Astrology's Critics Are Uninformed. Suppose that a proponent of astrology replies to a specific criticism of astrology by claiming that all criticisms fail because the critics of astrology are woefully uninformed because they have not read the major writers in the field of astrology, nor the scholarly arguments that have been made against astrology, nor the rebuttals that have been made against those scholarly arguments. Is this an adequate reply? Remember that your task is to decide whether or not this argument by itself is strong enough to support its conclusion. Finding that this argument is bad does not mean that other arguments for this conclusion are also bad. If you find it bad, say it's bad and explain why it's bad. The one thing you must not do is bring up other, unrelated arguments to support this conclusion. You can do that later. Right now your task is to evaluate just this argument. Of course, once you've finished evaluating the argument, you can go on and add any comments that occur to you. Did you change your mind about anything? Can you come up with better arguments on each side of the issue? Can you figure out what questions have to be settled before we can decide this issue? Based on the arguments you've seen so far, what is your overall take on the issue at this moment? What reasons do you have for coming to this conclusion? Anything else? |