Homework Guide

Identifying Claims and Types of Claims

This is a guide to the homework that was due this past Thursday, so that you can check your answers against it.

Step 1:

Remember to make a distinction between claims that are part of the narrative, and claims that are part of the argument. Don’t get distracted by the narrative – focus on the argument at issue and concentrate on the claims that are important for that.

So – what is the major question at issue in the argument?

• · Was the incident described in Case 4 a rape?

Step 2:

Remember that it’s often very important to break questions down, so that we have a good handle on what’s involved in the issue and can focus our inquiry.

So – what questions do we have to answer, in order to address that big question? In this case, how do we distinguish between sex and rape? So we need to ask…?

• Would a reasonable person have understood Angelica to have been consenting to sex? Some subsidiary questions you might ask:

o How does one give and ask for consent generally?

o Are the rules for consent different when it comes to sex?

o How does implicit consent differ from explicit consent?

Step 3:

Now we go to the central claims that are involved in figuring out that question.

Here’s what I would have put for each part. You certainly wouldn’t have had to word things exactly as I did, and one might split up the claims differently. This is to give you a general idea of what you’d want to be getting at.

Claims

Consented

· Drank with boys – empirical

· Consented to light petting – empirical

· Went upstairs willingly – interpretive

· Had consensual sex with other people in the past – empirical/interpretive

· If someone consents to light petting, they implicitly consent to intercourse – interpretive or normative, AND – below is the implicit claim:

· Consenting to light petting is so strong an implicit consent to intercourse that any later evidence, even explicit refusal or withdrawal of consent - that seems to contradict that consent can be ignored – interpretive OR

· Consenting to light petting morally obligates you to have sex with the person/s with whom you’re engaging in petting, to such a strong extent that you’re locked in to an unbreakable contract, and absolutely cannot later refuse the intercourse – normative

Did Not Consent

Th crime of rape (or "first-degree sexual assault" in some states) generally refers to non-consensual sexual intercourse that is committed by physical force, threat of injury, or other duress. A lack of consent can include the victim's inability to say "no" to intercourse, due to the effects of drugs or alcohol.

Angelica repeatedly yelled “no,” and “stop.” – empirical, stipulated by young men

· The yelling was loud enough to be heard through the storage room door – empirical

· Was too drunk to walk on her own – guided upstairs by 3 men – empirical/interpretive

Step 4:

This is what we’d do next:

Say

1. what evidence or argument we have for each claim

2. how strong the evidence or argument is

3. what more we need to see before we can make a judgment