DIGGING DEEPER
After we have reconstructed an argument as well as we can, doubts still might arise about its premises. If we agree with its premises, others might deny them or ask why they are true. If we disagree with its premises, we might be able to understand the source of our disagreement better if we determine why those premises are believed by other people—including the person who gave the ar- gument. Either way, it is useful to try to construct supporting arguments for the premises that may be questioned. These supporting arguments are not parts of the explicit argument or even of its reconstruction, but are arguments further back in a chain of arguments.
When we look for further arguments to support the premises in an argu- ment, we might then wonder whether the premises of each new argument can be accepted without supporting arguments as well. We seem faced with the unpleasant task of producing endless chains of argument. When pressed in this way to give reasons for our reasons, and reasons for our reasons for our reasons, we eventually come upon fundamental principles—principles for which we cannot give any more basic argument. These fundamental principles can concern morality, religion, politics, or our general views concerning the nature of the world. We often ar- gue within a framework of such principles without actually stating them, be- cause we assume (sometimes incorrectly) that others accept them as well. When someone argues that environmental destruction should be stopped because it will lead to the annihilation of the human race, he or she will not feel called on to say explicitly, “And the annihilation of the human race would be a very bad thing.” That, after all, is something that most people take for granted.
