Logic and understanding the basic features of Arguments.

   ANALYSIS OF THE ARGUMENT   

 WHAT is an Argument?

        In philosophy, an argument is a connected series of statements, including at least one premise, intended to demonstrate that another statement, the conclusion, is true. The statements that serve as the premises and conclusions are sometimes referred to as “propositions.” Statements are declarative sentences. Arguments offer proof for a claim, or conclusion. A premise is a statement that supports, or helps lead to, an argument’s conclusion. A conclusion is the statement that is reasoned from the argument’s premises. Arguments are “inferential; they intend to “infer” something. The process by which we reason in order to reach a conclusion is referred to as inference. Quite often the arguments have two or more premises and require multiple inferential steps to reach the conclusion. And then explore two main purposes of arguments: justification and explanation. Both justifications and explanations try to provide reasons, but reasons of different kinds,

•  JUSTIFICATION -    Justification is a set of reasons why something like a belief or a claim or an action is true or reasonable or good. Justification is often conflated with explanations. Justification does not encourage criticism. A justification supposedly shows that its conclusions are correct or probably correct, which means presumably that we probably shouldn’t bother criticizing them. 

•  EXPLANATION-   Explanation is a set of reason why an event or a belief came. An explanation is a rationale in which the reason presents a cause of some fact represented by the conclusion. Its purpose is to help us understand how or why that fact occurs. Explanations are good because they provide a target for criticism.
  

 What’s a logical argument?
Logic is the science of reasoning, proof, thinking, or inference. Logic lets us examine a piece of reasoning, or a thought, and determine whether it is correct or not. The building blocks of a logical argument are propositions, also called statements. A proposition is a statement which is either true or false. 

 A Logical Argument Example:

Premise Statements:

-“Washington, D.C. is the capital of the United States.”
-“The President of the United States lives in the White House.”
-“The White House is at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington D.C.”

Inference Statement(s):

-“These statements imply that the White House is located in Washington D.C.”
-“These statements also imply that the President lives in Washington D.C. by living in the     White House.”

Conclusion Statement:

-“Therefore, the President of the United States lives in the capital of the United States.”

What's the difference between argument and logic?
In arguments, premises are offered to provide support for the conclusion. Logic is about whether or not the support is adequate. If the logic is not adequate, it doesn’t matter what the premises are about; they won’t provide adequate support for the conclusion. The first step in evaluating arguments is thus to make sure they succeed logically.

THE WEB OF LANGUAGE

Arguments are made up of language, so we cannot understand arguments without first understanding language. To understand how arguments work, then, it is crucial to understand how language works. Still, certain facts about language are beyond dispute, and recognizing them will provide a background for understanding how arguments work. It takes only a little thought to see that this view, however daring it might seem, misrepresents the role of conventions in language. These conventions govern what we will call linguistic acts,speech acts, and conversational acts. A speech act is an act that belongs to the class that includes making statements, issuing commands, asking questions, making promises, expressing desires, etc. A typical speech act is a linguistic act that counts as a move in a discourse. The same linguistic act can be a part of different speech acts. In the first case, the linguistic act is a vow, in the second a report, and in the third an expression of desire.

THE LANGUAGE OF ANRGUMENT

 This will examine the use of language to formulate arguments and will provide methods to analyze genuine arguments in their richness and complexity. To do this, we will examine the words, phrases, and special constructions that indicate the premises and conclusions of an argument. These include guarding premises so that they are less subject to criticism, offering assurances concerning debatable claims, and discounting possible criticisms in advance. moreover in practice people do not always give further reasons or argument in support of every statement they make. Sometimes they use certain rhetorical devices to cut the argument short, or to hint at a further argument without actually stating it. There are three common strategies for doing this:

 Assuring: informing someone that there are further reasons, although one is not giving them now

Guarding: weakening one’s claims so that it is harder to show that the claims are false

 Discounting: anticipating objections that might be raised to one’s claim or argument as a way of dismissing those objections.

• EVALUATIVE LANGUAGE

 Arguments are often filled with evaluations, so it is important to figure out. what evaluative language means. We will begin with the clearest cases of evaluative language, which occur when we say simply that something is good or bad, that some course of action is right or wrong, or that something should or should not (or ought to or ought not to) be done. Evaluative language is also often used to express emotion

• THE STANDARD FORMAT OF AN ARGUMENT

Philosophers usually present their arguments in prose. It is often helpful to take an argument from its original prose statement and lay out its premise(s) and conclusion(c), to put it into standard form, because then its reasoning (whether good or bad!) may be seen more clearly.

Here's a simple argument in standard form.

1. Humans are mortal.

2. Socrates is human.

3. Therefore, Socrates is mortal (by 1 and 2).

From this, we can see the few simple rules of standard form:

• The argument is written as a list of numbered steps.
• Each step contains only one proposition -- a single declarative sentence. That proposition may be a premise, a conclusion, or both the conclusion of one argument and a premise of another.
• Premises come before the conclusions they are supposed to support.
• Conclusions are signaled by words like “Therefore...” or “So...” or sometimes three dots in a triangle.
• We say which premises are supposed to support each conclusion.

"  The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress. "

- Joseph Joubert