365 Days of Philosophy

365DaysOfPhilosophy 9 - Introduction to Arguments


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What defines an argument? For many of us, it’s going to involve conflict, possibly some shouting, between more than one person about a disagreement. However, arguments in the everyday sense may not necessarily mean reasoning is involved.

Arguments in philosophy are something more structured.

You have a starting point — called a premise or premises… then there’s the movement, called the inference, which takes you to the end (or the conclusion).

Premise — inference — conclusion.

It sounds fairly simple, but you can have numerous premises, and different kinds of inferential moves towards that final conclusion.

Arguments are very powerful in philosophy, because for many of the theories and ideas that are proposed, they’ve been derived through argument, through thinking out the premises, the different inferential moves before coming to the conclusions they do. And it doesn’t end there — a conclusion could be debated, and then there’s more premises that could come into play… and so on.

Reasoning isn’t exclusive to philosophy and of course, our emotions and background can have an influence on the quality of arguments we make. And not every philosopher is pro-rational, and could even be anti-rational, or use different methods that don’t involve arguments. But it’s a useful start and helps us investigate structures that underpin many arguments… and may even improve the way you argue in the real world.

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365 Days of PhilosophyBy Kylie Sturgess