ABSTRACT
The goal of argument-reconstruction is to produce a clear and completely explicit statement of the argument that the arguer had in mind. The desired clarity and explicitness is achieved by putting all of the argument, and nothing but the argument, into standard form: this displays the argument’s premises, intermediate conclusions and conclusion, and indicates the inferences between them. The strength of the argument is understood in terms of the concepts discussed in Chapters 3 and 4 – validity, inductive force, deductive and inductive soundness. In this chapter, we begin to see, in more detail, how the practice of reconstruction goes; in particular, we learn some ways of coping with commonly encountered difficulties.
