Evaluating truth and validity for arguments is important. I will choose arguments from the Applications list 12.2(a-y) that is at the end of Chapter 2 in The Art of Thinking to evaluate for truth and validity. The first argument will be exercise j and the statement is, “power must be evil because it can corrupt people (Ruggiero, 2012)”. The first step of the evaluation process involves evaluating to look for any hidden premises, and ensuring that it is stated in a clear way and fully. This argument passes the first the step. The next step involves checking whether the statement has errors that affect truth. To begin with, the first part of the statement that says that power corrupts all people-in this case, all is inferred- is untrue. This is because throughout history, there are several examples of people who had power that was not corrupted. To make the argument more valid, it would be rewritten as, “power can be evil since it can corrupt some people (Ruggiero, 2012).” The next step entails evaluating the argument to check for validity of errors, and also determining the reasoning that connects conclusions to premises. The aim of this is to check whether the conclusion is legitimate or illegitimate. In this case, the argument fails on several points. On top of revising it, the argument has several questions that required answers. One of the main questions is: how corrupt should people be before they are considered “evil”? Several people are corrupt but they would not be considered evil. The other question is; what is considered evil? What is considered evil by one may be considered perfectly good by one person, or unacceptable but not “evil”. In other words, people have different opinions on what is considered evil. Finally, this argument is very flawed, hence throwing it out and coming up with a different argument is the only choice. “Power that is used for evil motives- defining evil as any action that aims at enslaving or harming other people in the absence of the dew process of independent law-can be evil. Therefore, power in the right hands can do well, while power in the wrong hands can do great harm.”
The second argument to evaluate will be exercise r, “If the Social Security system is further weakened, the elderly will have to fear poverty. Therefore, if the Social Security system is not further weakened, the elderly will not have to fear poverty (Ruggiero, 2012).” After evaluating the argument to check whether it has any hidden premises, and ensuring that it was fully and clearly stated, the argument passed the first step. The next step in the process involves checking whether there are errors affecting truth. The argument did not seem to pass in this second hurdle. Not all the elderly people are dependent on Social Security. It is evident that most of the elderly people who are dependent on social security are people who worked in the government sector. A large proportion of the elderly do not benefit from these programs. Therefore, the statement that all elderly people will have to fear poverty once the social security system is weakened is not true. Additionally, the second part of the argument is still untrue, since it is based on the assumption that loss or reduction of income is the main cause of poverty. This is untrue since there are many other causes of poverty. One of the main causes that is rampant in all economies today is mismanagement of funds which may result from poor decision making in the financial sector. Other causes may include large families, inflation and unequal distribution of wealth among the sectors of the economy. This statement would be more defensible it transformed and read: “if the social security scheme is weakened further, the elderly people who depend on it will have to fear poverty. Therefore, if the social security system is not further weakened, the same elderly people will not have to fear poverty. The final step involves checking for validity errors in the argument, and also determining whether an authentic assumption can be result from the premise. The statement that has been revised now has more validity, and a defensible assumption. The assumption that the elderly who depend on social security will be poor upon the weakening or reduction of the program is more defensible.
The last argument will be exercise n, “Nuclear power is a threat to world peace. Nuclear energy stations generate nuclear power. So nuclear energy stations are a threat to world peace (Ruggiero, 2012).” The first step involves looking for hidden premises within the argument, and checking whether the argument is stated clearly and fully. The argument passed this step. The next step involves checking whether the argument has errors that affect truth. After doing this, I found out that the first statement, “Nuclear power is a threat to world peace (Ruggiero, 2012)”, is untrue just as it is written. To avoid the error of truth, I would rewrite it to read, “Nuclear power used in the weaponry production is a threat to world peace”. The nuclear energy has several peaceful uses. For instance, it can be used as an alternative to fossil energy. This makes the second statement true. This statement would however be fitted in the category of peaceful uses. The next step involves examining the argument to check for validity of errors, and also evaluate the reasoning that connects conclusions to premises. In this case, the premise is that nuclear power is a threat to the people in the world. I found that the way the statement was written was not correct, but after introducing the statement “used in weaponry production”, the argument can be defended better. The conclusion that the energy stations are a great threat to world peace since they generate nuclear power is indefensible. Therefore, the newly introduced statement is the qualifying statement, and changes everything. The nuclear energy station does not cause any threat to world peace, unless it produces weapons. The whole scenario would therefore be changed to, “Nuclear power used in weaponry production is a threat to world peace. Since most nuclear energy stations are only used to generate nuclear power that is to be used as an alternative source of energy, they are not a threat to world peace.” According to the fourth step of the process, individuals may sometimes find that an argument is so flawed that abandoning it altogether and implementing another different argument is the only appropriate thing to do. This is what had to be done to the statement after revising its first part.

Reference
Ruggiero, V.R. (2012). The art of thinking. A guide to critical and creative thought (10th ed.). : Pearson Education.