Arguments, Non Arguments, Logic

hi I'm Bruce Fraser I'm a professor of philosophy at Indian River State College the following video clips are designed to give you a rough and ready guide to some basic concepts and logic that you've covered in your textbook I will go through a series of topics and you can pick and choose which topics you like in which order and if you have any additional questions of course and those can be the basis for discussion posts and so on today what I'd like to do is talk about arguments non arguments and logic first to give us a sense of the context that we'll be using to understand the subject matter we'll talk about structure versus meaning and something called substitution instances which are very important and then we'll talk about deduction validity and soundness which will be the focus of our class this term okay let's get some perspective on what we're doing here logic is the study of justification if we take this circle to represent natural language okay this is where we live so to speak this includes all sorts of discourse we tell stories we try and justify things we explain things we we engage each other in all sorts of informal ways natural languages is where we we dwell well there are lots of parts of natural language that have nothing to do with argument but we're interested in that particular area of natural language which deals with logic which is the study of justification how you prove that one claim is true based on evidence so there are lots of things as I said that are not part of the study of logic that are not part of arguments we can put down here arguments alongside logic okay but this is our particular focus logic and argument now a regular critical thinking class and there's material in your textbook that deals with critical thinking issues focus is on the relationships between argument and all these other parts of natural language that we use this contains for example metaphors how to metaphor shape the reasoning process that's something that might come up in a critical thinking class or story telling stories narratives of certain sorts how do those tie-in with the arguments we give about various topics ok well the study of logic really takes the structure of justification and I'll illustrate what that means in just a second but it takes the structure of justification the essence of an argument and it deals with it in the abstract logic really is a branch of mathematics now that can be good news or it can be bad news depending on whether or not you like mathematics it's very precise it's very clean there is a right answer there was a wrong answer when we're dealing with deductive arguments we lose that precision and clarity when we're down here dealing with natural language ok now there's an analogy that I like to draw I'm just going to move over to the other board here there's an analogy that I like to draw between logic and grammar ok all of us should be familiar with the study of grammar when you study basic declarative sentences you understand that there's a noun phrase a verb phrase and so on well logic really is the underlying grammar of an argument so think of arguments as a method of justification what does that mean that means you're trying to show something is true showing usually a controversial claim is true ok what we're interested in doing is studying the grammar of this method alright so that brings us to this this issue of structure before I go into structure versus meaning I do want to dwell a moment longer on this issue of arguments versus non arguments one thing we have to keep in mind and one thing that's explored in your textbook is this difference between the argument and such things as let me put v4 versus explanation illustration reports and conditional statements okay arguments are different from these these components and I want to spend just a moment explaining what those differences are okay as I said an argument is a method of justification showing something is true when we explain something we're not showing something is true what we're doing is trying to improve a person's understanding of why something is the case so one of the examples that I use in my classes is this I say to the class okay you don't need me to prove to you that you are here in the classroom today why well because it's obvious it's obvious to everybody what you may need is an explanation of why people are here today so if I say to you students are in my class today because they're interested in their education and they want to satisfy the requirements for their degree and so on then you understand why something is the case compare that or contrast that rather with this this claim you should or one should take a critical thinking class now that's not obvious to everybody and what you need is a justification for that so argument is about proving something is true explanation is about showing why something is the case so that we improve our understanding all right explanation versus argument sometimes people confuse illustration with argument an illustration is a kind of example it shows us why something or how something is the case so to speak so if I give you an account of what an argument is then one of the things that you may need is an illustration here's an illustration an argument all whales are mammals all mammals are warm-blooded therefore all whales are warm-blooded here I have Illustrated for you what an argument is okay all right now a conditional statement that's different from an argument sometimes arguments can be built into conditional statements but often not so we don't want to just assume that conditional statements are the same thing as arguments a conditional statement is an if-then statement if one thing call it P then something else Q if then if I win the lottery then I will retire early what I've done is I've asserted that two things are related in a certain way but I have not tried to prove to you that that they are connected in a certain way so if I say if one thing then the other I'm asserting a relationship I'm not as yet proving it so there's a difference arguments are about proof and justification conditional statements of this form are simple assertions that relate one thing to something else okay so conditional statements are not arguments all right so that gives us a sense we have one more this gives us a sense of the difference between argument and logic over there on our little circle a primitive circle diagram and other parts of speech that are very important but are different from this process this method of justification okay reports language is descriptive I can tell you that the floor of this particular room is green if you're listening to the audio and you're not actually watching the video right I have told you something about what is the case I have reported to you a certain circumstance I have not tried to prove that the floor is green okay I've simply given you additional information reports are pieces of information that increase our understanding or knowledge of the way the world is okay they're different from arguments because again arguments are about justification proving something is true each of these pieces if we can move over to the the other board for a minute each of these pieces explanation illustration reports conditional statements along with a lot of other stuff are part of this natural language framework that we live in and we work in our focus again is on the grammar of this method of justification or logic all right it's very precise very mathematical and that's a good thing as I said if you like precision in mathematics if you're math phobic then it creates a little bit more of a challenge for you but in any case that's that's the basic context in which we study arguments argument structure and so on now with that said I'll turn to this issue of structure versus meaning

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Length: 9min 57sec (597 seconds)

Published: Wed May 16 2018