I nformal Logic 
V11.1, Winter 1985 

Teaching Note 

Getting into an Argument 

ARNOLD WILSON 

Most introductory logic courses 
spend time acquainting students with 
the concepts of premise, conclusion, 
deduction, induction, logical indicators, 
and so on. For a long time I thought this 
all fairly obvious material until one 
term I discovered what I thought to be a 
perverse group of students. Despite the 
care I had taken in discussing this 
material they did very poorly on a quiz 
later. They could not identify premises 
or conclusions in simple arguments. 
Many could not figure out how "be-
cause" works, and some even failed to 
identify it as a logical operator. 

Before the next class I struck on a 
plan to teach all this with much less 
chalk and handwaving. I would get 
them all into arguments! On a series of 
3 x 5 cards I wrote out a variety of 
arguments, one statement per card. On 
others I wrote premise and conclusion 
indicators. Thus: 

Statement cards Indicator cards 
Either Ted or Jake Since 
came from Utah 
Ted is not from Therefore 
Utah 
Jake is from Utah (as needed) 
(and similar) 

The idea was to have one card for each 
student; a card that would fit with 
others to produce an argument. I 
passed the cards out as they came into 

University of Cincinnati 

class, and later challenged them lito 
get into an argument." They wandered 
around comparing cards to see who 
"fit" their argument. The content of 
the statement cards was the guide, but 
I didn't tell them this. I gave no special 
instructions about the logical operators; 
I hoped they would just fit in. At first 
they felt lost, but soon others were 
yelling "We need a Since". Because I 
expected stragglers, but couldn't guess 
how many, I made a couple of elastic 
inductive arguments, allowing new-
comers to fit into an already complete 
argument (nothing worse than a conclu-
sion who cannot find premises to sup-
port it.) So at least one argument 
series was like this: 

Sue likes pizza and Everybody likes 
and 7 -up pizza and 7 -up 

Sal likes pizza and 
7-up 

Cal likes pizza and 
7-up 
Jete. .. ) 

As the II arguments" began forming, 
announced that each group was to go 
to one of the chalk boards; each student 
to write out their part of the argument, 
and to list their names at the side. 

It worked great. They thought this 
part Kooky but fun, and it took about 
five minutes. Then r asked the telling 
questions, sometimes to those in the 



64 I nformal Log ic 

argument under scrutiny, sometimes to 
others to keep class attention. (Now 
acquainted, they wanted to chat!) 
"How did you know that someone fit 
into your argument?" "Why is this the 
conclusion instead of that?" "Why did 
you put the conclusion first?" "Is this 
a good argument?" 

The exercise served well to distin-
guish deductive and inductive forms. 
(I showed them the extra cards and 
asked if the argument would have been 
"stronger" if one more person came to 
class.) We saw that they could recog-
nize an argument even if invalid. The 
"principle of charity" was identified 
and understood. They saw how arbitra-
ry but helpful are various "indicators." 

We learned more in forty minutes than 
ever before-plus they learned every-
one's name. 

! have since used the idea many 
times and have made some improve-
ments. (Now I use 5 x 8 cards.) It is a 
good icebreaker for a group of 20 to 
40 students, and reinforces the notion 
that they really do have an intuitive 
grasp of many of the basic ideas of 
logic. And its usefulness was evident 
all term as I recalled it to the class to 
illustrate some new but relevant point. 

Arnold Wilson, University College, 
University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, 
Ohio 45221-0206 USA ~