Writing a TOK Essay (Part IV): Unfolding the Argument

In my previous post on this subject, I wrote about the importance of definitions and some approaches to the definition of terms. The thing about definitions is that they lead, by various forms of reason, to certain arguments. As such arguments unfold, we have to be careful to examine them to see if we are not blinded by preconceptions (constructed frameworks) or prejudices (judgements in advance).

For example, a student recently told me that there was the case of a girl whose mental age was fixed in early childhood (I think it was three months) by a biological defect. A case was advanced for keeping her, by elective surgery, at a pre-adolescent stage of physical development. One argument against this was that it would deprive her of her sexual rights.

There are many arguments you could advance, but this is definitely (and definitively) not one of them. The counter-argument is obvious: in almost all jurisdictions, the mentally incompetent are protected from abuse by law. This child will never have the ability to give legal consent to sexual behaviour, and hence will never have the legal capacity to exercise sexual rights.

The point of this example is that definitions constrain us, but we can choose which set of definitions to apply. In this case, we might argue that all humans in general have a right to sexual enjoyment. That's very abstract; in practice, society governs this by laws which protect the vulnerable. Once we define which humans are allowed these rights, and under what conditions, the case becomes much clearer.

Similarly, the argument that history is fundamentally different from science is not an easy one to make. I've mentioned this before. If you define history accurately, you will see that it is, if you like, the grandfather of science (philosophy is the grandmother). Science as we know it was once divided into natural history (observations of reality) and natural philosophy (theories of reality).

Because of this definitional background, if asked to choose two disciplines (or areas of knowledge) as examples of different approaches, you should choose things that are more unalike. It's possible to argue that history and geography are less alike than history and science (or than geography and science, heh).

The primary reason that I've used the phrase 'unfolding the argument' here, therefore, is that if you've already started by defining the terms, sometimes those definitions will automatically unfold into points of argument. It's like a battlefield; the disposition of terrain features and forces on both sides will make certain tactical options more likely and others less likely. In some cases (for example, the one ford over a river that one side must cross), it's quite clear that there is one obvious option.

The secondary argument is that one should be careful to 'unfold the argument' step by step. It's like reverse origami; you have a crane, can you decompose the crane into folds? If you do it correctly, the logic of the argument will be clear and the examiner will be less irritated by it. Sloppy folding leads to sloppy unfolding; sloppy unfolding can lead to tearing of the material that was folded.