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From: andrew@orca.UUCP (Andrew Klossner)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.misc,net.philosophy
Subject: Re: The missing premise
Message-ID: <1608@orca.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 10-Jul-85 17:56:28 EDT
Article-I.D.: orca.1608
Posted: Wed Jul 10 17:56:28 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Jul-85 10:40:05 EDT
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Xref: watmath net.politics:9882 net.misc:8215 net.philosophy:2034

> To clarify this, consider an example:
> 
> 	"The country's cat ranchers are in trouble
> 	due to competition from strays.  Therefore,
> 	the government should subsidize cat ranching."
> 
> In addition to the obvious, this speaker has implied the
> belief that whenever some group of businesspeople is in
> trouble, the government should step in with subsidies.
> But by leaving this premise unstated, the speaker has made
> it much harder to dispute.
> 
> Keep an eye out for arguments of this sort.  They can be tricky.

Even more subtle are arguments like this which give a dis-explanation
to put across a viewpoint.

In the example, the ACTUAL implied statement is that, when the
country's cat ranchers are in trouble, the government should step in
with subsidies.  The generalization, to all businesspeople, is
unwarranted.  With cat exports shrinking dramatically and cheap cats
coming in from Asia, there is no question but that cat ranching
subsidies are needed.  By contrast, current calls for subsidies to
wombat ranchers should be soundly rejected, since wombats have no
social value.

;-)

  -=- Andrew Klossner   (decvax!tektronix!orca!andrew)       [UUCP]
                        (orca!andrew.tektronix@csnet-relay)  [ARPA]