4.1 The Requirement of Grounding PDF

§4.1 The Requirement of Grounding Each syllogism is its own little world; it is an internally coherent view of a certain limited universe. But a syllogism's internal consistency provides no guarantee that any particular person will accept its argument; one can admit a syllogism's logic and still...

§4.1 The Requirement of Grounding Each syllogism is its own little world; it is an internally coherent view of a certain limited universe. But a syllogism's internal consistency provides no guarantee that any particular person will accept its argument; one can admit a syllogism's logic and still reject its conclusion because one rejects its premises. A critical task for any advocate, then, is to induce his or her target audience to accept the premises of a syllogistic argument. What induces someone to accept the premise of a syllogism? At a minimum, the targets of persuasion must believe the premise of a syllogism to be true before they will accept it as the basis for a persuasive argument. That is why, as we saw in Chapter 3, the advocate must offer only premises that are true. But is the truth of a syllogism enough to persuade an audience to accept it? Consider the following syllogism: 1. Airfoils generate lift according to Bernoulli's Principle. 2. A fixed aircraft wing is an airfoil. 3. Therefore, a fixed aircraft wing generates lift according to Bernoulli's Principle. This syllogism states a fundamentally true explanation of why an airplane flies. It is properly structured and internally coherent. But does it persuade you? Probably not, unless you happen to know something about fluid mechanics. The premise of a syllogism, then, must be something more than merely true; it must be grounded. To say that a premise is grounded means that the premise is not only true, but self-evidently true; it requires no further explanation or justification from the advocate. A grounded premise is one that the target audience will accept as true without further elaboration. Now reconsider the foregoing syllogism explaining why airplanes fly. For most people, the syllogism is not persuasive, despite its truth, because they lack sufficient information to understand the truth of the syllogism. Most of us need to know the meaning of the terms “airfoil,” “Bernoulli's Principle,” and “fixed aircraft wing.” We need to know why airfoils work according to Bernoulli's Principle, and why a fixed aircraft wing should be considered an airfoil. Only when we have this information do we have a realistic opportunity to make a judgment about the truth of the premises of this syllogism. Does this mean that the syllogism is ungrounded? Not necessarily. The syllogism might be sufficiently grounded for presentation at an aeronautical engineering convention; that is, engineers might accept the premises as true without requiring further explanation or justification. But the premises are certainly not sufficiently grounded to present to a jury in a tort suit arising out of a plane crash: a panel of lay persons will require far more explanation than the premises of the syllogism provide. Proper grounding, then, is a matter of context. The proponent of a syllogism must provide sufficient explanation of its premises to allow the particular target audience to understand why the premises are true.