What is Standardisation

A standardisation of an argument identifies the premises and conclusion of the argument, while disregarding all its inessential features. It also identifies the evidential and structural relationships between premises and conclusion by a conventional representation.

Put succinctly, standardisation is just a formal representation of the premises and conclusions of an argument and their argumentative structure. We’ll say more about argumentative structure shortly, but here let's just get started on formal representation of premises and conclusions.

Suppose I want to claim that Capital punishment is wrong, and my reasons for this are that I think it is always disproportionate to any crime, and that I think it brutalises any society that practices it. (This is just the first two steps in our argument building process, but this will be fine to illustrate the point of standardisation.) We might think of these like this:

1. Conclusion: Capital punishment is wrong
2. Premise One: Capital punishment is a disproportionate response to crime
3. Premise Two: Capital punishment brutalises any society that practices it

The first thing we want to do here is find a quick and consistent way of setting this out. The practice we will use here will be to first set out the conclusion and mark it with a capital 'C'. And then set out the premises and number them consecutively (e.g. 1, 2, etc.). Like this:

1. C: Capital punishment is wrong
2. 1: Capital punishment is a disproportionate response to crime
3. 2: Capital punishment brutalises any society that practices it

This is a very simple model, which hopefully makes sense. But suppose we apply that third step in the building process and begin to introduce evidence and support for our reason. Suppose the reason I think capital punishment is disproportionate is that I think punishment should be in proportion to the crime, and there is no action that requires we forfeit our right to life in response. Further, suppose I think societies which accept taking a life in any circumstances are brutalised - as in made less respectful of life. What’s more, that that society is actively engaged in the practice of taking life. Again, we can push against any of these, but for the sake of standardisation, how would I represent this?

Well, given what we’ve already said, we would model that like this.

1. Conclusion: Capital punishment is wrong
2. Premise One: Capital punishment is a disproportionate response to crime
   1. Support One: Punishment must be in proportion to the crime
   2. Support Two: No action should require that we forfeit our life
3. Premise Two: Capital punishment brutalises any society that practices it
   1. Support One: Societies which sanction the taking of life are made less respectful of life
   2. Support Two: Societies which practice capital punishment are engaged in the practice of taking lives

But to follow our pattern of standardisation we need to incorporate the supporting claims. We do this by numbering them consecutively as part of the premise they are designed to support (e.g. if supporting 1, then 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, etc.).

So, for example:

1. C: Capital punishment is wrong
2. 1: Capital punishment is a disproportionate response to crime
   1. 1.1: Punishment must be in proportion to the crime
   2. 1.2: No action should require that we forfeit our life
3. 2: Capital punishment brutalises any society that practices it
   1. 2.1: Societies which sanction the taking of life are made less respectful of life
   2. 2.2. Societies which practice capital punishment are engaged in the practice of taking lives

That’s what this tool allows you to do, even in a much more complicated form. Have a play around with it now, and if it is still unclear remember to review the lecture and lecture notes for topic 2: Building and Representing Arguments.