PHIL 210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Constructive Dilemma, Flickr, Modus Tollens
8 Dec 2018
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A statement (assertion, proposition, claim) is anything that can either be true or false. A sentence like dave, pass the salt. is not an assertion. It makes no sense to say this is true (even if he does what is asked). The book gives two definitions of an argument. Neither of these definitions identifies arguments with heated disputes between two people. This sense of argument is not what we are interested in for this course. In the first definition an argument is something given by a particular speaker, in a given context, in order to convince an audience of a certain point. The second definition is more idealized, but often very helpful for understanding arguments. An argument is a series of statements (premises) that are intended to lend support to a conclusion. An argument is valid if it is not possible for the premises to all be true and the conclusion false.
