It is important when you engage in academic argument to ensure that the premise is debatable. Some statements such as ’Jakarta is a city in Indonesia’ are non-debatable because they are factually correct. Statements such as ‘the sky is blue’ or ‘grass is green’ are also non-debatable because generally these statements are true.  While it is true that the sky can be all manner of colors, including black at night, the majority of the time the sky is blue. Grass, unless dying or dead, is usually green.

A premise should contain a statement that is believed to be true by the person proposing it. Such a statement might be ‘Manchester United is the best British football team’. This statement contains two main points: ‘best’, and ‘British’. By what objective measure is Manchester United the best football team? Are we counting the number of trophies? Their Premier League titles? What time frame are we using? Looking at the ‘British’ point means that we are now comparing Manchester United with teams in the Scottish (also British) Premier League. The original statement would appear to be true if it is not analyzed critically. But the inclusion of the two points in the statement open up the statement to debate. No one would argue with ‘Manchester United is a football team’ or ’Manchester United is a British football team’. But the inclusion of the point ‘best’ makes the statement highly debatable.

Let’s go back to the statement ‘Jakarta is a city in Indonesia’. This statement contains no argument unless you wanted to debate Jakarta’s status as a city or a metropolitan area (Jabodetabek). Most people would take the statement at face value and believe it to be a truthful proposal. But if we include the word ‘diverse’ in the statement, we have a highly debatable topic.  In this statement, how is diversity being measured? Is it diversity in terms of religion? Racial mix? Ethnicity? Linguistics? ‘Jakarta is a diverse city in Indonesia’ is not yet a well-targeted statement. In order to strengthen the premise, we must restrict its focus to a particular perspective. If we change the statement to ‘Jakarta is a religiously diverse city in Indonesia’, we can debate its diversity in relation to other cities in the country. We can debate the merits of including (only) six religions in the national ideology, Pancasila.

*** IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU RECOGNIZE HOW TO CONSTRUCT DEBATABLE AND NON-DEBATABLE STATEMENTS AS YOU WILL BE TESTED ON THIS IN YOUR MID-SEMESTER EXAM.***