Assignment Task:
Argument Exercises In each of the following arguments identify the conclusion and premise (s).
1. Grow accustomed to the belief that death is nothing to us, because every good and evil lie in sensation. However, death is the deprivation of sensation. Therefore, death is nothing to us.
2. The president is either dishonest or incompetent. He's not incompetent, though, because he's an expert at getting self-serving legislation through Congress. I guess he's just dishonest.
3. Most Republicans are conservatives, and Kurt is a Republican. There- fore, Kurt is probably a conservative. Therefore, Kurt is probably opposed to increases in welfare benefits because most conservatives are opposed to increased welfare benefits
4. Can people without strong religious beliefs be moral? Countless people have been nonbelievers or nontheists and still behaved according to lofty moral principles (for example, the Buddhists of Asia and the Confucianists of China). Consider also the great secular philosophers from the ancient Greeks to the likes of David Hume and Bertrand Russell. So it is not true that those without strong religious beliefs cannot be moral.
5. Jan is a student at Harvard. No student at Harvard has won a Pulitzer Prize. Therefore, Jan has not won a Pulitzer.
6. We shouldn't pay the lawn-mower guy so much money because he never completes the work, and he will probably just gamble the money away because he has no self-control.
7. Manny, Mo, or Jack crashed the car. Manny couldn't have done it because he was sleeping in his room and was observed the whole time. Mo couldn't have done it because he was out of town at the time and has witnesses to prove it. So the guy who crashed the car had to be Jack.