According to Epstein, in order to fix a defective argument we could add a premise or conclusion if the argument becomes stronger or valid, the premises is plausible, and the premises is more plausible than the conclusion.
An example of an argument would be "John is a daily commuter. John should buy a Toyota Prius. The Toyota Prius is more suited with John than a Hummer." In order for this argument to be good we must add "The Prius saves a lot " and "The Hummer kills a lot of gas". The premises are more plausible because we know the Prius definitely saves more gas than a Hummer. The Conclusion could be false though because John might need the Hummer for its large size to carry his equipment for work. If we added "John needs a gas saving car", the argument would make no sense since its obvious John would need to by the Toyota Prius.
Great post. I like how you came up with your example of a defective argument. I agree with you that there should be a added premise for this argument because it would make the argument much stronger. Without the premise it would not that much sense why John buy a Toyota Prius over a Hummer. The added premise are also more plausible than the conclusion. By adding the premise to this argument it repairs it from being a weak argument to a stronger one. Overall I like this post because its demonstrate how easy it is to repair a defective argument.
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