SAMPLE Argument Assignment         
 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


HERE is a sample of a completed assignment.

(Suppose the assignment is to analyze the 4th - 6th paragraphs of Descartes's First Meditation. This is a relatively complicated example.)

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Premise: When I dream, I customarily sense things that seem exactly as real as what I am sensing right now.

Premise: What has deceived me before cannot be trusted.

Conclusion: What I am sensing right now cannot be trusted.

Premise: Trusting what I sense when awake requires conclusive indicators to distinguish between waking and sleeping.

Premise: I have been fooled before into thinking I was awake when I was asleep.

Conclusion: I lack conclusive indicators.

Conclusion: I cannot trust what I sense even when I think I'm awake.

Premise: When dreaming, imagination constructs what it senses out of simple, universal concepts.

Conclusion: I can still trust what is simple and universal in what I sense.