of this argument would fill in the missing premise with \u201cmost people who work for Merrill Lynch have college degrees\u201d rather than \u201ceveryone who works for Merrill Lynch has a college degree.\u201d Here we have created a more charitable (plausible) premise by weakening the claim from \u201call\u201d to \u201cmost,\u201d which as we have seen is a kind of guarding.<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\"><strong>Discounting<\/strong>: a rhetorical strategy that acknowledges objections to a claim but dismisses them<\/div>\n<p>Finally, we will consider <strong>discounting<\/strong>. Discounting involves acknowledging an objection to the claim or argument that one is making, while dismissing that same objection. The rhetorical force of discounting is to make it seem as though the argument has taken account of the objections\u2014especially the ones that might be salient in a person\u2019s mind. The simplest and most common way of discounting is by using the \u201cA but B\u201d locution. Contrast the following two claims:<\/p>\n<div class=\"textbox shaded\">\n<p>A. The worker was inefficient, but honest.<\/p>\n<p>B. The worker was honest, but inefficient.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Although each statement asserts the same facts, A seems to be recommending the worker, whereas B doesn\u2019t. We can imagine A continuing: \u201cAnd so the manager decided to keep her on the team.\u201d We can imagine B continuing: \u201cWhich is why the manager decided to let her go.\u201d This is what we can call the \u201cA but B\u201d locution. The \u201cA but B\u201d locution is a form of discounting that introduces what will be dismissed or overridden first and then follows it by what is supposed to be the more important consideration. By introducing the claim to be dismissed, we are discounting that claim. There are many other words that can be used as discounting words instead of using \u201cbut.\u201d Table 2 below gives a partial list of words and phrases that commonly function as discounting terms.<\/p>\n<table class=\"grid landscape aligncenter\" style=\"border-collapse: collapse; width: 100%;\">\n<caption>Table 2<\/caption>\n<tbody>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">although<\/td>\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">even if<\/td>\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">but<\/td>\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">nevertheless<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">though<\/td>\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">while<\/td>\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">however<\/td>\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">nonetheless<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<tr>\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">even though<\/td>\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">whereas<\/td>\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">yet<\/td>\n<td style=\"width: 25%;\">still<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<div class=\"textbox textbox--exercises\">\n<header class=\"textbox__header\">\n<h2 class=\"textbox__title\"><strong>Exercise 7<\/strong>: Which rhetorical techniques (assuring, guarding, discounting) are being using in the following passages?<\/h2>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"textbox__content\">\n<ol>\n<li>Although drilling for oil in Alaska will disrupt some wildlife, it is better than having to depend on foreign oil, which has the tendency to draw us into foreign conflicts that we would otherwise not be involved in.<\/li>\n<li>Let there be no doubt: the entity that carried out this attack is a known terrorist organization, whose attacks have a characteristic style\u2014a style that is seen in this attack today.<\/li>\n<li>Privatizing the water utilities in Detroit was an unprecedented move that has garnered a lot of criticism. Nonetheless, it is helping Detroit to recover from bankruptcy.<\/li>\n<li>Most pediatricians agree that the single most important factor in childhood obesity is eating sugary, processed foods, which have become all too common in our day and age.<\/li>\n<li>Although not every case of AIDS is caused by HIV, it is arguable that most are.<\/li>\n<li>Abraham Lincoln was probably our greatest president since he helped keep together a nation on the brink of splintering into two.<\/li>\n<li>No one with any sense would support Obamacare.<\/li>\n<li>Even if universal healthcare is expensive, it is still the just thing to do.<\/li>\n<li>While our country has made significant strides in overcoming explicit racist policies, the wide disparity of wealth, prestige, and influence that characterize white and black Americans shows that we are still implicitly a racist country.<\/li>\n<li>Recent studies have shown that there is no direct link between vaccines and autism.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"menu_order":10,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":"cc-by-nc"},"chapter-type":[48],"contributor":[62,63],"license":[55],"class_list":["post-2666","chapter","type-chapter","status-publish","hentry","chapter-type-numberless","contributor-daniel-g-shaw","contributor-ph-d","license-cc-by-nc"],"part":2643,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/introtophilosophy\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/2666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/introtophilosophy\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/introtophilosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/introtophilosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/introtophilosophy\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/2666\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2904,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/introtophilosophy\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/2666\/revisions\/2904"}],"part":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/introtophilosophy\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/2643"}],"metadata":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/introtophilosophy\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/2666\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/introtophilosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/introtophilosophy\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=2666"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/introtophilosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=2666"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pressbooks.ccconline.org\/introtophilosophy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=2666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}