How to Reason and Argue (Basics)

Argment

• It is a connected series of statements  intended to establish a definite proposition.

• A series of sentences, statements or propositions
• -> where some are the premises 
• -> and one is the conclusion
• -> where the premises are intended to give a reason for the conclusion

Purpose

• Persuading is making people believe or do something that they would not otherwise believe or do.
• Justifying is showing someone a reason to believe the conclusion.
• Tries to give good reasons

Uses of an argument

• Explaining is give a reason why something happened or is true
• The purpose is help people to understand something true
• Attempt to fit a particular phenomenon into a general pattern in order to increase understanding
• Types
• Casual - Why something happened
• Formal - Help to understand
• Teological - To explain the purpose of something
• Material - Explains of what something is made of

Explanation as an argument

1. General principle or law
2. Initial condition
3. Phenomenon to be explained

Notes

• You can get an explanation without prediction
• Viceversa you can get a prediction without an explanation
• Example: Bode's Law explains th distances between planets without explain why the planets take that distance among them

Meaning

There are three levels

• Linguistic
• Meaningful utterance

Examples:  The old man the ship

This phrase is meaningful.

If you read “the old man” as a noun phrase, then you will look for a verb and not find one. That makes this garden path sentence seem meaningless. However, “the old” can be a noun by itself referring to old people, and “man” can be a verb referring to managing the ship, and then the sentence means “The old people manage the ship.”

• Speech
• Advising in which you not persuade
• Conversational
• Persuade a person
• Inform a person

Conversational Act is the bringing about of the intended effect, which is the standard effect for the kind of speech act that the speaker is performing.

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Conversational Maxims (Paul Grice)

• Quantity
• Don't say too much or too little
• Quality
• Don't say what you don't believe or what you have no reason to believe.
• Relevance
• Be relevant
• Manner
• Be brief
• Be orderly
• Avoid obscurity
• Avoid ambiguity

Argument Markers

There are two types:

1. Conclusion marker
• After the reason introduce the conclusion
2. Reason marker
• After the conclusion introduce the reason

The following words are Argument markers:

• so
• therefore
• thus
• accordingly
• hence

You can replace each argument marker in the following sentences without affect the meaning

I am tall, so I am good at sports

I am tall. Therefore, I am good at sports

The following words are Reason markers:

• because
• for 
• as
• so
• since
• due to
• for the reason that
• and the reason why
• ....