Publication Date
2018
Faculty Department
Department of Philosophy and Religion
Document Type
Article
Abstract
There is no concept more central to logic and critical thinking than the concept of an argument. I here address extant definitions of ‘argument’ in the logical sense of the term and defend the claim that all are wanting: they are all extensionally inadequate, or at least problematically ambiguous. An adequate definition of ‘argument’ will entail either an absolutist understanding or a relativistic one. Current proposals, however, especially those typically found in logic and critical thinking textbooks, all seem to be objectionable no matter which sort of understanding one adopts. I thus finish with a proposal for how to define ‘argument’ that avoids these worries.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Recommended Citation
“On Defining ‘Argument’,” Argumentation, Vol. 32, No. 4 (2018)
