PHI 103 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Syllogism, Logical Form, Soundness
Document Summary
Some of the statements provide evidence for another statement in the group. The statements that provide evidence are called premises. The statement for which we provide evidence is called the conclusion. All poodles are mammals (we will be using the symbol to separate premises from the conclusion on blackboard. For the reading and lectures, we will be separating the premises from the conclusion with a line) when we evaluate arguments, we are concerned with both forms and instances: our first example is an argument form. Here, we have only the structure or skeleton of the argument. The letters "s", "p", and "m" are variables that can stand for anything. We replaced the letter "s" with "poodles", the letter "p" with "mammals", and the letter. When we evaluate arguments, we are interested in both form and content. Incidentally, if all we have is an argument form, it makes no sense to ask the second question.
