Lecture Notes by Christopher Lay

Los Angeles Pierce College

Department of History, Philosophy, and Sociology

 

 

 

 

Mathew Van Cleave's 2016 Introduction to Logic and Critical Thinking

 

https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/BookDetail.aspx?bookId=457

 

 

 

 

Chapter 1 "Reconstructing and Analyzing Arguments"

§5 "Using Your Own Paraphrases of Premises and Conclusions to Reconstruct Arguments in Standard Form"

 

 

 

Why Paraphrases are Needed

"Paraphrases ... are sometimes needed in order to make the standard form argument as clear as possible." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is a Paraphrase?

"A paraphrase is the use of different words to capture the same idea in a clearer way."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How to Paraphrase? 

"In order to paraphrase well, you will have to rely on your understanding of English to come up with what you think is the best way of capturing the essence of the argument."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

No Single Way

"There will [almost] always be multiple ways of paraphrasing ... and this means that there will never be just one way of putting an argument into standard form."

 

"[But] there are certainly better and worse ways of doing it." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Adding Your Own Words

At times, you may need to add in a word or phrase, to make the ideas clearer. 

 

"That is a totally legitimate thing to do, as long as introducing new terminology helps us to clearly express the essence of the premise or conclusion that we’re trying to paraphrase." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Accuracy

"How do we know that a paraphrase is accurate? Unfortunately, there is no simple way to answer this question."

 

"The only answer is that you must rely on your mastery and understanding of English in order to determine for yourself whether the paraphrase is a good one or not.  This is one of those kinds of skills that is difficult to teach, apart from just improving one’s mastery of the English language." 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Evaluating Paraphrases

With paraphrases, we aim to express the basic "essence of the logic of the original argument.  As long as your paraphrases help you to do that, they are good paraphrases."

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ambiguities

"[I]t is important to [remember] that there is never only one way of correctly capturing the standard form of an argument. And the reason for this is that there are multiple, equally good, ways of paraphrasing the premises and conclusion of an argument."