presented by Caltech hi everyone I'm Laurie and I'm Ellen and we're going to go over the basics of creating an effective argument I'm first going to talk about the theoretical side of how and why we argue and Laurie will go over the practical components of making a good argument what is an argument you're probably familiar with the concept of an argument but we'll review it really quickly an argument is a coherent series of statements leading from a premise to a conclusion for example you might think that a Taylor Swift song is about Harry Styles but
I actually think is about john mayer so i'm going to use an argument to prove that i'm right to persuade others that your argument is valid you must show that it is more complete or accurate than competing statements to do this your argument must be based on sound logic and evidence why do we argue we gain knowledge through advancing and defending arguable claims and the night of this philosophy assignments will often ask you to draw your own conclusions from the information you're given and convince others that they are valid after all the most interesting ideas
are often ones that generate a variety of reasonable opinions you can't just regurgitate the facts when do you need to write an argument you might have written a few argumentative essays in humanities classes but making an argument is an essential skill across all disciplines during your time at Cal Tech you will encounter many genres of writing that each have their own persuasive goals although these genres different in terms of style and purpose they all share a common goal to convince readers that what you've written is reasonable valid and evidence-based so how do you develop an
argument well it's hard to come up with a fully polished argument from scratch so you can start off by asking yourself two simple questions what do I already know about this topic and what do I still need to learn because a sound argument must begin with a solid premise your next step is to closely examine your evidence which is the primary foundation for your argument no any themes or patterns what do they suggest are there alternative interpretations once you've drawn a conclusion you can formulate your central claim also called a thesis what is a thesis
well you're likely familiar with the idea that thesis statement is the roadmap of your paper it shows the audience what to expect but we have two caveats first the thesis cannot stand on its own although the thesis must capture the essence of your argument it is up to the rest of the paper to show that the thesis is valid second the placement of the thesis should always be deliberate and logical although you may be most familiar with placing your thesis at the end of an introductory paragraph it doesn't always belong there so with all this
in mind Laurie is now going to go over the key elements of a strong argument the first part of a strong argument is that it must be contestable can someone disagree with you so here's an example the theme of good and evil as opposing forces in the world drives the action of the Harry Potter books now this sounds like an argument but it's not really contestable at all because no one would disagree with you so your argument should be something that you could debate with someone and if you can't think of any counter arguments to
your position then you should really rethink what you're saying second your argument needs to be specific enough that it can be developed and supported within the scope of your paper professors would often prefer that you explore a few topics in a lot of detail rather than many topics in a little bit of detail and finally a strong argument is interpretive the strongest argument is extract meaning from evidence beyond what's obvious and the evidence is used in support without resorting to summary pure summary for example scientific papers need discussion sections to interpret their results presenting patterns
and data isn't enough it's all about the interpretation so we're going to expand a little bit on the difference between an interpretive argument and a summary because this is a common problem that students run into so in this graph you might say that there's a linear negative relationship between our studying per week and amount of fun this is a summary of the results but what does it mean one interpretation of these results is that people who study more have less fun and another interpretation is that people who have a lot of fun don't feel the
need to study so this example reminds us that there are often multiple ways to interpret evidence while summary is important to establish the context of a piece of evidence you must also interpret the evidence to show how it supports your argument as you're writing your paper continue to evaluate your evidence and don't be afraid to tweak your argument if you're finding it difficult to support the evidence so it's really important that you remember that an argument is not a preconceived notion that you're trying to support it should arise itself from the text or data so
here we have an argument that I wrote recently for a Caltech English class about Jane Austen's books so my claim is contestable I'm arguing that embarrassing experiences are the main motivators for character growth not marriage and love and it's specific I specifically identify the themes I'm going to explore finally its interpretive because I've noticed that there is a connection between heroines being embarrassed and them consequently maturing and growing now here's an example of a weaker argument Jane Austen uses literary devices such as diction and tone to characterize her heroines throughout her novels so this is
extremely generic it doesn't tell us anything about how Jane Austen is characterizing her heroines and it's not contestable at all because all authors use literary devices like diction and tone so to recap a strong argument will be contestable specific and interpret its evidence in the next lecture Michael and Jamie will tell you how to organize your paper thanks for watching you
