Example of Argument Form
To demonstrate the important notion of the form of an argument, substitute letters for similar items throughout the sentences in the original argument.
- Original argument
- All humans are mortal.
- Socrates is human.
- Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
- Argument Form
- All H are M.
- S is H.
- Therefore, S is M.
All we have done in the Argument form is to put 'H' for 'human' and 'humans', 'M' for 'mortal', and 'S' for 'Socrates'; what results is the form of the original argument. Moreover, each individual sentence of the Argument form is the sentence form of its respective sentence in the original argument.
Read more about this topic: Logical Form
Famous quotes containing the words argument and/or form:
“A striking feature of moral and political argument in the modern world is the extent to which it is innovators, radicals, and revolutionaries who revive old doctrines, while their conservative and reactionary opponents are the inventors of new ones.”
—Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre (b. 1929)
“The Same, the Same: friend and foe are of one stuff; the ploughman, the plough, and the furrow, are of one stuff; and the stuff is such, and so much, that the variations of form are unimportant.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)