Council member P: Alarmists are those who see an instance of pollution and exaggerate its significance into a major character fault of society. ████ █████████ ████ ██ ███████████ ███ ████████ ███ ███ ████████ ████ ██████ ██ ████ ███ ███████████ ██ ██████ ███ ██ ████████
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P supports an unstated conclusion that alarmists do not have sufficient support to conclude that pollution is a major character fault of society. By explaining that alarmists fail to distinguish polluting behavior from people’s tendency not to pollute, P implies that a societal character flaw of pollution does not follow from specific instances of pollution.
Q indicates an unstated conclusion that alarmists’ claim is reasonably supported. Q supports this by explaining that actions generally follow the path of least resistance, and it is easier to pollute than not to pollute. This implies that a single incident of pollution is good evidence that more people will be doing the easy thing and polluting.
We need to find a disagreement. P and Q disagree about whether or not pollution indicates that people generally tend to pollute.
Council members P and Q ████████ ████ ███████
pollution should be ██████████ █ ███████
Neither speaker directly claims that pollution should or shouldn’t be considered a problem. Both P and Q’s arguments are consistent with the idea that pollution is problematic; the dispute is about how widespread we should believe pollution is, not whether it’s a problem.
actions tend to ██████ ███ ████ ██ █████ ██████████
Q makes this claim, but P never disagrees. In fact, P does not express any opinion about whether actions tend to follow the path of least resistance or some other path.
people are responsible ███ █████████
Both speakers could agree that people are responsible. They disagree over whether people are inclined to pollute, but they don't necessarily disagree that people do in fact pollute.
people can change █████ ████████ ███ ███ ███████
Neither speaker talks about whether polluters can or cannot change their behavior. The discussion focuses on how widespread pollution might be based on available evidence, not the next steps to limit pollution.
people are inclined ██ ███████
P disagrees with this and Q agrees, making this the point of disagreement. P explicitly states that people have a disposition not to pollute. Q claims that actions follow the path of least resistance, which is to pollute, thus implying that people tend to pollute.
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