Critical Thinking Assignment: Argument Evaluation

There is an interesting article in the weekly reading titled “Controlling Irrational Fears After 9/11”. This is an essay in which the author is trying to “downplay” the public’s reaction and outcry to the terrorist attacks of 9/11. In this essay, the author makes several arguments with the purpose of showing how these outcries and reactions were more than warranted.

On page 456 of the text, the essay claims “It is unlikely, for example, that many Americans remember that, earlier in 2001, an earthquake in Gujarat, India, killed approximately 20,000 people. One might explain the difference in reaction by saying that we naturally respond more strongly to the deaths of Americans closer to home than to those of others halfway around the world.” To preface, the author provides statistics of the 9/11 casualties at 2,800 deaths. The premise of this particular argument is when the author states “It is unlikely, for example, that many Americans remember that, earlier in 2001, an earthquake in Gujarat, India, killed approximately 20,000 people”; the conclusion of the same argument is “One might explain the difference in reaction by saying that we naturally respond more strongly to the deaths of Americans closer to home than to those of others halfway around the world.”

The premise of this argument does support the conclusion of the statement by using several key words. For example, in the premise of the argument the author uses the word “unlikely.” While this is a fallacy in itself, it does pair well with the conclusion of the argument in the way that the author distances the plight of another country – the author states “we naturally respond more strongly to the deaths of Americans closer to home than to those of others halfway around the world. By using words like “naturally” and “we”, the author has separated “us from them” and “drawn a line” in the sand and distanced the reader mentally (rather than the obvious physical distance of geographical location) from the plight of the Indians.

This argument is inductively strong in several aspects. The argument is strong because it is well written and evokes feelings and emotions of patriotism because of the “us and them” aspect of the argument – adding strong emotions to an argument seems to usually make an argument strong. Also, the argument is inductive in the way that it uses the words “unlikely” and “naturally.” These are words used when the reader comes to a conclusion of truth rather than the premise and conclusion being entirely truthful.

Finally, the premise of this argument is plausibly true, rather than being difficult to prove or definitely true. From the beginning of the premise uses the word “unlikely”, it shows that the author does not necessarily have the research or statistics on this claim; if the author did have the appropriate evidence then the word “unlikely” should be removed as it would now be likely. However, this premise is fairly simple to prove or disprove as the author could conduct a simple poll and calculate the findings.

In another argument on page 457 of the text, the author of the essay claims “One might say that it was the malice of the perpetrators that makes the 9/11 deaths so noteworthy, but surely there is plenty of malice present in the 15,000 homicides that occur every year in the United States. And while we have passed strict laws favoring prosecution of murderers, we do not see the huge and expensive shift in priorities that has followed the 9/11 attacks.” The premise of this argument is “One might say that it was the malice of the perpetrators that makes the 9/11 deaths so noteworthy, but surely there is plenty of malice present in the 15,000 homicides that occur every year in the United States.” The conclusion of the same argument is the second sentence: “And while we have passed strict laws favoring prosecution of murderers, we do not see the huge and expensive shift in priorities that has followed the 9/11 attacks.”

While the premise of this argument supports the conclusion of the same argument, I do not feel that it supports the conclusion of the entire message and essay. The premise of the entire essay is all of the evidence, proof, and comparisons that the author makes between other events (primarily automobile casualties) and the deaths of 9/11; the conclusion of the entire message is the claim that American’s reactions are not warranted if strictly adhering to the death count. The author seems to take the opportunity to point out flaws in National Defense rather than support the overall claim that Americans have overreacted to 9/11.

This argument is weak and invalid; the author seems to be picking all of the “beneficial” things that support his claim and omitting the “negative” things that would discredit his claim rather than taking evenly from both positive and negative. The author provides support of the proportion of deaths from 9/11 and the annual homicide death count in the premise but then does not provide any concrete evidence to support the conclusion of “we do not see the huge and expensive shift in priorities…”; there have been in fact many large and expensive shifts in priorities in National Defense – specifically the creation of the Department of Homeland Security.

The premise of the argument is true however; the author does provide evidence supporting the premise by quoting the figure of 15,000 homicides annually in the country.

While full of fallacies and slanters, the essay was a very interesting read; the author made many strong and valid arguments supporting the claim why Americans have overreacted to the terrorist of attacks of 9/11.