1) Claims in Phoenix Wright (Minor Spoilers)

If you are not aware of what Phoenix Wright is, it's mainly a video game series where you play as a lawyer, and it's one of my favorite games too. In terms of game play, you have to investigate crime scenes for evidence, and use the evidence in court in order to find contradictions in people's testimonies. Since chapter 6 revolves around different types of claims, I thought it would be appropriate to talk about this video game because you have to evaluate many claims and look for lies or bad arguments in testimonies.

First of all, you will run into testimonies that are contradictory to the evidence you come across. For example, I remember there was a case where a boyfriend died, and the girlfriend was basically accused of murder because it seemed her boyfriend wrote a dying message with her name on the floor. "Maggie," was written which was supposedly the girlfriend's name. According to the testimony, the witness said that the girlfriend's name was written on the floor.

However, as a lawyer, you had to study the evidence and facts provided for you. One of the claims made in a witness' testimony actually had a contradiction, or a negation. Fortunately for this case, you had the full names of the people involved in this case including the girlfriend and the boyfriend. According to the police report, the defendant's, or girlfriend's, name was actually spelled, "Maggey." This negation provided a contradiction to the witness' testimony of saying that the defendant's name was written on the floor because the name written on the floor was spelled differently than in the police report. The claim was contradictory to the facts or the opposite of the circumstances.

In addition, Slippery Slope arguments are made in people's testimonies as well. Although the claims in the Slippery Slope argument seem they are true, most of the time you will be finding a claim that cannot be 100% true, or not true at all. In this case, any claims or conditionals and conclusions that were chained after the false, or dubious, claim may be false as well.

For example, people will often unintentionally make a Slippery Slope argument when they are trying to lie or hide something. I remember a witness testifying about a two men, one being the murder victim and the other being the defendant, or her boyfriend. She testifies that the victim was shoved two times and electrocuted with a wire circuit by the defendant. During the fight, she was listening to music and watching. However, the lawyer thought one of the witness' claims was not plausible. It turned out that the time elapsed during this "fight" was about 10 minutes, and the lawyer thought it was suspicious that the witness was listening to music and watching them fight the whole time. From this, the lawyer suspected that the witness wasn't telling the truth. Because one of the witness' claims was not plausible, or believable, her Slippery Slope argument saying that her boyfriend killed the victim became not plausible as well. Her testimony, or chain of claims, had one claim, which was her listening to music, that did not seem plausible at the time. This, therefore, made all the conclusion and claims connected after become false or dubious as well.

As you can see, it is best if claims you make are as believable as possible. Make sure that after making a claim, there are no gaps or holes that can confuse any listeners. If not, you may be falling for traps, or you could even be accused of lying or making a bad argument. If this happens, no one will believe you.