Example Essay 1

Student Name: Matthew

Student No.: xxxxxxxxxx

Word Count: 1078

Argument Passage

This is a serious issue, and it requires serious people.  Anyway, as we all know, oil will run out.  It is not an inexhaustible resource.  When this happens, we're in serious trouble. I mean, can you imagine what would happen if the pumps ran dry and we couldn't drive our cars or trucks, or operate planes or trains?  Civilization as we know it would grind to a halt!  We don't want this.  So it's obvious that we have to develop alternative energy sources.  What do you think?

Standard Form

P1) If oil runs out and we do not develop alternative energy sources to oil , then we cannot drive cars or trucks, or operate planes or trains

P2) If we cannot drive cars or trucks, or operate planes or trains, then civilization will grind to a halt

___________

C1) If oil runs out and we do not develop alternative energy sources to oil, then civilization will grind to a halt (from P1 and P2)

P3) Oil will run out

___________

C2) If we do not have an alternative energy source to oil, then civilization will grind to a halt (from C1 and P3)

P4) We don’t want civilization to grind to a halt

P5) The benefits of avoiding civilization grinding to a halt outweigh the costs of developing alternative energy sources to oil

__________

C3) We must develop alternative energy sources to oil (from C2, P4 and P5)

Argument Map

Assessment

The authors main conclusion is that we need to develop alternative energy sources to oil. They argue for this with an extended argument containing three sub-arguments. Each sub-argument is deductive and valid, making the overall extended argument deductive and valid.

The author assumes that if we cannot drive cars and trucks, or operate planes and trains, then civilization will grind to a halt (P2). But the author does not make clear what it means for civilization to ‘grind to a halt.’ And on any interpretation of what this means, I am not confident all their starting premises are true.

If it means that civilization will collapse, or stop developing, or that civilization will no longer have a functioning transportation system, then I think it is false.

First, there are lots of examples of civilizations that did not collapse and still developed, and still had functioning modes of transportation, even without using cars and planes etc. Basically, every civilization that existed prior to the 20th Century.

Second, if oil runs out we will still have what those civilizations used for transportation– horses, ships, wagons, hot air balloons, steam trains etc.

Our civilization may collapse/stop developing if oil runs out, but I don’t think we can assume this, and in fact I think it is probably false.

There is one remaining interpretation of what it would mean for civilization to grind to a halt - transportation will become more difficult if oil runs out. I think that this is true. However, on this interpretation I have no confidence that P4 and P5 are true.

On this interpretation P4 says ‘we don’t want transportation to become more difficult.’ But would it really be a bad thing if people could not travel and transport things so easily around the world? It might even be a good thing for the environment, if human beings are unable to move so many things so quickly from one place to another. To give just one example of the potential environmental benefits: If humans cannot move so many things so quickly from place to place, we would not be able to overfish the oceans as much as we are doing now, allowing fish populations to recover from decades of overfishing. Which would ultimately be of benefit to human civilization.

Of course we don’t really know what the consequences of such a big change to our methods of transportation will be, but I don’t think we should just assume that they will be negative.

P5 says that the benefits of avoiding civilization grinding to a halt outweigh the costs of developing alternative energy sources to oil.

If it means that transportation will become more difficult, then I would need to have more details about the benefits and costs to have confidence it is true. It seems quite plausible to me that the benefits of avoiding transportation becoming less effective than it is now, does not outweigh the costs of developing alternative energy sources. Again, is it really such a bad thing that we cannot transport things as effectively as we do now? Perhaps it might even be better for humanity, if a result of this would be a better relationship with nature!

Even if I had confidence in P2, P4 and P5, I have problems with P3 and the practical course of action the author is advising us to take.

At face value, P3 is saying that one day, oil will run out. And so, assuming everything else the author says is true, then one day we will have to develop alternative energy sources to oil.

But the author says nothing about when this day will come. Is it going to be in the next few years, or the next few decades, or in a hundred years, or in a thousand years?

So while we can conclude that we will have to develop alternative energy sources to oil at some point in the future, if this time is far in the future, there is no real urgency to developing alternatives to oil, and it is not something that we have to do right now – which is what I think the author wants us to do

I don’t know much about oil reserves on planet Earth, but I do know that people have been saying we are about to run out of oil since the 1970s, but we keep finding new sources of oil and developing new technology for extracting oil. So as far as I know, this could easily continue.

The author really needs to give us some reasons to think that oil will run out soon, in order for his practical argument to have any urgency, and actually encourage us to develop alternatives to oil right now.

Conclusion

The author is trying to persuade us that we need to develop alternative energy sources to oil, because otherwise civilization will ‘grind to a halt.’ I am not convinced by his argument. Even though the structure is good, and their argument as a whole is valid, I do not think that it is sound. On any interpretation of the idea of civilization ‘grinding to a halt’, I am not confident that all their premises are true. And even if this were not the case, without some argument that oil will run out soon, there is no urgency to the author’s practical argument, and they have not persuaded me that developing alternatives to oil is something that we need to be focusing on right now.