UNIVERSITY OF NAIROBI

SCHOOL OF MATHEMATICS

LOGIC

George Nyongesa - 072045123

Offices: GW 301 (1) 3rd floor

Lecture Notes

[2016]

THE ANATOMY OF ARGUMENTS

Critical thinking largely involves giving reasons or evidence in support of certain claims
or issues. This is what we call reasoning- the art of inference or argumentation. Critical
thinking requires good skills in reasoning. Reasoning is usually expressed through
arguments.

An argument is a set of claims (statement, propositions), one of which, known as the

conclusion, is supposed to be supported by the rest or others, called premises.

The objective of an argument is to present reasons in support of a conclusion.

An argument consists of premises and a conclusion. The conclusion of an argument is
that proposition which is affirmed on the basis of the other propositions of the
argument the premises.

A premise is that proposition/statement which provides grounds or reasons in support

of the conclusion. Premises are supposed to provide reasons in support of the
conclusion.

In an argument, a conclusion follows from the premises.

In brief, an argument is a group of propositions/statements intended to establish the

truth or acceptability of a claim.
Examples:
Premises- There were five apples in the basket. Now there are only four apples on the
basket.
Conclusion. Therefore, one apple is missing.

An argument is made up of asserted statements or propositions. A statement is a

declarative sentence that is either true or false. Not all sentences are however
statements e.g. questions, proposals, suggestions, commands and exclamations. These
are neither true nor false.

A statement asserts; it makes a claim about some state of affairs in the world.

A proposition is the idea conveyed by a statement. We distinguish between a

proposition and a statement because different statements may express the same
propositions.

KEY TO IDENTIFICATION OF ARGUMENTS

An argument occurs only when someone gives a set of premises to support or prove a
conclusion. This intention is often expressed by the use of inference indicators.
Inference indicators are words or phrases used to signal the presence of an argument.
There are two kinds of inference indicators:
- Premise indicators
- Conclusion indicators

A premise indicator signals that the sentence to which it is prefixed is a premise.

A conclusion indicator signals that the sentence to which it is prefixed is a conclusion.

Examples
i. Conclusion indicators
1. Therefore
 2. Thus
3. Hence
4. So
5. Then
6. Accordingly
7. Consequently
8. This being so
9. It follows that
10. Which implies that
11. Which entails that
12. Which proves that
13. Which means that
14. From which we can infer that
15. As a result
16. We may deduce that
17. Subsequently

ii Premise indicators
1. For
2. Since
3. Because
4. Assuming that
5. Seeing that
6. Granted that
7. The reason is that
8. In view of the fact that
9. As implied by the fact that
10. Given that
11. In light of the fact that
The statement that immediately follows a conclusion indicator is the conclusion, while
that that follows a premise indicator is a premise.

In some cases indicators come between premises and conclusions.

Premise and conclusion indicators

Premise conclusion
-------------------------------shows that -------------------------------
------------------------------indicates that -----------------------------
------------------------------proves that ----------------------------------
-----------------------------entails that -----------------------------------
-----------------------------implies that -----------------------------------
---------------------------establishes that --------------------------------
---------------------------allows us to infer that -------------------------
-------------------------------gives us reasons for--------------------------------
-------------------------------believing that-----------------------------------------

Alternatively indicators can also appear as shown

Conclusion and premise indicators

Conclusion premise
----------------------is shown by------------------------------
-------------------------is indicated by--------------------------
--------------------------is proven by---------------------------
--------------------------is entailed by-----------------------------
---------------------------is implied by---------------------------
-------------------------is established by---------------------------

Examples
Abortion raises serious moral questions because abortion involves the taking of a
human life, and anything that involves the taking of a human life raises serious moral
problems.

It is wrong for society to kill a murderer. This follows from the reason that if a murderer
is wrong in killing his victims, then society is also wrong killing the murderer. And a
murderer is wrong in killing his victim.

The pentagon must be in Washington DC, because it is either in Washington D.C or in

Baltimore, Maryland. But my brother, who works at the pentagon, says he has never
been in Baltimore.