Logic is the science that evaluates arguments.

An argument is a group of statements including one or more premises and one and only one
conclusion.

A statement is a sentence that is either true or false, such as "The cat is on the mat." Many
sentences are not statements, such as "Close the door, please" , "How old are you?"

A premise is a statement in an argument that provides reason or support for the conclusion.
There can be one or many premises in a single argument.

A conclusion is a statement in an argument that indicates of what the arguer is trying to convince
the reader/listener. What is the argument trying to prove? There can be only one conclusion in a
single argument.

In this lesson you will need to be able to distinguish premises and conclusions:

The foolproof way to do this is to ask yourself what the author of the argument is trying to get
you to believe. The answer to this question is the conclusion.

There must also be at least one reason and possibly many. These are your premises.

What are arguments?

In the previous article, we discussed what statements are. Statements are the kind of sentences
that can be true or false. When someone is trying to persuade you to believe something, they will
express this as a statement.

But how do you know if what they are trying to persuade you of is true or false? Unless they just
want you to take their word for it without further discussion—and you probably shouldn’t—they
will give you reasons in support of their views. Those reasons will also be expressed as
statements. Together, all those statements form what we call an argument. This course is all
about developing skills to evaluate whether arguments are good or bad. We will talk about good
and bad arguments later. Before that, we need to be clear on what arguments are, and how to
recognise them.

 Definition: An argument is a group of statements some of which, the premises, are

offered in support of another statement, the conclusion.

You can think of the premises of an argument as reasons that are given in support of a view,
which is expressed in the conclusion of the argument.
Let’s see a very simple example of an argument:

Stan was driving his truck over the speed limit. He had no excuse for driving over the speed
limit. Furthermore, he was intoxicated. Therefore, Stan was breaking the law.

We can easily isolate the conclusion:

 Stan was breaking the law.

Notice that we do not include the word ‘therefore’ when we state the conclusion. The word
‘therefore’ is not part of the statement that forms the conclusion.

All other statements are premises. We have:

 Stan was driving his truck over the speed limit.

 Stan had no excuse for driving over the speed limit.
 Stan was intoxicated.

The word ‘therefore’ is what we call a conclusion indicator. It is very common to use a
conclusion indicator to stress the part of an argument that is being argued for. Arguments can
also have premise indicators. Conclusion and premise indicators are words that are used to make
clear which statements are premises and which statements are conclusions in arguments. Here’s a
list of the most common ones.

Conclusion indicators Premise indicators

Therefore Because
Thus Since
Hence Supposing that
Consequently Assuming that
Ergo Given that
Indicator words are not always present in arguments. You may have conclusions that are not
accompanied by conclusion indicators. But typically, the rule of thumb is that if you have a
conclusion indicator, then the statement to which it is attached is the conclusion of the argument.
And likewise with premises.

When arguments are given to you in the wild, they’re not always presented in such a clear way.
We will show you lots of examples of arguments, and you will see that they quite often look very
messy. This means that you will have to do some work to identify the conclusion and the
premises. And this is generally far from easy. Because of that, we will represent arguments
always in the same format, which we call the standard form of an argument.

Premise vs. Conclusion

When you think of the word 'argument,' you probably imagine two people yelling at one another
or having some sort of a fight. However, when we're discussing critical thinking, an argument is
a term used to describe something that can be far less dramatic than that. An argument, in this
context, is simply a statement, or set of statements, that includes at least one premise and a
conclusion. A premise includes the reasons and evidence behind a conclusion. A conclusion is
the statement that the premise supports and is a way of promoting a certain belief or point of
view. To help us better identify the premise and conclusion of an argument, we can take a look at
indicator words.

Fallacies
A logical fallacy is any sort of mistake in reasoning or inference, or, essentially,
anything that causes an argument to go wrong. There are two main categories of
fallacy, Fallacies of Ambiguity and Contextual Fallacies:

 Fallacies of Ambiguity: a term is ambiguous if it has more than one

meaning. There are two main types:
o equivocation: where a single word can be used in two different senses.
o amphiboly: where the ambiguity arises due to sentence structure
(often due to dangling participles or the inexact use of negatives),
rather than the meaning of individual words.
 Contextual Fallacies: which depend on the context or circumstances in
which sentences are used. There are many different types, among the more
common of which are:
o Fallacies of Significance: where it is unclear whether an assertion is
significant or not.
o Fallacies of Emphasis: the incorrect emphasis of words in a sentence.
o Fallacies of Quoting Out of Context: the manipulation of the context
of a quotation.
o Fallacies of Argumentum ad Hominem: a statement cannot be
shown to be false merely because the individual who makes it can be shown
to be of defective character.
o Fallacies of Arguing from Authority: truth or falsity cannot be proven
merely because the person saying it is considered an "authority" on the
subject.
o Fallacies of Arguments which Appeal to Sentiments: reporting how
people feel about something in order to persuade rather than prove.
o Fallacies of Argument from Ignorance: a statement cannot be proved
true just because there is no evidence to disprove it.
 o Fallacies of Begging the Question: a circular argument, where
effectively the same statement is used both as a premise and as a
conclusion.
o Fallacies of Composition: the assumption that what is true of a part is
also true of the whole.
o Fallacies of Division: the converse assumption that what is true of a
whole must be also true of all of its parts.
o Fallacies of Irrelevant Conclusion: where the conclusion concerns
something other than what the argument was initially trying to prove.
o Fallacies of Non-Sequitur: an argumentative leap, where the
conclusion does not necessarily follow from the premises.
o Fallacies of Statistics: statistics can be manipulated and biased to
"prove" many different hypotheses.

These are just some of the most commonly encountered types, the Internet Encyclopedia
of Philosophy page on Fallacies lists 176!

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Paradoxes
A paradox is a statement or sentiment that is seemingly contradictory or opposed
to common sense and yet is perhaps true in fact. Conversely, a paradox may be a
statement that is actually self-contradictory (and therefore false) even though it
appears true. Typically, either the statements in question do not really imply the
contradiction, the puzzling result is not really a contradiction, or the premises
themselves are not all really true or cannot all be true together.

The recognition of ambiguities, equivocations and unstated assumptions

underlying known paradoxes has led to significant advances in science, philosophy and
mathematics. But many paradoxes (e.g. Curry's Paradox) do not yet have universally
accepted resolutions.

It can be argued that there are four classes of paradoxes:

 Veridical Paradoxes: which produce a result that appears absurd but can be
demonstrated to be nevertheless true.
 Falsidical Paradoxes: which produce a result that not only appears false but
actually is false.
 Antinomies: which are neither veridical nor falsidical, but produce a self-
contradictory result by properly applying accepted ways of reasoning.
 Dialetheias: which produce a result which is both true and false at the same
time and in the same sense.

Paradoxes often result from self-reference (where a sentence or formula refers to itself
directly), infinity (an argument which generates an infinite regress, or infinite series of
supporting references), circular definitions (in which a proposition to be proved is
assumed implicitly or explicitly in one of the premises), vagueness (where there is no
clear fact of the matter whether a concept applies or not), false or misleading
statements (assertions that are either willfully or unknowingly untrue or misleading),
and half-truths (deceptive statements that include some element of truth).

Some famous paradoxes include:

 Epimenides' Liar Paradox: Epimenides was a Cretan who said "All Cretans
are liars." Should we believe him?
 Liar Paradox (2): "This sentence is false."
 Liar Paradox (3): "The next sentence is false. The previous sentence is true."
 Curry's Paradox: "If this sentence is true, then Santa Claus exists."
 Quine's Paradox: "yields falsehood when preceded by its quotation" yields
falsehood when preceded by its quotation.
 Russell's Barber Paradox: If a barber shaves all and only those men in the
village who do not shave themselves, does he shave himself?
 Grandfather Paradox: Suppose a time traveler goes back in time and kills his
grandfather when the latter was only a child. If his grandfather dies in childhood,
then the time traveler cannot be born. But if the time traveler is never born, how
can he have traveled back in time in the first place?
 Zeno's Dichotomy Paradox: Before a moving object can travel a certain
distance (e.g. a person crossing a room), it must get halfway there. Before it can
get halfway there, it must get a quarter of the way there. Before traveling a
quarter, it must travel one-eighth; before an eighth, one-sixteenth; and so on. As
this sequence goes on forever, an infinite number of points must be crossed, which
is logically impossible in a finite period of time, so the distance will never be
covered (the room crossed, etc).
 Zeno's Paradox of Achilles and the Tortoise: If Achilles allows the tortoise a
head start in a race, then by the time Achilles has arrived at the tortoise's starting
point, the tortoise has already run on a shorter distance. By the time Achilles
reaches that second point, the tortoise has moved on again, etc, etc. So Achilles
can never catch the tortoise.
 Zeno's Arrow Paradox: If an arrow is fired from a bow, then at any moment in
time, the arrow either is where it is, or it is where it is not. If it moves where it is,
then it must be standing still, and if it moves where it is not, then it can't be there.
Thus, it cannot move at all.
 Theseus' Ship Paradox: After Theseus died, his ship was put up for public
display. Over time, all of the planks had rotted at one time or another, and had
been replaced with new matching planks. If nothing remained of the actual
"original" ship, was this still Theseus' ship?
 Sorites (Heap of Sand) Paradox: If you take away one grain of sand from a
heap, it is still a heap. If grains are individually removed, is it still a heap when
only one grain remains? If not, when did it change from a heap to a non-heap?
 Hempel's Raven Paradox: If all ravens are black, then in strict terms of logical
equivalence, everything that is not black is not a raven. So every sighting of a blue
sweater or a red cup confirms the hypothesis that all ravens are black.
 Petronius' Paradox" "Moderation in all things, including moderation."
 Paradoxical Notice: "Please ignore this notice."
 Dull Numbers Paradox: If there is such a thing as a dull number, then we can
divide all numbers into two sets - interesting and dull. In the set of dull numbers
there will be only one number that is the smallest. Since it is the smallest dull
number it becomes, ipso facto, an interesting number. We must therefore remove
it from the dull set and place it in the other. But now there will be another smallest
uninteresting number. Repeating this process will make any dull number
interesting.
 Protagoras' Pupil Paradox: A lawyer made an arrangement with one of his
pupils whereby the pupil was to pay for his instruction after he had won his first
case. After a while, the lawyer grew impatient with the pupil's lack of clients, and
decided to sue him for the amount owed. The lawyer's logic was that if he, the
lawyer, won, the pupil would pay him according to the judgment of the court; if
the pupil won, then he would have to honor the agreement and pay anyway. The
pupil, however, argued that if he, the pupil, won, then by the judgment of the
court he need not pay the lawyer; and if the lawyer won, then the agreement did
not come into force and the pupil need not pay the lawyer.
 Moore's paradox: "It will rain but I don't believe that it will."
 Schrödinger's Cat: There is a cat in a sealed box, and the cat's life or death is
dependent on the state of a particular subatomic particle. According to quantum
mechanics, the particle only has a definite state at the exact moment of quantum
measurement, so that the cat remains both alive and dead until the moment the
box is opened.
 "Turtles all the way down": A story about an infinite regress, often
attributed to Bertrand Russell but probably dating from centuries earlier, based
on an old (possibly Indian) cosmological myth that the earth is a flat disk
supported by a giant elephant that is in turn supported by a giant turtle. In the
story, when asked what then supported the turtle, the response was "it's turtles all
the way down".
 Definition
 A definition is a statement that gives the meaning of  a term.
 -          Derived from the Latin word definire which means to enclose within limits or to
make boundaries or limits
 -          The boundary of a field is defined by indicating the limits within which a field is
confined and bounded which it is marked off from other fields; similarly, a term is
defined by indicating the limits within which it is used and by which it is marked off
from other terms.
 -          Definition is not a proposition or sentence but a term, generally a complex term.

 Parts of a Definition
 1.       Definiendum – the word that is defined
 2.       Definiens – the phrase that explains the definiendum

 Kinds of Definition
 I.                    Kinds of Definition Based on Usage

 A.      Lexical Definition
 A lexical definition (Latin, lexis which means “word”) is the definition of a word
according to the meaning customarily assigned to it by the community of users. It simply
reports the meaning which a word already has among the users of the language in which
the word occurs. A dictionary or lexicon comprises this kind of definition.
 E.g.:   Lexicon - dictionary: a reference book that alphabetically lists words and their meanings, e.g. of an ancient language
                             River -     large natural channel of water: a natural stream of water that flows through land and
empties into a body of water such as an ocean or lake


 B.      Stipulative Definition
 A stipulative definition is a kind of definition in which a new word or term is coined in
order to signify a meaning or object for which no word in the language has previously
been given.
 For example, the word selfie has been invented in order to signify a person who loves to
take picture of himself or herself.
 Suppose that another living creature was found in another planet. Surely, there is no word
in our language to signify such creature. We, then, have to stipulate that the creature shall
be known by this or that particular name. Doing this means making a stipulative
definition.

 C.      Precising Definition
 The purpose of a precising definition is to reduce the vagueness of a word. There are
terms in our language which must have precise definitions because some future actions
are based on our knowledge of them.
 For example, the arguments for or against contraception requires a clear, precise, and
unambiguous definition of life of human organism because such definition implies the
moral bearing of contraception.
 Other examples which need precising definitions are legal terms like “theft”, “murder”,
“private property”, “rights”, and “sovereignty” since the definition sets the condition of
understanding laws and legislative praxis.

 D.      Theoretical Definition
 Theoretical definitions attempt to define an object according to its true nature, and not
necessarily according to the way the word is used by a community of users.
 Take, for instance, the definition of table salt as sodium chloride. Unless the persons
involved have some acquaintance with elementary chemistry, this would be a bad
definition, for it would define the familiar in terms of the unfamiliar. For those
acquainted with the principles of chemistry, however, this definition is the best one, for it
reveals the real nature of salt. Other familiar theoretical definitions are “force equals mass
times acceleration,” or “light is electromagnetic energy (of a certain range of
wavelengths).” For scientific purposes, theoretical definitions are necessary and cannot
be replaced by other types of definitions. A theoretical definition answers the question,
“What really is x?” where “x” is the object whose name is to be defined.
 Philosophers, too, are interested in theoretical definitions. The desire to know what is
really the nature of “human person”, “knowledge”, “existence”, “being”, “beauty” etc.,
tells us why philosophy today have so many branches like Philosophy of the Human
Person, Epistemology, Existentialism, Metaphysics, and Aesthetics which endeavour to
get correct theoretical definitions of the objects just mentioned.

 E.       Persuasive Definition
 Some definitions are intended either mainly or at least partly to influence attitudes.
Persuasive definition, under which these definitions are categorized, incites either
favourable or unfavourable responses to the object so defined. Here are examples of
persuasive definitions:
 Democracy is a government of the weak, inferior race.
  Democracy is a government of the people by the people for the people.
 A dictator is one who achieves greatness by violence in the political sphere.
 Love is only an illusion on people who do not know the difference between reality and
fantasy.
 Contraception is the deliberate prevention of unwanted pregnancy so that families may be
able to give the best care to their children.
 Contraception is the wilful interference of God’s will so that children who would have
seen the light of day are deliberately prevented from doing so.
 Persuasive is not really concerned with revealing the true nature of the concept defined
but of influencing attitude by using phrases that appeal to one’s emotion


Definitions of language

Many definitions of language have been proposed. Henry Sweet, an English phonetician and
language scholar, stated: “Language is the expression of ideas by means of speech-sounds
combined into words. Words are combined into sentences, this combination answering to that of
ideas into thoughts.”

Language is the most important tool of communication invented by human civilization.

Language helps us share our thoughts, and understand others. It’s hard to overestimate the
importance of language for our lives. Every time we speak, we do it with a particular purpose.
Sometimes we want to deliver a message, or express our feelings. We use language to ask for
help, or just to say a joke

The Basic Functions of Language

Language is a multipurpose tool which performs the function of letting other people know our

thoughts, ideas, emotions, feelings and so on in different ways. There are three major functions

of language. Informative, expressive and the directive are the major functions of language which

interact with personality, society and culture.

Informative Function
One of the basic functions of language is to communicate information of all kinds whether it is

true or false correct or incorrect, important or unimportant, general or particular. All informative

discourse is used to describe the world around us and to reason about it. Thus, the language

which includes propaganda of all kinds and even deliberate information is said to informative in

function.

Expressive function

As science gives us the informative function similarly, the poetry provides us the finest examples

of expressive function of language. Every poet expresses his own feelings and thoughts, ideas,

emotions and the experiments and experiences of life. Not only the poets use the expressive

language, but also the other people express their deep and tender feelings and emotions. Poetry

also gives a little bit informative function of language, but we must keep it into our mind that

poet’s purpose is to express his ideas, feelings, and emotions and to convey all these things into

readers mind. Thus, all expressive language may be analysed into two component elements, to

express the feelings and attitude of the speaker; and to evoke the same attitude or feelings in the

hearer.

Verbal communication helps us meet various needs through our ability to express ourselves. In terms of

instrumental needs, we use verbal communication to ask questions that provide us with specific

information. We also use verbal communication to describe things, people, and ideas. Verbal

communication helps us inform, persuade, and entertain others, which as we will learn later are the
three general purposes of public speaking. It is also through our verbal expressions that our personal

relationships are formed. At its essence, language is expressive.

Directive function

The third basic function of language is called “Directive Function”. Directive language is based

on commands and requests. For instance, if any person says something to another person for

doing and thing, as a mother says her child to say prayers before going to bed, it does not mean

that mother is giving information to her child or she wants to arouse something in child’s mind;

but the purpose of her language is to make the child do what is indicated; similarly. Similarly, if

we ask the question from any body, there is an implied request for an answer. Commands and

requests can be interchanged. Commands can be changed by adding a “Please” at the beginning

or by the suitable change in the tone of the voice or in the expression of the face.

However; language performs multiple functions because effective communication often requires

it. For example, a speaker can cause the hearers to make their contributions to same particular

charity by making use of the multiple functions of language, Thus, as being essential to

successful communication, language must, at the same time, be used to serve all three functions

by informative, expressive and directive.