What is an Argument?

What is an argument in writing?

When you write an argument, you express your preference for a side to an argument. When you write an argument, you write a claim. Your claim is how you feel about a controversial topic. For example, if the question is "Should students grade their teachers?",  your claim might be, "Yes, students should grade their teachers." Or, "No, students should not grade their teachers."

Your claim is your position on an issue.

The issue is a problem in which there are two sides. The argument must be arguable. Something like "Smoking is bad for your health" is not an argument because everyone agrees that smoking is bad for our health. However, the argument might be that smoking should or should not be banned in public places. Now that is something that is arguable.

Your claim must be supported. If you can't back it up, then you can't argue it. Your support is your evidence. Your support can be statistics or stories, also known as anecdotes. Support is either for or against an argument. It wouldn't be an argument otherwise.

Your argument should show your viewpoint or attitude toward your topic. It should show your passion, your sparkle.

In logic and philosophy, an argument is a series of statements typically used to persuade someone of something or to present reasons for accepting a conclusion. The general form of an argument in a natural language is that of premises in support of a claim: the conclusion. The structure of some arguments can also be set out in a formal language, and formally defined "arguments" can be made independently of natural language arguments, as in math, logic, and computer science.

In a typical deductive argument, the premises are meant to provide a guarantee of the truth of the conclusion, while in an inductive argument, they are thought to provide reasons supporting the conclusion's probable truth. The standards for evaluating non-deductive arguments may rest on different or additional criteria than truth, for example, the persuasiveness of so-called "indispensability claims" in transcendental arguments, the quality of hypotheses in retroduction, or even the disclosure of new possibilities for thinking and acting.

The standards and criteria used in evaluating arguments and their forms of reasoning are studied in logic. Ways of formulating arguments effectively are studied in rhetoric. An argument in a formal language shows the logical form of the symbolically represented or natural language arguments obtained by its interpretations.

Informal arguments as studied in informal logic, are presented in the ordinary language and are intended for everyday discourse. Conversely, formal arguments are considered in formal logic and are expressed in a formal language. Informal logic may be said to emphasize the study of argumentation, whereas formal logic emphasizes implication and inference. Informal arguments are sometimes implicit. That is, the rational structure--the relationship of claims, premises, warrants, relations of implication, and conclusion--is not always spelled out and immediately visible and must sometimes be made explicit by analysis.

There are several kinds of arguments in logic, the best-known of which are deductive and inductive. An argument has one or more premises but only one conclusion. Each premise and the conclusion are truth bearers or truth-candidates, each capable of being either true or false, but not both. These truth values bear on the terminology used with arguments.

A deductive argument asserts that the truth of the conclusion is a logical consequence of the premises. Based on the premises, the conclusion follows necessarily with certainty. For example, given premises that A=B and B=C, then the conclusion follows necessarily that A=C. Deductive arguments are sometimes referred to as "truth-preserving" arguments.

A deductive argument is said to be valid or invalid. If one assumes the premises to be true (ignoring their actual truth values), would the conclusion follow with certainty? If yes, the argument is valid. Otherwise, it is invalid. In determining validity, the structure of the argument that because bats can fly (premise=true), and all flying creatures are birds (premise=false), therefore bats are birds (conclusion=false). If we assume the premises are true, the conclusion follows necessarily, and thus it is a valid argument.

If a deductive argument is valid and its premises are all true, then it is also referred to as sound. Otherwise, it is unsound, as in the "bats are birds" example.

An inductive argument, on the other hand, asserts that the truth of the conclusion is supported to some degree of probability by the premises. For example, given that the United States military budget is the largest in the world (premise=true), then it is probable that it will remain so for the next 10 years (conclusion=true). Arguments that involve predictions are inductive, as the future is uncertain.

An inductive argument is said to be strong or weak. If the premises of an inductive argument are assumed true, is it probable the conclusion is also true? If so, the argument is strong. Otherwise, it is weak.

A strong argument is said to be cogent if it has all true premises. Otherwise, the argument in uncogent. The military budget argument example above is a strong, cogent argument.