PHIL-1003 Lecture 3: PHIL 1003- Document 3
23 Aug 2018
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Truth and falsity are attributes of individual propositions or statements; validity and invalidity are attributes of arguments. Propositions, which are statements about the world, may be true or false; deductive arguments, which consist of inferences from one set of propositions to other propositions, may be valid or invalid. An argument may be valid even when its conclusion and one or more of its premises are false. Some invalid arguments contain only true propositions all their premises are true, and their conclusions are true as well: If i owned all the gold in fort knox, then i would be wealthy. I do not own all the gold in fort knox. The true conclusion of this argument does not follow from its true premises. This will be seen more clearly when the immediately following illustration is considered. Moreover, the fact that an argument is valid does not guarantee the truth of its conclusion.
