“Animal Liberation” by Peter Singer
Common Emotional Objections to Arguments for Veganism
One. "I love meat, so shut up."
Two. "I crave meat. My body is tell me I need to eat it, so get the hell out of here."
Three. "My doctor says I have to eat meat for the iron and other essential ingredients. Are you my doctor? I don't think so."
Four. "Animals are on the food chain. And I'm on top. So get back, my vegan friends, it's time for some barbecue tri-tip!"
Five. "I'm barely surviving on my meager income. I don't have your money to shop at Whole Foods and go on some fancy-pants vegan diet. Please."
Six. "Research shows that as soon as poor people start making some decent money, the first thing they do is purchase animal protein. What does that tell you, Mr. Vegan Smarty Pants?"
Seven. "Spare me your vegan platitudes, my effete egghead vegan do-gooders. Going vegan is for privileged people with too much free time on their hands."
People may be moved to be vegans:
Many people are moved by vegan arguments and cannot with a clear conscience participate in the kind of suffering a vegan describes.
Or they are moved by the need to help the environment.
Or they are moved by the need to lose weight and improve their health.
Or they are moved to be a vegan in order to win the favor of someone they're dating.
Road to Veganism Is Often from an Emotional Experience
I have a student who works in a famous barbecue restaurant. The meats come in large cardboard boxes and you can see the "whole body of the animal."
Sometimes she can detect movement in the box. A tail slowly wiggles. A leg with a hoof at the end kicks feebly. There's a final groan inside the box before the animal finally expires.
The kitchen floor is streaked with blood.
She couldn't all the gore and cruelty anymore. She has become a vegetarian. So have several of her co-workers.
They've seen what goes on "behind the curtain."
Most people don't want to know what happens "behind the curtain." We call this willed ignorance.
But the success rate is small, as we read in this New York Magazine article, "84% of Vegetarians Go Back to Eating Meat" by Melissa Dahl:
The lure of the cheeseburger is hard to resist. According to a large study of American dietary habits, 84 percent of vegetarians and vegans eventually go back to eating meat. The study was funded by advocacy group the Humane Research Council, which partnered with Harris Interactive to survey the meat-eating habits of 11,399 adults ages 17 and older.
A few of the more interesting findings:
- 2 percent of American adults are current vegetarians or vegans, 10 percent are former vegetarians/vegans, and 88 percent have never been vegetarian or vegan.
- More than half of the ex-vegetarians/vegans gave up on their veggie ways within their first year; a third went back to meat within three months.
- The average age that people said they first decided to give up meat was 34.
- About a third of ex-vegetarians and vegans said they were living with a non-vegetarian/vegan significant other when they started eating meat again.
So what nudges people into sticking with their veggie intentions, and what makes them abandon them? About two thirds of the former vegetarians and vegans said they rather abruptly changed their dietary habits, giving up meat and/or animal products within days or weeks of their initial decision to do so. Maybe, if this is a lifestyle you intend to stick with, it would be smarter if you make the transition gradually. Also, current vegetarians and vegans were more likely to name multiple reasons for avoiding meat and/or animal products, whereas many of the exes only reported one motivational factor, usually health.
Finally, 43 percent of the former vegetarians and vegans said they had a hard time sticking to a “pure” diet, suggesting that an all-or-nothing approach might be too difficult for newbies. No need to abandon the whole thing over some drunkenly consumed chicken nuggets.
Peter Singer's Claim That We Should be Vegans and Stop Hurting Animals:
Considering the arguments of sentience (animals can suffer), mass exploitation in factory farming, and inhumane acts in the name of medical science, humans should not use animals as a food or other resource.
15 Reasons Well-Intentioned People Struggle to Become Vegetarians or Vegans (with Counterarguments)
One. Fear of Leaving Your Paleo Roots
"I can't be a vegetarian. I am at the very core of my DNA a Paleo hunter. I crave meat because it's in my genes."
There is a school of thought that says our Paleo ancestors thrived on meat-eating, especially when the meat is cooked with fire, and that this carnivore diet led to bigger brains, bigger dominance, and better control over other living things.
From this point of view, ethics isn't the issue. Strength is.
The question isn't Is my eating ethical? The question is Does my eating make me strong?
“Dude, we’re all Paleo. Our ancestors killed their own beasts, and we are hardwired to do the same. So don't get all vegan on me.”
Objections to the Above
Farm Factory Slaughter Is Not Paleo
A “Paleo lifestyle,” however oversimplified by the torrent of Paleo diet books on the market, is about killing an animal with a spear, not farm factory killing.
It’s the farm factory killing, where animals live in inhumane conditions before they’re brutally slaughtered, that compels us to seek animal liberation.
If we were killing animals with spears, there would not be the kind of mass slaughter that kills 56 billion animals a year in farm factories.
But few people are going to kill animals with spears.
Bro-Science
The notion of Paleo is rooted in "Bro-Science," fake science that appeals to immature men's notions of masculinity. Most Bro-Science comes from bodybuilders and weightlifters.
A lot of mean equate eating meat with asserting their masculine dominance. This notion is further reinforced by ideas that eating meat increases testosterone and the vegetarian diet, often rich in soy products, increases estrogen.
But most meat eaters are overweight, the highest risk factor for lower testosterone.
Only the Upper Classes Would Buy Organic
If we concede that few will kill eating animals with spears and that factory farming is indefensible, then we're left with eating organic. And eating organic can be ridiculous: Buying our meat from places where the cows, often named Anastasia, listen to Mozart and the poetry of Walt Whitman before they're humanely killed, is so expensive that "boutique" meat-eating becomes the domain of the rich.
Furthermore, feeding the planet meat that's prepared in the organic fashion is not only too expensive for most people; it's too impractical. You can't scale boutique meat.
So we're left with a vegetarian diet.
Or, according to many sources, the future holds cricket protein as a main food source.
Two. Darwinian Argument
"Don't tell me I can't eat animals. I'm on top of the food chain. I'm the king, and I lord over the animals."
Related to the Paleo argument, the Darwinian argument says there’s a food chain, and we, human beings, are at the top of the chain. We’re the shot-callers. We flourish and stay at the top of the chain precisely because we dominate all the other animals.
The Darwin impulse, not morality, compels us to maintain our domination evidenced by imposing our will over these animals so we can survive and flourish.
Darwinism, the selfish will to survive, not morality, should inform and direct our unequivocal rejection of animal liberation.
Morality is not the issue. Survival is. "Don't you lecture me about food morality. I'm feeding my family."
Objections to the Above
For one, moral human beings don’t necessarily look to Darwinism as a lifestyle guide or an ethics handbook. To the contrary, many argue that morality is about turning away from our selfish, animal impulses.
To embrace our Darwinian impulses without a moral conscience is to be a sociopath.
One school of thought says that human beings, who have acquired language, music, art, and culture, are said to look beyond a Darwinian existence and to be transcendent of their animal instincts in order to flourish as fully-realized human beings.
For two, it can be argued that selfishness is not always a Darwinian survival impulse. To the contrary, flourishing societies evidence high degrees of adaptation and social evolution through empathy, self-interested altruism, social reciprocity, and cooperation.
A society comprised of Darwinian survivalists wouldn't be a society at all. It would be a throng of barbarians living in chaos. Is that the kind of world you want?
Three. Dumb Animal Argument
Who cares about animals? Animals are dumb, they’re driven by instincts, and many of them will eat us if given the chance. Clearly, then, this supports our right to impose our will on them and enjoy the delicacies they provide us.
"The hell with animals. People first."
Objections to the Above
How dumb animals are is open to question. But even if they are not as intelligent as humans, they deserve care and respect because they are feeling creatures.
A creature’s helplessness is not a justification for exploitation and outright cruelty of that creature.
Moral humans try to alleviate suffering. Therefore, moral humans care about animal suffering.
Even if people should take priority over animals, as I believe, this premise does not give us license to inflict unbridled cruelty against the animal kingdom.
Four. Love of Meat Eating is Associated with Family and Friends
Most people love eating meat. Most people have fond memories of going to barbecues. Telling them to not eat meat is like cutting them off from not just food that they love but from family and friends.
You may not miss meat so much as you miss the company of friends.
"My daddy barbecued, his daddy barbecued before him, and so did his daddy, and I'll be damned if you tell me I can't be the Pit Master of my own barbecue."
Objection to the Above
Saying that there is a long succession of this or that practice is not a moral justification; it's a logical fallacy called Tradition Fallacy (Appeal to Tradition).
Another example is the owner of a Country Club that excludes women: "We've never had women here. It's always been that way, and it always shall be."
That is not a logical justification of the practice of excluding women from the club.
Five. Veganism Usually Requires a Community of Like-Minded Folks
It’s almost impossible to be a vegan unless one lives in a vegan community. Any kind of eating that requires discipline requires a support system, a sense of encouragement, and a sense of belonging.
To be a lone vegan is to suffer ridicule, mockery, and ostracism.
Especially if the vegan bases her eating on an informed opinion, she's likely to be a critical thinker, and being a critical thinker in a land of non-critical thinking hobbits dooms one to a life of loneliness.
Six. You May be Perceived as a Joyless Fuddy-Duddy
As a vegan, you'll find that your meat-eating circle of family and friends may find your presence unpleasant and unwelcome since your abstinence from meat is an implicit condemnation of their omnivorous lifestyle.
Worse, some of your vegan allies may be militant in championing the vegan cause, and you may find yourself guilty by association.
A lot of vegans are perceived as evangelists for misery and joylessness. Vegan eating is looked at more as a punishment fueled by guilt and political correctness than as a celebration of food.
Seven. Compartmentalization
Most people are experts at compartmentalizing. They can see videos of the horrors animals face in factory farms and slaughterhouses and wince while they eat a brisket sandwich.
People can watch a film of a cow giving birth to a calf and say, "Isn't that precious!" while they savor a triple-decker cheeseburger.
My friend, who teaches health, shows a video of a healthy lung and a smoker’s lung, which disturbs his students. But during the class break, many of the students smoke outside the classroom while discussing “how gross” that yellow smoker’s lung looked.
There are people who love their family pet—a pot-bellied pig—and they have no problem having the pig sit at their breakfast table while they enjoy a plate of bacon and eggs.
Eight. Sense of Futility Leads to Apathy and Defeatism
An individual can say, “Even if I am a good vegan, I can see that world demand for meat is on the rise, that money, not morality, drives the demand for farm factories, and that this whole animal liberation thing is just a fool’s errand. I'm sick of being a critical thinker. I might as well join the hobbits at Burger King and eat triple-decker cheeseburgers to my heart’s content.”
Nine. Inherited Opinions Usually Triumph Over Informed Opinions
If we inherited the belief from our family, friends, and society that eating meat is part of a celebration of life, that belief will usually triumph over any kind of informed opinion we might make about the need for animal liberation.
We watch our TV foodie hero and adventurer iconoclast Anthony Bourdain shoot a pig in the head and speak with contempt about "annoying vegetarians."
Many people have strong emotional ties to barbecued meats. In South Carolina, a barbecue expert is called the Pit Master, and he enjoys the veneration of a holy priest.
Emotional reasons for eating more often than not triumph over informed reasons.
Ten. Limited Empathy
You have a 30-year-old college graduate working in tech or engineering or business, and he's making over 100K a year, but the cost of living in Los Angeles is so high he is renting a flophouse with seven other renters, and they're all fighting for the last ham and cheese Hot Pocket.
He's still got college debt, he's got a car payment, he's taking his work home, he just broke up with his girlfriend, and you bring up his need to go on a vegan diet.
What do you think his reaction will be?
"Amazing idea! Thanks for introducing me to the wonders of veganism!"
To the contrary, he is feel so overwhelmed by his own struggles that he doesn't have enough room in the empathy section of his brain to care about the plight of animals.
He has inherited the opinion or belief that animals are a resource for nutrition and energy. Why would he summon the will to challenge his inherited opinion and replace it with a moral point of view?
Will he summon the energy and the will to address the suffering of animals? Will he summon the critical thinking skills necessary to challenge his inherited and cultural opinions regarding the eating of meat or will he find it easier to fall back on his default setting for eating?
Eleven. Most People Don't Use Critical Thinking in Important Life Decisions
The example of the renter eating Hot Pockets speaks to the larger crisis: the shortage of critical thinkers in society.
According to Jason Brennan, philosophy and political science professor, a tiny segment of the population can be called critical thinkers.
He divides Americans into three groups:
One: The Hobbits (majority)
Two: The Hooligans (second to Hooligans in size)
Three: The Vulcans (tiniest in size, maybe 3% of the population)
Can you be a critical thinking Vulcan and eat meat?
Possibly. But we should make the difference between a carnivore whose lifestyle is informed by inherited opinions and one whose lifestyle is informed by considered opinions.
Twelve. Eating Takes Us Into Non-Critical Thinking World
Eating is about the Id, unbridled appetites, memories, Pavlovian responses. You may associate brisket, or steak, or barbecue tri-tip with the love of Grandma.
"Dad taught me how to kill a goat."
"My grandma taught me how to kill a chicken."
A lot of people get offended when confronted with the claims of veganism because those arguments become an implicit condemnation of some family member whose animal-killing skills provided fond memories of familial bonding.
Very few people approach eating from an intellectual or philosophical point of view.
Thirteen. Willed Ignorance
My daughters don't want to know what happened to the food they eat. "Dad, this barbecue chicken is delicious. Please don't tell me how this happened. That would be so gross. Traumatizing. Are you trying to ruin my life? You go to work so we can have privileges. And part of that privilege is not knowing what happens to chickens. Dad, pass me some more barbecue sauce."
Fourteen. Speciesism Argument Offends Many
Speciesism is defined as the selfish, narcissistic, tribalistic belief that humans “are entitled to treat members of other species in a way in which it would be wrong.”
Animal rights, according to speciesism, are as important as human rights. This moral equivalency offends many.
Objections to the Above
Peter Singer is going down a rabbit hole by attempting to compare animals to people. It’s offensive because too many animal lovers don’t show equal concern for “people's rights.”
Secondly, Singer is not realistic here. As a society, we have evolved to be speciesists. If my family or my class of students is threatened by a fanged animal, I'll choose to kill the animal. That's part of the social contract.
However, defending humans against animals doesn't give me the right to torture animals in farm factories.
Many of us would agree that Singer is misguided in both substance and rhetoric to compare animals to humans. We can be compassionate toward animals because they suffer without putting animals on equal footing with humans.
I am a Speciesist Who Is Sympathetic to the Arguments of Vegans
To drive my point further, I am an unapologetic speciesist. For example, if my daughters, or my students, for that matter, were in danger from a rabid rat or some other oversized rodent, and I had to choose between the life of my children or my students over the life of the rodent, I would choose to save the lives of my children and students? Why? Because I value the life of a human being over an animal’s. That makes me a speciesist.
Singer’s grounds for animal liberation based on the speciesist argument is misguided, incompetent, and I daresay fatuous (idiotic).
Review of Pathos, Ethos, and Logos
Such an argument diminishes both Singer's pathos: the emotional appeal of his argument, and his ethos: his credibility.
There is enough logos, that is clear logic, in his essay to keep us reading.
Of course, just because I disagree with one part of how Singer supports animal liberation doesn’t mean I reject his claim altogether.
Fifteen. Domain Argument
"The Bible says I have domain over all the animals. They were put on Earth for my pleasure. I can slaughter them as a holy sacrifice, I can use their furs to keep me warms, and I can eat their flesh. It's all in the Bible, so don't cram your heathen vegan religion down my throat."
Oppositions to the Above
Smart, reasonable religious people will agree you shouldn't take Bible verses out of context to justify self-serving behaviors, especially when those behaviors result in pig-headedness and cruelty.
Compelling Reasons to be a Vegan or Vegetarian
One. You can't compare animals killing their prey to factory farming.
The Faulty Comparison Meat-Eaters Make Between Humans and Animals
Some argue that we must kill animals for food because killing animals is part of nature. Animals kill animals. And that’s what we do. Tim, a reader from my blog, argues that vegans base their ideals on a false utopia. He writes:
I agree that man should be humane in all things, including the manner in which he kills his food. But let me add one little remark that the anti meat-eaters seldom appreciate.
Have you ever gone camping? What do the woods sound like at - say - 2 or 3 AM? To exaggerate a little, they sound like a slaughterhouse. Animals kill and eat other animals. They don't fuss over HOW the killing is done or how MUCH killing is done; they just do it. And it can be pretty horrible. Nature is savage; period.
So, don't forget, vegans, that nature itself is not a serene pacifistic green little utopia, whereas man is an abominable meat-lusting monster. Nature is often brutal and ugly.
In agreement with Tim, is another reader, Angelo. He writes:
I had a crayfish a few years ago---and he would eat "feeder" goldfish thrown in the tank. The "feeders" are sold for a dime each. The crayfish would ambush the goldfish, grab the fish and puncture its gill. Then, with the goldfish struggling, the crayfish would scrape the goldfish's scales off, before beginning to eat. The fish was still alive as the crayfish would chomp down on the tail, body parts, etc. Admittedly on a smaller scale--- that's still worse than electrocuting a cow.
But another reader, Shorty, believes comparing nature’s brutality with the brutality animals are subjected to in the slaughterhouses is a false one. He writes:
Nature is indeed savage, but animals seldom kill but for hunger. The animals that get eaten in the wild don't know what it's like to be confined in a pen, wallowing in their own waste - only to die fat and tender. Livestock warehousing and mass killing will never be vindicated. It will always be a symbol of greed, arrogance, and a barometer of the human condition. Eating meat is OK if you hunt for it in an ethical manner. Otherwise, vegetarianism is the holy grail for me.
Faulty Moral Equivalency or Faulty Comparison
Animals are obligate carnivores; humans are not entirely; animals eat out of necessity; too many humans eat out of gluttony; animals eat to survive; people kill animals for profit; animals don’t slaughter animals on the mass scale that humans do. Therefore, the comparison between nature’s brutality and man’s brutality is a faulty one and as such it constitutes a logical fallacy.
Humans Subject Animals to Horrors on a Mass Scale That Can’t be Compared to Predator and Prey
- Humans separate calves from their mothers at birth so mother can give milk for human consumption
- Cows are transported in boxcars where they panic.
- Chickens like to sunbathe but are doomed to a life of cramped darkness.
- Ducks crave water but are doomed to a life of arid dryness.
- Hens have their beaks cut off with a hot blade and live their lives in pain from the nerve damage.
- Birds raised in pens and kicked so they scatter and are shot at close-range (like Dick Cheney did when he shot someone) requires no skill and suggests a certain amount of sadism. There’s even a business where you can use computer graphics to kill your prey.
- Cows are forced to feed on corn, which is cheaper than grass but can’t be digested properly so the cows suffer indigestion and a bacteria count that leads to food-borne disease.
- One million calves are used for veal every year. They are removed from their mothers and holed up in a small crate, about two-feet wide, with no straw or bedding. They cannot stretch. The mortality rate is 20%. That is their life before being slaughtered.
- Pigs tails are cut off with no anesthesia so they don’t bite each other’s tails off during confinement.
- Confined, often the pigs go crazy, biting the bars or their own tails, or shaking their heads constantly.
- Confined, pigs have elevated levels of cortisol (stress hormone).
- Too often, pigs, cows, chickens, and other livestock are still alive on the conveyer belt as pieces of their body are taken apart. They die slowly, piece by piece, and in essence, are tortured. The slaughterhouses won’t let you see what is happening.
Two. Animals Don’t Cause Waste and Pollution the Way Humans Do
- Pig waste ruins lakes and rivers.
- Cattle feedlots contaminate water over 1,900 times the state’s maximum standard for E. coli in surface waters (Masson).
- Raising pigs and cattle (animals don’t raise animals to eat) creates 80 million metric tons of waste nitrogen annually (Masson).
- Animal waste is 130 times greater than human waste annually in America (Masson).
- Animal waste results in E. coli, Salmonella, and other diarrheal diseases (Masson).
- Rainforests are being destroyed to grow soy, but the majority of the soy is used to feed livestock (Masson).
- According to the Smithsonian Institution, every minute land the size of seven football fields is currently being bulldozed to create room for farmed animals and the crops need to feed them (Masson).
- Livestock accounts for 18% of human-induced greenhouse gas emissions of carbon dioxide, more than the entire transportation sector of the whole world, including cars, ships, airplanes, and trains (Masson).
Source for the Above:
The Face on Your Plate by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
Three. Vegan Diet Proven Effective for Weight Loss
According to USC study, the vegan diet is the most effective diet for permanent weight loss.
PETA refers to studies also, but you should avoid using PETA studies in your essay. Why? Their bias is too blatant.
Four. Vegan and Vegetarian Diets Result in Lower Cancer Rates.
Major university study shows 22% lower risk for colorectal cancer for vegetarians.
Generally speaking, vegetarians get cancer at half the rate of non-vegetarians.
Five. Cruelty Toward Animals Encourages Cruelty Toward Humans
Common Objection to Animal Rights
It’s immoral to lift one finger helping animals because there is still human suffering. It’s morally offensive to talk about helping the animals when there is so much human need and misery that needs to be addressed.
Helping the animals is a privileged person’s mission that ignores the needs of the unprivileged.
Rebuttal to the Above
Developing a mentality of care and respect for animals results in more respect and kindness for our fellow humans.
And the converse is true: A policy of brazen disrespect and cruelty for animals results in more coarse, even brutal behavior toward humans.
In fact, studies show that people inclined to abuse animals are more inclined to commit violence against humans.
Of all the defenses of animal liberation that I’ve seen, the above is one of the most compelling.
Using Toulmin Logic and Structure for Your Argumentative Essay
Understanding Toulmin Logic and Structure
The Claim
The claim is the thesis or the central argument of the Toulmin essay.
Examples:
Looking at all of the evidence and wanting to base our eating on critical thinking, we are morally compelled to adopt a vegan lifestyle.
The claim can stand alone, or it can be followed by a clarifying sentence or sentences, also called mapping components.
Examples Claims That Stand Alone
Eating meat is a moral abomination.
Supporting the farm factory industrial food complex is a moral outrage that endangers us all.
Veganism is a vastly superior diet to meat-eating.
Veganism is a fool's errand.
Examples of Claims Followed by Clarifying Sentences
Eating meat is a moral abomination evidenced by animal pollution that plagues poor communities, the greenhouse gases that deplete the ozone, and the cruelty that afflicts the animals in their overcrowded pens.
Eating meat is a moral abomination. This immoral undertaking becomes evident when we look at the animal pollution that plagues poor communities, the greenhouse gases that deplete the ozone, and the cruelty that afflicts the animals in their overcrowded pens.
Supporting the farm factory industrial food complex is a moral outrage that endangers us all. Farm factories are a vortex of cruelty, antibiotics, pollution, and human disease.
Veganism is a vastly superior diet to meat-eating evidenced by the vegan's lower cancer rates, lower cholesterol, lower heart disease, and moral highground.
Veganism is a fool's errand when we consider the high failure rates, the malnutrition, and the healthy organic meat-eating options available.
Should you use clarifying sentences or mapping components?
This is up to you.
There is an advantage to using mapping components.
They outline your essay.
They make it easier for your instructor to read your paper. Some instructors might be lazy, and they will appreciate that you made it easier for them to follow your exposition.
Grounds
Evidence, reasons, and support comprise the grounds of the Toulmin essay.
Examples
Vegans face 50% less risk for all cancers.
Vegans live 4-7 years longer than non-vegans.
Vegans on low-fat diets have lower rates of obesity, heart disease, and diabetes.
Warrants
Warrants answer this question: Exactly how do the reasons offered in support of the conclusion work together?
In other words, what kind of guarantee—or warrant—is provided to demonstrate that the reasons proffered actually do support the claim or lead to the conclusion?
Perhaps the most simple way to explain this is to say that the warrants are the logic used to connect the grounds to the claim.
Example:
Claim: Veganism is superior to meat-eating.
Grounds: Too many people object to vegan diets because they mistakenly associate these diets with punishment rather than as a celebration of great food.
Warrant: A lot of so-called aspiring vegans want to fail, so they fixate on the all the stereotypical hideous vegan foods: soy "Frankenstein" burgers, "rabbit" salads, and rice cakes, and then they boast to everyone how miserable they were when "they tried to be a vegan." This is a false attempt.
Backing
Backing is using further logic to convince reader that you have chosen compelling and appropriate reasons for supporting your claim: In fact, there are many vegan dishes "to die for" in various cuisines from the Middle East, India, and Thailand, to name a few.
Qualifiers
Qualifiers define the character and scope of the proposition or claim.
Examples
Unless people are pregnant or anemic or have some medical condition that requires some animal consumption as prescribed by their doctor, most people are morally compelled to adopt a vegan diet.
Rebuttals
At this point in your essay, you ask what are the possible objections to my argument? And what are the most compelling objections?
Can I state these counterarguments and rebuttal them effectively?
Example
People who object to veganism will point out _____________, ________, and _________; however, we find that a close examination of their claim reveals it to be faulty and misguided evidenced by ___________, __________, and ____________.
Sample Thesis Statements
Sample #1
While I concede that there is way too much mindless cruelty in the factory farming of animals, we must not obfuscate the truth, namely, that the vegetarian diet does not provide optimum nutrition. The omnivore diet, which includes meat eating, is defensible from an evolutionary, biological, and nutritional point of view.
Sample #2
Let's be clear. I am a failed vegetarian, a man for whom the vegetarian diet left me weak and so hungry that I overate carbs until I gained lots of weight to the point that I was saddled by corpulence. So let's put this on the table: I eat animal protein. Having confessed my carnivorous ways, let me say here that I am morally revolted by factory farming and that I am prepared to refute with all my heart and soul the major arguments that factory farm apologists use to defend the abominations that ensue in 99% of the slaughterhouses.
The central weakness of the farm factory apologists is their specious claim that we are entitled to brutalize animals since brutality is the norm in nature. Comparing farm factory slaughter with animal-on-animal slaughter is an egregious comparison wrought with many fallacies. First, animals kill for hunger while farm factories kill for profit. Second, the scale of brutality in the farm factory far surpasses that which occurs in nature. Third, the amount of waste farm factories impose on the environment cannot be compared to the almost nonexistent waste that occurs in the animal world. Fourth, farm factory butcheries spread disease like E. coli on a mass scale whereas in Nature such spread of contagion does not occur. Revealing this faulty comparison for the outlandish fraud that it is, what are meat eaters like me to do? Surely, the answer lies in trying to eat meat that comes from non-farm factory sources, such as meat labeled “organic” and “sustainable.”
Sample #3:
While the vegetarian argument is built on noble aspirations and makes a convincing case for reforming the cruelties and abominations that take place on factory farms, the vegetarian diet does not provide optimum nutrition. First, we must consider we have evolved into omnivores and as such we have a biological/evolutionary need for some animal protein; second, we must consider that there is an abundance of evidence that points to malnutrition and even death that infants suffer who are forced by their parents to eat a vegan diet; third, we must consider there is a strong link between the vegetarian diet and obesity and related metabolic syndrome as a result of relying too much on agricultural, carbohydrate-laden foods.
Sample #4:
While I concede that there are many advantages to a meat-eating diet, these advantages are offset by several factors, which include the inevitable cruelty that animals suffer as we try to feed a world of billions of people; the environmental devastation that occurs when we reserve the Earth’s land for grazing livestock animals; the environmental damage that occurs from the animal waste that cannot be adequately refined at factory farms; and the myriad of diseases that are spread from farm factory animals.
Sample #5:
Our professor McMahon has apprised us of the intractable conflict between the dangers of the strict vegan diet and indiscriminate meat eating as he successfully shows that the only solution to this conflict is to eat organic, sustainable animal protein. Such an eating program is the only viable way to eat because _____________, _________________, _______________, and ___________________.
Sample #6:
McMahon’s argument for killing animals in an "organic setting" rests on so many illusions that he has been stripped of any intellectual credibility. His illusions are too numerous to cover in their entirety, but we can begin by focusing on McMahon's most egregious critical thinking lapses, which include the fact that it is impossible to feed the world with the organic process; _________________, ______________, _________________, and _____________________.
Sample #7
While I concede that the vegetarian diet can be refuted on biological, evolutionary, and nutritional grounds, I cannot accept the reckless barbarism and cruelty that many meat-eating arguments try to ignore or sweep under the carpet. That we may need to eat meat doesn’t excuse our torture and brutality against animals. We must fight to reform the meat industry. That the vegetarian, and especially the vegan diet, may be lacking in vital nutrients does not excuse our woeful treatment of animals. That we are dependent on animal products in so many ways does not excuse the cruelty we inflict upon them. Any legitimate arguments against the vegetarian or vegan lifestyle in terms of nutrition do nothing to dissuade me from believing that our current slaughterhouse system is a moral abomination in four ways: The current slaughterhouse factories for chickens, cows, pigs, and other livestock are built on moral relativism, mindless denial (willed ignorance), dishonest language, and outright sadism.
"Why Asking for a Job Applicant's Facebook Password Is Fair Game" by Alfred Edmund
“Should business owners be allowed to ask job applicants for their Facebook passwords?” Many people who watched me on MSNBC’s Your Business on Sunday were surprised to hear that my answer is “Yes,” including the show’s host, JJ Ramberg. (For those who missed it, the show reairs on Saturday, April 7, at 5:30 a.m.) This question became a hot news topic last week, especially in business and social media circles, when Congress failed to pass legislation that would have banned the practice of employers asking employees to reveal their Facebook passwords.
Now, if I was asked the same question as a guest on a show called Your Career, I would have been hard-pressed to think of a situation where I would share my Facebook password with a potential employer. For me to consider it, I would have to want the job pretty badly, with the amount and type of compensation (including benefits, perks and even an equity stake in the company) being major considerations. But before doing so, I would see if there were other ways I could address the potential employer’s concerns without revealing my password, such as changing my privacy settings to give them the ability to view all of my Facebook content. If they persist with their request for my password, I would try to negotiate terms to strictly limit both its use of the password and the length of time the potential employer would have access to it before I could change it. I might even consider getting an employment attorney to negotiate an agreement, include terms of confidentiality, to be signed by both me and the potential employer before sharing my password.
Of course, for the vast majority of positions, neither I nor a company looking to hire would deem it worth the time and expense to jump through all of these hoops. Most companies would not care to have password access to an applicant’s social media accounts. (For what it’s worth, Facebook’s terms of rights and responsibilities forbids users from sharing their passwords.) In probably 99 percent of such cases, if a potential employer made such a request, my answer would be, “No, I will not share my password. Are there alternatives you are willing to consider to satisfy your concerns?” I accept that I’d risk not being hired as a result. On the other hand, if that was all it took for me not to be hired, I’d question how badly they really wanted me in the first place, as well as whether that was the kind of place I would have been happy working for. But for certain companies and positions, especially if I wanted the job badly enough, I’d consider a request for my Facebook password at least up for negotiation.
That said, my response on Your Business was from the perspective of the business owner. And if I’m the owner of certain types of businesses, or trying to fill certain types of positions, I believe I should be able to ask job applicants for access to their Facebook accounts. The applicant may choose not to answer, but I should be able to ask. Depending on the position, knowing everything I possibly can about an applicant is critical to not only making the best hire, but to protecting the interests of my current employees, customers, partners and as well as the financial interests of the company.
On Your Business, I pointed to an example where I believe a request for a Facebook password as part of the hiring process is entirely reasonable: the childcare industry. If I am running a school or a day care center, the time to find out that a teacher or other worker has a record of inappropriate social media communication with minors, or worse, a history of or predilection for sexual relationships with students, is during the hiring process—as New York City is finding out the hard way, with an epidemic of public school employees being revealed to have had such relationships with students. To me, such a request falls into the same category of checking the backgrounds of potential employees as the common (also still debated) practice of asking job applicants to agree to a credit check, especially for jobs that will require them to handle money, keep the books or carry out other fiscal duties on behalf of a company. In these and other cases, safety and security issues, and the legal liability that they create for business owners if they are not adequately addressed during the hiring process, outweigh the job applicant’s expectation of privacy when it comes to their social media activities.
Speaking of which, I can still hear people screaming (actually tweeting and retweeting), that an employer asking for your Facebook password is a horrible invasion of privacy. Well, for those of you who still believe in Santa Claus, I strongly recommend that you read The Filter Bubble: What The Internet is Hiding From You by Eli Pariser (Penguin Press). Or you can just take my advice and let go of the illusion of privacy on social media. The courts are conflicted, at best, on whether we as social media users have a right to an expectation of privacy, with many cases being decided against such expectations. The last place you want to share anything that is truly private is on your Facebook page or any other social media platform. Better to think of social media as the ultimate “Front Street.” No matter what their privacy policies are (which they can change at will without your permission) and what privacy tools and settings they offer (which they also change whenever it suits their business models), always assume that posting on Facebook is just the ticking time-bomb version of you shouting your private business from the middle of Times Square—on steroids.
To paraphrase a quote shared in The Filter Bubble, if you’re getting something for free, you’re not the customer, you’re the product. Social media is designed for the information shared on it to be searched and shared—and mined for profit. The business model is the very antithesis of the expectation of privacy. To ignore that reality is to have blind faith in Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc. operating in your best interests above all else, at all times. (I don’t.)
Whether you agree with me or not about a whether a potential employer asking you for your Facebook password is fair game, I hope you’ll take my advice: When considering what to share via social media, don’t think business vs. personal. Think public vs. private. And if something is truly private, do not share it on social media out of a misplaced faith in the expectation of privacy.
This debate is far from over, and efforts to update existing, but woefully outdated, privacy laws—not to mention the hiring practices of companies—to catch up with the realities of social media will definitely continue. I’d like to know where you stand, both as entrepreneurs and business owners, as well as potential job applicants. And I’d especially like to hear from human resources and recruiting experts. How far is too far when it comes to a potential employer investigating the social media activity of a job applicant?
Rebuttals
One. Valid slippery slope: If we give up our Facebook account to our employer, what's next? They get digital receipts of all our consumer purchases? Full medical records? Our psychological evaluations?
Two. Wanting something badly enough doesn't justify compromising ourselves to get it. We shouldn't base important decisions on our desperation.
Three. Rigorous background protocols existed before Facebook.
Four. That we have less privacy in Internet Age doesn't mean that we must therefore surrender even more privacy to our employers.
I call this the "Pie Fallacy." I cheated on my diet by eating two slices of pie, so I might as well eat ten slices. Or put it this way: I spent $20 on a crappy sandwich at the airport, so I might as well spend $50.
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Stephen Toulmin, an English philosopher and logician, identified elements of a persuasive argument. These give useful categories by which an argument may be analyzed.
Claim
A claim is a statement that you are asking the other person to accept. This includes information you are asking them to accept as true or actions you want them to accept and enact.
For example:
You should use a hearing aid.
Many people start with a claim, but then find that it is challenged. If you just ask me to do something, I will not simply agree with what you want. I will ask why I should agree with you. I will ask you to prove your claim. This is where grounds become important.
Grounds
The grounds (or data) is the basis of real persuasion and is made up of data and hard facts, plus the reasoning behind the claim. It is the 'truth' on which the claim is based. Grounds may also include proof of expertise and the basic premises on which the rest of the argument is built.
The actual truth of the data may be less that 100%, as much data are ultimately based on perception. We assume what we measure is true, but there may be problems in this measurement, ranging from a faulty measurement instrument to biased sampling.
It is critical to the argument that the grounds are not challenged because, if they are, they may become a claim, which you will need to prove with even deeper information and further argument.
For example:
Over 70% of all people over 65 years have a hearing difficulty.
Information is usually a very powerful element of persuasion, although it does affect people differently. Those who are dogmatic, logical or rational will more likely to be persuaded by factual data. Those who argue emotionally and who are highly invested in their own position will challenge it or otherwise try to ignore it. It is often a useful test to give something factual to the other person that disproves their argument, and watch how they handle it. Some will accept it without question. Some will dismiss it out of hand. Others will dig deeper, requiring more explanation. This is where the warrant comes into its own.
Warrant
A warrant links data and other grounds to a claim, legitimizing the claim by showing the grounds to be relevant. The warrant may be explicit or unspoken and implicit. It answers the question 'Why does that data mean your claim is true?'
For example:
A hearing aid helps most people to hear better.
The warrant may be simple and it may also be a longer argument, with additional sub-elements including those described below.
Warrants may be based on logos, ethos or pathos, or values that are assumed to be shared with the listener.
In many arguments, warrants are often implicit and hence unstated. This gives space for the other person to question and expose the warrant, perhaps to show it is weak or unfounded.
Backing
The backing (or support) for an argument gives additional support to the warrant by answering different questions.
For example:
Hearing aids are available locally.
Qualifier
The qualifier (or modal qualifier) indicates the strength of the leap from the data to the warrant and may limit how universally the claim applies. They include words such as 'most', 'usually', 'always' or 'sometimes'. Arguments may hence range from strong assertions to generally quite floppy with vague and often rather uncertain kinds of statement.
For example:
Hearing aids help most people.
Another variant is the reservation, which may give the possibility of the claim being incorrect.
Unless there is evidence to the contrary, hearing aids do no harm to ears.
Qualifiers and reservations are much used by advertisers who are constrained not to lie. Thus they slip 'usually', 'virtually', 'unless' and so on into their claims.
Rebuttal
Despite the careful construction of the argument, there may still be counter-arguments that can be used. These may be rebutted either through a continued dialogue, or by pre-empting the counter-argument by giving the rebuttal during the initial presentation of the argument.
For example:
There is a support desk that deals with technical problems.
Any rebuttal is an argument in itself, and thus may include a claim, warrant, backing and so on. It also, of course can have a rebuttal. Thus if you are presenting an argument, you can seek to understand both possible rebuttals and also rebuttals to the rebuttals.
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“Animal Liberation” Study Questions
One. Should a liberation movement, as part of a forward-thinking society, embrace humanitarian concerns for animals as sentient, feeling beings? Or should we abandon such a concern and look at animals as merely a form of property and a resource for humans’ needs and pleasures?
Of course, Singer claims we must do the former. Animals, like humans, can suffer, and suffering is a just cause for treating animals with the same care and respect we are encouraged to give to our fellow humans.
Common Objection to the Above
It’s immoral to lift one finger helping animals because there is still human suffering. It’s morally offensive to talk about helping the animals when there is so much human need and misery that needs to be addressed.
Helping the animals is a privileged person’s mission that ignores the needs of the unprivileged.
Rebuttal to the Above
Developing a mentality of care and respect for animals results in more respect and kindness for our fellow humans.
And the converse is true: A policy of brazen disrespect and cruelty for animals results in more coarse, even brutal behavior toward humans.
In fact, studies show that people inclined to abuse animals are more inclined to commit violence against humans.
Of all the defenses of animal liberation that I’ve seen, the above is one of the most compelling.
Two. What is the inequality objection against animal rights?
Animals are dumb, they’re driven by instincts, and many of them will eat us if given the chance. Clearly, then, this supports our right to impose our will on them and enjoy the delicacies they provide us.
Objection to the Above
How dumb animals are is open to question. But even if they are not as intelligent as humans, they deserve care and respect because they are feeling creatures.
A creature’s helplessness is not a justification for exploitation and outright cruelty of that creature.
Moral humans try to alleviate suffering. Therefore, moral humans care about animal suffering.
Three. What is the Paleo argument against animal rights?
“Dude, we’re all Paleo. Our ancestors killed their own beasts, and we are hard-wired to do the same.”
Objection to the Above
A “Paleo lifestyle,” however oversimplified by the torrent of Paleo diet books on the market, is about killing an animal with a spear, not farm factory killing.
It’s the farm factory killing, where animals live in inhumane conditions before they’re brutally slaughtered, that compels us to seek animal liberation.
If we were killing animals with spears, there would not be the kind of mass slaughter that kills 56 billion animals a year in farm factories.
Four. What is the Darwinian opposition to animal liberation?
Related to the Paleo argument, the Darwinian argument says there’s a food chain, and we, human beings, are at the top of the chain. We’re the shot-callers. We flourish and stay at the top of the chain precisely because we dominate all the other animals.
The Darwin impulse, not morality, compels us to maintain our domination evidenced by imposing our will over these animals so we can survive and flourish.
Darwinism, the selfish will to survive, not morality, should inform and direct our unequivocal rejection of animal liberation.
Morality is not the issue. Survival is.
Objections to the Above
For one, moral human beings don’t necessarily look to Darwinism as a lifestyle guide or an ethics handbook.
One school of thought says that human beings, who have acquired language, music, art, and culture, are said to look beyond a Darwinian existence and to be transcendent of their animal instincts in order to flourish as fully-realized human beings.
For two, it can be argued that selfishness is not always a Darwinian survival impulse. To the contrary, flourishing societies evidence high degrees of adaptation and social evolution through empathy, self-interested altruism, and cooperation.
A society comprised of Darwinian survivalists wouldn't be a society at all. It would be a throng of barbarians living in chaos. Is that the kind of world you want?
Five. Is the comparison between “speciesism” and racism valid?
Speciesism is defined as the selfish, narcissistic, tribalistic belief that humans “are entitled to treat members of other species in a way in which it would be wrong.”
Objection to the Above
Singer is going down a rabbit hole by attempting to compare animals to people. It’s offensive because too many animal lovers don’t show equal concern for “people rights.”
Secondly, Singer is not realistic here. As a society, we have evolved to be speciesists. If my family or my class of students is threatened by a fanged animal, I'll choose to kill the animal. That's part of the social contract.
However, defending humans against animals doesn't give me the right to torture animals in farm factories.
As we read in the article “Peter Singer’s Race Problem,” published in Jacobin and written by Sarah Grey and Joe Cleffie:
Speciesism, as Singer defines it, is “an attitude of bias against a being because of the species to which it “belongs” — in short, discrimination against nonhuman animals. “Humans show speciesism,” he explains, “when they give less weight to the interests of nonhuman animals than they give to the similar interests of human beings.”
Singer does not think it is speciesist to think human life is more important than that of nonhuman animals in some instances. It is only speciesist to say human life is always more important.
To support this distinction, Singer focuses on the specificities of particular situations. It is not speciesist, for example, to declare that monkeys should not teach physics, because monkeys lack the ability to do so.
It is, however, speciesist to argue that monkeys should be used in medical experiments that are not absolutely necessary, simply because they are not human. He grants that killing “a being with the ability to think of itself as existing over time, and therefore to plan its life, and to work for future achievements” is more wrong than killing a nonhuman animal, but he argues that given that some human beings — most obviously, those with profound intellectual impairment — lack this capacity, or have it to a lower degree than some nonhuman animals, it would be speciesist to claim that it is always more seriously wrong to kill a member of the species Homo sapiens than it is to kill a nonhuman animal.
People influenced by Singer’s concept of speciesism often use it in a stronger sense — and deploy it less carefully than Singer himself does. The concept of speciesism is a cornerstone of the animal-rights movement, whose members tend to categorize it alongside (if not ahead of) forms of human oppression such as racism and sexism.
Those who count animal-rights activists or vegan evangelists among their Facebook friends will no doubt be familiar with this sort of framing: it often involves inflammatory memes juxtaposing images of factory-farmed chickens with images of slave ships or Nazi concentration camps. Israeli animal-rights activists also drew this parallel in a recent viral video, explicitly describing a truck full of chickens as “just like what my grandparents experienced during the Holocaust.”
The recent illegal killing of Cecil the Lion has also brought this dynamic to light. Author Roxane Gay tweeted her thoughts on the hypocrisy of white Americans who were outraged about the lion but expressed no concern for ongoing police murders of African Americans, writing: “I’m personally going to start wearing a lion costume when I leave my house so that if I get shot, people will care.”
Gay was subsequently inundated with hundreds of messages from incensed animal-rights activists, who insisted that “animal lives matter” and accused her of speciesism. The next day, the hashtag #AllLionsMatter was trending on Twitter.
Responding to the Above
Many of us would agree that Singer is misguided in both substance and rhetoric to compare animals to humans. We can be compassionate toward animals because they suffer without putting animals on equal footing with humans.
To drive my point further, I am an unapologetic speciesist. For example, if my daughters, or my students, for that matter, were in danger from a rabid rat or some other oversized rodent, and I had to choose between the life of my children or my students over the life of the rodent, I would choose to save the lives of my children and students? Why? Because I value the life of a human being over an animal’s. That makes me a speciesist.
Singer’s grounds for animal liberation based on the speciesist argument is misguided, incompetent, and I daresay fatuous (idiotic).
Review of Pathos, Ethos, and Logos
Such an argument diminishes both pathos: the emotional appeal of his argument, and his ethos: his credibility.
There is enough logos, that is clear logic, in his essay to keep us reading.
Of course, just because I disagree with one part of how Singer supports animal liberation doesn’t mean I reject his claim altogether.
Six. Is it true, as Peter Singer claims, that we can acclimate to immoral behavior to the point that we deem this behavior to be normal, natural, and even moral?
Singer writes: “People who eat pieces of slaughtered nonhumans every day find it hard to believe that they are doing wrong; and they also find it hard to imagine what else they could eat.”
Indeed, normal is what you’re used to.
Perhaps, though, Singer is wrong. Perhaps eating meat in moderation is normal. What’s not normal, however, is factory farming and the abuses in the mass slaughterhouses. For example, take this common sense approach to meat eating by journalist and author Michael Ruhlman in his essay, “Why It’s Ethical to Eat Meat”:
Several weeks ago, New York Times columnist Ariel Kaminer created a contest asking people to argue that eating meat is an ethical decision. Kaminer was pleased by the response. Judges included carnivores, vegetarians, and perhaps the most thoughtful and compelling vegan living, Peter Singer (and it’s worth clicking the Kaminer link for the judges’ overall responses to the many essays they read). They chose as winner an article by teacher Jay Bost.
It’s no secret that I am a vigorous and unapologetic carnivore. After visiting the above, Schmidt Family Farms, where Bradley Cramer not only processed more than 100 chickens but also trained Burmese refugees how to do it so that they, relocated to the Midwest, might try to earn a living farming, I’ve decided to weigh in on a subject I’ve been thinking about for years: why it is OK for me to eat another sentient creature.
This I believe: to eat humanely raised and slaughtered animals is not only ethical, it’s important to our humanity. I don’t argue against vegetarianism, and do believe that our diets should be composed mainly of plants, as Michael Pollan rightly simplifies it. I don’t believe anyone has the right to tell anyone else what they’re allowed to eat. And while I’m an admirer of the great intelligence of Peter Singer and his talents as a writer, I believe veganism as practiced by most is sanctimonious at best, and at worst harmful arrogance. What I can say for veganism is that it’s a superlative weight-loss strategy.
As the Harvard biological anthropologist Richard Wrangham argues in his book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, the cooking of food may well have been the mechanism that tripped our ancient genes into our current human ones. He suggests convincingly that consuming calorie-dense food (attainable only by cooking it) grew our brains, gave our ancestors the health needed to spread their genes, and socialized us (cooking food required cooperation, which led to small societies that could organize and protect themselves). Meat was a main source of this calorie-dense food.
To put it as simply as possible, then, to give up eating what made us who we are possibly endangers us genetically and socially.
Second, eating meat is a pleasure, and in a stressful uncertain world, pleasure is good, for mind and body.
Third, our eating animals is good for the animals. They exist because we care for them, and we care for and raise their offspring. If spit-roasted dodo bird had been delicious to eat, I’d wager the dodo bird would still exist.
In my reporting about food, I interviewed a farmer, Keith Martin, who raises lamb outside Pittsburgh for high-end restaurants such as the French Laundry and Alinea. He is so caring for his animals that when a farm hand failed to keep the animals’ bedding dry, he made the farm hand lie in the urine-soaked hay in order to make his point.
I spoke with Mr. Martin about his personal thoughts on the ethics of raising lamb for slaughter, given his obvious care for these animals. He is a thoughtful and smart man who left his work as a stockbroker to raise livestock—no crackpot.
Michael, he said to me, I spend a lot of time with these animals. I watch them get into that truck. I see their eyes. I know they’re good with it. They know, and they’re good with this arrangement.
The arrangement being that Martin takes good care of them, and their children, and they go willingly into the truck, stress-free, to the slaughterhouse. This he believes. [Update: enough people have taken issue with Keith’s comments that I urge you to read their comments below, as well as my response.]
To eat meat then is both good for us, health-giving when consumed in proper proportions, and deeply pleasurable (there’s a biological reason for this pleasure, certainly). Eating meat is good for humanity generally and, provided the animals are treated with care, our eating them ensures their survival, life’s ultimate impulse, no matter the form.
Given that humans no longer need high reserves of protein and fat, and given that modern livestock raising has become in many places harmful to the land, the animals, and the workers who tend them, our ethical duty lies in eating meat in healthful proportions and working to ensure that all animals are cared for with the passion and thoughtfulness of people such as Mr. Martin and Mr. Cramer. This truly is what needs to be the next step, and I don’t think anyone—vegan, vegetarian, carnivore—disagrees with it: End the way we currently grow, process, slaughter, distribute, and eat meat by encouraging more Keith Martins and Bradley Cramers to do their work.
Caveats to the Above
One could make the argument, as Ruhlman does, that one can eat meat in moderation but that the meat must come from animals that are humanely treated. This means eating “organic” or boutique. The problem is that as world demand for meat increases organic meat can’t keep up and factory farming continues to be on the rise.
The 5 Ways to Introduce Your Argument
According to Stuart Greene and April Lidinsky in their college text From Inquiry to Academic Writing, there are 5 major ways to introduce your argumentative essay.
One. The Inverted-Triangle Introduction
Another way to see the inverted-triangle is to think of moving from a general topic to a specific thesis.
First, we begin with a broad description of the problem we want to address.
Second, we examine some widely held but inadequate or misguided assumptions about the topic.
Third, we respond to those misguided assumptions by presenting our thesis.
For example, we could raise the No Child Left Behind Act as a popular political movement. We could bring up some misguided assumptions about NCLB, namely the idea that NCLB is an “objective” standard that makes students and teachers accountable to core standards. Then the thesis could be to dismantle these assumptions by showing its class bias, its profit-motive for the test makers, and its abysmal, laughably nonsensical questions. We could even show how the top schools in the world, coming from Finland, don’t use standardized tests.
Two. Narrative Introduction
A narrative grabs your reader’s attention. A good narrative should be like a King Cobra snake sinking its fangs into your reader. Or if you’d like a different metaphor, a good metaphor should be like a Muay Thai expert who slams his palm into your solar plexus, compelling you to keel over. In other words, a strong introduction commands your attention.
Example
So your ego’s been damaged. Your girlfriend told you that you both “need to take a breather” and get some “quality alone time” so that maybe you can get back together. But that time never comes. When you start calling her again, she says things like, “I think we need to start seeing other people.” And “Since getting away from you, I feel like I’ve been given my life back.” And worse, “I think being your girlfriend was like dying a slow painful death.” And then the final nail in the coffin: “I’m seeing someone. It’s serious, so you’ll need to stop calling me—or I’ll call the cops.”
At this point, any man with half a brain realizes the relationship is officially over. If you’re a healthy-minded dude, you wish her well and hope she finds the happiness and romantic bliss she couldn’t find with you. But you’re not that dude. You’re a spiteful SOB whose ego needs to see her life miserable in your absence. To see her squirm and fail as she tries to make it in the world without you gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling inside. Her miserable existence “proves” that indeed you were the best thing that ever happened to her. You need to hear through the grapevine that she’s unhappy with her “dating life” and that she has a dead-end job with an obnoxious, penny-pinching boss who micromanages her every move. You need to know that her credit card bills and other expenses have crippled her finances and that she has had to move back with her parents.
And then you get what you’ve been craving more than anything—You see her at a party standing all alone by a bowl of potato chips and onion dip. She’s overweight, pouting, makeup running down her face. At which time you walk a circle around her, shake your head in disdain, puff on your Cuban cigar, and say, “Look at you now, sweetheart. Look at you now.” And then with a sneer, you walk away from her as you make your grand exit from the party. Of course, you’re flanked by your eye-catching entourage—two slender scandalously dressed supermodels who accompany you as you get inside your silver Ferrari Barchetta Pininfarina you bought with the riches afforded by your new Fortune 500 company. As you sit in your three-hundred-thousand-dollar Italian sports car and your “girls” run their sensuous fingers through your luxurious head of hair, you see your ex-girlfriend, still alone at the party, now looking at you through the parted curtains and she stares at you like a sad, little puppy dog.
This gratifying scenario would have lasted longer, only your three-hundred-pound mother in a muumuu wakes you from your dream and tells you to get off your fat ass. You promised her you’d find a job by now and you’ve got less than an hour before your interview at Toys R Us. As you lay on your filthy bare mattress and listen to your mother berate you for your failed existence, you think back to your English professor who warned you that dropping out of college would have deleterious effects on both your professional and personal life, which would include ____________________, _________________, ________________________, and _______________________.
Three. The Interrogative Introduction
You ask your readers to enter the controversy at hand by asking one or more pertinent questions about your topic.
Example
Have you ever had a professor in some kind of writing class, whether it be English, history, philosophy, or political science, who seemed to be grading you less on your critical thinking skills and more on your eagerness to conform to his personal worldview? Have you felt that students, who wrote far inferior essays to yours, were being rewarded with higher grades merely for “sucking up” to the professor? Perhaps universities need to pass a Fair Grade Act that holds instructors accountable for not letting their personal biases infringe on their commitment to grading the students’ essays on student learning outcomes and discourage professors for giving high grades based on student sycophantism.
Four. The Paradoxical Introduction
You “appeal to readers’ curiosity by pointing out an aspect of the topic that runs counter to their expectations.”
Example
Dieting actually makes you fatter than you were before. The paradox of dieting is that the more we buy diet books and study the newest advances in nutrition the fatter we get. The only way to lose weight and keep that weight off is to be in a permanent state of semi-hunger and only an infinitesimal percentage of the human race can endure such prolonged agony. The superior alternative to dieting is to _________________________.
We read in "Education Isn't the Key to a Good Income" by Rachel M. Cohen:
One of the most commonly taught stories American schoolchildren learn is that of Ragged Dick, Horatio Alger’s 19th-century tale of a poor, ambitious teenaged boy in New York City who works hard and eventually secures himself a respectable, middle-class life. This “rags to riches” tale embodies one of America’s most sacred narratives: that no matter who you are, what your parents do, or where you grow up, with enough education and hard work, you too can rise the economic ladder.
A body of research has since emerged to challenge this national story, casting the United States not as a meritocracy but as a country where castes are reinforced by factors like the race of one’s childhood neighbors and how unequally income is distributed throughout society. One such study was published in 2014, by a team of economists led by Stanford’s Raj Chetty. After analyzing federal income tax records for millions of Americans, and studying, for the first time, the direct relationship between a child’s earnings and that of their parents, they determined
that the chances of a child growing up at the bottom of the national income distribution to ever one day reach the top actually varies greatly by geography. For example, they found that a poor child raised in San Jose, or Salt Lake City, has a much greater chance of reaching the top than a poor child raised in Baltimore, or Charlotte. They couldn’t say exactly why, but they concluded that five correlated factors—segregation, family structure, income inequality, local school quality, and social capital—were likely to make a difference. Their conclusion: America is land of opportunity for some. For others, much less so.
Five. The Minding-the-Gap-Introduction
You point out that something is missing in the research about a given topic. Your essay’s purpose is to fill in that gap.
Examples
Current earthquake preparedness fails to address how phone apps can give us twenty minutes warning of an earthquake.
Concussion studies on football players have failed to look at small pre-concussive events.
The benefits of CrossFit training have not been put in context of inadequate training for the trainers and data about permanent injuries resulting from CrossFit training.
Lesson on Using Sources (adapted from The Arlington Reader, fourth edition)
We use sources to establish credibility and to provide evidence for our claim. Because we want to establish credibility, the sources have to be credible as well.
To be credible, the sources must be
Current or up to date: to verify that the material is still relevant and has all the latest and possibly revised research and statistical data.
Authoritative: to ensure that your sources represent experts in the field of study. Their studies are peer-reviewed and represent the gold standard, meaning they are the sources of record that will be referred to in academic debate and conversation.
Depth: The source should be detailed to give a comprehensive grasp of the subject.
Objectivity: The study is relatively free of agenda and bias or the writer is upfront about his or her agenda so that there are no hidden objectives. If you’re consulting a Web site that is larded with ads or a sponsor, then there may be commercial interests that compromise the objectivity.
Checklist for Evaluating Sources
You must assess six things to determine if a source is worthy of being used for your research paper.
The author’s objectivity or fairness (author is not biased)
The author’s credibility (peer reviewed, read by experts)
The source’s relevance
The source’s currency (source is up-to-date)
The source’s comprehensiveness (source has sufficient depth)
The author’s authority (author’s credentials and experience render him or her an expert in the field)
Warning Signs of a Poor Online Source
Site has advertising
Some company or other sponsors site
A political organization or special interest group sponsors the site.
The site has many links to other biased sites.
Integrating Sources and Avoiding Plagiarism
Summarizing Sources
“A summary restates the main idea of a passage in concise terms” (314).
A typical summary is one or two sentences.
A summary does not contain your opinions or analysis.
Paraphrasing Sources
A paraphrase, which is longer than a summary, contains more details and examples. Sometimes you need to be more specific than a summary to make sure your reader understands you.
A paraphrase does not include your opinions or analysis.
Quoting Sources
Quoting sources means you are quoting exactly what you are referring to in the text with no modifications, which might twist the author’s meaning.
You should avoid long quotations as much as possible.
Quote only when necessary. Rely on summary and paraphrase before resorting to direct quotes.
A good time to use a specific quote is when it’s an opposing point that you want to refute.
Using Signal Phrases or Identifying Tag to Introduce Summary, Paraphrase, and Quoted Material
According to Jeff McMahon, the grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor. They’ll all be the same.
Jeff McMahon notes that the grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor. They’ll all be the same.
The grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors, Jeff McMahon observes, that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor.
The grading rubric in English classes is used in such a way by instructors that soon there will be no such thing as an “easy” or “hard” professor, Jeff McMahon points out.
Common identifying tags (put link here)
Strategies for Writing Your Essay (adapted from The Arlington Reader, Fourth Edition)
One. Know what type of writing you're doing:
- Description
- Comparison and contrast
- Process analysis (how to do something)
- Narrative (we write narratives for many reasons: catharsis of demons, explanation of an epiphany that changed our lives, an account of remarkable suffering and resilience, an account of something that was excruciatingly funny, to name a few examples)
- Define a term that your reader needs to understand in greater depth
- Persuasion (persuade readers and/or listeners to act as opposed to argumentation which is to win people’s minds over an issue, but not necessarily change their behavior)
- Cause and effect analysis
- Argumentation
The takeaway from the above is that you should always know what type of essay is generated from the assignment options the professor gives you.
Brainstorm a list of topics and thesis statements that are relevant to the essay.
Most writers need to get the bad stuff out of the way, so there’s no shame in coming up with five bad thesis statements before getting to a good one. That’s a natural course of events.
Always make sure your thesis addresses the essay prompt.
Your thesis is a single sentence that drives your whole essay. The thesis in argumentation is often called your claim.
Generally speaking, a thesis is the main argument or controlling idea of your essay. It makes a claim that intellectually sophisticated, challenging to common assumptions, compelling, and can is supportable with evidence.
The more obvious a thesis, the less compelling it is to write. The more a thesis reaches for insight or challenges common assumptions, the more compelling and sophisticated it is.
Bad thesis:
Smartphones are a nuisance in the class.
Better thesis
Rather than ban students from using their smartphones in the class, college instructors should integrate these and other personal technological devices into their classroom teaching.
Writing an introduction to your essay
Before transitioning from your introduction to your thesis, you should look at some effective introduction strategies:
Briefly narrate a compelling anecdote that captures your readers’ attention.
State a common false argument or false perception that your essay will refute.
Offer a curious paradox to pique your readers’ interest.
Ask a question that your essay will try to answer.
Use a fresh (not overused) quotation or parable to stir your readers’ interest.
How to Set Up a Counterargument in Your Rebuttal Section (The Templates)
Some of my critics will dismiss my claim that . . . but they are in error when we look closely at . . .
Some readers will 0bject to my argument that . . . However, their disagreement is misguided when we consider that . . .
Some opponents will be hostile to my claim that . . . However, their hostility is unfounded when we examine . . .
While Author X is guilty of several weaknesses as described by her opponents, her argument holds up to close examination in the areas of _________________, ______________, _____________, and ______________.
Even though author X shows weakness in her argument, such as __________ and ____________, she is nevertheless convincing because . . .
While author X makes many compelling points, her overall argument collapses under the weight of __________, ___________, ___________, and ______________.
Transition Words and Phrases
Agreement / Addition / Similarity
The transition words like also, in addition, and, likewise, add information, reinforce ideas, and express agreement with preceding material.
in the first place
not only ... but also
as a matter of fact
in like manner
in addition
coupled with
in the same fashion / way
first, second, third
in the light of
not to mention
to say nothing of
equally important
by the same token
again
to
and
also
then
equally
identically
uniquely
like
as
too
moreover
as well as
together with
of course
likewise
comparatively
correspondingly
similarly
furthermore
additionally
Opposition / Limitation / Contradiction
Transition phrases like but, rather and or, express that there is evidence to the contrary or point out alternatives, and thus introduce a change the line of reasoning (contrast).
although this may be true
in contrast
different from
of course ..., but
on the other hand
on the contrary
at the same time
in spite of
even so / though
be that as it may
then again
above all
in reality
after all
but
(and) still
unlike
or
(and) yet
while
albeit
besides
as much as
even though
although
instead
whereas
despite
conversely
otherwise
however
rather
nevertheless
nonetheless
regardless
notwithstanding
Cause / Condition / Purpose
These transitional phrases present specific conditions or intentions.
in the event that
granted (that)
as / so long as
on (the) condition (that)
for the purpose of
with this intention
with this in mind
in the hope that
to the end that
for fear that
in order to
seeing / being that
in view of
If
... then
unless
when
whenever
while
because of
as
since
while
lest
in case
provided that
given that
only / even if
so that
so as to
owing to
inasmuch as
due to
Examples / Support / Emphasis
These transitional devices (like especially) are used to introduce examples as support, to indicate importance or as an illustration so that an idea is cued to the reader.
in other words
to put it differently
for one thing
as an illustration
in this case
for this reason
to put it another way
that is to say
with attention to
by all means
important to realize
another key point
first thing to remember
most compelling evidence
must be remembered
point often overlooked
to point out
on the positive side
on the negative side
with this in mind
notably
including
like
to be sure
namely
chiefly
truly
indeed
certainly
surely
markedly
such as
especially
explicitly
specifically
expressly
surprisingly
frequently
significantly
particularly
in fact
in general
in particular
in detail
for example
for instance
to demonstrate
to emphasize
to repeat
to clarify
to explain
to enumerate
Effect / Consequence / Result
Some of these transition words (thus, then, accordingly, consequently, therefore, henceforth) are time words that are used to show that after a particular time there was a consequence or an effect.
Note that for and because are placed before the cause/reason. The other devices are placed before the consequences or effects.
as a result
under those circumstances
in that case
for this reason
in effect
for
thus
because the
then
hence
consequently
therefore
thereupon
forthwith
accordingly
henceforth
Conclusion / Summary / Restatement
These transition words and phrases conclude, summarize and / or restate ideas, or indicate a final general statement. Also, some words (like therefore) from the Effect / Consequence category can be used to summarize.
as can be seen
generally speaking
in the final analysis
all things considered
as shown above
in the long run
given these points
as has been noted
in a word
for the most part
after all
in fact
in summary
in conclusion
in short
in brief
in essence
to summarize
on balance
altogether
overall
ordinarily
usually
by and large
to sum up
on the whole
in any event
in either case
all in all
Obviously
Ultimately
Definitely
Time / Chronology / Sequence
These transitional words (like finally) have the function of limiting, restricting, and defining time. They can be used either alone or as part of adverbial expressions.
at the present time
from time to time
sooner or later
at the same time
up to the present time
to begin with
in due time
as soon as
as long as
in the meantime
in a moment
without delay
in the first place
all of a sudden
at this instant
first, second
immediately
quickly
finally
after
later
last
until
till
since
then
before
hence
since
when
once
about
next
now
formerly
suddenly
shortly
henceforth
whenever
eventually
meanwhile
further
during
in time
prior to
forthwith
straightaway
by the time
whenever
until now
now that
instantly
presently
occasionally
Many transition words in the time category (consequently; first, second, third; further; hence; henceforth; since; then, when; and whenever) have other uses.
Except for the numbers (first, second, third) and further they add a meaning of time in expressing conditions, qualifications, or reasons. The numbers are also used to add information or list examples. Further is also used to indicate added space as well as added time.
Space / Location / Place
These transition words are often used as part of adverbial expressions and have the function to restrict, limit or qualify space. Quite a few of these are also found in the Time category and can be used to describe spatial order or spatial reference.
in the middle
to the left/right
in front of
on this side
in the distance
here and there
in the foreground
in the background
in the center of
adjacent to
opposite to
here
there
next
where
from
over
near
above
below
down
up
under
further
beyond
nearby
wherever
around
between
before
alongside
amid
among
beneath
beside
behind
across
Thesis statements or claims go under four different categories:
One. Claims about solutions or policies: The claim argues for a certain solution or policy change:
America's War on Drugs should be abolished and replaced with drug rehab.
Two. Claims of cause and effect: These claims argue that a person, thing, policy or event caused another event or thing to occur.
Social media has turned our generation into a bunch of narcissistic solipsists with limited attention spans, an inflated sense of self-importance, and a shrinking degree of empathy.
Three. Claims of value: These claims argue how important something is on the Importance Scale and determine its proportion to other things.
Global warming poses a far greater threat to our safety than does terrorism.
Four. Claims of definition. These claims argue that we must re-define a common and inaccurate assumption.
In America the notion of "self-esteem," so commonly taught in schools, is, in reality, a cult of narcissism. While real self-esteem teaches self-confidence, discipline, and accountability, the fake American brand of self-esteem is about celebrating the low expectations of mediocrity, and this results in narcissism, vanity, and sloth.
Ways to Improve Your Critical Reading and Assess the Quality of Your Sources
- Do a background check of the author to see if he or she has a hidden agenda or any other kind of background information that speaks to the author’s credibility.
- Check the place of publication to see what kind of agenda, if any, the publishing house has. Know how esteemed the publishing house is among peers of the subject you’re reading about.
- Learn how to find the thesis. In other words, know what the author’s purpose, explicit or implicit, is.
- Annotate more than underline. Your memory will be better served, according to research, by annotating than underlining. You can scribble your own code in the margins as long as you can understand your writing when you come back to it later. Annotating is a way of starting a dialogue about the reading and writing process. It is a form of pre-writing. Forms of annotation that I use are “yes,” (great point) “no,” (wrong, illogical, BS) and “?” (confusing). When I find the thesis, I’ll also write that in the margins. Or I’ll write down an essay or book title that the passage reminds me of. Or maybe even an idea for a story or a novel.
- When faced with a difficult text, you will have to slow down and use the principles of summarizing and paraphrasing. With summary, you concisely identify the main points in one or two sentences. With paraphrase, you re-word the text in your own words.
- When reading an argument, see if the writer addresses possible objections to his or her argument. Ask yourself, of all the objections, did the writer choose the most compelling ones? The more compelling the objections addressed, the more rigorous and credible the author’s writing.
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