argument153【Aero小组】 第一次作业

wellwillUID: 2238480

In this argument, the author claims that the amount of violence shown should be reduced in television programs during prime time in order to lower the rate of teenage crime for he or she hold such a perspective that it is the violent scenes that lead to the teenage crime increased in Alta. To support this view, the arguer relies on several national studies, which seem quite credible at first sight. One is that there are a number of very young children who are more inclined to show violent behavior after watching violent television programs than those who do not. The other is a survey indicating that a great number of parents demand the prime-time television-programs should display less violence. But after a cogitative analysis it reveals several deficiencies in the argument as follows.

The threshold problem involves the definition of the violent behavior. Without defining this concept clearly and indicating the standard on which the national study cited depends, saying that even very young children display more violent inclination after watching violent scenes in the television programs than before, we can’t accept that it is true. Since individuals have their different comprehensions of the violent behaviors, it is possible that the study arbitrarily count the behavior just showing that the children worship the heroes and imitate their action such as martial arts into the range of violence. For that matter, the study overestimates and exaggerates the seriousness of the fact, so we don’t think it can serve a strong support to the author’s standpoint. Additionally, the study is of statistical fallacy with vague information, for it doesn’t indicate on earth how many children display the violent behavior. On the other hand, even though the study turns out a truth by a objective standard, it is still insufficient to convince that Alta share the same situation with the nation as a whole because the augur don’t offer the necessary evidence that the national study can be applied to Alta. Perhaps, in Alta exists no such phenomenon as the study shows. All in all, the national study is not only of defect in itself but is imprudently relied on by the arguer without thorough thinking.

The second problem lies in that the credibility and validity of the survey led by Observer are open to doubt. First, the author don’t tell us the pool of the survey and what the percentage of parents whose children are vulnerable is. It is entirely possible that almost all the respondents are parents who care about their children tensely and that the total number of the respondents is too small. As we know, the smaller the number is, the more incredible the outcome of the survey is. Secondly, even though the number of the respondents were statistically sufficient, there is no adequate evidence to guarantee the survey is random selected and thus the parents who object against the television programs showing violence during the prime-time are representative of the view of majorities of people. Maybe all the parents respond to the survey are those who have high responsibilities so that are very worried about their children’s both physical and emotional health. In this case, we can’t believe that most people have the demand that the television programs in prime-time should show less violence.

What is more, the arguer commits a primary fallacy that unreasonably establish a unconfirmed causal correlation between the rate of teenage crime on the rise in Alta and the increase in violence shown on television without providing sufficient evidences that can convince us it is indeed the latter is responsible for the former. There may be other alternative explanations account for this case such as the loose of supervision of parents and the lack of education of schools on morality. And thus increase in teenage crime is merely synchronous with increase in violence shown on television. Without ruling out these possibilities, it is too illogical to assert the television programs with violence scenes in are the evil.

In final analysis, it is dubious whether the recommendation of the arguer that television programmers reduce the amount of violence shown during prime time is feasible. Admitting that it is the violent scenes that cause the teenage crime increase, reduction of these programs during prime time alone is useless if there are many ones at other time. In addition, there are other solutions which may be more effective in lowering the rate of teenage crime. For example, we could strengthen our superintend system in society to modify the children’s behavior and focus on the education of children’s morality and emotion.

In sum, the argument primarily suffers from the fallacies mentioned above. To strengthen the arguer’s view, he or she should eliminate other possible reasons for the increased rate of teenage of crime and provide sufficient evidence that the increased violence shown in television programs cause the increase in rate of teenage crime. Meanwhile, to better evaluate the reason process, the arguer should convince us the national studies can be applied to Alta and the survey is statistically large and random selected.


第一次写argu 希望大家多拍啊！:)

[ 本帖最后由 wellwill 于 2007-12-12 22:01 编辑 ]