Jumping in

What is an argu­ment? Many peo­ple think of a fight or an angry alter­ca­tion when they think of the word.

Some folks would define “argu­ment” as some sort of heat­ed dis­cus­sion con­cern­ing a dis­agree­ment. For this course, we’re employ­ing the word in the sense used in phi­los­o­phy, that is, a claim backed up by one or more sup­port­ing state­ments (we’ll dis­cuss that def­i­n­i­tion short­ly).

So, one day, you could indeed find your­self in a heat­ed dis­cus­sion about the word “argu­ment.”

In the fol­low­ing three-minute skit from Mon­ty Python, the two char­ac­ters have such an, er, argu­ment.

For the pur­pos­es of this crit­i­cal-think­ing course, an “argu­ment” is more along the lines of what the cus­tomer in this skit is seek­ing, that is, an “intel­lec­tu­al process” of “a con­nect­ed series of state­ments intend­ed to estab­lish a propo­si­tion.” An “argu­ment,” for our pur­pos­es, will not mere­ly be a con­tra­dic­tion or dis­agree­ment.

We’ll start dis­cussing argu­ments in detail in the next top­ic.