Warrants Flashcards
What is a warrant?
General principles that connect reasons to claims. Warrant is important because readers may challenge not just the validity of a reason but its relevance as well.
Why do we need warrant?
State you warrant only when your readers will not understand your argument without them or when you expect your readers to challenge your reasoning.
Do we need warrants when you write for experts in a field?
When you write for experts in a field, you can leave most of your warrants unstated, because your readers will usually know then already and take them for granted.
How are warrants used in everyday reasoning?
Through provers which describe a situation made of a circumstance(when there is smoke,…) and its consequence(…there’s fire). If the connection between the circumstance and consequence is true in general, it must also be true in specific instances(inference).
Usage:
Cause and effect: Haste makes waste;
Rules of behaviour: Look before you leap;
Reliable inference: One swallow does not a summer make.
Sports: Defense wins championships;
Cooking: Serve oysters only in months with an ‘r’;
Definitions: A prime number can be divided only by itself and one;
Research: When readers find an error in one bit of evidence, they distrust the rest.
Why are warrants used in academic arguments hard to manage?
Academic warrants are difficult because:
1. Specific principles of reasoning that belong to particular communities of researchers.
2. Rarely stated when writing for specialized readers.
3. Often stated in ways compressing circumstances and consequences(unlike in proverbs). Ex: smoke means fire; shared DNA is the measure of the relationship between species.
How are warrants used in academic arguments?
A whale is more closely related to a hippopotamus than to a cow(claim), because it shares more DNA with a hippopotamus(reason).
Warrant(When X, then Y): When a species shares more DNA with one species than it does with another(circumstance), we infer that it is more closely related to the first(consequence).
How would you justify Russia’s economic future:
The Russian Federation faces a falling standard of living(claim->specific consequence), because its birth rate is only 13.2 per 1,000 and life expectancy for men is only about 63 years(reason->specific circumstance),
when someone claims the reason seems irrelevant to the claim?
Justify the connection between the reason and claim with a warrant consisting of two parts:
1.a general circumstance that lets us draw a conclusion about
2.a general consequence.
Warrant:
When a nation’s labour force shrinks(general circumstance), its economic future is grim(general consequence).
If the author wants her readers to accept the warrant, what five questions must she examine?
- Is that warrant reasonable?
- Is it sufficiently limited?
- Is it superior to any competing warrants?
- Is it appropriate to this field?
- Is it able o cover the reason and claim?
How do we know when to state a warrant?
- Readers are outside your field, especially when ways of reasoning are unusual.
- Use a principle of reasoning that is new or controversial in your field.
- Make a claim that readers will resist because they just do not want it to be true. Start with a warrant that you hope readers will accept before laying out reason and claim.
Why is warrant important?
Warrant significantly affects how readers perceive the ethos you project through the arguments.
How to challenge others’ warrants?
Challenging warrants based on experience, authority, systems of knowledge, articles of faith;
Challenging general cultural warrants, methodological warrants.
How to challenge warrants based on experience and give examples?
Example: when people habitually lie, we do not trust them.
When insecticides leach into ecosystem, eggshells of wild birds become so weak that fewer chicks hatch and the bird population fails.
To challenge, either
1. Challenge the reliability of the experience;
2. Find counter examples that cannot be dismissed as special cases.
How to challenge warrants based on authority?
When authority X says Y, Y must be so.
Argue that an authority does not have all the evidence or reaches beyond its expertise; or the source is not an authority at all.
How to challenge warrants based on systems of knowledge and give examples?
Warrants based on systems of knowledge are backed by systems of definitions, principles, or theories:
From mathematics: when we add two odd numbers, we get an even one.
From biology: when an organism reproduces sexually, its individual offspring differ.
From law: when we drive without a license, we commit a misdemeanor.
Facts are irrelevant. Either challenge the stems, or show that the case does not fall under the warrant.
What are general cultural warrants?
Backed by the common experience of an entire culture, not individual experience.
Example: out of sight, out of mind.
An insult justifies retaliation.
Handling toads causes warts.
