24 Finding the "Good" Reason

Consider the commonplace excuse, "Sorry to be late. The five o'clock rush held me up." Here the speaker is offering a respectable minor premise from which it is possible to infer a syllogism (see #40) which will excuse the tardiness. The argument runs:

If a person is delayed, he will be excusably late. I was delayed in the five o'clock rush. Therefore, I am excusably late.

Suggesting a fact which implies the conclusions desired is a face-saving way to make an excuse. If you are not minded to accept the excuse, you may think up a different set of premises. For instance:

A person taking care to be on time will anticipate foreseeable delays.

The five o'clock rush is a foreseeable delay. Therefore, this person did not take care to be on time.

"Finding the 'good' reason" is the process of selecting a fact which is creditable or, at least, not discreditable, and proposing it as the explanation for one's actions.

EXAMPLE COMMENT
A student explains his failure in chemistry. "If you are a good parrot you can crack that course for an 'A.' I can't stand sheer memory courses." There are lots of possible explanations for the student's failure. Maybe he does not study, maybe the course is too advanced for his background, perhaps the instruction is obscure, perhaps the student is dull; it is quite possible that he is uninterested in the subject so that his mind does not focus on it when he is "studying." Very likely the explanation of his failure involves several of these factors. For the purposes of rationalization, the student wants a reason which will be respectable. Thus, he presents this argument:

Chemistry is a sheer memory course.

I "can't stand" (i.e., do not learn the material in) a sheer memory course.

Therefore, I do not learn chemistry.

We are, of course, free to disagree with either or both of these premises.