Cora's Example (Modified) Toulmin Analysis of May's Argument
WR 122 Handout - Winter 2008 - Prof. Cora AgatucciResources: AofA Ch. 3, especially “Concept Close-Up: Model Toulmin Diagram for Analyzing Arguments” and “Best Practices: Toulmin Analysis” (AofA pp. 52-53).
1. IDENTIFY ARGUMENT ANALYZED:
May, William F. “Rising to the Occasion of Our Death.” Christian Century 11 July 1990: n.p. Rpt. in Aims of Argument: A Brief Guide. Ed. Timothy W. Crusius and Carolyn E. Channell. 5th ed. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2006. 45-47.
2. IDENTIFY CASE CLAIM (thesis/central contention), as well as specific Qualifications and Exceptions – and relevant Key Definitions & Distinctions. See also: AofA Ch. 7: “Analyzing the Thesis” (p. 206)
Case Claim: “On the whole, our social policy should allow terminal patients to die, but it should not regularize killing for mercy” (May 47: par. 6) except “when the patient is utterly beyond human care, terminal, and in excruciating pain” (May 47: par. 8).
Cora’s Note: May poses key question to be answered in his argument: “…Should we develop a judicious, regulated social policy permitting voluntary euthanasia for the terminally ill?” (46: par. 3). But a question is not a thesis statement! May’s Case Claim is his answer to this key question.
Qualifications and Exceptions: “On the whole,” a social policy permitting mercy killing (AKA: “active euthanasia”) should be allowed ONLY IF . . .
--(a) it is “judicious, regulated” (May 46: par. 3) like that of the Netherlands [Comparison]: i.e. “death is imminent,” “professional review of the medical evidence and the patient’s resolution” is conducted, and “final, endorsing signatures of two doctors” are required (May 46: par. 2)
Cora’s Note: Compare/Contrast to May’s opening example of the unregulated practice of Kevorkian, a “pathologist” who puts people “to sleep” as veterinarians put animals “to sleep” (46: par. 1-2).
AND . . .
--(b) it applies only to “terminal patients” who are “utterly beyond human care, terminal, and in excruciating pain” at “that moment in illness when it no longer makes sense to bend every effort to cure or to prolong life and when one must allow patients to do their own dying” (May 47: par. 8, 6).
Key Definitions & Distinctions:
--“passive euthanasia” vs. “active euthanasia” (May 46: par 1)
--“allowing to die” vs. “killing for mercy” or “mercy killing” (May 46: par. 3, 4)
--“the right to die” vs. “the right to be killed” (May 46: par. 3)
--“voluntary euthanasia” (May 47: par. 7)3. IDENTIFY REASONS and EVIDENCE offered to support author’s Case Claim.
See also AofA Ch. 7: “Finding Reasons” (pp. 207-210) & “Using Evidence” (pp. 212-214); and AofA Ch. 8: “Using the Forms of Appeal” (pp. 248-254)Except in the cases of those “terminal patients” who meet May’s criteria (see Qualifications and Exceptions above), social policy should not permit “sudden death” termination of a person’s life, which “fail[s] to appreciate our human capacity to rise to the occasion of our death” (May 46: par. 5), BECAUSE . . .
Reason #1: Benefit to dying patient: “Those forewarned of death and given time to prepare for it have time to engage in acts of reconciliation” (May 46: par. 5)
Reason #2: Benefit to dying patient’s loved ones: “Also, advanced grieving by those about to be bereaved may ease some of their pain” (May 46: par. 5)
Evidence: (Expert Opinion) “Psychiatrists” observe that the bereaved have a harder time recovering from sudden loss (e.g. an accident) of a loved one than from a loss preceded by “an extended period of illness before death” (May 46: par. 5).
Reason #3 & #4: Benefits to the community:
--“The community, moreover, may need its aged and dependent, its sick and its dying, and the virtues which they sometimes evince—the virtues of humility, courage, and patience . . . ” (May 46-47: par. 5);
--“. . . the community needs the virtues of justice and love manifest in the agents of care” (May 46-47: par. 5)—i.e. “agents of care” = “those who care for the sick and dying” (Crusius and Channell 49).*EVALUATION CRITERIA: Are May’s reasons and evidence good? relevant?
4. IDENTIFY REFUTATIONS (objections explicitly anticipated & addressed)
Objection: “Some moralists argue that the distinction between allowing to die and killing for mercy is petty quibbling over technique. Since the [terminally ill] patient in any event dies—whether by acts of omission or commission—the route to death doesn’t really matter” (May 46: par. 3).
Concession: “The impulse behind the euthanasia movement is understandable in an age when dying has become such an inhumanly endless business” (46: par. 5; emphasis added), when modern medical procedures (experts and machines) have made dying “a prolonged and painful business” (May 46: par. 3). On this basis, active euthanasia advocates “asser[t] not simply the right to die but the right to be killed” (May 46: par. 3).
Rebuttal: BUT, May contends, advocates of active euthanasia fail to make “an important moral distinction between allowing to die [passive euthanasia] and mercy killing [active euthanasia]”: these advocates “wan[t] to engineer death rather than face dying,” “would bypass dying [“the interval between life and death”] to make one dead as quickly as possible” and thereby “solv[e] the problem of suffering by eliminating the sufferer” (May 46: par. 4).
Objection: “Advocates of active euthanasia appeal to the principle of patient autonomy—as the use of the phrase ‘voluntary euthanasia’ indicates”: i.e. “the patient’s right to determine his or her destiny” (May 47: par. 7).
Rebuttal: May counters that only those with “an extremely naïve view” argue “voluntary euthanasia” is a free “uncoerced decision” for “elderly” and dying whose alternatives are “so wretched as to push patients toward this escape” (47: par. 7).
Objection: It is compassionate to allow our elderly and slowly dying to choose active euthanasia over living out their lonely, fearful, compassion-starved existences.
Rebuttal: It is “ironic” and “hypocritical” for our society to condone such a choice as “compassionate killing”: “[a] country has not earned the moral right to kill for mercy unless it has already sustained and supported life mercifully. Otherwise we kill for compassion only to reduce the demands on our compassion” (May 47: par. 7). “Regularized mercy killings would too quickly relieve the community of its obligation to provide good care” (May 47: par. 9).
Qualification: “This statement does not charge a given doctor or family member with impure motives. I am concerned here not with the individual case but with the cumulative impact of a society policy” (May 47: par 7).*EVALUATION CRITERIA: Has May anticipated and successfully answered the most compelling opposing viewpoints?
Are May's rebuttals good? relevant?ADDITIONAL EVALUATION CRITERIA & TOOLS FOR ANALYSIS - FOR DISCUSSION:
1. Does May's argument satisfy the four "Criteria for Mature Reasoning"? (See AofA Ch. 1)
2. Does May use successful appeals to reason, to emotion/values, to character, and/or to style in his argument? (See AofA Ch. 8)
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Toulmin
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2008
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16 January 2008
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Humanities Department, Central Oregon
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