A-manual-for-writers-of-research-papers-theses-and-dissertations

The reason is both true and a valid instance of the general condition of the warrant(encyclopedias were instances of valued objects).The claim is a valid instance of the general consequence of the warrant (not owning anencyclopedia is a valid instance of something valuable not being part of an estate).And if the researcher feared that a reader might doubt any of those conditions, she would haveto make an argument supporting it.But that's not the end of the problem: is the warrant true always and without exception?Readers might wonder whether in some parts of the country wills mentioned only land andbuildings, or whether few people made wills in the first place. If the writer thought thatreaders might wonder about such qualifications, she would have to make yet anotherargument showing that those exceptions don't apply.Now you can see why we so rarely settle arguments about complex issues: even when weagree on the evidence, we can still disagree over how to reason about it.TESTING THE RELEVANCE OF A REASON TO A CLAIM. To test the relevance of a reason to aclaim, construct a warrant that bridges them. First, state the reason and claim, in that order.Here's the original reason and claim from the beginning of this section:In 1836, this country wasn't a confident player on the world stage, reasonso the Alamo stories spread quickly. claimNow construct a general principle that includes that reason and claim. Warrants come in allsorts of forms, but the most convenient is the When–then pattern. This warrant “covers” thereason and claim.When a country lacks confidence, it quickly embraces stories of heroic military events.We can formally represent those relationships as in figure 5.1.