ARGUMENTS ABOUT VALUES--HANDOUT

I) Supporting criteria with a specific audience in mind

Generally speaking, you will not have to defend any criteria your 
audience is likely to share; for example, if you are claiming that your 
friend is a "good student" you would probably not have to defend the 
criteria for a "good student" to that friend.  But if your audience does 
not accept your criteria of evaluation to begin with, you need to 
determine ways by which you can support your criteria.  While there are 
four methods for supporting criteria for a specific audience, i.e., 
authority, consequences, comparison, and values, we will be focusing 
only on values.

Arguments premised on "values" are generally held (although this point 
is disputable) to be different from arguments based on "facts" as they 
do not appeal to a universal audience as would arguments based on 
"fact".  Arguments with regard to values means an admission that a 
belief in an ideal, person or object may help support a particular 
action, but the success
of this appeal may not be binding to everyone, but rather only to a 
specific audience.  For example, while an argument based on the fact of 
gravity may appeal to a universal audience, an argument based on values 
about writing and specific definitions of literacy may only appeal to a 
limited group of people.

If you can show that your standard of evaluation falls under one of your 
audience's basic assumptions about what has value then you have 
supported your criteria, at least for that audience.  The following 
example illustrates an argument based on values with limited audience 
appeal.   The novelist John Gardner evaluates much modern fiction as 
"trivial and corrupt."  He claimed as his criterion for that evaluation 
that fiction should be a moral art.  How could he back up that 
criterion, one with which many modern novelists and readers disagree?  
He could place that criterion under one of our basic assumptions by 
appealing to the self-evident goodness of what is moral.  Moral is 
another word for choosing the good and repressing the bad and if we 
argue that trying to live according to this policy is admirable in life, 
shouldn't it also be admirable in fiction?   Young and Sullivan's 
article, "Why Write", provides another illustration of criteria 
supported by values designed to address a specific audience,

What these arguments share [Rohman, Progoff, Britton, and Olson]  is the 
idea that writing enables us to think in ways that are otherwise 
improbable , or difficult, or even impossible. (Young and Sullivan, p. 
216)

The criterion used here for defending the value of writing is based on 
certain values concerning the type of thinking which writing engenders.  
While this argument may be readily accepted by some members of a 
literate community,  it may not be accepted by members of an oral 
culture who believe that oral discourse enables equally as valuable 
cognitive abilities.  Or it may not be accepted by people who find 
writing to be a difficult, and even a counterproductive task, and who 
rely on other  means of expression and communication.

II) Weighting values: ethical argument

Consider the following case in terms of the ethical evaluation involved 
in making a decision:  Is it right for a community and school board to 
allow  the reading of the Bible (if such a decision is supported by a 
majority vote)  while our educational system is supposed to maintain a 
separation of church and state?  In this situation the issue is not 
"right action" versus "wrong action", but rather the issue at hand 
concerns several positive values which are in conflict, education, 
majority rule and religious freedom.   A decision about a case such as 
this would involve weighting one value over another.  Ethical argument 
involve making such very fine discriminations, ordering values in a 
hierarchy to make possible the judgment of action.  In an ethical 
argument, you and your audience might agree on certain values, but not 
necessarily order those values the same way.  Your job in argument is to 
weight one value, the one that will become the critical criterion of 
judgment, above the other.  Evaluating values in this way is a matter of 
stance, that faced with a choice, being well educated is more important 
than being wealthy (or vice versa).   No matter what you are evaluating, 
from an object to  a value itself, most of the time weighting will be 
the crucial issue with your audience.  People are likely to agree about 
the relevance of a set of criteria but disagree about which is most 
important in a given situation. 

I) Arguments about premises

When a speaker/writer presents the premises (i.e., the starting point of 
the argument) upon which he/she builds an argument, he/she is assuming 
(or counting on) the audience's acceptance of that premise.   However, 
the audience may not always accept this premise:  they do not adhere to 
what the speaker/writer presents as being generally accepted; they may 
see this premise as one-sided; they may not accept the way in which the 
premise was presented.  As such, it is important in building your 
argument  to carefully consider the question of what sort of agreements 
can serve as effective premises.  While not  all encompassing, we will 
look at types of objects of agreement that play different roles in the 
arguing process.  These types of objects of agreement fall into 2 
classes:

1) real:  facts, truths, and presumptions 

2) preferable: values, hierarchies, and, in general, lines of argument 
concerning what is preferable in a given situation
 
Even though the 2 classes separate values from facts and truths, it is 
important to recognize that in many ways this classification is a false 
one as arguments about values almost always enter a debate as some stage 
of an argument.  For example,  the reasoning processes used in the hard 
sciences ( a discipline generally held to present "facts" and "truths" 
which are removed from any form of subjective value judgment) are 
generally confined to the beginning of the formulation of the concepts 
and rules that makeup the framework which the discipline operates 
within.  In other words, information which is considered to be factual 
and truthful is, even in the hard sciences, relative to the norms and 
values upon which the discipline is based.  Relatedly, when a 
writer/speaker presents information which he/she claims to be a "fact" 
or to be "true", the reasoning or justification supporting this claim 
must also be presented.  And the reader/hearer needs to become skilled 
in questioning  someone's presentation and assumptions underlying their 
claims of presenting facts.   Furthermore, the status of statements 
evolve:  over time values, through various processes may become accepted 
as facts and/or truths, just as facts and truths may be understood to be 
value judgments.