Argument137 【GREAW 小组第14次作业】有拍必回

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137.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."


In this argument, the author recommend that the Mason City council should increase its budget for improvement to the publicly owned lands along the Mason River, since recreational use of the river is likely to increase. This recommendation is based on the survey that the region' residents consistently rank water sports as a favorite form of recreation, but they seldom use the Mason River. Residents have to avoid the river because they think it is not clear enough, and the author points out that this kind of situation will change: the agency responsible for rivers has announced plans to clean up the river. This argument suffers four critical fallacies.

A threshold with the problem is the argument involves the statistical reliability of the survey. The author provide no evidence that the number of respondents is statistically significant or that the respondents are representative of the residents in general. Lacking information about the randomness and size of the survey's sample, the author cannot make a convincing argument based on the survey.

Secondly, to support this conclusion the author depends on the assumption that if the river is cleaned up, the water sports will really increase. Even though the region's residents consider the water sports such as swimming, fishing, and boating as a favorite form of recreation, we can not make sure that they would like to go on these water sports on the Mason River. Since seldom would the residents use the river for any kind of recreational activity, maybe the river is not suitable for water sports for some reasons. Without eliminating this possibility, the author cannot rely on the plan to clean up the river to conclude that the recreation activity on the river will increase corresponsively.

Thirdly, even though the river is suitable for water sports, and people would rather do some water sports if the river is clean enough, the author unfairly assumes that the agency's plans can be carried out and the river is surely cleaned up. However, the arguer fails to provide any evidence to support the assumption. Perhaps there are other factors for the reason. Maybe the river is polluted so seriously that the plan underestimates the degree of the pollution, and do not have the effective measures. Or perhaps, the work efficiency is so slow that before the river is clean up, new pollution has come up, and the river quality is never reach the goal to suit for water sports. Since the arguer has failed to consider and rule out these possibilities, the auger's assertion that the river will become clean can not be taken seriously.

Finally, even if the arguer's assumption that the river will be clear after the plan is carried on, the arguer cannot assume further that the publicly owned lands along the Mason River really need to improve. The arguer have no evidence to support the assumption above. It is possible that the publicly owned lands function well enough, and need not improve. Or perhaps, for some other factors, the lands have been improved recently. Given the possible scenarios, the recreational use of the river may provide nothing about the need to improve the publicly own lands.

In conclusion, the author's argument lacks credibility because the evidence cited in the analysis does not lend strong support to what the arguer maintains. To strengthen it the author must provide more convincing evidence that the water sports will increase in case the river is clean. To better evaluate the argument we would need more information about weather the river can be cleaned up by the agency. We would also need to know that the publicly owned lands really need to improve.