FALLIBLE FOX

Arguments & Claims Part 1: What is an Argument? 

 

Understanding arguments is essential for understanding our own and others reasoning. First and foremost, the word "argument" has two meanings and we're referring to one in particular. What are we not talking about? When we refer to "argument" in this section of MAPS, we're not talking about a heated verbal exchange between two or more people. Put that aside entirely.

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In the context we're interested in, an argument contains a set of two or more statements that are related to each other in a very specific way (we'll get to precisely what we mean by "statements" below). In an argument, a person provides one or more reasons (premises) that a claim (conclusion) is true or false. 

 

Stated differently, an argument occurs when someone intends to support or establish some claim or conclusion using one or more reasons.

 

Each of the following is a claim that a person might make:

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• Cats are better than dogs.

• Climate change is occurring due to human intervention.

• Self-driving cars are safe.

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​These are assertions that something is or is not the case. They're worded in such a way that they might be either true or false. That is, one could sensibly place "it is true that" or it is false that" at the beginnings of these sentences, as in, for example, "it is true that self-driving cars are safe." Regardless of whether the author of the claim is correct or not, they're making a claim. ​

 

Each of the above examples, therefore, could be the conclusion in an argument. By themselves, they're not conclusions, though, because they do not come with reason(s) that are intended to support them. However, once you add even one reason meant to support the truth of a claim, the claim becomes a conclusion and whole thing—the reason and the conclusions together—becomes an argument. Consider these two examples:​

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• My cat is smarter than Steve's dog. Therefore, cats are better than dogs. 

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• Self-driving cars are safe. There have been proportionally fewer car accidents among self-driving versus person-driven vehicles.

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The above are now each simple arguments. The author of the first, for example, has provided a conclusion ("cats are better than dogs") and they've also provided a reason, or premise, intended to support the conclusion ("my cat is smarter than Steve's dog").

 

Regardless of whether the premise is a good reason to accept the conclusion, what we have is clearly an argument—someone is trying to support a claim with a reason it's true.

 

Of course, you might be able to see that the reason given in support of the conclusion is not a very good reason to accept the conclusion that cats are better than dogs. It's not a great argument—we'll get to that in a later section. Right now, we're simply interested in what is and is not an argument.

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The self-driving car example above is set up differently on the page. The conclusion comes first. However, reading carefully for the intended meaning, one can see that the second sentence is meant to be a premise or reason in support of the conclusion. 

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So, we now know that the most basic form of an argument has one premise and one conclusion. 

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• An argument always has only one conclusion.

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• An argument can have any number of premises or reasons intended to support the conclusion.

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• The conclusion and any premises must each be set up as statements or truth claims (more on statements below). 

 

The above cats and cars arguments are kept incredibly simple so that we can get the basics before moving on. ​I suggest stopping here for a moment to practice by jotting down three or so claims. Then, turn each one into an argument by adding a premise to support each, thus rendering each of those initial claims conclusions.

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Below we will take a closer look at the components and presentation of arguments and then consider the importance of understanding the nature of arguments.

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Arguments are made of statements

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An argument is a group of statements: one conclusion and one or more premises (the reasons upon which the conclusion is based). But what exactly is a statement? For something to qualify as a statement, it must be possible to state whether it is as true or false (regardless of whether it actually is true or false). The following, therefore, are statements:

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• The sky is blue.

• The sky is made of Swiss cheese.

• God exists.

• God does not exist.

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It doesn't matter if a statement is true, false, or impossible to prove—it qualifies as a statement if (a) you can preface it with "It is true that..." or "It is false that..." and, doing so, (b) it remains grammatically sensible thing to say.

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I can state, for example, that, "It is true that the sky is made of Swiss cheese." My having stated this does not make it true, but it does make it a statement. As such, "the sky is made of Swiss cheese" can be a premise or a conclusion in an argument. It would be a conclusion if I offered reasons to support that the the sky is made of Swiss cheese. It would be a premise if I use "the sky is made of Swiss cheese" to support some other conclusion, like this:

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• The sky is made of Swiss cheese. Therefore, we can all go up and have a delicious sky snack.

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That's, of course, a ridiculous argument, but I'm hoping you now see that it is an argument. It's made of two statements: a premise and a conclusion. Both can be rephrased with "It is true that..." at the beginning.

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By contrast, the following are not statements and so cannot, under any circumstances, be premises or conclusions in an argument:

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• Shut the door.

• Let's go to Niagara Falls!

• Are your shoes on backwards?

 

The above cannot reasonably be prefaced with "It is true that..." or "It is false that...". You can't say, "it is true that shut the door!" As such, "shut the door" is not a statement and, therefore, cannot be the premise or conclusion in an argument.

 

However, with slight alterations to these sentences, they can be changed into statements (but their meaning also changes). For example, "are your shoes on backwards?" is not a statement, but the following is a statement: "Your shoes are on backwards."

 

That is, it does not make grammatical sense to say, "it is true that are your shoes on backwards?" It does, however, make sense to say, "it is true that your shoes are on backwards." Thus, "your shoes are on backwards" could become, say, the premise in an argument. Like this:

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• Your shoes are on backwards (premise). I think you're going to hurt yourself in the basketball game (conclusion).

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Clues in the Wording

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Sometimes there are indicator words that help us to identify a conclusion (e.g., "therefore" or "thus") or premises ("because" or "seeing that") but the presence of these sorts of helpful words does not make it any more of an argument than when they're missing. What makes it an argument is the author's intention—does the person mean to support a claim (i.e., the conclusion) with at least one reason (i.e., a premise). These are all, for example, essentially the same argument:

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• My cat is smarter than Steve's dog. Therefore, cats are better than dogs. 

• Seeing that my cat is smarter than Steve's dog, cats are better than dogs. 

• My cat is smarter than Steve's dog. Cats are better than dogs. 

• Cats are better than dogs. How do I know that? Because my cat is smarter than Steve's dog.​

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Can you pick out which of the above four varieties of the same argument have indicator words? What are those indicator words telling the reader? Finally, which of those four passages has something extra that is not a statement and not a core part of the the argument? 

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A look at some simple arguments​

 

Don't forget, arguments range in quality—let's just say for now that there are good and bad arguments. In other words, some arguments do not provide sufficient reason for the author to arrive at the conclusion or for the audience to accept the conclusion. Use your intuition and some effort to try to identify which of the following three arguments might not be very good (hint: one of them is fine!).

 

Give it a try and, as you do so, see if you can come up with reasons to justify your evaluation for the arguments' quality. Don't worry, however, if you're not sure about what might make the arguments good or bad—the remainder of the Arguments and Truth Claims module is intended to help you develop that capacity.

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ARGUMENT 1: “Bob is a male (premise 1). Most males experience hair thinning as adults (premise 2). Therefore, as time goes by, Bob is likely to lose at least some of his hair (conclusion).”

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ARGUMENT 2: “Dr. Patton offended hundreds of people when he made his controversial claims about differences between men and women (premise). Dr. Patton's view is therefore clearly incorrect (conclusion).”

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ARGUMENT 3: “This medicine I've developed is good for you (conclusion) because it is all natural (premise 1) and doesn't have cyanide in it (premise 2)”

 

First and foremost, how do we know that these are, in fact, arguments? ​Well, aside from the fact that I've told you that they're arguments, we can tell that these are arguments because they are composed of premises and a conclusion. Each of those premises and conclusions are statements (see above), so there's nothing wrong with their construction. Note however, that this says nothing at all about whether they're high or low quality arguments.

 

The following, by contrast, are not arguments. Given the definitions of statement, premise, conclusion, and argument, why do you think are these are not arguments?

 

NON-ARGUMENT 1: "As time goes by, Bob is likely to lose at least some of his hair."

 

NON-ARGUMENT 2: "Is this medicine good for you? All I know is that it's natural and doesn't have cyanide in it." 

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The first is not an argument because it's just a single statement on its own. The second contains a question, which is not a statement and so cannot be a part of an argument.

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Now, we can consider the quality of the above three arguments. ARGUMENT 1 is probably fine (so long as we have good reason to believe the premises are true). There are no obvious logical flaws there (see parts 3-5 of this module for more information on truth of premises and logic of arguments). By contrast, you may have noted that there are serious problems with the latter two arguments. We'll see later that good arguments have (a) all true premises and (b) logical connections between the premises and conclusion. If you haven't identified any problems with arguments 2 or 3, give it another good try before reading on. Specifically, do you see any issues with arriving at the conclusion based solely on the premises provided?

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In ARGUMENT 2, the author is judging Dr. Patton's view as incorrect solely because hundreds of people were offended by his claims. In other words, the argument is that Dr. Patton is wrong because he offended lots of people. This argument is flawed because whether people are offended by a claim is completely irrelevant to its truth value.

 

Sometimes finding the faults in arguments like this can be hard because we as readers sometimes add meaning to what we read that isn't there. As you read the argument, perhaps you thought you might be offended by Patton's claim too—unfortunately, that's still irrelevant. Whether you might be offended has nothing to do with truth. As you read, you might have thought there was widespread agreement that Patton was wrong because "hundreds of people" were offended. But, that's still irrelevant to the conclusion's truth value! Remember, those people simply agree that the claims were offensive, not that they were correct or incorrect. Whether something is offensive and whether something is true are different concerns entirely.

 

Generally speaking, it's important to read the argument for precisely what it says— not what you think it says or want it to say. 

 

Now imagine that ARGUMENT 2 read as follows instead:

 

“Most people in the general public disagree with Dr. Patton's controversial claim about differences between men and women (premise). Dr. Patton's view is clearly incorrect (conclusion).”

 

Is this now a good argument? No, it's still poor! But the problem might be harder for you to spot. Whether the general public agrees or disagrees with a scientific claim is not a good reason for us to go along with them and assume the claim is true. The author is falling prey to something called the bandwagon fallacy, which involves using other people's beliefs or actions as a source of evidence. In many cases, no matter the number or proportion of people that share a view, we shouldn't use that information alone as evidence that a conclusion is true (see Arguments & Truth Claims Part 6 for more on fallacies and some important nuances about the bandwagon fallacy in particular). Who's to say whether the general public has good or bad reasons supporting their understanding of the science?

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ARGUMENT 3 isn't very good either (“This medicine is good for you [conclusion] because it is natural [premise 1] and doesn't have cyanide in it [premise 2]”). Contrary to common belief, whether something is or is not natural has no bearing on whether it's good for you (consider, for instance, that cyanide and arsenic are natural!). This view that if it is natural it must be good is fallacious and therefore does not support the conclusion (see appeal to nature fallacy). 

 

Further, not having cyanide in a medicine does not give us any reason to believe the medicine is good for you. Electric chairs, arsenic, and deadly nightshade also lack cyanide—are they good for you? Not at all!

 

In short, arguments like this do not provide good reason to accept their conclusions. We need to get better at spotting such bad arguments, so we're not convinced by peddlers of nonsense!

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Why is it important to develop your understanding of arguments?

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Understanding argument helps us to see when we have good reasons for beliefs, communicate our own ideas more effectively, and make better sense of others' communications.

 

Think, for example, about your own beliefs. It's possible to arrive at a justifiable or true belief about some topic—say, MMR vaccines, homeopathy, or the shape of the earth—without personally having good reasons for holding the belief. That is, one can arrive at a belief that reflects reality without having constructed a good argument for the belief. Critically, though, without understanding what makes for a good argument, one might just as easily be persuaded to adopt flawed beliefs for no good reason (e.g., because a false authority told you to believe it or because a friend shared with you a bad argument that you couldn't effectively critique). 

 

By contrast, when you can understand where your beliefs are coming from, you can pick apart the reasoning and discover flaws you hadn't previously known were there. The same goes for when you're analyzing others' ideas. 

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It can be quite hard to identify arguments where they might be present in the media or in our own minds. That's partly because they're often messily presented and littered with lots of superfluous content. Arguments are everywhere, but understanding the basics of more explicitly stated arguments—like the ones we'll look at here—is necessary before you start trying to deconstruct complex and messy arguments in articles and podcasts. You need to know what you're looking for first.

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At this point, how are you feeling about your general understanding of arguments? Based on our look at some basic arguments, how do you feel about your intuitions about good and bad arguments? We'll further develop our skills in this domain in the next few sections, but here are some links you can try for more support before you move on:

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• A basic introduction to argument

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• A fuller, though more academic, look at argument at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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