Claims, Evidence, Warrants and Qualifications
1. Making Strong Claims
a. Your Claim must be substantive
i. E.g. “The 1981-82 recession did not occur because OPEC raised
oil prices but mainly because the Federal Reserve Board tightened
the money supply”
ii. “Within the last twelve months, the United States government has
used internationally outlawed forms of human torture as one means
by which to wage its war on terrorism”
b. Your Claim must be Contestable
i. Should lead your reader to think, “You will need to explain that
position to me”
ii. Claim should possess at least one other tenable position
c. Your Claim must be specific in both assertion and language
2. Using Plausible Claims to Guide your Writing
a. Look for specific research that supports and refutes your specific claim
b. Know your opposition
c. Look for research that will define the terms central to your claim
3. Offering Reliable Evidence
a. Six tests for Reliable Evidence
i. Accuracy
c) How reliable is your information?
d) Did you cite it properly?
e) By what means did you acquire this information?
f) Did you engage in “fair use?
g) Did you double check the accuracy of your writing prior to
its submission?
h) Does this work offer the reader or listener the best possible
view of you as an intellectual?
ii. Precision
c) Did you use specific quantities rather than general terms
such as “a lot” or “several”?
d) Did you meet the standards of precision for the discipline in
which you are writing?
e) Have you been over-precise in your evidence?
iii. Sufficiency
c) Are you providing enough legitimate points of evidence to
support the claim?
d) Writers need more than one piece of evidence to support
most claims
e) Personal experience rarely passes the test of sufficiency
f) Unless an expert in the field, personal opinion does not
qualify as sufficient evidence.
g) If attempting to disprove a claim using the terms “none”,
“never” or “always”, one piece of admissible evidence will
demonstrate sufficiency.
iv. Representative
c) Does the evidence reflect the variety of persons or areas
affected by the claim?
d) To what degree does your evidence apply to most situations
rather than special or unique cases?
v. Authoritative
c) Who in the world is the author of your evidence?
d) Who published the evidence? What do you know of the
publisher?
e) How recent is the evidence cited? “Hot” or more recent
evidence usually stronger.
f) Authoritative secondary sources usually targeted to specific
rather than general audiences.
g) Does the source over-simplify the issues at hand or avoid
all technical language? Perhaps time to find another
source.
h) Remember: just because something may seem to you to be
“common sense” it may still not be true or authoritative.
i) Do not quote somebody whom all persons in a given
discipline scorn or have never heard of.
j) Do not quote “Scripture” as authority unless all readers
possess your specific religious convictions regarding its
divine authority. In most disciplines, use of text in this
manner would be inadmissible.
k) Authorities must be recognized as such by established
communities of experts. Just because you perceive the
person as good hearted, impressive or intimidating does not
mean their opinions will meet the standard of authority for
evidence in a documented essay or public speech.
vi. Perspicuous or demonstrates keen mental perception
c) Your readers need to see your evidence as evidence
d) Out of context direct citation does not serve as evidence
e) Statistics—only by its existence in your work—does not
serve as evidence.
f) Quotations need to be contextualized and interpreted to
serve as evidence.
g) Tell your reader in specific terms how your evidence is
significant in the support of your claim.
4. Warrants
a. Serve as the reason why readers should connect your claim to your
presented evidence
b. Warrants offer the principle or underlying assumption that readers must
accept for these connections to be made
c. In other words, a warrant is a general principle that serves as a logical
bridge between the claim and evidence
d. E.g.
i. Claim: “The Forest Service has wasted money on fire prevention.”
ii. Evidence: “Since 1990, the Forest Service has increased its
expenditure on fire prevention on the average of 14% each year,
yet the number of Class Three fires has remained the same.”
iii. Warrant: Whenever anyone spends money to prevent something
but its incidence remains the same, that person or agency has
wasted money
iv. But a critical question: is this warrant true under most conditions?
Maybe not.
v. Warrants must be tested for logic and conditionality
e. Criteria for Establishing a Warrant
i. One part of the warrant must describe the general kind of evidence
you offer
ii. The other part of the warrant must describe the general kind of
claim the naturally follows from the evidence
iii. It must state a logical connection between the general evidence and
general claim
c) Cause and effect
d) One signifies the other
e) Many occurrences allows for a generalization
iv. When writing to audiences that share your assumptions, you rarely
need to make warrants so explicit
v. In public discourse (and Senior Theses), however, warrants must
be explicit
vi. Beware of the following types of warrants
c) False warrant
a. Cause and effect conditions simply wrong
b. The general cause does not logical signify the other
(or visa versa)
c. Even ten thousand occurrences would not allow
such an illogical generalization
d) Unclear
a. Cause and effect poor stated, implicit, or not stated
at all
b. The general cause is too general or it is not clear on
the limits of significance (or visa versa)
c. How does your identified occurrence differ from
other occurrences?
e) Inappropriate
a. Cause and effect suggests immoral, unethical or
social indefensible positions
b. The general cause offers a vulgar, immoral or
dishonest representation of the effect
c. Even one gazillion occurrences could never warrant
such a generalization
f) Inapplicable warrant
a. Illogical
b. Illogical
c. Illogical
5. Qualifications
a. All positions taken must accept limited uncertainty
b. Your claim cannot be applicable to all situations, all persons, throughout
all times in history
c. As a result, your argument gains strength when you articulate the limits or
scope of its reach
d. Four forms of Qualification
i. Rebuttal of mistaken or illogical objections to your evidence or
warrants
c) Anticipate the possible objections to your evidence, claim
and warrant by conducting proper research
d) Demonstrate that you have entertain other claims or
evidence but dismissed them for just cause
e) Anticipate objections that you know your particular readers
might bring with them
f) Anticipate the alternatives that your readers might offer
g) Define all key terms with precision and accuracy
h) Do not oversimplify causes and effects
i) Consider counterexamples when presenting evidence and
dismiss them for just cause
ii. Concession of objection you cannot logically rebut
c) Recognize those specific objections that you cannot answer
d) You should, however, that the balance of your work more
than compensates for this qualification
e) Know the other possible positions and concede their logic.
Failure to mentions these positions might lead your reader
or listener to believe either A) you conducted poor
research or B) you are intentionally withholding valuable
counterevidence to mislead your audience
f) Do not be afraid to suggest that “the problem warrants
more study”
iii. Stipulation of conditions that must qualify your evidence or limit
the application of the warrant
c) Conditions rarely stay the same forever
d) Admit the possible, specific ways in which shifts in
condition might alter the claim, evidence or warrant of your
argument
iv. Articulate the degree of certainty of your evidence, warrant or
claim (it will be rare that you will be absolutely certain about all of
these elements)
c) Practice humility
d) Deny omniscience
e) Only state the important moments of uncertainty in your
claim, evidence or warrant.
f) In other words, do not qualify every claim—you will
trivialize your argument
g) Express certainty on those matters that logically warrant
such a response