Introduction to arguments

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Building blocks of arguments

Intro­duc­tion to argu­ments Build­ing blocks of argu­ments

In the last top­ic we learned that an argu­ment, in the crit­i­cal-think­ing sense, is a state­ment that com­pris­es a con­clu­sion and at least one premise.

In this top­ic we for­mal­ly intro­duce these three all-impor­tant terms.

WATCH: A brief glimpse into the com­po­nents of an argu­ment and how they can be arranged and iden­ti­fied.

EXPLORE: Below, the build­ing blocks are explained and illus­trat­ed.

State­ments

A state­ment is a ver­bal com­mu­ni­ca­tion (that is, the com­mu­ni­ca­tion is put into words) that con­veys infor­ma­tion or express­es an idea or belief.

With­in an argu­ment, a state­ment can have one of two func­tions. A state­ment can act as either the argument’s claim (aka con­clu­sion) or its premise.

 

Con­clu­sions (or, claims)

A con­clu­sion  (or claim) is a state­ment at the heart of an argu­ment, that is, it is the main point that the argu­ment is built to assert. There should only be one claim per argu­ment.

 

Premis­es

A premise (plur­al: “premis­es”) is a state­ment prof­fered to sup­port the argu­men­t’s claim. Every argu­ment should have at least one premise.

Per­haps the more com­plex the claim, the more premis­es that may be required to sup­port it.
Also, be care­ful with com­plex premis­es! They may have to be bro­ken down into two or more premis­es.

 

A com­plete illus­tra­tion of these build­ing blocks can be down­loaded from this topic’s Mate­ri­als tab.

TEST YOURSELF: Check your cur­rent under­stand­ing of these three build­ing blocks with the quiz below.

“Build­ing Blocks of Argu­ments” is an illus­tra­tion demon­strat­ing the three build­ing blocks of an argu­ment.

Build­ing Blocks of Argu­ments (illus­tra­tion / info­graph­ic)

 

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