Author: James E. Scheuermann

You will recall that in Reading Argumentative Texts I took the position that there is no one authoritative reading of any argumentative text, no one definitively correct reading of such a text.  Instead, there are better and worse readings of a text.  How do you know that your reading of a text tends fall on the worse end of the spectrum, or is so far off the mark that it could be called “bad”?  In Chapter 3, I discussed four ways in which your reading of an argumentative text can be “bad,” four errors any one of which place your reading outside of the zone of a reasonable reading.

There is also a fifth way in which your reading of a text can fall outside the zone of reasonableness.  That is to read far more into the text than the sources of meaning of the text allow.  Or, equivalently, to read something far different into the text than the sources of meaning of the text allow.  (Recall that the sources of meaning for an argumentative text are its words, structure, context, and the reasonable inferences from those.)  This phenomenon is known as the overinterpretation of a text. You can think of overinterpretation like a flood. You house is inundated with water when you just wanted enough rain to water the garden.

A reading of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, for example, that interpreted it as an argument for monarchy as the best form of government would be outside of the zone of a reasonable reading of that text.  Lincoln nowhere mentions “monarchy” in the 272 words of that speech.  Moreover, his political career was entirely supportive of our constitutional democracy, so there is no contextual support for such a reading of his speech.  These are just two of many reasons why such a reading imports far too much meaning into the text, meaning which the text cannot support.

Or consider any of the essays we discussed in Reading Argumentative Texts or in the companion Workbook.  Should someone read one of these essays and declare that “properly understood” it definitively solves the question whether President Kennedy was killed by one gunman or more than one gunman, you would say that person is crazy or delusional.  There is no secret or hidden meaning that can be extracted from any of those texts that addresses or solves this debate. 

Many novels and other works of literature are subject to overintepretation.  The novelist and scholar Umberto Eco discusses this with respect to his own novels in a collection of essays, Interpretation and Overinterpretation (Cambridge U. Press 1998).  His insights into both interpretation and overinterpretation are instructive.

In Reading Argumentative Texts I did not dwell on the relationship between reading argumentative texts and writing an argumentative text (an essay, opinion piece, letter to the editor, etc.).  Nonetheless, many of you likely came away with this insight:  virtually everything I wrote in Reading about reading argumentative texts is applicable, directly or indirectly, to writing an argumentative text.  Utilizing the tools we discussed in Reading will make you a better reader and that will make you a better writer.  In turn, being a better writer will make you a better reader.  Writing argumentative texts is a good tool to improve your reading of argumentative texts.

The “easiest” way to get started on writing an argumentative text is to write an essay that uses a Road Map introduction (see Reading, Chapter 5), and in which the body of the essay follows the Road Map.  Alternatively, use the five-paragraph essay format which I discussed in my blog entry of September 4, 2022 (“Introductions and the Five-Paragraph Essay”); modify that template as necessary if your essay is longer than five paragraphs. 

I put “easiest” in quotes in the preceding paragraph because if you are new to writing an argumentative piece, you will find out that writing a good argumentative piece is not easy.  Typically it is a challenge.  Here are a few suggestions to make the task less of a challenge.

Write a first draft of your argumentative piece.  Let it sit for a few days, to give yourself some perspective on what you have written.  Read and rewrite it, because your first draft is sure to need improvement.  Go back to your second draft in a couple of days and rewrite again as necessary. 

Use that write/step away/rewrite/step away/rewrite again process with every argumentative essay you write.    

In writing and rewriting your essay, you will repeatedly be asking yourself two key questions, namely:  (1) what do I know (believe to be true)? and (2) how do I know it (what’s the basis for my knowledge or belief)?  You will recall that these are the same two questions that I urged you to ask of the authors of all argumentative texts and which, if you can answer them, constitute your understanding of the argument of a text.  (See Reading, Chapter 3.)  In attempting to answer these questions while writing, you likely will find that your understanding of your subject is satisfactory in some areas and incomplete in others.  When you start plugging those knowledge gaps, you may find that you need to modify or limit your thesis to conform to newly learned facts.  That is not a problem; it’s just part of arguing for a position that is defensible based on and limited to what you and others actually know.  

What should you write about to become a better reader?  I suggest that you start with a subject matter which you already know something about, as opposed to one which is new to you.  Use the writing process to deepen and expand your knowledge of that subject matter.  This allows you to use what you know to spot the flaws and gaps in your argument and to learn more readily what facts or concepts are needed to remedy those issues so that your argument is well constructed. 

At some point, you likely will need to write on a subject matter about which you have relatively little knowledge, as when a college professor gives you a writing assignment.  Your lack of familiarity with the subject matter will make the task more challenging; you will have to learn more new material to pull it off successfully.  But your task is far from impossible unless the subject matter is just way out of your league (e.g., a topic in quantum mechanics or rocket science). 

As you go through this process, you will be reading and thinking about what others have written on the same topic.  In doing so, you likely will come to a better appreciation of the thesis and the grounds for that thesis that an author proposes in writing on your topic.  For example, suppose you are arguing that George Washington was an ineffective general during the Revolutionary War and that the thirteen colonies won that War in spite of Washington’s many mistakes on the battlefields.  One source you may use to support this thesis is David McCullough’s military history 1776.  In reading this history and others on the question of Washington’s effectiveness or lack of effectiveness as a general in the Revolutionary War, you will come to a deeper appreciation of the many factors that McCullough and other authors took into account in addressing this question, what weight they gave to each of those factors, whether an author was biased in any respect, whether any one of these authors reached the right conclusion, and so on.  

In staking out an intelligent and defensible position on Washington’s military skills, you will need to understand the arguments of others on the subject.  That will increase your knowledge of the subject matter you are writing about, will improve your analytic reading skills, will make you a better reader of such texts, and will improve your writing skills for this and future essays. 

In sum, writing and reading argumentative texts are two sides of the same coin. The more you do of one, the better you will be at the other. 

When someone says you are being illogical, that generally is not a compliment.  Acting, speaking, and writing logically are essential to having order in and structure to our lives.  If we repeatedly cannot discern the logic of words and deeds, our lives take on the appearance of irrational chaos.

There is, however, a widely recognized exception to these general propositions:  humor.  In particular, many jokes are funny because they violate one or more logical canons.  In Chapters 7 and 9 of Reading, we saw how some jokes turn on the fallacy of equivocation (ambiguity).  Here, we will focus on how some jokes employ necessary and/or sufficient conditions to work.  Necessary and sufficient conditions often present the most difficulty to students first encountering the study of logic.  Looking at their operation in jokes helps to make these concepts clearer.

There is a genre of jokes which we may loosely refer to as “Conversations with God” jokes.  Typically, they work because the main character makes a logical mistake as to what is a sufficient or necessary condition for some desired outcome.  He finds out his mistake when he finally has a conversation with God.  Here are three jokes in this genre, all variations on the same structure, but with some logical twists.

Joke #1. 

One night a man gets down on his knees and says this prayer:  “Dear God, I try to be a good person.  I’m as generous as my conditions allows.  I pray and go to church regularly.  You know I am poor.  Please, please, please let me win the lottery.” 

The next day the lottery numbers are drawn and he doesn’t win.  So he repeats his prayer that night.

He doesn’t win the lottery the next day, so he repeats his prayer again that night.  And on and on for many months.

Finally, one night in the middle of his prayer, there is rumbling in the skies, a bright light shines down upon him, and he hears this loud, booming voice:  “Hey, buddy, do me a favor.  Buy a ticket.”

In the punch line, God effectively points out to the man that he is making a logical mistake.  The man (apparently) believes that being a good person, being generous, praying, and going to church regularly are as a group (jointly) a sufficient condition for him to win the lottery, even if he does not buy a ticket.  God’s reply tells him that this is not the case.  God’s reply in effect tells the man that buying a ticket is a necessary condition of winning the lottery (God can’t make the man a winner if he doesn’t buy a ticket).  God is also telling the man that buying a ticket may be either a sufficient condition or part of a set of jointly sufficient conditions for the man to win (i.e., buy a ticket and you may win, but God doesn’t guarantee that outcome in his reply).

Joke #2  

One year, the flooding got particularly bad in the town of Floodville.  As the waters rose one early morning, the local minister was standing in his first floor living room up to his ankles in water.  The police knocked on his door and asked him to get in the rescue boat waiting outside.  He refused, saying, “No thanks.  I’ve led a holy life.  I’m sure God will save me.”   

As the waters continued to rise, the fire department found him that afternoon in waist-deep water on the second floor of his house.  Once again, he refused to get in the rescue boat the department had brought.  He said again, “No thanks.  I’ve led a holy life.  I’m sure God will save me.”   

Finally, the next day he climbed to the top of his roof to get above the raging waters.  The National Guard came by with a third rescue boat and again the minister refused to get in.  He told the Guard, “No thanks.  I’ve led a holy life.  I’m sure God will save me.”

The flood waters kept rising, swept him away, and he drowned.  When he got to heaven, he asked God, “Why didn’t you save me from the flood?  I was sure you would save me.  You know that I lived a holy life, followed your commandments, helped the poor, and was kind.”  To which God replied, “Hey, Reverend, I sent you three rescue boats.”

God’s reply in effect tells the minister that (a) the minister was mistaken in believing that living a holy life, following the commandments, helping the poor, and being kind were sufficient conditions, jointly or separately, of being saved from the flood, and (b) getting into one of the rescue boats was a necessary condition (and presumably also a sufficient condition) of being saved.  God’s reply is ambiguous as to whether the minister’s living a holy life, following the commandments, helping the poor, and being kind were a necessary condition for him (God) to have sent the three rescue boats to the minister; we don’t know from the joke whether God sent rescue boats to saints and sinners alike.

Joke #3.

When the Covid pandemic began in 2020, a very devout, religious man prayed every night, “Dear God, I go to church every week, I pray to you every day, and I do good works for the poor.  Please don’t let me die from Covid.” 

After the Pfizer vaccine was made available, the man’s friends urged him to get vaccinated, but he always told them, “No need.  I pray to God every night; I’m religious and go to church every Sunday.  I do good works for the poor.  God will protect me from dying from Covid.”  So he continued his same prayer every night, “Dear God, I go to church every week, I pray to you every day, and I do good works for the poor. Please don’t let me die from Covid.”

When the Moderna vaccine was made available, his friends urged him to get vaccinated, but he always told them the same thing:  “No need.  I pray to God every night; I’m religious and go to church every Sunday…. God will protect me from dying from Covid.”  So he continued his same prayer every night, “Dear God, …” and so on.

When the Johnson & Johnson vaccine was made available, his friends urged him to get vaccinated, but he always told them, “No need.  I pray to God every night; I’m religious and go to church every Sunday.  God will protect me from dying from Covid.”  So he continued his prayer every night, “Dear God, …”

Well, as things played out, the man did not get vaccinated, got Covid, and died.  When he got to heaven, he went to God’s throne and asked him, “God, I went to church every week, I prayed to you every day, I did good works for the poor.  I thought you were going to protect me.  Why didn’t you save me from Covid?” 

God replied, “I did.  I sent you three vaccines.”

The analysis is largely the same as with Joke #2.  Note this twist, however, which arises because Joke #2 does not depend on the minister praying to God, whereas the man’s prayers to God (to save him from Covid) are essential to Joke #3.  In the punchline in Joke #3, God is effectively telling the man that recognizing when he (God) answers your prayers (the three vaccines) is a necessary condition of that answer having the effect prayed for (saving the man’s life).  In other words, a vaccine plus the man’s recognizing that the vaccine was how his prayers were answered are jointly necessary conditions for his being saved from death by Covid.  Further, note that the availability of the vaccine by itself was not a sufficient condition of being the man’s saved (of his prayers being answered), but that the availability, plus recognizing that taking the vaccine would prevent his death, plus actually taking the vaccine were jointly sufficient conditions of not dying from Covid (the answer to the man’s prayers). 

Sometimes analyzing a joke kills its humor; analyze it and it’s no longer funny.  But just as often, analyzing a joke and seeing a violation of a logical rule gives it greater meaning.  You gain a deeper appreciation of how and why it is funny.  There are many other jokes that turn on errors in recognizing necessary and sufficient conditions.  The internet is full of them.  Check it out.

Everything has a context or contexts.  Context influences our understanding of that thing, person, action, or text.  So, if you want to understand something, one of your most important tasks is to understand its context(s). 

Let’s start with you, the reader.  Suppose you want to understand yourself, who you are, why you act as you do, what you believe and why, and so on.  What is that self you are trying to understand?  The author Jose Ortega y Gasset suggested that part of that answer must be an account of our circumstances, our living, breathing context: “I am I plus my circumstances” (Meditations on Quixote).  The African-American essayist James Baldwin made the same point, directing us to our multiple contexts and leaving open-ended what else one needs to consider:  “I am what time, circumstance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am, also, much more than that.  So are we all.”  (James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son, xx (2012)) If these authors are right, the “you” that you need to examine includes at least the intellectual, social, political, and cultural contexts in which you find yourself. 

In Chapter 8 of Reading I discussed five types of context that add meaning to an argumentative text.  One general lesson from that chapter is that the more you know about the context(s) of a text, the richer the meaning of that text will be for you, the greater your understanding of what the author is trying to communicate to you.  So, how do you know what the contexts of any text is? 

Knowing and recognizing context is not like learning a reading skill like outlining or summarizing.  Indeed, it presents a sort of chicken and egg problem (which came first, the chicken or the egg?).  The more you know about science, history, and general aspects of a culture, the more you will recognize the relevant contexts of a text; conversely, the more meaning you get from any particular text because you recognize its relevant contexts will give you greater knowledge of science, history, and so on to aid you in understanding other texts.  Indeed, some commentators have argued that without some background knowledge of history, culture, science, etc., reading comprehension is impossible or nearly so.  (See, e.g., Natalie Wexler, The Knowledge Gap (New York: Avery/Penguin 2019)) 

This is not a reason to be discouraged.  Knowledge begets knowledge and you have to start wherever you are. 

One obvious lesson from this is to learn everything you reasonably can.  A less obvious lesson is that reading deeply in a subject matter that interests you is a good way to improve your reading skills.  Especially if you are struggling in your reading, find a book in an area that interests you, at a reading level you can manage, and begin reading.  It can be a book about soccer, Hip-Hop, cooking, the origins of the stars, automotive mechanics, the history of the U.S. Civil War, whatever.  Your background knowledge of the subject matter of the book will aid you in understanding it.  Once you’ve mastered it, move on to another (not necessarily more difficult) text in the same subject matter.  Repeat as often as is useful and then branch out to texts in other areas in which you are interested.  You will be amazed at how much you can teach yourself and how much your reading will improve.

The more you know, the more you will appreciate your life.  To take a trivial example, consider this old and well-trod joke:

A priest, a minister, and a lawyer were trapped on an island surrounded by sharks many miles from the mainland.  They waited for days to be rescued, but no one came for them.  Finally, in desperation, they agreed that one of them had to try to swim to the mainland to get help.  No one volunteered for the task because they feared they would be eaten by the sharks.  So they decided to draw lots to decide who would make the swim.  The lawyer lost the draw, said his goodbyes to the priest and minister, jumped into the water and began to swim.  Surprisingly, when he got near the sharks, they formed two parallel lines and allowed him to swim through this lane unmolested.  The priest shouted with joy, “It’s a miracle.  Thank God.”  The minister replied, “No, father, just professional courtesy.” 

If you don’t know the social or cultural context it assumes, you won’t “get” the joke and won’t find it funny.  If you do know the assumed context, you likely won’t bend over in riotous laughter (it’s not that funny), but you are likely to appreciate it and at least get a chuckle from it.

A post-script:  go back to my post of March 10, 2022.  Its title was “Analytic Tools:  Swords or Plowshares?”  Did you catch the Biblical reference?  (See Joel 3:10)  Does knowing that reference and the common modern turn of phrase based on it add any meaning to that post?

You will recall that in Chapter 7 of Reading Argumentative Texts I discussed ambiguity and three nonliteral uses of language, specifically, irony, normative statements (and how they are distinct from factual statements), and rhetoric.  It will be useful here to expand on the discussions in Reading of ambiguity and the fact/normative distinction and to show an interesting way these are related.

In Chapter 7 of Reading, relying on a time-honored philosophical view I treated the distinction between factual and normative statements as being sharp, such that a normative conclusion could never be inferred from factual premises alone.  But consider the statement “John is rude”.  Is it a factual or a normative statement? 

A moment’s reflection shows that it could be either, and so with respect to some specific sentences the distinction between factual and normative statements may not be sharp.  Those sentences may be ambiguous, especially depending on the context. 

As a matter of grammatical form, “John is rude” looks like a statement of fact.  “John is rude” has the same grammatical form as “John is left-handed” or “John is fluent in French”.  As factual statement, it may mean that it can be shown that John routinely violates certain rules of etiquette, e.g, he routinely interrupts others in conversation, he does not hold doors open for the infirm, he takes more than his fair share of common food at the table, etc.  (John’s conduct is factually different from Mary’s, who in fact is routinely polite.) 

But the speaker or writer of “John is rude” may be implying that John should act differently, that he ought to stop violating the rules of etiquette.  Normatively, it may mean that the writer is criticizing John’s conduct, so that “John is rude” implies “and he ought to be more considerate of others”, or “John, you are rude!  You ought to be more polite”.  The “ought” in these sentences suggests that the speaker believes that persons have a duty to obey the rules of etiquette (and perhaps also those moral rules that are related to the rules of etiquette, such as the Golden Rule).   

Similarly, “John is a reckless driver” is ambiguous.  It can have both a a factual and a normative meaning.  Factually, it may mean that it can be shown empirically that John typically drives without concern for the possibly harmful consequences of his driving or that he routinely violates the rules of the road, e.g., he runs through stop signs, he drives down the middle of two-lane roads, he doesn’t yield to pedestrians in crosswalks, and so on.  As a normative statement, a speaker or writer may say this of John as a way of criticizing his driving habits because his heedlessness of the consequences of his driving or his violations of the rules of the road make him dangerous to others (contrary to a basic moral norm) or because his driving is imprudent (“John, your reckless driving is going to cost you your license and you’ll not be able to get to work.”) (contrary to a rule of prudence that we should not act contrary to our own interests).    

In sum, this discussion provides you with a new tool for your reading toolbox:  when it appears that a writer is attempting to draw a normative conclusion solely from factual premises, take a moment to ask whether any of his premises is ambiguous and could be interpreted as both factual and normative.  If so, then the author may be relying on a normative premise to support his normative conclusion.  Then he is not committing the logical error of drawing a normative conclusion from solely factual premises.  His argument may still be invalid or weak if his normative premise (or premises) is itself open to argument.  But that is a different type of error. 

Several times in Reading Argumentative Texts, I stated that there is no one authoritative – absolutely correct – reading of an argumentative text.  It is profitable to revisit that proposition.  If I am correct that in this view, then why is that so?  There are several reasons.

As an initial matter, we saw in Chapter 6 of Reading and in the Workbook that sometimes authors are just not terribly careful in their writing.  An author may be more focused on emotional appeals than argumentative rigor; she may not recognize one or more logical errors; she may not be attuned to the ambiguity in a word or phrase; and so on.  Any one or more of those characteristics of an argumentative text may result in multiple reasonable interpretations of the text. 

Moreover, even when an author is trying to be as precise as possible, the text may still have significant room for interpretation.  On the one hand, written language is by its very nature plastic, open ended, and flexible.  (Contrast it with the precision of mathematical symbols and proofs.)  That plasticity can be an impediment to clear communication.  Yet it can also have real benefits, in allowing a text to generate multiple meanings and, in some instances, multiple ideas or theories.  On the other hand, as James Madison (the principal intellect behind our Constitution) recognized more than two centuries ago, written language also lacks precise words and phrases for every complex idea.  We are constrained to express those ideas as best as we can through language and when those expressions fall short of the idea we seek to communicate, there will be room for multiple reasonable interpretations of that language. 

Finally, as you have learned from reading Reading and the Workbook, there are at least four sources of meaning in an argumentative text:  (1) the structure of the text; (2) the meanings of key words, phrases, and sentences; (3) the context of the text; and (4) the logical relations between the parts of the text.  The way these four sources relate to each other, and the different emphases or stresses a reader gives to one or more of these sources, will yield different meanings for the text as a whole. 

If there were a rule (or set of rules) a reader could follow to determine the proper stresses and emphases to give to these four sources of meaning for any particular text, then following that rule (or rules) may produce an authoritative reading for the text.  But there is no such rule or set of rules.  No rule can tell you that the context of a particular text is of greater or lesser importance in interpreting that text, or that some ambiguous term is to be interpreted as meaning X and not Y, or that a sentence is meant to be rhetorical and not part of the argument, and so on.  Accordingly, for each text we must engage in the art of interpretation, recognizing that there are better and worse ways of performing that art (just as there are better and worse ways of singing or hitting a baseball) but no single, absolutely right way for any particular text. 

One lesson to be taken from these brief reflections is this:  if someone tells you that he has the authoritative reading of an argumentative text (or, by extension, a great work of fiction or historical event), you should view that claim with skepticism, perhaps even with extreme skepticism.  If you put him through the paces and ask him to prove his claim, you shouldn’t be surprised if he can’t.