What makes a strong reasoning

Academic writing requires writers to make claims and support them using evidence of one kind or another. When writers employ good reasoning, it is called "cogent. Discussed in detail below are the three specific characteristics of good arguments.

Three Characteristics of Good Arguments. A cogent argument has three characteristics, according to Kahane and Cavender :. All its premises are true. The premise s , the reasons for accepting the conclusion s , must be true — or, at least, believable — in order for the argument to be cogent. It considers all relevant information.

Good arguments also consider all information likely to be relevant. This consideration includes addressing counter-arguments and objections to both the premises and the conclusion.

A Good Argument and a Bad Argument. Consider the following two arguments. The first argument displays good reasoning and the second demonstrates fallacious reasoning. If it is raining, then the ground is wet.

It is raining. Therefore, the ground is wet. The first premise specifies a conditional relationship. If A happens, then B happens too.

This structure is called the major premise of the argument. This argument form is known as modus ponens. The ground is wet. Therefore, it is raining. At first glance, one may be tempted to believe that this argument shows good reasoning as well. Since we have already established the truth-value of the first premise, and since we will assume that somewhere the ground is, in fact, wet, let us consider the relationship between the premises and the conclusion.

This argument is invalid: the truth of the premises does not give us grounds to accept the conclusion as true. There are reasons other than rain that the ground could be wet: the sprinkler system could be on, for instance. Proofs that make use of mathematical induction typically take the following form:. Property P is true of the natural number 0. Therefore, P is true of all natural numbers. When such a proof is given by a mathematician, and when all the premises are true, then the conclusion follows necessarily.

Therefore, such an inductive argument is deductive. It is deductively sound, too. Because the difference between inductive and deductive arguments involves the strength of evidence which the author believes the premises provide for the conclusion, inductive and deductive arguments differ with regard to the standards of evaluation that are applicable to them.

The difference does not have to do with the content or subject matter of the argument, nor with the presence or absence of any particular word. Indeed, the same utterance may be used to present either a deductive or an inductive argument, depending on what the person advancing it believes.

Consider as an example:. If it is the intention of the speaker that the evidence is of this sort, then the argument is deductive. He or she may merely believe that nearly all champagne is made in France, and may be reasoning probabilistically. If this is his or her intention, then the argument is inductive.

As noted, the distinction between deductive and inductive has to do with the strength of the justification that the arguer intends that the premises provide for the conclusion. Another complication in our discussion of deduction and induction is that the arguer might intend the premises to justify the conclusion when in fact the premises provide no justification at all.

Here is an example:. All odd numbers are integers. All even numbers are integers. Therefore, all odd numbers are even numbers. This argument is invalid because the premises provide no support whatsoever for the conclusion. However, if this argument were ever seriously advanced, we must assume that the author would believe that the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion.

Therefore, this argument is still deductive. It is not inductive. Given a set of premises and their intended conclusion, we analysts will ask whether it is deductively valid, and, if so, whether it is also deductively sound. If it is not deductively valid, then we may go on to assess whether it is inductively strong. We are very likely to use the information that the argument is not deductively valid to ask ourselves what premises, if they were to be assumed, would make the argument be valid.

Then we might ask whether these premises were implicit and intended originally. Similarly, we might ask what premises are needed to improve the strength of an inductive argument, and we might ask whether these premises were intended all along. If so, then we change our mind about what argument existed was back in the original passage. So, the application of deductive and inductive standards is used in the process of extracting the argument from the passage within which it is embedded.

The process goes like this: Extract the argument from the passage; assess it with deductive and inductive standards; perhaps revise the decision about which argument existed in the original passage; then reassess this new argument using our deductive and inductive standards.

Implicit premises and implicit features of explicit premises can play important roles in argument evaluation. Suppose we want to know whether Julius Caesar did conquer Rome. In response, some historian might point out that it could be concluded with certainty from these two pieces of information:. Category: Current Issues , General. Category: Digital Skills , Learning , What is. We offer a diverse selection of courses from leading universities and cultural institutions from around the world.

These are delivered one step at a time, and are accessible on mobile, tablet and desktop, so you can fit learning around your life. You can unlock new opportunities with unlimited access to hundreds of online short courses for a year by subscribing to our Unlimited package. Build your knowledge with top universities and organisations. Learn more about how FutureLearn is transforming access to education. Learn more about this course. The validity and strength of arguments How do we decide if an argument is valid?

How do we decide if an argument is strong? First we need to decide if it is deductive or non-deductive. Loved It 05 Jul, The contents were worth the time and I Visit the course. Excelent course regarding making Hand on Course 01 Jul, I Have just taken a short course on the same topic in Chile and I think this one was the perfect decision to clarify doubts and put knowledge into Thanks to the wonderful lecturers and the great community of Good course 01 Jul, Excellent course, move at your o It is better than I expected 14 Sep, Easy to understa Thanks for this wonderful course.

I enjoyed it very much and I learned a lot too. Best regards,. When evaluating arguments, we have two main questions to ask:. Is it possible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false? If my jeans are blue, then they have a colour. Therefore, the argument is valid. Some people believe that, but this is an invalid argument. What is the probability for a dice to land on six? There are six faces and the dice is likely to land on any of them.

It is thus possible for the premise of the argument to be true, but the conclusion false.