Weak/Strong Arguments

[Dave Killoran]

This morning I received the following question:

Mr. Killoran, good morning to you. I completed the first chapter of the LR Bible. I understood basically everything. However, I was sort of having issues with identifying whether the stimulus was an argument or fact set. And how to tell whether an argument was weak or strong. I went to the forum to get more help and it kinda helped me out. I just wanted to check with u about something.

From what I gathered, an argument is a group of premises or statements that support one another and ultimately have a conclusion. All arguments attempt to persuade someone.

A factset is basically a statement of facts with no conclusion. All its doing is presenting facts.

Weak argument: poor judgment or premises to support a conclusion. Strong argument: Good, sound premises to support a conclusion.

Please tell me I'm right. I think I need more assistance in those areas but I think I have a good idea of what I'm learning. Sorry for the long response.

In general, that looks like a pretty good understanding of what's going on there! Note that a weak argument can be weak for more than just problems with the premises. For example, it may be that the conclusion goes too far and is not supported. Here's an example of that: "Last week I bought a lottery ticket and won a prize. This week I'm going to buy another lottery ticket and since I won before I'm going to win again this time for sure!" In that example the premise is very reasonable but the conclusion drawn form that premise goes way too far. There are different ways to describe that error, but two would be: "draws an absolute conclusion from a probabilistic premise" and "draws a conclusion that is overly broad."

With strong arguments, it's just that the premises support the conclusion; the premises themselves can be nonsensical. Here's an example of that: "If I eat one ice cream cone in my lifetime, then I am sure to be a millionaire someday. I just ate an ice cream cone, so someday I will be a millionaire." While you and I would way that argument is ridiculous (because we know eating ice cream cones has nothing to do with being a millionaire), structurally it is sound because the premises do support that conclusion.

So, the bottom line is that you can't evaluate argument by looking at the innate truthfulness of the premises; instead look at whether the premises, when accepted, lead to the conclusion or not.

Thanks!