In this assignment I will attempt to unpack Donald Trump’s logic in the tweet above.
Explicitly, Trump’s tweet in its current arrangement appears to be a disjunctive/hypothetical syllogism hybrid:
P1: We, as a country, either have borders or we don 't.
C: If we don 't have borders, we don 't have a country.
Being charitable and filling in implicit premises, Trump’s argument takes on the following format:
P1: All countries have borders
P2: Either America has borders or it does not have borders
C: If America does not have borders, America is not a country
Trump’s basic argument is deductive, using an argument from definition. Symbolically, the argument goes as follows:
When a truth table is formulated, the argument comes out as …show more content…
Without that premise, Trump’s argument begs the question of whether or not borders are a necessary condition to what constitutes a country. Unless he has a premise establishing how borders relate to a country, Trump is merely presuming what he purports to believe. Once the implicit premise is added, the argument is slightly better but still …show more content…
P4: Either America has strong border enforcement or it does not.
C: If America does not have strong border enforcement, America will be illegally inhabited by citizens from different countries.
C2: Strong border enforcement must be implemented to preserve America as its own country.
Adjusting his argument to make up for Twitter’s character limit only makes his argument more problematic. Not only is he guilty of committing equivocation by using border with two different ambiguous meanings (as in a boundary and as in strong border enforcement), but much of this argument is based on presumption, creating a false dichotomy. He claims that America must either impose strong border enforcement, or not be a country at all, while clearly there are more than these two alternatives. Surely America is still its own country even if there are illegal immigrants inhabiting it, and strong border enforcement (in the form of an obtrusive wall or mass deportation) is hardly the only solution to illegal immigration. Perhaps programs could be put in place to help illegal immigrants gain citizenship if they so choose, or a more mild form of enforcement could exist. This false dichotomy additionally lends to a slippery slope. It is unlikely that the existence of illegal immigrants in America will lead to America’s complete demise as a country. In fact, some might argue it is much more likely that Trump
Explicitly, Trump’s tweet in its current arrangement appears to be a disjunctive/hypothetical syllogism hybrid:
P1: We, as a country, either have borders or we don 't.
C: If we don 't have borders, we don 't have a country.
Being charitable and filling in implicit premises, Trump’s argument takes on the following format:
P1: All countries have borders
P2: Either America has borders or it does not have borders
C: If America does not have borders, America is not a country
Trump’s basic argument is deductive, using an argument from definition. Symbolically, the argument goes as follows:
When a truth table is formulated, the argument comes out as …show more content…
Without that premise, Trump’s argument begs the question of whether or not borders are a necessary condition to what constitutes a country. Unless he has a premise establishing how borders relate to a country, Trump is merely presuming what he purports to believe. Once the implicit premise is added, the argument is slightly better but still …show more content…
P4: Either America has strong border enforcement or it does not.
C: If America does not have strong border enforcement, America will be illegally inhabited by citizens from different countries.
C2: Strong border enforcement must be implemented to preserve America as its own country.
Adjusting his argument to make up for Twitter’s character limit only makes his argument more problematic. Not only is he guilty of committing equivocation by using border with two different ambiguous meanings (as in a boundary and as in strong border enforcement), but much of this argument is based on presumption, creating a false dichotomy. He claims that America must either impose strong border enforcement, or not be a country at all, while clearly there are more than these two alternatives. Surely America is still its own country even if there are illegal immigrants inhabiting it, and strong border enforcement (in the form of an obtrusive wall or mass deportation) is hardly the only solution to illegal immigration. Perhaps programs could be put in place to help illegal immigrants gain citizenship if they so choose, or a more mild form of enforcement could exist. This false dichotomy additionally lends to a slippery slope. It is unlikely that the existence of illegal immigrants in America will lead to America’s complete demise as a country. In fact, some might argue it is much more likely that Trump