RECOGNIZING ARGUMENTS

We turn now to the problem of recognizing  'arguments'. In every argument one or more premisses and a conclusion are asserted. But not every assertion of several propositions constitutes an argument. Newspapers, Magazines and history books abound in assertions, though they tend to contain relatively few arguments. Containing several assertions is a necessary condition for discourse to express an argument, but it is not a sufficient condition.Nevertheless that that necessary condition distinguishes arguments from several kinds of non-arguments with which they are sometimes confused.

Consider the statement :

If objects of art are expressive, they are a language.

   

(If objects of art are expressive -- Premiss)

(they are a language---- Conclusion)

Such proposal is called conditional.            

Its component proposition 'objects of art are expressive' is not asserted, nor its other component proposition 'they are a language'. It asserts only that the former implies the latter, but both could be false for all the statement in question asserts. No premiss is asserted, No inference is made, No conclusion is claimed to be true. There is no argument here.

But consider the following quotation from John Dewey.

Because objects of art are expressive, they are a language.

(Because objects of art are expressive---- Premiss)

(they are a language.-------- Conclusion)

Here we do have an argument. The proposition 'objects of art are expressive' is asserted as premiss and the proposition 'they are a language' is claimed to follow from the premiss and is therefore asserted to be true. A conditional statement may look like an arguments, but it is not an argument; and the two should not be confused.

Consider another passage that looks - at first glance- even more like an argument.

"Synonyms are good servants but bad masters; therefore select them with care". 

In spite of the presence of the standard 'conclusion-indicator' "therefore"in the above passage, we do not generally regard such utterances as expressive arguments. What follows the "therefore"is a command rather than a proposition and since a command is neither true nor false, it cannot be claimed to be true on the basis of what is asserted in the rest of the passage. Wherever a command rather than an assertion occupies the place appropriate to a conclusion, we do not have an argument. Premisses and conclusions must be asserted in an argument and that is why such passages as these do not express arguments.