Argument

This article is about the subject as it is studied in logic and philosophy. For other uses, see Argument (disambiguation).
For other uses, see Disagreement (disambiguation).

An argument is a series of sentences, statements, or propositions some of which are called premises and one is the conclusion.[1] The purpose of an argument is to give reasons for one's conclusion via justification, explanation, and/or persuasion.

Arguments are intended to determine or show the degree of truth or acceptability of another statement called a conclusion.[2][3] The process of crafting or delivering arguments, argumentation, can be studied from three main perspectives: the logical, the dialectical and the rhetorical perspective.[4]

In logic, an argument is usually expressed not in natural language but in a symbolic formal language, and it can be defined as any group of propositions of which one is claimed to follow from the others through deductively valid inferences that preserve truth from the premises to the conclusion. This logical perspective on argument is relevant for scientific fields such as mathematics and computer science. Logic is the study of the forms of reasoning in arguments and the development of standards and criteria to evaluate arguments.[5] Deductive arguments can be valid, and the valid ones can be sound: in a valid argument, premises necessitate the conclusion, even if one or more of the premises is false and the conclusion is false; in a sound argument, true premises necessitate a true conclusion. Inductive arguments, by contrast, can have different degrees of logical strength: the stronger or more cogent the argument, the greater the probability that the conclusion is true, the weaker the argument, the lesser that probability.[6] The standards for evaluating non-deductive arguments may rest on different or additional criteria than truth—for example, the persuasiveness of so-called "indispensability claims" in transcendental arguments,[7] the quality of hypotheses in retroduction, or even the disclosure of new possibilities for thinking and acting.[8]

In dialectics, and also in a more colloquial sense, an argument can be conceived as a social and verbal means of trying to resolve, or at least contend with, a conflict or difference of opinion that has arisen or exists between two or more parties.[9] For the rhetorical perspective, the argument is constitutively linked with the context, in particular with the time and place in which the argument is located. From this perspective, the argument is evaluated not just by two parties (as in a dialectical approach) but also by an audience.[10] In both dialectic and rhetoric, arguments are used not through formal but through natural language. Since classical antiquity, philosophers and rhetoricians have developed lists of argument types in which premises and conclusions are connected in informal and defeasible ways.[11]

  1. ^ Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter; Fogelin, Robert J. (2015). Understanding arguments: an introduction to informal logic. Cengage advantage books (9 ed.). Australia; Brazil; Mexico; Singapore; United Kingdom; United States: Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-1-285-19736-4.
  2. ^ Ralph H. Johnson, Manifest Rationality: A pragmatic theory of argument (New Jersey: Laurence Erlbaum, 2000), 46–49.
  3. ^ This is called "argument-as-product", distinguished from "argument-as-process" and "argument-as-procedure." Wenzel, J. W. (1987). The rhetorical perspective on argument. In F. H. van Eemeren, R. Grootendorst, J. A. Blair, & C. A. Willard (Eds.), Argumentation. Across the lines of discipline. Proceedings of the conference on argumentation 1986 (pp. 101–109). Dordrecht-Providence: Foris.
  4. ^ Wagemans, Jean H. M. (2 December 2021), Stalmaszczyk, Piotr (ed.), "The Philosophy of Argument", The Cambridge Handbook of the Philosophy of Language (1 ed.), Cambridge University Press, pp. 571–589, doi:10.1017/9781108698283.032, ISBN 978-1-108-69828-3, S2CID 244088211, retrieved 2 May 2022
  5. ^ Copi, Irving M.; Cohen, Carl; McMahon, Kenneth (9 September 2016). Introduction to Logic. doi:10.4324/9781315510897. ISBN 9781315510880.
  6. ^ "Deductive and Inductive Arguments", Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  7. ^ Charles Taylor, "The Validity of Transcendental Arguments", Philosophical Arguments (Harvard, 1995), 20–33. "[Transcendental] arguments consist of a string of what one could call indispensability claims. They move from their starting points to their conclusions by showing that the condition stated in the conclusion is indispensable to the feature identified at the start ... Thus we could spell out Kant's transcendental deduction in the first edition in three stages: experience must have an object, that is, be of something; for this, it must be coherent; and to be coherent it must be shaped by the understanding through the categories."
  8. ^ Kompridis, Nikolas (2006). "World Disclosing Arguments?". Critique and Disclosure. Cambridge: MIT Press. pp. 116–124. ISBN 0262277425.
  9. ^ Walton, Douglas N. (August 1990). "What is Reasoning? What Is an Argument?". The Journal of Philosophy. 87 (8): 399–419. doi:10.2307/2026735. JSTOR 2026735.[permanent dead link‍]
  10. ^ van Eemeren, Frans H.; Garssen, Bart; Krabbe, Erik C. W.; Snoeck Henkemans, A. Francisca; Verheij, Bart; Wagemans, Jean H. M. (2021), van Eemeren, Frans H.; Garssen, Bart; Verheij, Bart; Krabbe, Erik C. W. (eds.), "Informal Logic", Handbook of Argumentation Theory, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 1–45, doi:10.1007/978-94-007-6883-3_7-1, ISBN 978-94-007-6883-3, retrieved 2 May 2022
  11. ^ Wagemans, Jean H.M. (2016). "Constructing a Periodic Table of Arguments". SSRN Electronic Journal. doi:10.2139/ssrn.2769833. hdl:11245.1/c4517884-2626-4ada-81d0-50655ec78786. ISSN 1556-5068.