Argument137 Gter四月''无名''小组第10次作业-acmwyy

acmwyyUID: 2189302

TOPIC: ARGUMENT137 - The following appeared in an editorial in the Mason City newspaper.

"At present, Mason City residents seldom use the nearby Mason River for any kind of recreational activity, even though surveys of the region's residents consistently rank water sports (swimming, fishing, and boating) as a favorite form of recreation. Since there have been complaints about the quality of the water in the river, residents must be avoiding the river because they think that it is not clean enough. But that situation is about to change: the agency responsible for rivers in our region has announced plans to clean up Mason River. Therefore, recreational use of the river is likely to increase, so the Mason City council will need to increase its budget for improvements to the publicly owned lands along the Mason River."
WORDS: 629          TIME: 0:30:00          DATE: 2006-4-6

第一段：干净了不一定人多了，有可能人们自己不愿意去活动，有可能河地理位置等不好
第二段：人多了不一定要钱，可能没有花费，可能盈利大于消耗，无须政府补助
第三段：统计问题

In this argument, the author concludes that the Mason City council will need to increase its budge for improvements to the publicly owned lands along the Mason River because the recreational use of the river is likely to increase result from the agency responsible for river has announced plans to clean up Mason River. The author points out that because the quality of the water in the river is not clean enough, even though surveys shows that the water sports are favorite form of recreation, the nearby Mason River for any kind of recreation activity is seldom used. A careful examination of this argument would reveal that the argument is fraught with problematic logic deduction.

The major problem of this argument is that the cleaning of the river does not necessarily lead to the increase of people use the Mason River for recreational activity. The author fails to establish a causal relationship between the two. It is quite possible that people seldom come to Mason River for recreational activity because their personal factors such as they are too busy to do any exercise, or their favorite do not leads to action. The economic situation and life condition of residents are also possible factors that may undermine the possibility of doing recreational activity. Even if we concede that the problems come from the Mason River, the author ignores other factors may lead to little people come to the river. Such as the river is near the main road of the city and suffered from acoustic pollution, or the river is too far away from where they live.

Even we accept the assumption that the quality of the river brings the problem, The author fails to convince us that more people use the Mason River needs an increase in budget. Even ten times of people come to the Mason River does not mean more money is needed. What's more, whether the announcement from the agency will take into action is open to doubt. Even though we concede that they will clean the river, further budget requirement is unwarranted. It is quite likely that with more people participate in the recreational activity near the river will lead to a series of new business which produce abundant of profits. From which, the publicly owned land don't require support from government.

However, we have got no information about how the survey is conducted. The statistical evidence upon which the argument relies is too vague to be informative. Who conducted the survey and how the questions are settled, how many people involved in the survey and how many people responded the survey, whether people participated in the research are representative are still open to doubt. We find no sign of random sampling and have good reason to doubt if the result can reflect the overall attitude.

To conclude, the argument is not persuasive as it stands. Before we accept the conclusion, the author must present more facts to demonstrate that the quality of the river causes the problem and an increase of the budget is indeed necessary. To solidify the argument, the author would have to produce more evidence concerning the residents' behavior as a whole, including a persuasive static as well as a valid attitude leads to action. Any decision aimed at the increasing of budget, must be based on more informative evidence concerning the whether improving the public land along the river is necessary. We also need concrete evidence to show that the river need to be cleaned and will be cleaned as well. A more through investigation to gather sufficient data in order to narrow down and locate the actual cause(s) of the problem is also need to take into consideration. Otherwise, the author is simply begging the question throughout the argument.