{"id":12552,"date":"2009-07-06T16:21:09","date_gmt":"2009-07-06T16:21:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/07\/06\/enthymemes\/"},"modified":"2009-07-06T16:21:09","modified_gmt":"2009-07-06T16:21:09","slug":"enthymemes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/07\/06\/enthymemes\/","title":{"rendered":"Enthymemes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"justify\" class=\"firstinpost\"><font face=\"Georgia\">An enthymeme is a truncated argument in which either one of the premises, or the conclusion, is left unstated. Some examples:<\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\"><\/font><\/p>\n<div align=\"justify\" class=\"trigger\" style=\"DISPLAY: none\">\n<\/div>\n<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p><font face=\"Georgia\"><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\"><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\"><\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\"><em>Since McAuliffe is a Democrat, he is mendacious.<\/em> This is an argument whose validity requires the tacit premise, \u2018All Democrats are mendacious\u2019 a proposition that is clearly false. This argument is an enthymeme since it is left to the consumer of the argument to supply the tacit (major) premise.<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" class=\"hidden\" style=\"DISPLAY: block\"><font face=\"Georgia\"><em>Since all Democrats are mendacious, McAuliffe is mendacious.<\/em> This is an argument whose validity requires the tacit (minor) premise, \u2018McAuliffe is a Democrat.\u2019<br \/><\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" class=\"hidden\" style=\"DISPLAY: block\"><font face=\"Georgia\"><em>Democrats are mendacious, and McAuliff is a Democrat.<\/em> Here the consumer is invited to supply the conclusion, \u2018McAuliffe is mendacious.\u2019<br \/><\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" class=\"hidden\" style=\"DISPLAY: block\"><font face=\"Georgia\"><em>Capital punishment is wrong because it involves killing a human being.<\/em> When we supply the tacit premise, without which the argument is invalid, we see that the argument is unsound, precisely because of the falsity of the premise that must be supplied: \u2018All killing of human beings is wrong.\u2019 The counterexamples to this are obvious: killing in self-defense, and killing in just wars.<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" class=\"hidden\" style=\"DISPLAY: block\"><font face=\"Georgia\">(A sound argument is a deductive argument whose form is valid and whose premises are true. An unsound argument is therefore either (i) one whose form is invalid, or (ii) one that has has one or more false premises, or both (i) and (ii)).<\/font><\/p>\n<p align=\"justify\" class=\"hidden\" style=\"DISPLAY: block\"><font face=\"Georgia\">Careful thinkers and writers either avoid enthymemes or else use them sparingly: they argue explicitly, laying all of their assumptions on the table, so that both they and their readers can see if the arguments are cogent. In the capital punishment example, the lack of cogency springs to the eye once the argument is set forth explicitly.<\/font><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>An enthymeme is a truncated argument in which either one of the premises, or the conclusion, is left unstated. Some examples:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[108],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-logica-docens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}