<\/p>\n
An argument is a reason for believing something.<\/p>\n
Arguments consist of two or more claims, one of which is a conclusion.\u00a0 The conclusion is the claim the argument purports to give a reason for believing.\u00a0 The other claims are the premises.\u00a0 The premises of an argument are offered as a reason for believing its conclusion.<\/p>\n
Some arguments provide better reasons for believing their conclusions than others.\u00a0 Evaluating an argument involves two essential steps:<\/p>\n
The second of these tasks may involve evaluating further arguments in support of the premises.\u00a0 There is an obvious question to ask regarding (1).\u00a0 Namely, what is it for the premises of an argument to support its conclusion?\u00a0 Here, I will introduce the two standards of support that have been recognized and developed by philosophers.\u00a0 One is the standard of deductive validity<\/em> and the other is the standard of inductive strength<\/em>.<\/p>\n Here are two equivalent definitions of deductive validity:<\/p>\n (D) A deductively valid argument is an argument where if its premises are true, then its conclusion must be true.<\/p>\n (D’)\u00a0 A deductively valid argument is an argument where it is not possible for all of its premises to be true and its conclusion false.<\/p>\n Deductive validity is the strictest standard of support we can uphold.\u00a0 In a deductively valid argument, the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion.\u00a0 Here are a few examples of deductively valid arguments<\/p>\n In contrast, the following argument is not valid:<\/p>\n To see why the last argument is not valid, try to think of a possible scenario that makes both of the premises true and the conclusion false.\u00a0 One scenario is where Sue catches her plane, but her cab from the airport gets stuck in traffic.\u00a0 The validity or invalidity of these arguments is fairly obvious.\u00a0 But the validity or invalidity of many arguments is not so easy to see.\u00a0 Formal logic provides us with tools for testing more difficult arguments for validity.<\/p>\n A deductively valid argument may or may not have true premises.\u00a0 A deductively valid argument only provides one with a good reason for believing its conclusion if its premises are in fact true. If a deductively valid argument has all true premises, we say that it is deductively sound<\/em>.\u00a0 For an argument to be deductively sound is one way for it to pass both steps (1) and (2) for evaluating arguments.<\/p>\n The other widely recognized standard of support for the conclusion of an argument is inductive strength.\u00a0 We can define inductive strength as follows:<\/p>\n (I) An inductively strong argument is an argument where it is not probable that its conclusion is false given that its premises are true.<\/p>\n Notice that the criteria for inductive strength in (I) looks much like the criterion for deductive validity in (D’).\u00a0 The biggest difference is in the use of the word “probable” rather than “possible”.\u00a0 This is a big difference.\u00a0 Possibility is a yes-or-no-affair.\u00a0 It either is possible for the premises of an argument to be true and its conclusion false or it isn’t.\u00a0 On the other hand, probability is a matter of degree.\u00a0 The conclusion of an argument may be more or less probable given the truth of its premises.<\/p>\n Corresponding to the notion of deductive soundness, an inductive argument that is both strong and has true premises is called a cogent inductive argument.\u00a0 Unlike the notion of deductive soundness, it is possible for an inductively cogent argument to have true premises and a false conclusion.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" An argument is a reason for believing something. Arguments consist of two or more claims, one of which is a conclusion.\u00a0 The conclusion is the claim the argument purports to give a reason for believing.\u00a0 The other claims are the premises.\u00a0 The premises of an argument are offered as a reason for believing its … Continue reading Arguments<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-critical-thinking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/73"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":57,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions\/57"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/commons.bellevuecollege.edu\/wrussellpayne\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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