ARGUMENT, PREMISES AND CONCLUSION

Logic: the Science that Evaluates Arguments

•Logic teaches us to develop a system of methods and principles to use as a criteria
for evaluating the arguments of others and to guide us in constructing an argument of
our own.

PREMISES
•Premises and conclusions are always propositions (statements) – they can be true or
false.
•They are not questions, commands or exclamations.
•Test: “It is true / not true that P”
• where P = a premise or a conclusion

Example
•It is true that Sarah was not at the party.
• *It is true that Where was Sarah?
• *It is true that Don’t you dare do that again!
•Note: /*/ indicates that a statement is unacceptable.
•At issue is the form of the statement,
whether it CAN be true or false,
not whether it IS true of false.
• These are PROPOSITIONS:

Snow is green.
I am Brad Pitt.
• These are NOT Propositions:

*What color is snow?

*Hey, look, there’s Brad Pitt!

PREMISE INDICATORS
•_________ there are no lights on, no one is home.

Since
Because
Assuming that
Seeing that
Granted that
In view of the fact that
Inasmuch as
CAUTION
•Conclusion and premise indicators DON’T always indicate conclusions and premises:

*It has been ages since I ate really good sushi.

*She’s so cute!

IMPLICIT STATEMENTS
•Sometimes arguments are not actually expressed or may be expressed incompletely.
•One of us will be cleaning the bird cage, and it won’t be me.
•Implicit conclusion: You will be cleaning the bird cage.
•Alisha wears Birkenstocks, which proves that you don’t have to be a tree-hugger to wear
Birkenstocks.
•Implicit premise: Alisha is not a tree-hugger.

IMPLICIT ARGUMENTS
•Rules governing reading propositions into an argument
–Do so only if it is required to complete the arguer’s thought.
–Do so only if the arguer would accept the proposition.
–Employ the principle of charity – give the arguer the benefit of the doubt and make the
argument as strong as possible.
–Minimize misrepresentation.

NON-ARGUMENTS
•Reports
•Unsupported Assertions
•Conditional Statements
•Illustrations
•Explanations

REPORTS, ASSERTIONS
•Reports convey information
•Unsupported assertions are statements of what a speaker or writer happens to
believe.

CONDITIONAL STATEMENTS
•Conditional statements (if-then statements)
–Antecedent and consequent sometimes implicit:

•Should it rain, the picnic will be cancelled.

•Pete will graduate provided he passes calculus.
–May be parts of arguments
but are not themselves arguments.

ILLUSTRATIONS
•Illustrations: provide examples of a claim but do not prove or support it.

Many wildflowers are edible.

For example, daisies and day lilies are delicious
in salads.
•There are borderline cases between examples and evidence.

Many of the world’s greatest musicians

died at 27. for example, Jim Morrison,
Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Curt Cobain.

EXPLANATIONS
•Explanations: try to show why something is the case, not to prove that it is the case.
• The Titanic sank because it hit an iceberg.

(Explanation)
•Capital punishment should be abolished because innocent people may be mistakenly
executed. (Argument)

Recognizing Arguments
•Arguments VS. None Arguments
–At least one statement must claim to present evidence or reasons.
–The alleged evidence must claim to support or imply something.
•Conditional Statements by Themselves are Not Arguments
If professional football incites violence in the home, then we should reconsider giving widespread
approval to the sport.

First Steps to Analyzing an Argument

•The steps to begin analyzing each argument are:
–Eliminate any non-statements.
–Identify the conclusion and the premises.
–Determine if the argument is inductive or deductive
•Deductive arguments can be valid or invalid.
•Here is an argument:
•All dogs are animals.
•All animals must eat.
•So, all dogs must eat.
•There are no non-statements in this argument.
•There is a conclusion indicator, “So”. The last statement is the conclusion, and the others are
premises.
•This argument is Deductive. The intention of the argument is that if the premises are true, they
will lead with certainty to the conclusion.
•It will turn out that this argument is Valid. For now, consider the diagram above.
•We would probably all agree that the premises are true, so this argument is Sound.

–We will learn later how to prove validity of an argument. In this presentation I will simply
discuss its validity/invalidity.
•Valid arguments can be sound or unsound.
–We will not be learning how to decide if an argument is sound or not, but I will discuss it during
this presentation.
•Inductive arguments are analyzed for fallacies, or know bad argument types.

Here is an argument:
All Bloops are Gleeks.
All Gleeks are Zorgs.
Therefore, all Bloops are also Zorgs.
•There are no non-statements in this argument.
•There is a conclusion indicator, “Therefore”. The last statement is the conclusion, and the others
are premises.
•This argument is Deductive. The intention of the argument is that if the premises are true, they
will lead with certainty to the conclusions.
•It will turn out that this argument is Valid. For now, consider the diagram above.
•We have no idea if the premises are true, so we can’t decide about its soundness.

Here is an argument:
P •All dogs are animals.
P •All (normal) dogs have four legs.
C •Thus, all animals have four legs.

•This sounds like a previous argument about dogs, but something seems to be wrong!
•The conclusion indicator, “Thus”, tells us the last statement is the conclusion.
•This argument is Deductive. The intention of the argument is that if the premises are true, they
will lead with certainty to the conclusions. (Although it is flawed.)
•It is clear that this argument is Invalid. We will prove this later, but consider the diagram .
•We can’t discuss soundness because the argument is invalid.

Here is an argument:
P •My grandfather was logical.
P •My father was logical.
C •So, I am logical.

•This argument is Inductive. The intention of the argument is to give supporting

premises, but even if they are true, they do not guarantee that the conclusion is true,
only that it is likely to be true.
•We cannot discuss either validity or soundness of inductive arguments.
•These terms apply only to deductive arguments.

Here is a similar argument:

P •Children of logical people are always logical.
P •My father was logical.
C •So, I am logical.

•The only change to the previous argument is the first premise. The conclusion is exactly the same
as before.
•This argument is Deductive. The intention of the argument is to guarantee that the conclusion is
true.
•This is, in fact, a Valid argument. If the premises are true, they invariably lead to the conclusion.
•However, I think you’ll agree that this argument is Unsound. The first premise is not generally
agreed upon to be true.

•Analyzing an argument begins with finding the conclusion and premises, then determining
whether the argument is Deductive (premises guarantee the conclusion) or Inductive (premises
make the conclusion likely).

•You can’t determine whether an argument is Valid or Invalid simply by looking at the Truth or
Falseness of the conclusion alone.
•Validity is a matter of the entire structure of the argument.
•Validity only applies to Deductive arguments.
•We will learn to prove or disprove validity later.
•Soundness only applies to Valid Deductive arguments.
•We won’t be working with soundness of arguments in this course.
•Inductive arguments may have fallacies that defeat them.
•If they don’t, then all that is left is to argue against the strength of the premises.

IDENTIFYING PREMISES AND CONCLUSION

Deductive and Inductive
•Deductive and Inductive:
Necessity vs. Probability
•Deductive arguments incorporate the claim that it is impossible for the conclusion to be false if
the premises are true.
•Inductive arguments claim that it is improbable that the conclusion be false if the premises are
true.

Common Types of Inductive Argument:

•Prediction, Analogy, From Authority, Based on Signs, Causal/underlying Inference
•Example: The meerkat is closely related to the suricat. The suricat thrives on beetle larvae.
Therefore, probably the meerkat thrives on beetle larvae.

Validity, Truth, Soundness, Strength, Cogency/Force.

•Validity vs. Invalid Deductive Arguments
•Valid Deductive Arguments are arguments in which it is impossible for the conclusion to be false
given that the premises are true.
•Invalid Deductive Arguments are arguments in which it is possible for the conclusion to be false
given that the premises are true.

•Cogent/Force Argument = Strong Argument + All true premises

•Example: Every previous U.S. President was older than 40. Therefore, probably the next U.S.
President will be older than 40.
Argument Forms: Proving Invalidity
•Form as Determinative of validity
–All valid arguments take this form:
•All a are b.
•All c are a
•All c are b

•The form is identical to the form we just considered and is valid.

•Now consider an invalid argument form
–All a are b.
–All c are b.
–All a are c.

Extended Arguments
•Vertical Patterns: Conclusions subsequently become premises.
–The vertical pattern consists of a series of arguments in which a conclusion of a logically prior
argument becomes a premise of a subsequent argument.

•Multiple Conclusion: When a premise supports more than one conclusion in a passage.
•Although no single argument can have more than one conclusion, we evaluate such passages as
consisting of two or more arguments, but we join the two conclusions with a bracket.