Chapter Two: What Makes an Argument?

“An argument isn’t just contradiction.”
“Can be.”
“No it can’t. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.”
“No it isn’t.”
“Yes it is.”

—Monty Python, The Argument Clinic

The goal of this chapter is to look closely at arguments so that you will be able to identify them and to pick out their premises and conclusions. As we saw in Chapter 1, arguments are models of reasoning that allow reasoning to be examined and evaluated. They are important because good reasoning is the way to get good answers to the questions you care about.

According to the definition provided in Chapter 1, an argument is a series of statements in which at least one of the statements is offered as reason for belief in another. This definition applies to a simple argument; later in this chapter we will cover complex arguments, which link simple arguments together into chains.

Any statement, whether explicit or implicit, that is offered as a reason is a premise (sometimes spelled premiss by the British). As we saw in Chapter 1, we can also refer to premises as evidence, warrant, justification, basis, grounds, or rationale. The statement for which the reason is offered is the conclusion. There must be at least one premise (but there is no upper limit) and, in a simple argument, there is exactly one conclusion.^[1]

Let’s look more carefully at two pieces of the definition: what statements are, and what it is to offer a reason for belief.

2.1 STATEMENTS: THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF ARGUMENTS

Statements are sentences that can be true or false.^[2] Most of the sentences in this book and most of the sentences you speak are statements. Here are two concrete examples:

Eleanor Roosevelt was one of the most prominent first ladies in history.
A water molecule is made up of two hydrogen and two oxygen atoms.

Both of these statements can be true or false. The first is true, while the second is false.

The following four sentences do not count as statements for our purposes:

Oh, to be at the beach this afternoon!
Speak into the microphone.
Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?
I promise to return the money on Tuesday.

Read each of these and ask yourself if it is true or false. You will see that they aren’t quite like the sentences about water molecules and Eleanor Roosevelt. The first of the four can be sincere or insincere; the second can be obeyed or disobeyed; the third can be answered yes or no; and the fourth can be kept or broken. But none of them can be true or false.

2.1.1 The Form and the Function of Statements and Other Sentences

Statements typically exhibit a certain form. The usual form of a statement includes a subject—such as water molecule—and a property, or a trait, attributed to that subject—such as being made up of two hydrogen and two oxygen atoms. (More rarely, statements assert an identity instead of attributing a property; that is, they assert that two different names pick out the same thing, as in the sentence Santa Claus is St. Nick.)

Statements, in addition, fulfill a certain function, namely the declarative function of conveying information. The statement Eleanor Roosevelt was one of the most prominent first ladies in history conveys information about a historical figure; as noted above, we can usually evaluate this information, depending on our store of knowledge or our commitment to researching it, as either true or false.

Sentences that are not statements serve a wide variety of other nondeclarative functions. Some sentences are exclamatory—that is, they function to express strong and sudden emotion, as in the sentence:

Oh, to be at the beach this afternoon!

Some sentences are imperative—that is, they direct others to action. The following sentence is imperative:

Speak into the microphone.

Others are interrogative—that is, they serve to ask a question. Consider, for example, the following:

Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?

Still other sentences serve a performative function; by asserting certain things under the right circumstances, they enable you thereby to do, or perform, those things. Examples include:

I promise to return the money on Tuesday.
I resign from this committee.
I apologize for what I said.
I categorically deny all allegations.

A single sentence can serve more than one function. This means that a sentence not in the form of a statement might nevertheless function as a statement. Note the following question:

Don’t you know that I love you?

It is not in the form of a statement, but of a question—its form, then is interrogative, not declarative. But in the right circumstances it can function both to ask and to tell. So it not only serves its explicit interrogative function, but it also serves a declarative function—that is, it also functions as a statement.

Here is a sentence that might be thought to serve all five functions:

For the last time I ask you to tell me your name!

On a fairly generous interpretation, you might find these functions:

Declarative, since it conveys the information that this is the last time.
Exclamatory, since it expresses strong emotion—exasperation, to be
specific.
Imperative, since it directs another person to action.
Interrogative, since it asks for your name.
Performative, since by virtue of asserting “I ask,” I do ask.

Often you need to know more about the context to determine whether a sentence is serving as a statement. It is often necessary to see a larger section of the passage in which it is written, or to hear a larger part of the conversation in which it is spoken, or to know more in general about the circumstances surrounding the expression of the sentence. Suppose, for example, you are asked, Is the beach pleasant this afternoon? Some possible answers might be:

Oh, to be at the beach this afternoon!
Is the beach pleasant this afternoon?
Whatever you do, go to the beach this afternoon.
Yes.

None of these sentences is cast in the form of a statement. And in other contexts each might function quite differently. In this context, however, each sentence is clearly intended to serve the same declarative function as the statement,

The beach is pleasant this afternoon.

For identifying arguments, what matters most is the function served by the sentences; so, in defining an argument as a series of statements, the term statement is meant to include sentences that function declaratively, whether they take that form or not.

2.2 STATEMENTS THAT OFFER A REASON FOR BELIEF

2.2.1 The Reason Need Not Be Good

What matters in identifying an argument is not whether the premise succeeds in supporting the conclusion, but whether it is intended to support it—whether, as our definition puts it, a statement is offered as a reason to believe another statement. When the premise succeeds in supporting the conclusion, that can make it easier to see that it is an argument. But success is not what makes it an argument.

The story is told of a professor, walking across campus, who stops a student to ask, “Excuse me, in what direction am I headed?” When the bemused student replies, “North,” the professor smiles and says, “Ah, then I’ve had my lunch.” It is hard to see how the premise I am headed north supports the conclusion I have had my lunch, but he considers it a reason, and that makes the series of statements an argument.

Or consider the account of Denis Diderot, 18th century French intellectual and atheist, who in 1773 was staying at the Russian court in St. Petersburg, where he entertained and educated the nobility. Fearing that Diderot was undermining their religious faith, Catherine the Great commissioned Leonhard Euler, the most distinguished mathematician of the time, to debate him publicly. Euler, so the story goes, began with this argument.

A squared minus B squared equals A minus B times A plus B; therefore, God exists. Reply!

Diderot, we are told, left the court abruptly amid the laughter of the audience, confined himself to chambers, demanded safe conduct, and promptly returned to France. It is hard to see how Euler’s premise about A and B has any connection to the conclusion that God exists, but it is offered as a reason, and so we take the series of statements as an argument.

It may be that in the professor’s or Euler’s case there really is a worthwhile argument waiting to be appreciated once we figure out what the implicit premises are. Perhaps the professor’s routine is so invariable, and his autopilot so effective, that he feels confident in deducing his past action from his present direction. Perhaps Euler believes that mathematical truths cannot be true unless there is a God to make them true. But in other cases the argument is clearly beyond redemption. Members of the Israel Antiquities Authority were incensed when the Huntington Library in southern California decided to release to the public its photographs of the Dead Sea Scrolls, breaking the authority’s 40-year monopoly over the scrolls. The Los Angeles Times reports:

Bruce Zuckerman, the acting director of the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center, said he was concerned that someone might depict the Dead Sea Scrolls on T-shirts. Because of such a disrespectful possibility, Zuckerman would preserve the secrecy imposed by the team of editors that has controlled access for the last 40 years.

Not only is the danger of disrespectful T-shirts a terrible reason for preserving secrecy (should we suppress photographs of Gandhi and Mother Theresa as well?), but also it is doubtful that it is Zuckerman’s real reason. Nevertheless, he offers it as a reason for believing his conclusion, and that is enough to count the series of statements as an argument.

2.2.2 Inference Indicators

Given the frequent absence of good reasons for belief, what tells us that an argument is even being offered? Perhaps the best sign of an argument is the presence of an inference indicator, a term that frequently signifies the presence of an inference—that is, of movement from premises to conclusion. (An old-fashioned word for inference indicator, illative, comes from a form of the Latin word for infer.)

Note this hasty bit of reasoning by Christopher Hitchens in Harper’s:

Since it is obviously inconceivable that all religions can be right, the most reasonable conclusion is that they are all wrong.

The highlighted terms suggest that a reason for belief is being offered, and they help us to figure out where the premise is (after the word since) and where the conclusion is (after the words the . . . conclusion is).

Some other inference indicators that introduce a premise are highlighted in the sentences below:

Since you said it, it must be true.
Because he is being so sweet, you know he’s about to ask for money.
Spring is coming early, for the crocuses are already in bloom.
I can tell that she will accept the job offer; my reason is that I heard her talking to a moving company yesterday.
I think that the butler did it, on account of his fingerprints on the weapon.

A common pitfall in identifying indicators is to suppose that if is an inference indicator that introduces a premise. Suppose, for example, I say,

If the Dow Jones Industrial Average doubles this week, then you will be rich.

This looks a bit like an argument in which the premise is The Dow Jones Industrial Average doubles this week and the conclusion is You will be rich. But this argument—You will be rich, because the Dow Jones Industrial Average will double this week—expresses much more confidence about your imminent wealth than the sentence If the Dow Jones Industrial Average doubles this week, then you will be rich. Premises are held to be true by the arguer. But an arguer who uses if is not asserting that what comes between if and then is true but is only asking us to suppose for the moment that it is true. I am not offering you a reason to believe you will be rich (unless in a separate sentence, I do, without the if, state that the Dow will double this week). It is true that if–then statements do occur often in arguments (Chapter 11 is devoted to such arguments), but these statements can be either premises or conclusions. So, if is not useful as an inference indicator that introduces a premise.

The following are examples of inference indicators that introduce the conclusion:

You said it, therefore it must be true.
He is being sweet; thus, you know he’s about to ask for money.
The crocuses are already in bloom; consequently, spring is coming early.
I heard her talking to a moving company yesterday; it follows that she will accept the job offer.
These are the butler’s fingerprints; hence the butler did it.

In addition, two old-fashioned inference indicators are left over from the days when Latin was the dominant European academic language. Ergo is the Latin term for therefore, as in the sentence You said it, ergo it must be true.  And Q.E.D. is the acronym for the Latin phrase quod erat demonstrandum (or, which was to be demonstrated); it is placed after the conclusion, as in, You said it. It is true. Q.E.D.

The list of inference indicators is seemingly endless; we have covered only a few of the most common ones. Note a less conventional one in this statement:

Rastafarians smoke the herb “ganga” or marijuana as part of their religious rites, citing Psalms 104:14: “He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man.”

Citing is the inference indicator here. What we cite is typically support, so the term indicates that the premise is coming up—the premise (true or false) that the Bible approves of the use of marijuana.

2.2.3 When There Are No Inference Indicators

Arguers don’t always supply inference indicators to help you find your way around. This leaves you in the dark if the logic of the argument is bad—that is, if there is no plausible connection between premises and conclusion. But otherwise, you should still be able to make your way.

Bernie Smith, a train buff who manages a model railroad store in Kansas City, was asked about the possibility that cabooses might be eliminated from trains for economic reasons. He offered this argument:

I think they should keep the cabooses. What’s a train without a caboose? People are used to seeing a red caboose tagged on the end and someone waving at them.

Without inference indicators in Bernie Smith’s argument, how are you to find the premises and conclusion?

Here is a helpful, but not foolproof, suggestion. In the absence of inference indicators look for the most controversial statement in the argument; it is usually the conclusion. Then test it out either mentally or on a piece of paper by placing the word therefore in front of the statement. If it sounds right in this form, you’ve found the conclusion. This often works because arguments typically use the familiar as grounds for accepting the new. Premises are usually easier to accept than the conclusion, since the premises are not supposed to be what is in question; the conclusion is. The conclusion, presumably, becomes plausible because it follows from the already plausible premises.

This technique is easy to apply to Bernie Smith’s argument. There’s nothing surprising about this statement:

People are used to seeing a caboose at the end of the train.

But this one is less obviously true:

They should keep the cabooses.

And it sounds right if we insert therefore in front of it; it, then, is the conclusion.

Here’s another argument with no inference indicator, provided by an aide to the astronaut and American hero John Glenn when Glenn was running for president. The aide, speaking anonymously to reporter Morton Kondracke about whether Glenn would make a good president, said this:

It’s great to have Glenn with you. He’s indefatigable when he homes in on one issue. But he doesn’t see the forest or even the trees, only branches and twigs. He’s a responder and not a leader. He has no coherent vision. He would be a symbol, not a man of substance. He would not be a good president.

Our technique of looking for the most controversial statement is not as useful here. Because we have no knowledge of Glenn’s political capability, it is hard to tell whether any of the statements is substantially more controversial than the others. But arguments, as already noted, often occur in the context of answering questions. This suggests another technique: look in the wider context for the question being asked; the argument’s conclusion is usually a proposed answer to that question. In this case, the wider context is a media interview in which the aide was asked whether he believed that Glenn would be a good president. Glenn’s aide is giving reasons for his answer:

John Glenn would not be a good president.

And, again, inserting therefore in front of it does sound right. That statement is the conclusion.

Notice that the conclusion is the first sentence in the caboose example; in the John Glenn example, it is the last. First and last are the two places where a conclusion is most likely to be found, though it could, in principle, be found anywhere.

2.3 STATEMENTS THAT DO NOT OFFER A REASON FOR BELIEF

Now that we have determined what it is that makes an argument, let’s look at a few things that do not. We will here rule out three of the many kinds of statements that sometimes look as though they may be arguments, but are not: mere assertions, mere illustrations, and mere explanations.

2.3.1 Mere Assertions

Arguments are probably far more common than you have previously thought, but you should not expect now to find arguments in everything you hear or read. Most forms of communication are in part an attempt to influence beliefs, but they do not always use arguments to do so, nor should they. A journalist, for example, is not typically expected to argue that unemployment is down; a teacher does not normally argue that agricola is the Latin word for farmer; and I need not argue that I was born in California and did most of my growing up in Georgia. Merely asserting such things—just saying them—is usually good enough to get others to believe them.

In other cases, however, ideas are asserted without reasons—sometimes with great fervor—and it isn’t good enough. Note this passage from a speech by Robert Ingersoll, 19th century American orator and lawyer:

I do believe in the nobility of human nature. I believe in love and home, kindness and humanity. I believe in good fellowship and cheerfulness, in making wife and children happy. I believe in good nature, in giving to others all of the rights that you claim for yourself. I believe in free thought, in reason, observation, and experience. I believe in self-reliance and in expressing your honest thought. . . . Above all, I believe in liberty.

There is no argument here, no reason offered in support of the beliefs Ingersoll expresses. This does not mean that his beliefs are immune from evaluation; as we will see in Chapter 9, there is much to be said about how to evaluate statements that are not themselves argued for. But they are not to be evaluated as arguments.

2.3.2 Mere Illustrations

Passages intended merely to illustrate a point might also look a bit like arguments. But they would normally be bad arguments; and, as we will see in the discussion of the principle of charity in Chapter 3, it is usually preferable to take them as good illustrations rather than as bad arguments. There are usually clues to mere illustrations, such as for example, for instance, and is illustrated by. I am providing a verbal picture, not making an argument, if I say, “Charlie Parker is a good example of the fine line between artistic genius and insanity.” Similarly, Mark Twain provides us with this in Pudd’nhead Wilson:

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.

The ass is not trotted out as reason to believe the first sentence, but as a way of making its point more vivid. It is better to take the passage merely as an illustration, not as an argument. As the old Yiddish saying puts it, “For example is no proof.”

The distinction between mere illustration and argument is not always clear-cut. Suppose you overhear this remark:

White Southerners are racists. Take David Duke.

Is this an argument, generalizing from a premise about a single case, David Duke, to a conclusion about an entire population, white Southerners (an important sort of argument called inductive generalization that will be covered later in the book)? Or is it merely an illustration? There is no clear way in this case to tell. You could probably tell if you heard more of the conversation. If the listener, for example, had just said, “I don’t understand exactly what you mean. What sort of racism do you have in mind?” then it is clearly an illustration. But if the listener had just said, “Why should I accept such a sweeping indictment of a huge part of our population?” then it is clearly an argument. For this would make it clear that the speaker is offering a reason for belief.

2.3.3 Mere Explanations

Often reasons are given to provide a causal explanation of some state of affairs, not to offer reason for belief in some statement. If I point to my watch and angrily say, “Because you couldn’t read the darn map, we’re going to be late,” my statement is not providing a reason to believe we are late; we both already know that. I’m merely identifying the cause of our being late. Consider this explanation:

In the 19th century, British jurists sought to modify the laws permitting a husband to “chastise his wife with any reasonable instrument” by dictating that the instrument be “a rod not thicker than his thumb.” Hence the rule of thumb.

This passage points to the cause behind the existence of the phrase rule of thumb. It does not offer a reason to believe that such a phrase exists; it is a commonly used phrase and no fluent English speaker doubts its existence. The first sentence of the passage is not a premise; it refers to a cause. And the second sentence is not the conclusion; it refers to the effect. The passage is not an argument; it is a mere causal explanation.

Terms that serve as inference indicators can also occur in mere explanations (where they are no longer inference indicators). So and hence, for instance, are used in the two preceding examples not to indicate movement from premise to conclusion, but movement from cause to effect. The same goes for inference indicators that typically introduce premises. A psychologist, for example, asks this on a talk show:

Did you ever wonder why people are more likely to laugh out loud when they are with others than when they are alone? Because, among other things, laughing announces “I got it,” and in an empty room, they’d be announcing to nobody.

The psychologist is not providing us with a reason to believe that we more readily laugh out loud when we are with others; he assumes that we already know it or that we’ll recognize it by reflecting briefly on our own experience. When we do realize it, it strikes us as curious. Why would it make any difference whether the room is empty or not? This leads to the explanation offered in the passage, with because used to introduce a cause—the fact that laughter functions as a signal to others that a joke has been understood—not a premise.

There is one way in which premises in arguments are sometimes the opposite of the causes in mere causal explanations. In arguments, recall, the movement from premises to conclusion is typically from the familiar to the new. But in mere explanations, the movement from cause to effect is often from the new to the familiar—from, for example, the surprising and unfamiliar origin of a phrase in British law (the cause) to the well-known everyday phrase rule of thumb (the effect).

2.3.4 Arguments and Explanations Sometimes Overlap

As we have seen, any series of statements could potentially be used as an argument if at least one of the statements were offered as reason to believe another. So even a series of statements offered as a causal explanation could at the same time be used as an argument—and thus would no longer be a mere causal explanation. The cause could be the premise, or the cause could be the conclusion. There is nothing tricky to worry about. The standard rule continues to apply: a statement is the conclusion if a reason is being offered to believe it. And the tips for identifying it are no different: it is probably the conclusion if it answers the question being asked in the broader passage; if it is the least familiar, most controversial, of the statements; or if clear inference indicators point to it.

Here is an example of a cause as a conclusion from Alan Abelson, a financial reporter for Barron’s, written on one of his more lighthearted days:

Very often a company comes to market with an initial public offering, boasting a classy record of earnings growth. Then, the very next year, profits take a strange tumble. Obviously, logic impels us to the conclusion that the reason profits took a tumble was because the company went public.

There is clearly a causal explanation here; the tumble in profits (the effect) results from the company’s going public (the cause). But there is also an argument; note the clear inference indicator logic impels us to the conclusion that. The conclusion—Profits often fall because companies go public—includes the cause. And the premises include the effects—Profits often fall the year after companies go public. The effects, Abelson suggests, give us evidence of a particular cause. Arguments of this sort—explanatory arguments—are quite common and will be covered in depth in Chapter 16.

On the other hand, here is an example of a cause as a premise, found in Manage, a magazine geared toward business executives:

Today’s doctors tell us that a hearty laugh is great exercise. When you emit an explosive guffaw, they say, your diaphragm descends deep into your body and your lungs expand, greatly increasing the amount of oxygen being taken into them. At the same time, as it expands sideways, the diaphragm gives your heart a gentle, rhythmic massage. That noble organ responds by beating faster and harder. Circulation speeds up. Liver, stomach, pancreas, spleen and gall bladder are all stimulated—your entire system gets an invigorating lift. All of which confirms what that sage old Greek, Aristotle, said about laughter more than 2,000 years ago: “It is a bodily exercise precious to health.”

This argument offers a reason to believe the conclusion,

Laughing is good exercise.

Note the inference indicator confirms, which precedes the conclusion. But at the same time the premises offer a causal explanation—of what causes laughter to be good exercise. (Even, apparently, in an empty room.) So this passage serves both as argument and explanation, with premises doubling as causes and conclusion as effect.

Use of cause as premise is most obvious when the effect being explained is itself a belief. Suppose I say the following:

I believed it was murder because the coroner’s report said so.

In a case like this, there seems to be hardly any difference between saying that the coroner’s report caused me to believe it was murder and saying that the statement The coroner’s report said so serves as a premise for the statement It was murder. It is both an argument and a causal explanation. It would be quite a different matter had I said:

I believed that it was murder because my enemies put me under a magic spell.

This explains what caused the belief, but makes no mention of any reason I had for believing it (presumably I had no reason). So it is merely a causal explanation, not an argument.

2.4 Implicit Statements

This chapter expands on the definition of a simple argument as a series of statements in which one of the statements is offered as reason for belief in another. We have seen how sentences not cast in the declarative form can still function as statements, hence as building blocks of arguments. Sometimes, too, arguments rely on implicit statements, statements that are not spoken or written in any form but are implied or assumed. Note the following argument reported in the obituary of Roy Sullivan, who had killed himself with a shotgun:

Roy Sullivan, a retired forest ranger, was hit by lightning seven times and survived. He was baffled by his misfortune and speculated that the chemical makeup of his body in some way attracted lightning. “I don’t believe God is after me,” he told an interviewer. “If he was, the first bolt would have been enough.”

At the end of the passage, Sullivan offers an argument to rule out the explanation that God was after him. (Assume that he means what most people mean by God—that he is an all-powerful being.) His conclusion is this:

God is not after me.

And his stated reason—his premise—is this:

If God were after me, the first bolt of lightning would have killed me.

But there is another reason that must be combined with this one to get to the conclusion—an unexpressed and thus implicit premise—that Sullivan obviously assumes:

The first bolt of lightning did not kill me.

It would have been silly for him to state it—after all, Sullivan was alive when he offered the argument.

An arguer can have many reasons for leaving a premise or conclusion implicit. Sullivan’s is the most common one—he considers the premise so obvious that there is no need to express it, since it would be pedantic or insulting to do so. But this is not the only possible reason. The arguer may not have thought through the argument carefully enough to be aware of the assumption. Or the arguer, fully aware of the assumption, may be suppressing it to deceive you.

Burger King’s very first TV advertising campaign featured a jingle with these words:

The bigger the burger, the better the burger; the burgers are bigger at Burger King.

In this case it is the conclusion that is implicit:

The burgers are better at Burger King.

This is advertising, so a good guess is that a marketing motive lies behind it. Perhaps they think that if you help yourself to the conclusion, you’re more likely to help yourself to a Whopper.

An argument with an implicit premise or conclusion is called an enthymeme. (This word comes from the Greek roots en for in and thymos for internal urge; an enthymeme, then, is an argument that leaves a premise or conclusion behind as the arguer’s mere unstated urge.) For the purpose of clarifying and evaluating, implicit statements should be considered just as much a part of an argument as explicit ones.

2.5 Complex Arguments

So far our concern has been solely with simple arguments. Complex arguments link together simple arguments, so that the conclusion of one serves as a premise for the next. Judge, this man is a well-established member of the community, so he will not flee the country. Thus, you should release him on his own recognizance. Usually, the conclusion of the final simple argument—such as He should be released on his own recognizance—is the main conclusion. Properly speaking, the main conclusion is the most important one, the one that answers the question being asked in the broader passage. Conclusions that provide a link between the simple arguments—such as He will not flee the country—are termed subconclusions. Complex arguments can be made up of any number of simple arguments and thus may have any number of subconclusions.

In Of Property John Locke argues:

The materials of nature (air, earth, water) that remain untouched by human effort belong to no one and are not property. It follows that a thing can become someone’s private property only if he works and labors on it to change its natural state. From this I conclude that whatever a man improves by the labor of his hand and brain belongs to him, and to him only.

Pay special attention to the second sentence, which is italicized. It is a subconclusion, since it is offered both as a conclusion (it follows that indicates that the second sentence is supported by the first) and as a premise (from this I conclude comes immediately after it). The statement for which it is offered as a premise is the main conclusion of the complex argument.^[3]

Complex arguments occur often, and we will look at examples from time to time, but simple arguments will be our major concern. If you know how to evaluate simple arguments, you know how to evaluate a series of simple arguments.

2.6 Summary of Chapter Two

Sentences vary according to their forms and their functions. Statements—which are sentences that can be true or false—function to convey information. And their form is typically that of a subject and a trait attributed to that subject; an example is the statement The beach is pleasant today. Other types of sentences differ in their forms and functions in ways that mark them as imperative, interrogative, exclamatory, and performative. Sentences that are not in statement form might nevertheless function as statements—that is, they might communicate information; an example is the sentence Oh, to be at the beach this afternoon!

A simple argument is a series of statements in which at least one of the statements is offered as reason for belief in another. The statements offered as reasons are the premises. The statement for which the reasons are offered is the conclusion. Inference indicators are helpful in identifying the premises (e.g., because . . .) and the conclusion (e.g., therefore . . .). In the absence of inference indicators, the conclusion can usually be identified either by looking for the most controversial claim in the passage or by looking for the answer to the question being asked.

A series of statements can count as an argument even if some of the statements are implicit and even if the reasons are bad. On the other hand, statements merely asserted with conviction do not count as arguments, because they supply no reason to believe them. Nor do mere illustrations (which might make an idea easier to understand, but do not straightforwardly aim to convince us that we should believe it). Nor do mere causal explanations. In a mere explanation, a cause is often offered to explain an effect that is typically already believed to exist; this differs from an argument, in which a premise is offered to justify belief in a conclusion that may not already be believed to be true. Sometimes, however, explanations and arguments do overlap.

A complex argument is a series of connected simple arguments in which the conclusion of one simple argument serves as the premise of another and is thus a subconclusion.

2.7 Guidelines for Chapter Two

• For the purpose of identifying arguments, consider a sentence a statement if it serves a declarative function.
• Count it as an argument even if the reasons offered seem clearly to be bad ones.
• When possible, identify premises and conclusions by the location of inference indicators.
• When there are no inference indicators, look for the most controversial statement in the argument; if one can be readily identified, it is usually the conclusion.
• When there are no inference indicators, look in the wider context for the question being asked; the proposed answer to it is usually the conclusion.
• If a series of statements is merely an attempt to influence belief without offering reasons, do not count it as an argument.
• Do not count a series of statements as an argument if it merely offers an attempt to make a statement easier to understand—that is, if it is a mere illustration. Terms like for example, for instance, and is illustrated by typically introduce mere illustrations.
• Do not count a series of statements as an argument if it offers merely a causal explanation of a state of affairs. If the statements show the familiar following from the new, and if the new is not offered as a reason to believe the familiar, it is probably a mere explanation.
• Count causal explanations as arguments when they also offer a reason for belief—whether the effect is offered as reason to believe the cause, or the cause is offered as reason to believe the effect. In such cases they are not mere explanations.
• Consider any premise or conclusion that is assumed by the arguer, but not expressed, as part of the argument.
• Count a series of statements as a complex argument when the conclusion for one simple argument serves as the premise for another simple argument.

2.8 Glossary for Chapter Two

Complex argument—a series of two or more simple arguments, in which the conclusion of one argument serves as a premise for the next. Complex arguments can be made up of any number of simple arguments, and thus may have any number of subconclusions.

Conclusion—the statement for which the reason is offered. Each simple argument has exactly one conclusion.

Declarative function—the function of conveying information. An example of a sentence with this function is Eleanor Roosevelt was one of the most influential first ladies in history.

Enthymeme—an argument with an implicit premise or conclusion. This word comes from the Greek roots en for in and and thymos for internal urge; an enthymeme, then, is an argument that leaves a premise or conclusion behind as the arguer’s mere unstated urge.  For the purposes of clarifying and evaluating, the implicit statements should be considered just as much a part of an enthymematic argument as the explicit ones.

Exclamatory function—the function of expressing emotion. An example of a sentence with this function is Oh, to be at the beach this afternoon!

Imperative function—the function of directing others to action. An example of a sentence with this function is Speak into the microphone.

Implicit statements—statements that are not spoken or written in any form, but are relied on by the arguer as a part of the argument.

Inference—movement from premises to conclusion. Also, sometimes simply a synonym for simple argument.

Inference indicator—a term that indicates movement from premise to conclusion. Also called an illative. Examples are because, which introduces premises, and therefore, which introduces conclusions.

Interrogative function—the function of asking a question. An example of a sentence with this function is Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist party?

Main conclusion—the most important conclusion of a complex argument, the one that answers the question being asked in the broader conversation.

Performative function—the function of doing, or performing, something by the very act of asserting it under the right circumstances. An example of a sentence with this function is I promise to return the money on
Tuesday.

Premise—any statement that is offered as a reason for belief in another statement. (Sometimes spelled premiss by the British.) We alternatively refer to premises as the evidence, warrant, justification, basis, grounds, or rationale. There must be at least one premise in an argument, but there is no upper limit.

Simple argument—a series of statements in which at least one of the statements is offered as reason for belief in another.

Statement—a sentence that can be true or false. It functions to convey information. Its form, typically, includes a subject and a trait that is attributed to the subject.

Subconclusion—in a complex argument, the conclusion of one simple argument that also serves as premise for the next simple argument.