Read these only after you have written your own three sentences. Two of the paragraphs are good, one is not. The question is not which side is right — the lesson does not settle that — but what an advisory note has to do to count as an argument at all.

Model A — discovered

The tribunal should designate the conserved Vasa as continuous with the vessel of 1628, and in doing so it is discovering an answer, not inventing one. The question has the shape of the Sorites, and I take the epistemicist’s side on it: “the same ship” has a boundary that we cannot locate — which is exactly why no percentage of original timber can be read off as the verdict — but a criterion can still track it, and I would apply continuous registration as one vessel from the seabed to the museum, which the Vasa satisfies and a replica such as Olympias does not. That criterion survives the Sorites turned on it because registration does not come in grains: it is continuous or it is broken, and there is no hair to pluck. The price I pay is the borderline case decided wrongly: some future object will meet my criterion when it ought not to, and I cannot tell the tribunal which one — only that the error will be ours, not the world’s.

What it does: names the side (discovered); locates the reason at the level of our judgements and says which response to vagueness it leans on; states the criterion and why it is not arbitrary; names the price and admits it is a debt.

Model B — drawn

The tribunal is drawing a line, not finding one, and its designation should say so. The Sorites shows that “the same ship” has no boundary waiting to be found: the museum’s 98% is precise and the predicate is not, and no fibre-count, keel-fraction, or registration date is out there in the world to be discovered — each is a stipulation that serves a purpose, insurance or heritage or the museum’s honesty. I recommend designating the conserved object as continuous with the 1628 vessel, on the stated ground that this line does the work heritage law needs and costs nothing that the law values. The price I pay is the next case: a line that can cite only the previous line collapses into arbitrary consistency, so what stops that collapse is the obligation I am imposing on the tribunal — to publish what work its line does, in terms a future court can weigh again, rather than cite the ruling itself.

What it does: the same moves, on the other side. Notice that both good paragraphs agree on the shape (a Sorites) and on the number (98% settles nothing), and disagree on where the indeterminacy lives — in our judgements or in the world. That is where the case lives.

Model C — a paragraph that does not count

The Vasa is obviously the same ship, because the museum says 98% of the wood is original, and 98% is nearly all of it. Anyway the Sorites is a contradiction — nobody really thinks a million grains is not a heap — so it does not affect the case. And since we can never know exactly where a ship stops being the same ship, there is no fact of the matter and the tribunal can decide whatever it likes.

What goes wrong:

  • The reason is an outcome — the 98% figure — not a premise or a level. The percentage is precise; the predicate “the same ship” is not; the number settles neither side, and the paragraph never notices.
  • “The Sorites is a contradiction” dismisses the paradox instead of taking it apart. A contradiction is simply wrong; a paradox is an argument whose three pieces cannot all stand, and the paragraph has not said which one goes.
  • “We can never know … so there is no fact of the matter” runs cannot know where the boundary is (Position A’s epistemicism) into there is no boundary (Position B) in a single sentence. That is the exact slide the lesson exists to catch; the paragraph is advising on both cases at once and therefore on neither.
  • No price. “Whatever it likes” costs the writer nothing; it does not say what stops the next ruling from being arbitrary, nor which borderline case the writer is prepared to get wrong.

The checklist

An advisory note counts as an argument when it:

  1. names a side — discovered or drawn;
  2. gives a reason at the right level — indeterminacy in our judgements, or in the world — and says which response to vagueness it leans on;
  3. names the price the side pays, in the writer’s own words: the borderline case decided wrongly and the criterion that survives the Sorites (A), or what stops the next ruling from being arbitrary (B);
  4. answers, or at least states, the strongest objection from the other side.

Model C fails 2, 3 and 4. Go back to your own paragraph and mark it 1–4.