argument137 第七次作业victors小组

ghost33UID: 2267869

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: 494          TIME: 0:43:34          DATE: 2007-5-30

In this argument, the arguer tries to recommend the Mason City(MC) council to increase the budget to ameliorate the public land along the Mason River(MR). He cites a survey which tells that the city residents' favorite form of recreation is water sports, and some complaints about the MR's water quality which he guesses is the reason of the residents' avoiding of MR, and some announces plans about the MR's cleaning up to support his inclusion that recreational use of MR will increase. However, his argument suffers from several unwarranted assumptions.

To begin with, when talking about the seldom use of MR, the arguer assumes that it is because of the water quality of the MR. While it is true that no people will go to swim, or fish, or boat in a dirty river, there are some other factors can interpret such situation. For example, the MR is not suitable for playing. That is: maybe the MR is too deep, or the water runs too fast, to play in it. And it is also quite possible that MC has some nice parks where is more common to do fishing, or boating, any kind of games. What's more, the arguer does not take the frequency of MR's use when its water is in a better quality into consideration. If things do not change much when MR is in its best state, we will not accept the arguer's assumption that MR is suitable for recreation. Even that people do play in the MR very often before, the arguer does not rule out other possibilities which may cause the residents not to use it right now, such as the MR is in its flood season. Even those complaints about the water quality cannot convince me that there do be necessary to improve it, without specific information. Common sense tells us that not everyone will be satisfied, and a few complaints are allowed.

When the arguer recommends budget increase, he assumes that the cleaning up will be carried out and finished soon, and that as soon as the completement of cleaning up, increasing use of MR will take place, and that the publicly owned land along MR do need improvements. However, we cannot make sure any of these. First, we know the complexity of decision making of a government. To cleaning up the MR, funds are prerequisites. Since the government's money is finite, they need make priorities. Thus, albeit the cleaning up is taken on the agenda, when it will be carried out is not predictable. Second, the interests of the public are changing, so it is quite possible that when the MR is cleaned up, the residents have found other forms of activity rather than water sports. Third, the arguer does not provide the current budget for the public land along the MR, thus, whether it is enough or not is very ambiguous. What's more, the necessarity of such improvements is not self-proof in the argument.

In conclusion, this argument is not well substantiated. To better support his inclusion, the arguer should convince us that the MR is a perfect place for recreation, and that the water quality is the very reason of the avoiding of MR. More information about the currence budget will lend more support.


[ 本帖最后由 ghost33 于 2007-6-1 09:39 编辑 ]

冬天的鹰UID: 2191930

你的第一段显得过大，不必要地增加了时间，而且破坏了全文的结构。

这个题目可以这么来分析：河流的使用率将增加，而我们的预算不足以支持这种增加，所以我们要增加预算。这个是题目的主干。那么我们应该看见，真正导致结论“要求增加预算”的原因不在于前提“人们将更频繁地使用Mason河”，而是“预算不够了”，所以要重点攻击的，尤其是要放在第一位进行攻击的，就应该是“预算不够了”这个现状：“有什么信息能够说明目前的预算不足以支持对Mason河两岸的开发吗？”

ghost33UID: 2267869

我觉得你说的重点攻击很有见地，谢谢

15348664UID: 2269142

主要逻辑问题：

1.文中逻辑：因为非A导致非B，所以A导致B
2.预算够不够问题。

1更像是大前提，觉得应该首先批驳；楼主可以这么批，但是第一点写的比较乱，没有首先指出问题：就是改善水质不一定导致娱乐增多。

另外一点就是即使娱乐增多，预算不一定必须增加。

ghost33UID: 2267869

意思就是说:水不好的时候没人用,那么水好就有人用?

我一直写argument就是见一个批一个,你的分析对我很有启发,谢谢!!!