ARGUMENT IS THE KERNEL OF LOGIC

An argument is a series of sentences, statements or

propositions some of which are called premises and one is the
conclusion. 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.
The process of crafting or delivering
arguments, argumentation, can be studied from three main
perspectives: the logical, the dialectical and
the rhetorical perspective.
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. Deductive
arguments can be valid, and the valid ones can be sound: in a
valid argument, premisses 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. 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, the quality of hypotheses
in retroduction, or even the disclosure of new possibilities for
thinking and acting.
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. 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. In both
dialectic and rhetoric, arguments are used not through a 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.

Argument
terminology
There are several kinds of arguments in logic, the best-known
of which are "deductive" and "inductive." An argument has one
or more premises but only one conclusion. Each premise and
the conclusion are truth bearers or "truth-candidates", each
capable of being either true or false (but not both). These truth
values bear on the terminology used with arguments.
Deductive arguments
A deductive argument asserts that the truth of the conclusion is
a logical consequence of the premises: if the premises are true,
the conclusion must be true. It would be self-contradictory to
assert the premises and deny the conclusion, because negation
of the conclusion is contradictory to the truth of the premises.
Based on the premises, the conclusion follows necessarily (with
certainty). Given premises that A=B and B=C, then the
conclusion follows necessarily that A=C. Deductive arguments
are sometimes referred to as "truth-preserving" arguments. For
example, consider the argument that because bats can fly
(premise=true), and all flying creatures are birds
(premise=false), therefore bats are birds (conclusion=false). If
we assume the premises are true, the conclusion follows
necessarily, and it is a valid argument.
Validity
In terms of validity, deductive arguments may be either valid or
invalid. An argument is valid, if and only if it is impossible in all
possible worlds for the premises to be true and the conclusion
false; validity is about what is possible; it is concerned with how
the premises and conclusion relate and what is possible. [1] An
argument is formally valid if and only if the denial of the
conclusion is incompatible with accepting all the premises.
In formal logic, the validity of an argument depends not on the
actual truth or falsity of its premises and conclusion, but on
whether the argument has a valid logical form. The validity of
an argument is not a guarantee of the truth of its conclusion. A
valid argument may have false premises that render it
inconclusive: the conclusion of a valid argument with one or
more false premises may be true or false.
Logic seeks to discover the forms that make arguments valid. A
form of argument is valid if and only if the conclusion is true
under all interpretations of that argument in which the
premises are true. Since the validity of an argument depends
on its form, an argument can be shown invalid by showing that
its form is invalid. This can be done by a counter example of
the same form of argument with premises that are true under a
given interpretation, but a conclusion that is false under that
 interpretation. In informal logic this is called a counter
argument.
The form of an argument can be shown by the use of symbols.
For each argument form, there is a corresponding statement
form, called a corresponding conditional, and an argument form
is valid if and only if its corresponding conditional is a logical
truth. A statement form which is logically true is also said to be
a valid statement form. A statement form is a logical truth if it
is true under all interpretations. A statement form can be
shown to be a logical truth by either (a) showing that it is
a tautology or (b) by means of a proof procedure.
The corresponding conditional of a valid argument is a
necessary truth (true in all possible worlds) and so the
conclusion necessarily follows from the premises, or follows of
logical necessity. The conclusion of a valid argument is not
necessarily true, it depends on whether the premises are true.
If the conclusion, itself, is a necessary truth, it is without regard
to the premises.
Some examples:
 All Greeks are human and all humans are mortal; therefore, all
Greeks are mortal. : Valid argument; if the premises are true
the conclusion must be true.
 Some Greeks are logicians and some logicians are tiresome;
therefore, some Greeks are tiresome. Invalid argument: the
tiresome logicians might all be Romans (for example).
 Either we are all doomed or we are all saved; we are not all
saved; therefore, we are all doomed. Valid argument; the
premises entail the conclusion. (This does not mean the
conclusion has to be true; it is only true if the premises are
true, which they may not be!)
 Some men are hawkers. Some hawkers are rich. Therefore,
some men are rich. Invalid argument. This can be easier seen
by giving a counter-example with the same argument form:
In the above second to last case (Some men are hawkers ...),
the counter-example follows the same logical form as the
previous argument, (Premise 1: "Some X are Y." Premise 2:
"Some Y are Z." Conclusion: "Some X are Z.") in order to
demonstrate that whatever hawkers may be, they may or may
not be rich, in consideration of the premises as such.
The forms of argument that render deductions valid are well-
established, however some invalid arguments can also be
persuasive depending on their construction (inductive
arguments, for example).
Soundness
An argument is sound when the argument is valid and
argument's premise(s) is/are true, therefore the conclusion is
true.
Inductive arguments
An inductive argument asserts that the truth of the conclusion
is supported by the probability of the premises. For example,
given that the military budget of the United States is the
largest in the world (premise=true), then it is probable that it
will remain so for the next 10 years (conclusion=true).
Arguments that involve predictions are inductive since the
future is uncertain. An inductive argument is said to be strong
or weak. If the premises of an inductive argument are assumed
true, is it probable the conclusion is also true? If yes, the
argument is strong. If no, it is weak. A strong argument is said
to be cogent if it has all true premises. Otherwise, the
argument is uncogent. The military budget argument example
is a strong, cogent argument.
Non-deductive logic is reasoning using arguments in which the
premises support the conclusion but do not entail it. Forms of
non-deductive logic include the statistical syllogism, which
argues from generalizations true for the most part,
and induction, a form of reasoning that makes generalizations
based on individual instances. An inductive argument is said to
be cogent if and only if the truth of the argument's premises
would render the truth of the conclusion probable (i.e., the
argument is strong), and the argument's premises are, in fact,
true. Cogency can be considered inductive logic's analogue
to deductive logic's "soundness". Despite its
name, mathematical induction is not a form of inductive
reasoning. The lack of deductive validity is known as
the problem of induction.
Argument from expert opinion

Major Source E is an expert in subject domain S

Premise: containing proposition A.

Minor
E asserts that proposition A is true (false).
Premise:

Conclusion: A is true (false).

Each scheme may be associated with a set of critical questions,
namely criteria for assessing dialectically the reasonableness
and acceptability of an argument. The matching critical
questions are the standard ways of casting the argument into
doubt.