The practice of argument-reconstruction the arguer until we specify what claim that is. Freaney's claim, the one that ultimately concerns the arguer, is the claim that he saw a moa. So what the arguer is really trying to persuade us of is that Paddy Freaney did see a moa. Here then is a case in which the conclusion is at least partly implicit; none of the sentences directly says that Paddy Freaney saw a moa. Indeed, it might plausibly be suggested that the conclusion ultimately at issue here is one that is inferred from the proposition that Freaney saw a moa, namely, that the moa is not extinct. In that case it would be even more obvious that the conclusion of the argument is only implicit in the original statement of the argument. But let us not push the matter quite as far as that. For simplicity we shall take the conclusion to be that Paddy Freaney saw a moa. Once we have identified the conclusion, we must identify the argument's premises. It is clear that the first two sentences in the example function as stage-setting, informing the reader of some of the relevant concerns surrounding the issue, and are not premises of the argument. The arguer is arguing that Paddy Freaney saw a moa; this proposition is certainly not supported by the fact that the moa is thought to be extinct, nor by the fact that many people doubt Freaney's claim to have seen one. If anything, those facts make it less credible that Freaney saw a moa. So, by the principle Of Charity, we should not take the arguer to be citing those facts in support of the conclusion that Freaney saw a moa. Rather, the function of these propositions is to acknowledge that there is reasonable resistance to Freaney's claim. This sort of thing is very common: very frequently, an arguer will begin by explaining why there is opposition to his or her conclusion. The only premise explicitly given is that Freaney has twice climbed Mount Everest, and has not claimed to see a yeti. So our first shot at a reconstruction might look like this: P1 )
Paddy Freaney climbed Mount Everest twice, and did not claim to see a yeti.
C)
Paddy Freaney saw a moa.
Now this is a start, but clearly it does not do justice to the arguer's intentions. As it stands, the argument is neither deductively valid nor inductively forceful. To see this, suppose the only information you are given is that a certain person climbed Mount Everest twice, and that that person did not claim that he saw a yeti. Does that give you any reason to infer that that person saw a moa? Obviously not. PI does not support the conclusion by itself.
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