Joint Support Essay

The premises of an argument are just as important as the conclusion they are defending. The purpose of premises in an argument is to validate the conclusion. There are many approaches one can take to display their reasons in a logical manner.Three of the major supporting strategies are linear support, branching support, and joint support. Arguments do not need to have an abundance of reasons for its conclusion to be deemed legitimate. Linear support is an example of this. Linear support occurs when there is one explanation that leads to a conclusion, and then that conclusion acts as a premise for another conclusion. An argument can be tested to see if it is linear by taking apart the argument and deduce that each of the premises can be used independently and still support the conclusion. If the reasons still justify the conclusions while standing alone, it is a linear support argument. An example of an argument that contains a linear support is: I know my dog cannot be a tiger, because it is not a feline. So it can’t be a tiger cub either. To confirm that this is a linear type of support, we must break it down into separate parts of the …show more content…
Joint support is when an argument has two premises that do not have enough evidence to prove the conclusion true on their own. In other words, the premises work together to provide support for the conclusion, and neither premise alone is sufficient enough for the conclusion. To test to see if an argument contain joint support, one can see if either of the premises are sufficient to operate independent of each other, but when paired together supports the conclusion. A case of join support would be: My friend always orders either french fries or a hamburger. He did not order french fries. so, he must have ordered a hamburger. To see if this sentence contains joint structure we must see that both premises need each other to support the