Basics
Getting started
A quick, hands-on tour of argument visualization — and of Because, the free editor you can drive right here on the page.
On this page
This page provides a quick introduction to the basic ideas of argument visualization and to using the Because app, which you can learn more about under Software. Find interesting arguments to practice what you learn at the bottom of this page. More advanced lessons are under Hints.
Every figure below is a live argument map. You can click a claim, move around it with the arrow keys, and — in the ones marked “Try it” — perform the very same keyboard shortcut the editor uses and watch the map change.
Reasons#
Reasons are the basic building blocks of arguments. Reasons aim to raise our confidence in a claim. For example, someone might say, “You shouldn’t feel bad that you’re going to die because death is inevitable.” Here, the claim that death is inevitable is provided as a reason to believe the conclusion that you shouldn’t feel bad about mortality.
In an argument visualization, reasons are represented using green.
Conclusion (1.1): ‘You shouldn't feel bad that you're going to die.’. It has no reasons or objections yet.
What happens
Attaching a reason to a claim is easy. First, select the claim, then press ⏎ Return / Enter. The empty box that appears is waiting for you to type the reason. Prefer the mouse? Use the Add reason (thumbs-up) button on the toolbar.
Reasons can contain multiple claims#
Notice that if someone said “You shouldn’t feel bad that you’re going to die because death is inevitable” their argument would be importantly incomplete.
The claim “Death is inevitable” only supports the conclusion “You shouldn’t feel bad that you are going to die” when it is supplemented with another claim:
Conclusion (1.1): ‘You shouldn't feel bad that you're going to die.’. It is supported by one reason. A reason supports the conclusion, containing claim 2.1 ‘Death is inevitable.’.
What happens
To add another claim to a reason (these extra claims are sometimes called co-premises), select a claim already in that reason and press ⇥ Tab. Or use the Add sibling claim button on the toolbar.
If some claims support a conclusion only when taken together, place them in a single reason.#
In the example above, each claim must be plausible for either one to support the conclusion. Here is the finished reason again:
Conclusion (1.1): ‘You shouldn't feel bad that you're going to die.’. It is supported by one reason. A reason supports the conclusion, containing claims 2.1 ‘Death is inevitable.’ and 2.2 ‘You shouldn't feel bad about inevitable things.’.
This is important: If you didn’t believe 2.1, you wouldn’t think that 2.2 supported the conclusion, and if you didn’t believe 2.2, you wouldn’t think that 2.1 supported the conclusion. But if you believed them both, then your confidence in the conclusion would rise. That’s why they must be together.
Independent reasons#
Argument visualizations also allow us to represent arguments that contain multiple independent reasons for a claim. Here is an example:
Conclusion (1.1): ‘You shouldn't feel bad that you're going to die.’. It is supported by two reasons. A reason supports the conclusion, containing claims 2.1 ‘Death is inevitable.’ and 2.2 ‘You shouldn't feel bad about inevitable things.’. A reason supports the conclusion, containing claim 2.3 ‘When you are dead you will not experience anything.’.
Add independent reasons just like you added the first: select the claim you want to support, then press ⏎ Return / Enter. Dragging one claim on top of another will make the first an independent reason for the second.
Note that 2.3 could support the conclusion regardless of the truth of 2.1 and 2.2. In other words, 2.3 is an independent reason to believe the conclusion, and that is why it belongs under its own green bracket.
Test your understanding now#
Which of the two argument visualizations below best represents the following passage?
Test your understanding
Being genetically enhanced is only beneficial if it makes you better than other people -- for example, if it makes you taller or better looking than average. But if genetic enhancement technology becomes widely available, everyone will use it, so there's no point in pursuing genetic enhancement technology.
Which of these two visualizations best represents the passage?
Show the answer
Answer: One reason, two claims. Right — neither claim can lift the conclusion on its own; they only work as a team. Try the falsity test: pretend enhancement is beneficial even when it doesn't make you better than others (so 2.1 is false). Now the fact that everyone would use it does nothing to show there's no point in pursuing it. Flip it the other way and the same thing happens. Each claim needs the other, so they belong under one green bracket.
Objections#
Objections aim to lower our confidence in a claim. Argument visualizations use red coloring to represent objections:
Conclusion (1.1): ‘You shouldn't feel bad that you're going to die.’. It is supported by one reason. A reason supports the conclusion, containing claims 2.1 ‘Death is inevitable.’ and 2.2 (implicit) ‘You shouldn't feel bad about inevitable things.’.
What happens
To add an objection, select the claim you want to object to and press ⌥O / Alt+O, or use the thumbs-down button on the toolbar. You can also flip a reason into an objection (or back again) by selecting its bracket and pressing T — the same Toggle button on the toolbar.
Notice that if you became convinced of 2.3 and 2.4 you would become less confident in the conclusion.
Apart from this one difference, objections work just like reasons.
Unstated assumptions#
When people present arguments in writing or speech, they sometimes acknowledge assumptions: “While several of my colleagues in Psychology have argued persuasively against Theory X, in this talk, I assume X is true.” It’s nice when people are clear about their assumptions, both to themselves and to their audiences. It is also quite rare. In popular media and in articles written for scientists and academics, contestable assumptions are routinely passed over in silence. An important part of improving your ability to read and evaluate argumentative texts is training yourself to detect problematic assumptions in your own and in other people’s reasoning.
For example, consider again the first argument presented above: “You shouldn’t feel bad that you’re going to die because death is inevitable.” What does this argument assume? Plausibly, that you should never feel bad about inevitable things. Perhaps something about this assumption smells fishy to you… It’s inevitable (near enough, given the laws of nature) that all sapiens will one day be extinct. Should this recognition make you feel less bad about the possibility of a meteor wiping out humankind forever? I’m inclined to say “no”. Having identified an unstated assumption, we are now in a better position to make progress on evaluating the argument.
Unstated assumptions are sometimes also called “implicit claims” to contrast them with claims that an author explicitly makes by writing them down or saying them out loud.
Because lets you mark an unstated assumption by making the border around its claim box dashed. Watch Claim 2.2 turn implicit:
Conclusion (1.1): ‘You shouldn't feel bad that you're going to die.’. It is supported by one reason. A reason supports the conclusion, containing claims 2.1 ‘Death is inevitable.’ and 2.2 ‘You shouldn't feel bad about inevitable things.’.
What happens
To mark a claim as implicit (or make it explicit again), select it and press T — or ⌥T / Alt+T — or use the Toggle button on the toolbar. Toggle is context-sensitive: on a selected claim it flips implicit and explicit; on a selected bracket it flips a reason into an objection.
Inferential strength#
Because doesn’t attempt to assess your arguments, but it does let you represent your rough sense of how convincing their various inferences are, especially in relation to each other. Consider the arguments given above for the claim that you shouldn’t feel bad that you are going to die. Perhaps you think that Claim 2.3 supports the conclusion more strongly than the reason consisting of Claims 2.1 and 2.2. You can represent this by thickening the connecting line between 2.3 and the conclusion:
Conclusion (1.1): ‘You shouldn't feel bad that you're going to die.’. It is supported by two reasons. A reason supports the conclusion, containing claims 2.1 ‘Death is inevitable.’ and 2.2 ‘You shouldn't feel bad about inevitable things.’. A reason supports the conclusion, containing claim 2.3 ‘When you are dead you will not experience anything.’.
What happens
To change the thickness of a connecting line, click it and then choose Stronger or Weaker.
Objecting to whole reasons and transitions#
Sometimes an argument is no good, but not because it contains a false claim. Consider this example:
Conclusion (1.1): ‘There exists a cosmic law giver (God).’. It is supported by one reason. A reason supports the conclusion, containing claims 2.1 ‘It is a Law of Nature that ordinary matter cannot travel at light speed.’ and 2.2 ‘The existence of a law implies the existence of a law giver.’.
As the word “law” is used in physics, Claim 2.1 is certainly plausible. But what about 2.2? You might be tempted to respond to this argument: “Sure, if you’re talking about human laws — e.g., laws about how fast people may drive on highways — the existence of a law implies the existence of a law giver. (In this case, it implies the existence of someone or something to decide how fast people may drive.) But if we’re talking about laws of nature, it’s much less clear that laws imply law givers.” This suggests an objection to the inference that we can represent like this:
Conclusion (1.1): ‘There exists a cosmic law giver (God).’. It is supported by one reason. A reason supports the conclusion, containing claims 2.1 ‘It is a Law of Nature that ordinary matter cannot travel at light speed.’ and 2.2 ‘The existence of a law implies the existence of a law giver.’. A further objection (claim 2.3 ‘The word "Law" means something different in each these claims.’) objects to the inference from 2.1–2.2, not to any single claim.
To object to a whole reason (rather than a single claim), select the green bracket and press ⌥O / Alt+O, or use the thumbs-down button on the toolbar.
The red bar is placed under the green bracket to represent that Claim 2.3 objects to the inference rather than the truth of any particular claim.
Here’s another way to represent roughly the same thing:
Conclusion (1.1): ‘There exists a cosmic law giver (God).’. It is supported by one reason. A reason supports the conclusion, containing claims 2.1 ‘It is a Law of Nature that ordinary matter cannot travel at light speed.’, 2.2 ‘The existence of a law implies the existence of a law giver.’, and 2.3 (implicit) ‘The word "Law" is used with a consistent meaning across Claims 2.1 and 2.2.’. An objection objects to claim 2.3, containing claim 3.1 ‘The word "Law" means something different in each these claims.’.
Notice that the border around Claim 2.3 is dashed to indicate that this claim is assumed by the argument but not stated by the author.
In this visualization, instead of attaching my objection to the inference directly, I’ve supplied an unstated assumption. This assumption introduces a kind of self-reference into the argument, since Claim 2.3 concerns the meanings of claims in the very argument of which it is a part. This allows us to represent an objection to the inference as an objection to the truth of a specific claim.
Students seem to prefer this approach, but I prefer the earlier one. The visual approach uses a distinct convention to represent the logical difference between (a) objecting to an inference from a set of one or more claims and (b) objecting to some particular claim. This logical distinction deserves to be marked by its own visual convention. (If you’re interested to think about why, see Lewis Carroll’s 1895 article, “What the Tortoise Said to Achilles”.)
What goes in the top box?#
The conclusion of an argument is the claim the argument supports (or opposes) overall. In other words, all the other claims in the argument somehow support (or oppose) this conclusion, and the argument does not use the conclusion to directly support (or oppose) any other claim. This does not mean that the conclusion — in the sense relevant here — is always what the author of the passage believes. Sometimes the conclusion is a claim that the author of an argument disagrees with (or doesn’t take a side on).
For a concrete example where an author does not necessarily believe the conclusion of the argument, consider this text:
People sometimes argue that medical researchers should not pursue enhancement technology because such technology goes beyond the purpose of medicine. But consider that many medical treatments already accepted as serving the purposes of medicine are not intended to cure illness or reduce discomfort: Plastic surgery and contraceptive medication are just two examples.
The conclusion is that medical researchers should pursue enhancement technology. Does the author believe it? Maybe. But maybe not. You could make an informed guess, but judging from this passage alone, you can’t really be sure. Still, you can be confident that the author doesn’t think that Claims 2.1 and 2.2 in this analysis jointly support the conclusion:
Conclusion (1.1): ‘Medical researchers should not pursue enhancement technology.’. It is supported by one reason. A reason supports the conclusion, containing claims 2.1 ‘Enhancement technology goes beyond the purpose of medicine’ and 2.2 (implicit) ‘Medical researchers should only pursue technologies that serve the purposes of medicine.’. An objection objects to claim 2.1, containing claims 3.1 ‘Plastic surgery and contraceptive medicine do not go beyond the purposes of medicine.’ and 3.2 (implicit) ‘Plastic surgery and contraceptive medicine are enhancement technologies.’.
The text provides an objection to Claim 2.1, so the above representation works well.
This argument also provides a good example for one last bit of advice to help you get started with visual argument analysis: when you encounter an author objecting to another person’s argument, a good strategy is to first figure out the argument to which the author is objecting, and only after you have it figured out, work on attaching the author’s objection.
Practice with real arguments#
Now that you know the basics, try to analyze these arguments in Because. Each one is a genuine philosophical argument worth arguing about — head to the Practice page, pick one, and map it. When you’re done, there’s a model solution to compare notes with.