Exercise on the Structure of Arguments

“I’m on my way to school. 1 I left five minutes late. 2 Traffic is heavy. 3 Therefore, I’ll be late for class. 4 So I might as well stop and get breakfast.” 5
Argument? (yes or no) Yes.
Conclusion: I might as well stop and get breakfast. However, if we reworded this argument, we could conclude that he is late for school because everything really builds up to that.
Additional premises needed? Yea, he could say something like “I’m hungry. Since I’m already going to be late, I might as well stop and get breakfast.”
Identify and subargument: I would say that number 1 through 3 are all subarguments. They can all be independent arguments. For instance, 1 is going to school, 2 is being late, and 3 is traffic is heavy. However 4 is using all 1 through 3 to support it. Therefore, in a different order, they wouldn’t technically be subarguments.
Good argument? Yes, the argument is pretty good. The premises are good and do provide pretty good reason to believe that he is going to be late. However, if he hustles, he can still make it. Nonetheless, it is still a good argument because it is up to him if he is later or not. Either way, it is most likely that he is going to be late seeing how traffic is bad, and he already left late.

I did like this activity because I learned a lot reading the other examples and really having to think. However, I still felt like I didn’t fully understand how to properly criticize the structure of arguments, but I’m sure that will come with more practice seeing how this was my first one.