 So in this course we're going to look at arguments. Arguments, it's not just people yelling at each other. That's just the disturbance of the piece. Now an argument is something more than that. There are lots of paragraphs, lots of different kinds of paragraphs that were likely to use in everyday discourse. Arguments are one of them. And in this chapter what we're going to do, or this part of the course, what we're going to do is we're going to look at arguments and compare them to other very common kinds of paragraphs learned to distinguish arguments from these other kinds of paragraphs. And then on top of that we'll learn the basic parts of an argument. Here we go. Now you might wonder why we bother differentiating arguments from other kinds of paragraphs. After all, it's really obvious to figure out what people mean. Well, it's not always true. There's a variety of different kinds of paragraphs. Arguments are one of them. And if you aren't able to distinguish what kind of paragraph you're dealing with, you might be persuaded by it when it's not a good argument. And it really isn't until you put it in the form of an argument that you can tell whether it's a good one. So I said that one of the reasons why we're doing this is it's common practice to use these different kinds of paragraphs as arguments when they don't work as argument. You're persuaded by them. You do or believe what they want you to do or believe, but it's not through the use of reason. This happens a lot. TV ads, or any ads, right, whether on TV, movies, what you see before or after during this video on your very social media, political ads, buy a product, just subscribe to a service, to vote for a candidate, to vote for a bill. Most of the time they're overwhelming majority of the time. They're using emotion. A lot of times fear, appearances, what, vanity? That's a big one that's used a lot. And they use these ads, they use these different kinds of paragraphs to persuade you to do or buy what they want. But that's not a proper use of reason. Now when you identify what kind of paragraph it is and learn how to turn that actually into an argument, you can see the glaring errors in reason. But let's not get too ahead of myself. Let's take a look at these different kinds of paragraphs one by one. Descriptive paragraphs are intended to provide you with information about a subject. This happens in three main ways, right, through century information. Describe what a thing looks like, smells like, feels like, tastes like. You can give the definition of the thing. Now we spent a lot of time going over definitions and I'm not going to reiterate that here. And another big way is to give the purpose of a thing. That's not going to always work, but it works a lot. And we got these three main ways of describing things. They're probably not the only ways, but these are the most prominent. And it's important to remember, you know, like I said before, descriptive paragraphs, they do not involve an inference. Descriptive paragraphs do not involve an inference. Since they don't involve an inference, it's not it's not something that's, it's not an argument. There's no premises, there's no evidence, there's no inference. That's not to say that there's, you know, nothing involved with descriptive paragraphs as far as logic is concerned. After all, we spent a good long time on definitions, but it's just not nearly enough to count as an argument. A narrative paragraph is different from a descriptive paragraph, but has some pretty good similarities as well. A descriptive paragraph is supposed to inform you about a subject, to, you know, give you information, help you identify the subject. A narrative paragraph is, gives you a sequence of events. Now there are a liken that they both provide information, but they're different in that descriptive paragraph is supposed to focus on a single subject, whereas a narrative, I mean may or may not focus on a single subject, but it will describe a series of events. So you might describe a single subject when you say, I don't know, describe the events of your day or, you know, the series of trails that I took to get through, you know, to walk through this park. But, you know, narrative might also talk about, you know, different people, right? Dramas. Well, if we're dealing with actual fiction as opposed to non-fiction, news reports might detail various members on a put a committee in Congress, or the activities of various scientists at NASA, or with the American Medical Association, or it could be a variety of things. Narrative paragraphs are giving you information, but not about a single subject and not helping to identify. They're giving you a sequence of events, right? Now narratives are also not arguments. There's no inference involved, and there's no inference with narratives. Not trying to persuade you of some conclusion, not trying to tell you about, or trying to persuade you that the events actually happened, right, is presumed that you're going to believe. The same thing with descriptive paragraphs is presumed that you're going to believe the person as they describe the subject, as they help you identify the subject. With a narrative, you're presumed to believe the speaker, or the author, and describe in the sequence of events. So, we got descriptive paragraphs, we got narrative paragraphs, neither one are arguments, because neither one has an inference. So the next one is very often confused with an argument or the use of reason. It's just a statement of belief. That's when people, you know, pretty much pronounce what they believe. I'm not talking about things like, there's a tree. I mean sometimes they could happen, but I don't know. I believe in democracy. I believe everybody should have an equal right to vote. I believe everybody should have an equal opportunity to pursue how they live their own life, right? Here I am just saying, I believe, and under the proclamations, but sometimes it's just not even as explicit as that. Just things like, the universe is composed of material objects, causation, four fundamental forces of nature, and that's it. That would just be a statement of belief. And I'm not knocking it. People believe lots of things, and I'm not saying they're dunskis, but it's not the use of reason. It's not logic yet. It's not logic until you actually provide evidence and an inference. I mean a statement of belief is something more like just a conclusion. An argument's going to have evidence which infers a conclusion. The statement of belief is probably just the conclusion. And if there's no evidence, there's no inference. I mean you might hold the belief honestly. You might even have good evidence for the belief. You might hold it passionately. Okay, still not using logic. Still not the use of reason. It's just an assertion. The argument, logic, requires much more than conviction. Instructive paragraphs bear a superficial resemblance to narrative paragraphs, and a narrative paragraph describes a sequence of events. An instructive paragraph doesn't describe a sequence of events. It prescribes a sequence of events. It doesn't tell you what has happened, or even what will happen. It's not a prediction. It's an instruction. So this is the difference between a declarative sentence and an imperative sentence. A declarative sentence is something that's true or false. There are trees out in the park. There are trees in the park. That's a declarative sentence. An imperative would be something like enjoy the trees in the park. Go out and enjoy the trees in the park, or go look at the trees. That would be an imperative. So instructive paragraphs tell you to do or perform a sequence of events, but doesn't in and of itself describe a sequence of events. Instructive paragraphs are also not logic. There might be some sense of practical reason. Okay, that makes sense. These are the steps that are most likely to help you achieve your goal. All right, fine. But not theoretical logic or theoretical reason. It's not involved in what's true or false, only in performing actions. There's no evidence. There's no inference. There's no conclusion. Hence, there's no argument, no argument, not logic. Expository paragraphs are providing explanations. Explanations help you understand. This is kind of sort of similar to a descriptive paragraph. A descriptive paragraph, though, really just focuses on one subject. An expository paragraph will likely use a lot of descriptive description paragraphs. Really shouldn't even call it expository paragraph, just an exposition. Expositions can use a number of descriptive paragraphs, could use narratives, might even use instructive paragraphs, depending on what sort of explanations involved. Expositions provide explanations. These help you understand. Now, there's a lot that can be said about the nature of an explanation, about what it is to understand. I'm not going to go into all of that here. That's a whole another class, believe it or not. Expositions usually are much more broad than a single subject, much more broad than a single narrative, much more broad than a single set of instructions. It has to deal with usually a whole frame or reference of inquiry. So the physical sciences are excellent for expositions. There's a prime example of an exposition. Trying to explain what a planet is is going to involve a lot. It kind of looks like a descriptive paragraph, but it's not just giving a simple definition. We're at a full exposition of a planet we're talking about its density and the orbit around a star, the fact that it's pretty much spherical. There'd be a lot involved in explaining all of these parts of what a planet is, how we know about a planet. So scientific explanations, anytime you're trying to explain the causal relationship between material objects, prime example of an exposition. You also have historical expositions explaining, I don't know, an event, a person, a place. Even words have histories. It might be odd to think about, but words have histories. There's a time when a word started, there's a reason why it was used, there's a time when a word ends. We hardly ever use what, hitherto. We hardly ever use that word anymore. I'm not even sure that's the right word. Come hither, right? Come hither. We really don't ever use that word except, you know, to be artful or funny or satirical or something like that. It doesn't really come up in common discourse. Anyway, histories also another great form of exposition telling us why something happened, what happened, events leading up to it. Okay, you know, by the way, you know, expositions in the physical sciences are very, very general, right? Gravity is pretty much the same all across the universe, or at least we think it is. The scientific explanation for gravity or her planet, galaxy, a comet, whatever, is going to be the same here and a million years from here. History is not so, not like that really. You know, the history of democracy in the United States is very different than, say, Belgium, right? Scientific explanation is very general. History, usually much more particular. Another prominent kind of explanation, exposition, psychological. Why somebody does something, how somebody acts, what is, you know, today people's anxieties is a very hot topic in psychology and explaining the anxiety and explaining behavior in terms of the anxiety is very, very common. Anxiety, by the way, is not the only possible explanation, but it's one of them, right? That would be a psychological explanation. So, expositions aren't necessarily, they aren't really arguments. They aren't. There's a lot of evidence, but it's like a descriptive paragraphs or narrative paragraphs. An exposition is supposed to inform, not persuade. That's not to say that there's absolutely no persuasion involved. So, to reach a conclusion in the physical sciences or psychology or history, you have to provide a lot of evidence and use an interest to reach the conclusion. So, there's logic used in the discipline, but expositions are mostly just to inform as opposed to persuade. So, now, having said that, it's kind of a gray area with expositions and argument. Not every explanation is an argument, but some are. It's used in an argument form called inference to the best explanation. So, you provide a set of possible explanations for some event, and the one that's most likely to have happened is the one that we infer did happen. Sometimes this is called Occam's razor, inference to the best explanation. Now, not again, not every explanation is an argument, and frankly most expositions don't operate like this. With inference to the best explanation, you provide a set of explanations, a variety of them, a number of them. But, you know, scientific explanation isn't really providing a set, right? The claim is, well, this is how it happened. This is what it means to be planned and how it's formed. Same thing with history. Now, I don't know, if we, you know, say something in history, we have a set of possible explanations in history. Well, we might use inference to the best explanation to decide on one of them, okay. But an explanation itself is not an argument. It's, I mean, I don't want to say it's not the use of reason, because you have to use a lot of reason to reach or create a very good explanation. But it's not the same thing as an argument. It's not evidence with an inference and a conclusion. Now, reports, reports are a little complicated, kind of like expositions. Expositions can include descriptions, narratives, even instructions can include a lot. Reports are complicated. They're very, very complex. They'll undoubtedly have a number of descriptions, probably have some narrations, maybe even some exposition. Now, a report is kind of the flip side of a statement of belief, a statement of belief is a proclamation of a belief, which you think is true what your convictions, that in which you trust, okay, that's a statement of belief. A report, statement of belief is a conclusion without evidence. A report is kind of like, you can think of it as evidence without the conclusion. It could be an explanation or a description of the set of events leading up to an election or a vote on a bill or what, a demonstration. It could be the stock prices for the day, the trends that have happened over the past 30 days in a stock. A report could be the various statements that people have given, say as an eyewitness, or simply as one's own expert testimony. A scientist telling us what to expect with Hayley's comment or a historian telling us the events and documents, the events surrounding, say, the Declaration of Independence and the documents produced as a result of that. So a report, you kind of think of it as a newspaper article, a set of events, a description of several subjects, right? And then you're supposed to draw a conclusion from that. You're supposed to draw a conclusion from that. It's the evidence. It's what's happened and then you must make an inference or sometimes a decision, right? Reports are often used very frequently for courses of action. Yeah, it's different than, say, an instructive paragraph. An instructive paragraph, it's presumed these are the steps that you're supposed to take to carry out some goal. You're not trying to prove it. A report, you know, the presumption that this is the best, well, maybe. But that's what the report is supposed to do. It's supposed to allow you to have all the relevant evidence to reach a conclusion, either about a course of action or a belief. So still not using logic though, right? Reports are very useful for reasoning. Yes, they are. Reports are very useful for arguments. Absolutely they are. But they themselves are not arguments. It's more like it's the evidence before you draw, before you use an inference to draw a conclusion. Okay, there we go. Reports. Well, finally we get to persuasive paragraphs. Now, I want to give kind of a word of caution here. So persuasive paragraphs attempt to, well, you know, not make, but the goal is for somebody, the person is listening to you to start believing some proposition or even, you know, maybe to start taking a course of action. This is persuasion as opposed to force. Force is not the use of argument, not the use of actually any communication at all other than, you know, do this. But, you know, force would be to physically grab somebody and make them do something. If you're trying to use force to have somebody believe something that's usually called brainwashing. We're not doing that. So we're using persuasion as opposed to force. Now persuasion, you give somebody a set of reasons to believe something, a set of propositions or belief or something like this that, you know, it's offered for somebody else to believe some further proposition. So it'd be great if every instance of persuasion was purely cognitive, was purely dealing with logic, but it's not, right? There's a good chunk of persuasion that deals just with emotion. So trying to intimidate somebody to believe something, trying to elicit, oh, I don't know, you know, feelings of sympathy or joy or hatred, anger, right? Something to feed your vanity that that's used a lot for persuasion. In fact, you see it with a lot of ads. You know, if you don't believe me, right, look at, you know, I've talked about TV ads before. So you're probably detecting a theme, but that's okay. You know, look at some of these ads, say for shoes or cars or fragrances or, you know, sometimes even food. Are they giving you information about the product? So if you're looking at shoes, they tell you what, how much weight is distributed across the sole, the way that it supports or provides support or pressure to the inside of the heel or the arch of the foot, anything about its resistance to dirt or grime or, you know, things like that, right? Now full. As far as I know, they rarely even put the price, if ever, on products for shoes, but they will show you people who are athletes or even just famous, wearing or using the product. And this is, there's like a really happening with a lot of, say, social media influencers or these ads before, you know, videos or whatever or Instagram. Obviously, I'm not the biggest social media mogul there is out there. But you'll see these little seven second, five second ads, just showing you somebody really good looking or famous or using a product and then you, oh, I have to get that. Well, that's manipulation, right? It's using emotion to get you to buy the product. It's not the use of reason. And in this course, when we're talking about the use of reason to persuade you for a belief or to justify a belief, right? That's what we call an argument, an argument. And again, I don't, I don't mean, you know, two people yelling at each other and getting very angry. That's not what I mean by an argument. What I mean by an argument is a somebody who's offering a set of evidence, right? Propositions that are true or false that infer a conclusion. Right? So we have three parts to an argument. You have the evidence or the reasons or the premises is what they're most often call them. We use that in this course, premises. You'll have the conclusion, right? Which is the proposition that's justified or inferred by the premises and then the inference itself. Okay. So let's, let's take a look at premises just real quick. What you'll need to do in this course, what will you be tested on, is learning how to identify premises versus conclusion. Kind of a heads up. The inference is almost never stated, right? The inference itself, what inferences use is almost never stated. I think maybe in some academic journals when the inference was not evident, right? It's a specialized sort of inference. Okay. Then, then you'll use the, then you'll explicitly state the inference in a plain language argument. Okay. Maybe, maybe, maybe sometimes, but in everyday discourse, nobody ever cites the rule that they're using to infer the conclusion. Most often they'll just say something like, well, it logically, it follows that. It's like, okay, what's the rule? What's the rule of inference that justifies that conclusion? And, and, you know, even right now, you might be thinking to yourself, wait, what rules? It's like, yes, there are rules for inference. There are rules for inference. A good chunk of this course will be identifying those rules. What we'll get to that. In the meantime, look at the premises and the conclusion. So the conclusion is, depending on the argument, there can be lots of conclusions, but usually in any given, say, public, you know, public piece of argument, there's just one conclusion, at least one that's mentioned. It's usually given, you know, it's what is inferred by the premises. You know, premises will be a proposition or set of propositions to infer the conclusion. The conclusion is what's inferred by the premises. So usually the conclusion is one sentence. And in most paragraphs, that's either going to be the first or the last. So finding the conclusion versus the premises in terms of the order of sentences, that, you know, that's your first bet, right? The first or the last. It would be pretty bad writing to embed the conclusion somewhere in the middle of a paragraph or somewhere in the middle of the premises. That would be bad writing. And the conclusion is usually given by an indicator word, something like, therefore, or it follows that, or thus, these are really good indicator words for the conclusion. And so if you identify the conclusion, well, then, you know, the rest of the sentences of the premises. Now, that's kind of a mechanical way of going about doing it. It's a, you know, checkbox way, not a very cognitive way of doing it, but it's just following a simple set of procedures. And that's what you have. That's what you have. The best way to figure out the conclusion, though, is to figure out what is inferred. The direction of inference, we might call it. It's not a great term, the direction of inference, but it's what we got for the moment. It's what is inferred by the premises. So you figure out, and maybe a better way of doing this, you know, separate out the sentences and try to figure out, okay, which one is inferred by the rest. Now, we'll work on that skill much more during the course of the semester. It will be part of your task to figure out the conclusion from the, versus the premises versus the evidence. And one way that I'm going to do that is I'm not going to include the indicated word like, you know, therefore or thus, or follows that, or in conclusion, I'm not going to do that. You'll have to, it's as you master the inference better and better, you'll be able to recognize the form. That's what I'll be testing you on. So the conclusion is what is inferred by the premises. The premises are what infers the conclusion. And the inference is what does the job, right? What's the rule that is used to draw out that conclusion from the evidence.