Enthymemes Connect Reasons to Conclusions, and Build Bigger, Better Papers

Enthymemes? What the what?

The American English Dictionary defines an enthymeme as

"an argument in which one premise is not explicitly stated."

In other words: Because A = B, and B = C, then it follows that A also = C.

Even Wikipedia knows all about enthymemes and offers an example:

“Socrates is mortal because he's human.”
 

The complete formal syllogism (or enthymeme) in the classic is as follows:

A. All humans are mortal. (major premise = assumed);

B. Socrates is human. (minor premise = stated);

C. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. (conclusion = stated)

The word enthymeme was used by the Greek philosopher Aristotle when, in his treatise on rhetoric, he needed to describe how reasoning works informally in our everyday arguments where we do not necessarily use the mathematically rigid forms of logic.

In Greek, the term combines en = into, and thymos = soul, to suggest the way that reasoned language is able to produce belief. Aristotle called the enthymeme the “body (or substance) of proof.”

The relationship created between a reason and a conclusion is not self-contained. It makes implicit reference to other ideas that help to bind the reason to the conclusion, making it seem to follow.

Here is an example of enthymemes used in an actual argument, in a brief passage from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from Birmingham Jail:

“A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama, which set up the state’s segregation laws, was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?”

Conclusion: Alabama’s segregation laws are unjust.

Reason: Those laws were inflicted on a minority that had no role in enacting them.

Assumption: Any law that is inflicted on a minority that had no role in enacting it is an unjust law.

The reason here is itself the conclusion of another enthymeme:

Conclusion: African Americans had no role in enacting Alabama’s segregation laws.

Reason: African Americans were prevented from voting for the state legislature.

Assumption: Anyone prevented from voting for the legislature has no role in enacting laws passed by that legislature.

In other words: because A = B, and B = C, therefore A = C.

Your thesis statement (disguised as an enthymeme) begins to operate like so:

Because 'A' is true, therefore 'B' and 'C' are also true.

Question: “How do enthymemes help me build bigger, better papers?”

Answer: Enthymemes help to build a bigger, beefier thesis statement that also helps you structure your paper. (For you vegans out there, this is only a metaphor.)
The paper can now be written with the enthymeme in the place of a thesis statement. The next few paragraphs will flow more easily with that bigger, better, more forceful powerhouse (i.e., the enthymeme) on your side.

Remember: Because A = B, and B = C, therefore A = C.



*To pronounce the word, "enthymeme," go here: http://youtu.be/C0tMcoMleZg

Critical Thinking and Assumptions

In the middle of last semester, I had an interesting conversation with another writing consultant. The topic of our conversation was the difference between an assumption and a presumption. Although when I check The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, it does, in the second entry, give assumption as a synonym for presumption, when philosophers make arguments, assumption is the term of choice. 

Most of you probably have a colloquial sense of what an assumption is, indeed, most of you have probably been warned about the dangers of assuming anything. When you make an argument or when you assess an argument, you should probably avoid relying on your colloquial intuitions. 

Assumptions can be true or false; they can be strong or weak. They will be found in almost every argument you will ever encounter. Thus, while making an ass of oneself and others, could on many occasions result from making a naive assumption, it certainly is not inevitable.  

What is an assumption? 

This was the question put to me by the other writing consultant. After thinking back to my Logic 101 class, my response was the following: "An assumption is an unstated premise." Fairly simple, right? 

We know that in college classrooms "argument" does not mean "screaming match" or "fight." Rather, when you make an argument for a class, you conclude something on the basis of evidence and good reasoning. The premises are used to support the conclusion. Sometimes, if the argument is sufficiently complex, you may have more than one conclusion. In such arguments, you may have a sub-conclusion that also a premise because it is used to support a main conclusion. So, premises support a conclusion, and an assumption is an unstated premise. 

To illustrate these abstractions, I'm going to refer to some of what I said to my writing consultant colleague. Before our discussion began, we had just noticed someone eating chicken soup in the graduate student office, at which point I said, "He must have a cold." My colleague confirmed my conclusion. "Yeah, he told earlier today that he wasn't feeling well."

This exchange, or an exchange very similar to this one, happens a million times a day. But what exactly are the rhetorical components that are important for critical thinking? There are premises and a conclusion, and of course, there are assumptions as well. To make the relationship between these entities explicit, let's look at the following schema.

Conclusion: "He must have a cold."

How did I arrive at this conclusion? Well, I saw the person in question eating a bowl of chicken soup. So let's make this premise explicit.

Premise 1: "He is eating a bowl of chicken soup."

At this point, something in the reasoning chain is missing. How do I connect premise 1 to the conclusion? There are many ways, but the most definitive would be to use the following premise. 

Premise 2: "If a person is eating a bowl of chicken soup, then he has a cold." 

Premise 2 is false, but it will help illustrate my point about assumptions. The point is that I didn't actually include another premise when I drew my conclusion. My argument, if I had written it down in standard premise and conclusion form would have looked like this:

1. He is eating a bowl of chicken soup.
2. Thus, he must have a cold. 

The consultant I was speaking with understood my reasoning chain without the additional premise. When I am speaking to someone in a colloquial manner, it would be awkward, not to mention cognitively problematic, to explicitly state every premise in every argument I make. For this reason, I, and basically everyone else in the world, will use a lot of assumptions when we argue. Let's include the assumption in our schema to reinforce this idea visually. 

1. He is eating a bowl of chicken soup.

Assumption, unstated premise: If a person is eating a bowl of chicken soup, then he has a cold

3. Thus, he has a cold. 

In many of the texts you read for your classes, the assumptions will be more controversial. Controversy can lead to emotion, and emotion can lead to a person wanting to make an argument appear more cogent than it actually is. 

If the writing consultant I was talking to had asked me to clarify my assumption, and if I had clarified it with premise 2, then my conclusion would not follow. I would need to modify my assumption in order to get a cogent reasoning chain. I might modify my assumption by making it more narrow e.g., "If a person is eating a bowl of chicken soup, then it is likely he has a cold." 

I might modify it by including more information in it e.g., "If a person is eating a bowl of chicken soup during the cold and flu season in Charleston, IL, then it is likely that he has a cold."

 An essential part of critical thinking is to ask yourself about the assumptions a writer or speaker makes. If a writer's or speaker's assumption is weak, then his conclusion will be weak. Keep this in mind when you analyze an argument.