Week 4 Discussion: Post 1

Argument:  YES.

Las Vegas has too many people (1). There’s not enough water in the desert to support more than a million people (2). And the infrastructure of the city can’t handle more than a million: The streets are overcrowded, and traffic is always congested; the schools are overcrowded, and new ones can’t be built fast enough (3). We should stop migration to the city by tough zoning laws in the city and country (4).

Conclusion: We should stop migration to the city by tough zoning laws in the city and country.

Additional Premises needed?: No, the premises stated are enough to support the argument.

Identify any subarguement: 2 and 3 are independent and support 1.

Good Argument:  I think that this is a very good argument. The argument is Las Vegas has too many people. Several premises that describe why Las Vegas can’t handle all of the population then support it. Then the argument is backed up by a conclusion to stop migration.

I feel like this exercise was not as effective than it should have been. I was still kind of confused “additional premises needed?”. Does the additional premises have to connect to each other or do they follow the subargument? If so, the premise I would add after 2 would be: Therefore, it is unsafe to have an overpopulated city if there is not enough water to support their needs. I think that 3 already had a premise to follow its subargument. “The streets are overcrowded, and traffic is always congested; the schools are overcrowded, and new ones can’t be built fast enough” gave enough support to the subargument. I felt like the argument was valid and didn’t need to have any additional premises. In the previous example about the dogcatcher, it was easy to add premises, but for my argument I wasn’t sure if it was actually necessary. Please help if you have any suggestions!