It’s kind of hard to understand Caleb’s injuries. Even doctors can’t say for sure exactly why he has flashbacks, why he could be standing in a bookstore when all of a sudden he’s sure he’s in Ramadi, the pictures in his brain disorienting him among the stacks, which could turn from stacks to rows of rooftops that need to be scanned for snipers.
“It’s kind of hard to understand Caleb’s Injuries.”
-5 I believe this is an Evaluative claim. For someone who has never had PTSD it is hard to understand the constant stress PTSD causes people. But for someone who is going through something like this they could possibly understand what he’s going through.
“Even doctors can’t say for sure exactly he has flashbacks, why he could be standing in a bookstore when all of a sudden he’s sure he’s in Ramadi, the pictures in his brain disorienting him among the stacks, which could turn from stacks to rows of rooftops that need to be scanned for snipers.”
-2 I believe this is an Analogy claim. The author is comparing Caleb standing in a bookstore and the stacks of books to the rooftops of Ramadi and Caleb looking for snipers.
Sometimes he starts yelling, and often he doesn’t remember anything about it later. They don’t know exactly why it comes to him in dreams, and why especially that time he picked up the pieces of Baghdad bombing victims and that lady who appeared to have thrown herself on top of her child to save him only to find the child dead underneath torments him when he’s sleeping, and sometimes awake. They don’t know why some other guys in his unit who did and saw the same stuff that Caleb did and saw are fine but Caleb is so sensitive to light, why he can’t just watch the news like a regular person without feeling as if he might catch fire. Some hypotheses for why PTSD only tortures some trauma victims blame it on unhappily coded proteins, or a misbehaving amygdala. Family history, or maybe previous trauma.
“Some hypotheses for why PTSD only tortures some trauma victims blame it on unhappily coded proteins, or a misbehaving amygdala. Family history, or maybe previous trauma.”
-5, 3 I believe that this could either fit into an evaluative claim or a categorical claim. The claim that it could be proteins, the amygdala, family history, or previous trauma are evaluations that could be supported with more study on the individual topics. The idea that they can categorize it under these topics supports that this could also be a categorical claim
Whatever is happening to Caleb, it’s as old as war itself. The ancient historian Herodotus told of Greeks being honorably dismissed for being “out of heart” and “unwilling to encounter danger.” Civil War doctors, who couldn’t think of any other thing that might be unpleasant about fighting the Civil War but homesickness, diagnosed thousands with “nostalgia.” Later, it was deemed “irritable heart.” In World War I it was called “shell shock.” In World War II, “battle fatigue.” It wasn’t an official diagnosis until 1980, when Post Traumatic Stress Disorder made its debut in psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, uniting a flood of Vietnam vets suffering persistent psych issues with traumatized civilians—previously assigned labels like “accident neurosis” and “post-rape syndrome”—onto the same page of the DSM-III.
-4 This is a factual claim because these conditions exist without a doubt. These claims can also be proved with evidence. The fact that the author references Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is proven by evidence.
Counterintuitive 
I don’t understand your numbering system, Eagles.
You make good observations throughout—thoughtful and thorough evaluations of the subject matter. Those observations don’t exactly match the spirit of the assignment however, which was to recognize the smallest claims that might be missed in a casual reading, as in the many claims hiding in just the title of the classroom sample: “Let’s Harvest the Organs of Death Row Inmates.”
Let’s look at an example:
There’s a factual claim here: Caleb has flashbacks. Note that the claim doesn’t have to be true to be a “factual claim.” We trust that it is, but even if the claim proves to be incorrect, it’s still a claim of fact.
The unanswered question “Why he has flashbacks” is an Evaluative Question. Expect what follows to be an evaluative claim.
Doctors can’t say why is another factual claim. Again, whether the claims are true or not, we have two already: Caleb has flashbacks the doctors can’t explain.
Now look how many ways the claims are undercut, qualified, narrowed. Nearly every word in the sentence makes a small qualifying claim:
—Doctors can’t say exactly why he has flashbacks, meaning they can roughly explain the phenomenon, but not specifically.
—Doctors can’t say for sure why, meaning they can explain why but not with certainty.
—Even doctors can’t say, meaning that if the experienced professionals are uncertain, imagine how confused non-professionals are.
Do you see now why a very small selection of material yields several claims? Your process here has been instead to reduce large selections to a few claims.
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