When studying the philosophy of argumentation, it’s clear to observant participants that there are different ways to come to and defend ones statement. In any given statement used in an argument, there are various ways to group and dissect these larger reasoning’s into categories that qualify their conclusions in similar ways. Two of these categories that we use to justify arguments are branch support and joint support. Branch support is able to justify its conclusion by giving premises that provide independent support. This means that each premise is independently giving sufficient reasons to reach the same conclusion. If the conclusion could be reasonably defended with only on of the premises as opposed to both, then it is branch reasoning.
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An example of branch support would be “I’m no good in math class. I’ve always hated doing math homework because I always get the lowest grade in the class. Also, I’ve never tested well in math sections on standardized testing.” This is a good example of branch supporting because both the fact that I’ve always had the lowest homework grade in the class, and the fact that I’ve never tested well on big tests independently go to show that I am not good at math. An argument that would be qualified as joint support would be “I can tell there is going to be a pop quiz on the reading today in English. We almost always either have a pop quiz or a vocab activity on Mondays. Also, there are no vocab words written on the board like she would usually have done before class if we do a vocab activity.” This is an example of joint reasoning because it is not apparent there will be a pop quiz just because usually on Mondays there is either a pop quiz or vocab activity. Also it is not clear there will be a quiz just because there are no vocab words written on the board. However, if you look at both premises working together then you can understand there must be a pop quiz today because usually on Mondays there is either a pop quiz on the reading or a vocab activity, and since there are no vocab words written on the board like normally there would be if there was an activity, then there must be a pop
An example of branch support would be “I’m no good in math class. I’ve always hated doing math homework because I always get the lowest grade in the class. Also, I’ve never tested well in math sections on standardized testing.” This is a good example of branch supporting because both the fact that I’ve always had the lowest homework grade in the class, and the fact that I’ve never tested well on big tests independently go to show that I am not good at math. An argument that would be qualified as joint support would be “I can tell there is going to be a pop quiz on the reading today in English. We almost always either have a pop quiz or a vocab activity on Mondays. Also, there are no vocab words written on the board like she would usually have done before class if we do a vocab activity.” This is an example of joint reasoning because it is not apparent there will be a pop quiz just because usually on Mondays there is either a pop quiz or vocab activity. Also it is not clear there will be a quiz just because there are no vocab words written on the board. However, if you look at both premises working together then you can understand there must be a pop quiz today because usually on Mondays there is either a pop quiz on the reading or a vocab activity, and since there are no vocab words written on the board like normally there would be if there was an activity, then there must be a pop