Assessing arguments in (1) to (3) requires assessing empirical and conceptual claims.
They maintain that the application of this technique to increase students' reasoning ability while reading requires "assessing arguments and statements, deducing conclusions and hypotheses, detecting inconsistencies and common mistakes in reasoning, and making inferences" (p. 52).
When it comes to assessing arguments that are presented as being either for or against disjunctivism it is obviously going to be important to be sensitive to the question of which formulation of disjunctivism is in play.
Valla's insistence on examining and assessing arguments in terms of persuasion and usefulness leads him to criticize not only the syllogism but also other less formal modes of argumentation.
So to the extent that such exclusivistic behavior is based on inadequate conceptual tools and/or fallacious reasoning, the continuing philosophical discussions of religious diversity that clarify issues and assess arguments may well be of great practical value.
But when traditional political allegiances are gone, as they now are for the Republicans who can see Trump for what he is, the paradigm of values no longer follows from those allegiance - and minds are unusually able to assess arguments and options based on core principles and human experiences without bias toward a political tribe or mediation by a felt political identity.
Our students- including those at liberal arts institutions- need to be able to formulate and assess arguments in light of empirical evidence while understanding that the results of a single study do not indicate the absolute end of a debate or "proven" state of the world.
To assess argument (1) above, consider four main ethical codes---classical Aristotelian virtue theory, medieval Thomistic natural-law theory, modern/contemporary Millian utilitarianism, and modern/contemporary Rawlsian egalitarianism.
Once the image is recognized as an argument, we can assess it in the way that informal logic assesses verbal arguments.
Tracing its ancestry back to ancient Greek thinkers (usually Plato, Parmenides, or Xenophanes), he assesses their arguments for it, and finds them eminently resistible.
