Premises to prove that Affirmative Action is Wrong:
1. It is wrong to hire anyone other than the person who will do the best job.
2. Whenever one takes race or sex into account in hiring, one will hire someone
other than the person who will do the best job.
3. Therefore, it is wrong to take race or sex into account in hiring.
4. Affirmative Action programs require employers to take race and sex into
account in hiring.
5. Therefore, affirmative action programs require employers to do something
wrong.
The above argument for Affirmative Action being morally impermissible is a valid argument. Each of the premises follows the previous one correctly and the conclusions that the argument makes are deducible from the premises stated before them.
The premises may follow each other and the conclusions may be deducible by them, but that does not mean that the premises themselves are correct. For instance, premise 1 is not valid, or we can at least provide an argument to prove it invalid. Premise 1 states that it is wrong to higher anyone other than the person who will do the best job. However, in many cases, there will be more than one person who can perform the tasks of the job just as well as the other applicants. In most cases there is a "tie" between people that have the same ability to do a job. Say Joe, Ted, Mary and Muhammad all applied for the same job along with 50 other less qualified people. Joe, Mary, Ted and Muhammad are all just as qualified as the other fo ...