A crucial part of critical thinking is to identify, construct, and evaluate arguments.

In everyday life, people often use "argument" to mean a quarrel between people. But in logic and
critical thinking, an argument is a list of statements, one of which is the conclusion and the
others are the premises or assumptions of the argument.

Before proceeding, read this page about statements.

To give an argument is to provide a set of premises as reasons for accepting the conclusion. To
give an argument is not necessarily to attack or criticize someone. Arguments can also be used to
support other people's viewpoints.

Here is an example of an argument:

If you want to find a good job, you should work hard. You do want to find a good job. So you
should work hard.

The first two sentences here are the premises of the argument, and the last sentence is the
conclusion. To give this argument is to offer the premises as reasons for accepting the
conclusion.

A few points to note:

Dogmatic people tend to make assertions without giving reasons. When they are
criticized they often fail to give arguments to defend their own opinions.
To improve our critical thinking skills, we should develop the habit of giving good
arguments to support our opinions.
To defend an opinion, think about whether you can give more than one argument to
support it. Also, think about potential objections to your opinion, e.g. arguments against
your opinion. A good thinker will consider the arguments on both sides of an issue.

Exercise #1

See if you can give arguments to support some of your beliefs.

1. For example, do you think the economy is going to improve or worsen in the next six
months? Why or why not? What arguments can you give to support your position?
2. Or think about something different, do you think computers can have emotions? Again,
what arguments can you give to support your viewpoint? Make sure that your arguments
are composed of statements.

1. How to look for arguments

How do we identify arguments in real life? There are no easy mechanical rules, and we usually
have to rely on the context in order to determine which are the premises and the conclusions. But
sometimes the job can be made easier by the presence of certain premise or conclusion
indicators. For example, if a person makes a statement, and then adds "this is because ...", then it
is quite likely that the first statement is presented as a conclusion, supported by the statements
that come afterwards. Other words in English that might be used to indicate the premises to
follow include :

since
firstly, secondly, ...
for, as, after all,
assuming that, in view of the fact that
follows from, as shown / indicated by
may be inferred / deduced / derived from

Of course whether such words are used to indicate premises or not depends on the context. For
example, "since" has a very different function in a statement like "I have been here since noon",
unlike "X is an even number since X is divisible by 4".

Conclusions, on the other hand, are often preceded by words like:

therefore, so, it follows that

hence, consequently
suggests / proves / demonstrates that
entails, implies

Here are some examples of passages that do not contain arguments.

When people sweat a lot they tend to drink more water. [Just a single statement, not enough to
make an argument.]

Once upon a time there was a prince and a princess. They lived happily together and one day
they decided to have a baby. But the baby grew up to be a nasty and cruel person and they regret
it very much. [A chronological description of facts composed of statements but no premise or
conclusion.]

Can you come to the meeting tomorrow? [A question that does not contain an argument.]

Exercise #2

Do these passages contain arguments? If so, what are their conclusions?

1. Cutting the interest rate will have no effect on the stock market this time round as people
have been expecting a rate cut all along. This factor has already been reflected in the
market. answer
2. So it is raining heavily and this building might collapse. But I don't really care. answer
3. Virgin would then dominate the rail system. Is that something the government should
worry about? Not necessarily. The industry is regulated, and one powerful company
might at least offer a more coherent schedule of services than the present arrangement has
 produced. The reason the industry was broken up into more than 100 companies at
privatisation was not operational, but political: the Conservative government thought it
would thus be harder to renationalise. The Economist 16.12.2000 answer
4. Bill will pay the ransom. After all, he loves his wife and children and would do
everything to save them. answer
5. All of Russia's problems of human rights and democracy come back to three things: the
legislature, the executive and the judiciary. None works as well as it should. Parliament
passes laws in a hurry, and has neither the ability nor the will to call high officials to
account. State officials abuse human rights (either on their own, or on orders from on
high) and work with remarkable slowness and disorganisation. The courts almost
completely fail in their role as the ultimate safeguard of freedom and order. The
Economist 25.11.2000 answer
6. Most mornings, Park Chang Woo arrives at a train station in central Seoul, South Korea's
capital. But he is not commuter. He is unemployed and goes there to kill time. Around
him, dozens of jobless people pass their days drinking soju, a local version of vodka. For
the moment, middle-aged Mr Park would rather read a newspaper. He used to be a brick
layer for a small construction company in Pusan, a southern port city. But three years ago
the country's financial crisis cost him that job, so he came to Seoul, leaving his wife and
two children behind. Still looking for work, he has little hope of going home any time
soon. The Economist 25 .11.2000 answer
7. For a long time, astronomers suspected that Europa, one of Jupiter's many moons, might
harbour a watery ocean beneath its ice-covered surface. They were right. Now the
technique used earlier this year to demonstrate the existence of the Europan ocean has
been employed to detect an ocean on another Jovian satellite, Ganymede, according to
work announced at the recent American Geo-physical Union meeting in San Francisco.
The Economist 16.12.2000 answer
8. There are no hard numbers, but the evidence from Asia's expatriate community is
unequivocal. Three years after its handover from Britain to China, Hong Kong is
unlearning English. The city's gweilos (Cantonese for "ghost men") must go to ever
greater lengths to catch the oldest taxi driver available to maximize their chances of
comprehension. Hotel managers are complaining that they can no longer find enough
English- speakers to act as receptionists. Departing tourists, polled at the airport, voice
growing frustration at not being understood. The Economist 20.1.2001 answer

Presenting arguments in the standard format

When it comes to the analysis and evaluation of an argument, it is often useful to label the
premises and the conclusion, and display them on separate lines with the conclusion at the
bottom :

(Premise 1) If you want to find a good job, you should work hard.
(Premise 2) You do want to find a good job.
(Conclusion) So you should work hard.

Let us call this style of presenting an argument a presentation in the standard format. Here we
rewrite two more arguments using the standard format:
We should not inflict unnecessary pain on cows and pigs. After all, we should not inflict
unnecessary pain on any animal with consciousness, and cows and pigs are animals with
consciousness.

(Premise 1) We should not inflict unnecessary pain on any animal with consciousness.
(Premise 2) Cows and pigs are animals with consciousness.
(Conclusion) We should not inflict unnecessary pain on cows and pigs.

If this liquid is acidic, the litmus paper would have turned red. But it hasn't, so the liquid is not
acidic.

(Premise 1) If the liquid is acidic, the litmus paper would have turned red.
(Premise 2) The litmus paper has not turned red.
(Conclusion) The liquid is not acidic.

In presenting an argument in the standard format the premises and the conclusion are clearly
identified. Sometimes we also rewrite some of the sentences to make their meaning clearer, as in
the second premise of the second example. Notice also that a conclusion need not always come
at the end of a passage containing an argument, as in the first example. In fact, sometimes the
conclusion of an argument might not be explicitly written out. For example it might be expressed
by a rhetorical question:

How can you believe that corruption is acceptable? It is neither fair nor legal!

In presenting an argument in the standard format, we have to rewrite the argument more
explicitly as follows:

(Premise) Corruption is not fair and it is not legal.

(Conclusion) Corruption is not acceptable.

If you want to improve your reading and comprehension skills, you should practise
reconstructing the arguments that you come across by rewriting them carefully in the
standard format.
Presenting arguments is not just a way to defend your own opinion. It helps us understand
other people as well.

Exercise #1

Rewrite these arguments in the standard format.

1. He is either in Hong Kong or Macau. John says that he is not in Hong Kong. So he must
be in Macau.
2. If the Government wants to build an incinerator here they should compensate those who
live in the area. Incinerators are known to cause health problems to people living nearby.
These people did not choose to live there in the first place.
1. Definition of validity
One desirable feature of arguments is that the conclusion should follow from the premises. But
what does it mean? Consider these two arguments :

Argument #1 : Barbie is over 90 years old. So Barbie is over 20 years old.

Argument #2 :Barbie is over 20 years old. So Barbie is over 90 years old.

Intuitively, the conclusion of the first argument follows from the premise, whereas the
conclusion of the second argument does not follow from its premise. But how should we explain
the difference between the two arguments more precisely? Here is a thought : In the first
argument, if the premise is indeed true, then the conclusion cannot be false. On the other hand,
even if the premise in the second argument is true, there is no guarantee that the conclusion must
also be true. For example, Barbie could be 30 years old.

So we shall make use of this idea to define the notion of a deductively valid argument, or valid
argument, as follows:

An argument is valid if and only if there is no logically possible situation where all the premises
are true and the conclusion is false at the same time.

The idea of validity provides a more precise explication of what it is for a conclusion to follow
from the premises. Applying this definition, we can see that the first argument above is valid,
since there is no possible situation where Barbie can be over 90 but not over 20. The second
argument is not valid because there are plenty of possible situations where the premise is true but
the conclusion is false. Consider a situation where Barbie is 25, or one where she is 85. The fact
that these situations are possible is enough to show that the argument is not valid, or invalid.

2. Validity and truth

What if we have an argument with more than one premise? Here is an example :

All pigs can fly. Anything that can fly can swim. So all pigs can swim.

Although the two premises of this argument are false, this is actually a valid argument. To
evaluate its validity, ask yourself whether it is possible to come up with a situation where all the
premises are true and the conclusion is false. (We are not asking whether there is a situation
where the premises and the conclusion are all true.) Of course, the answer is 'no'. If pigs can
indeed fly, and if anything that can fly can also swim, then it must be the case that all pigs can
swim.

So this example tells us something :

The premises and the conclusion of a valid argument can all be false.
Hopefully you will now realize that validity is not about the actual truth or falsity of the premises
or the conclusion. Validity is about the logical connection between the premises and the
conclusion. A valid argument is one where the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the
conclusion, but validity does not guarantee that the premises are in fact true. All that validity tells
us is that if the premises are true, the conclusion must also be true.

3. Showing that an argument is invalid

Now consider this argument :

Adam loves Beth. Beth loves Cathy. So Adam loves Cathy.

This argument is not valid, for it is possible that the premises are true and yet the conclusion is
false. Perhaps Adam loves Beth but does not want Beth to love anyone else. So Adam actually
hates Cathy. The mere possibility of such a situation is enough to show that the argument is not
valid. Let us call these situations invalidating counterexamples to the argument. Basically, we
are defining a valid argument as an argument with no possible invalidating counterexamples. To
sharpen your skills in evaluating arguments, it is therefore important that you are able to discover
and construct such examples.

Notice that a counterexample need not be real in the sense of being an actual situation. It might
turn out that in fact that Adam, Beth and Cathy are members of the same family and they love
each other. But the above argument is still invalid since the counterexample constructed is a
possible situation, even if it is not actually real. All that is required of a counterexample is that
the situation is a coherent one in which all the premises of the argument are true and the
conclusion is false. So we should remember this :

An argument can be invalid even if the conclusion and the premises are all actually true.

To give you another example, here is another invalid argument with a true premise and a true
conclusion : "Paris is the capital of France. So Rome is the capital of Italy." . It is not valid
because it is possible for Italy to change its capital (say to Milan), while Paris remains the capital
of France.

Another point to remember is that it is possible for a valid argument to have a true conclusion
even when all its premises are false. Here is an example :

All pigs are purple in colour. Anything that is purple is an animal. So all pigs are animals.

Before proceeding any further, please make sure you understand why these claims are true and
can give examples of such cases.

1. The premises and the conclusion of an invalid argument can all be true.
2. A valid argument should not be defined as an argument with true premises and a true
conclusion.
3. The premises and the conclusion of a valid argument can all be false.
 4. A valid argument with false premises can still have a true conclusion.

4. A reminder
The concept of validity provides a more precise explication of what it is for a conclusion to
follow from the premises. Since this is one of the most important concepts in this course, you
should make sure you fully understand the definition. In giving our definition we are making a
distinction between truth and validity. In ordinary usage "valid" is often used interchangeably
with "true" (similarly with "false" and "not valid"). But here validity is restricted to only
arguments and not statements, and truth is a property of statements but not arguments. So never
say things like "this statement is valid" or "that argument is true"!

Exercise #1

Are these arguments valid?

1. Someone is sick.
Someone is unhappy.
So someone is unhappy and sick. answer
2. If he loves me then he gives me flowers.
He gives me flowers.
So he loves me. answer
3. Beckham is famous.
Beckham is a football player.
Therefore, Beckham is a famous football player. answer
4. If it rains, the streets will be wet.
If the streets are wet, accidents will happen.
Therefore, accidents will happen if it rains. answer
5. John was in Britain when Mary died in Hong Kong.
So Mary could not have been killed by John. answer
6. If there is life on Pluto then Pluto contains water.
But there is no life on Pluto.
Therefore Pluto does not contain water. answer
7. There were only two rabbits in the room last week.
No rabbit has left the room since then.
Therefore there are only two rabbits in the room now. answer
8. All whales have wings.
Moby does not have wings.
So Moby is not a whale. answer

Exercise #2

Are these arguments valid?

1. John shot himself in the head. So John is dead. answer

2. John shot himself in the head. So John shot himself in the head.
 3. All management consultants are bald. Peter is bald. So Peter is a management consultant.
answer
4. If time travel is possible, we would now have lots of time-travel visitors from the future.
But we have no such visitors. So time travel is not possible. answer
5. Jen is either in San Diego or in Tokyo. Since she is not in Tokyo, she is in San Diego.
answer
6. Some people are nice. Some people are rich. So some people are rich and nice. answer
7. If I drink then I will be happy. If I am happy then I will dance. So if I drink then I will
dance. answer
8. Every red fish is a fish. answer
9. The services of mobile phone companies are getting worse as there has been an
increasing number of complaints against mobile phone companies by consumers. answer
10. All capitalists exploit the weak and the poor. Property developers exploit the weak and
the poor. So property developers are capitalists. answer

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