Turning up
How to join, and when we meet, aren’t written down here yet.
Six words
Any philosophy discussion leans on a few words that mean something exact. These are the ones that come up first.
- Premise.
- A statement an argument starts from and does not itself argue for. It is what the argument asks you to grant before it begins.
- Valid.
- An argument is valid when, if its premises were all true, its conclusion could not be false. Validity is about the shape of the argument, not about whether anything in it is so.
- Sound.
- Valid, with premises that are in fact true. A sound argument’s conclusion is true; a merely valid one’s need not be.
- Counterexample.
- A single case in which the premises hold and the conclusion fails, or in which a general claim comes out false. One is enough.
- Begging the question.
- Assuming, somewhere among the premises, the very thing the argument was supposed to establish. The newer sense, raising a question, is a different thing with the same name.
- The principle of charity.
- Reading an argument in the strongest form its words will bear before answering it. It is a rule of interpretation, not a kindness.