The practice of argument-reconstruction Extraneous material • Defusing the rhetoric • Logical streamlining • Implicit and explicit • Connecting premises • Covering generalisations • Relevance • Ambiguity and vagueness

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,

• Extraneous material 169

• Defusing the rhetoric 171

• Logical streamlining 174

• Implicit and explicit 176

• Connecting premises 184

• Covering generalisations 185

• Relevance 188

• Ambiguity and vagueness 191 Ambiguity • Vagueness

• More on generalisations 198 The scope of a generalisation

• Practical reasoning 201

• Balancing costs, benefits and probabilities 205

• Explanations as conclusions 207

• Causal generalisations 210

• A shortcut 213

cates the inferences between them. The strength of the argument is understood in terms of the concepts discussed in Chapters 2 and 3 – 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.