Concept

Argument

Overview

An argument is one or more premises—sentences, statements, or propositions—directed towards arriving at a logical conclusion. The purpose of an argument is to give reasons for one's thinking and understanding via justification, explanation, or persuasion. As a series of logical steps, arguments are intended to determine or show the degree of truth or acceptability of a logical conclusion.

The process of crafting or delivering arguments, argumentation, can be studied from three main perspectives: through 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, 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. 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 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.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Argument is discussed.

An argument is derived from what has been done, in this way: "When a woman becomes the wife of a man, everything which has belonged to the woman now becomes the property of the husband under the name of dowry." But in the way of comparison there are many kinds of valid arguments; in this way: "That which is valid in a greater affair, ought to be valid in a less: so that, if the law does not regulate the limits in…
Marcus Tullius Cicero, The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4
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I maintain, then, that the physico-theological argument is insufficient of itself to prove the existence of a Supreme Being, that it must entrust this to the ontological argument—to which it serves merely as an introduction, and that, consequently, this argument contains the only possible ground of proof (possessed by speculative reason) for the existence of this being.
Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
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If we be, therefore, engaged by arguments to put trust in past experience, and make it the standard of our future judgement, these arguments must be probable only, or such as regard matter of fact and real existence, according to the division above mentioned. But that there is no argument of this kind, must appear, if our explication of that species of reasoning be admitted as solid and satisfactory. We have said…
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
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This second part of the operation, which, as before observed, is essentially a process of interpretation, will be resolvable into a syllogism or a series of syllogisms, the majors of which will be general propositions embracing whole classes of cases; every one of which propositions must be true in all its extent, if the argument is maintainable. If, therefore, any fact fairly coming within the range of one of these…
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic
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Third Argument. If God were corporeal, He would be finite, and so far this argument is correct; if He were finite, He would have certain dimensions and a certain form; this is also a correct conclusion. But they continue thus: Attribute to God any magnitude or form whatever: He might be either larger or smaller, and might also have a different form.
Moses Maimonides, The guide for the perplexed
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Argument

Overview

In the original texts

Philosophers who discussed Argument

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