Additional Content on Understanding and Evaluating Arguments

Unit 2 is about arguments, which is the main “currency” of philosophy and critical thinking. The key skills we’ll be learning here involve identifying and understanding arguments, on the one hand, and then evaluating arguments on the other.

Identifying and Understanding Arguments

Arguments come in all shapes and sizes, but for our purposes, “argument” just means a series of premises that support a conclusion. For example:

P1: It’s raining
C1: You should bring an umbrella.

This is an argument. The first sentence, “It’s raining”, provides a reason to support the second sentence, “You should bring an umbrella.” It’s not a very exciting argument, but it is an argument.

I’ve given my lecture on the basics of arguments many times over many years, and so eventually I decided to just make a YouTube video(s), that introduce arguments: how they work, their different types, and how to evaluate them—that sort of thing.

The video below introduces how to understand arguments, which is an essential skill for the class:

In this video, pay particular attention to 5:35 in the video, which introduces indicator words. These are useful for Unit 2 AS1, and some samples are here:

Evaluating Arguments

But now that we know how to identify arguments, how do we figure out if our arguments (or anyone else’s) are any good? The next video covers this issue, focusing on how to evaluate arguments. Basically, it comes down to evaluating the truth of the premises and the amount of support they give to the conclusion: