PHIL 210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Logical Form

• School: Concordia University
• Department: Philosophy
• Course: PHIL 210
• Professor: jordan glass

Document Summary

A statement (assertion, proposition, claim) is anything that can either be true or false. E(cid:454). (cid:862)dave is tall(cid:863) or (cid:862)dave should sta(cid:455) i(cid:374) school(cid:863) A se(cid:374)te(cid:374)ce like (cid:862)dave, pass the salt. (cid:863) is (cid:374)ot a(cid:374) assertio(cid:374) (it (cid:373)akes (cid:374)o sense to say that it is true even if. Ex. premises: if stephen harper is a fish, then he spends his life under water. Ex. conclusion: he is a fish, so he spends his life under water: it is valid, all of its premises are true. 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. The book gives two definitions of an argument. Neither definition identifies arguments with heated disputes between two people. This sense of argument is not what we are interested in for this course.