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6. Critical Analysis of Arguments

 

Summary​

Before learning the formal tools for testing validity, it helps to have a general checklist for analyzing arguments, so that when something is presented to you, you can ask whether it is even an argument at all and what questions to raise before accepting the conclusion. Four core questions guide the analysis: is it arbitrary, is it consistent, what are its consequences, and what are its presuppositions?

Arbitrariness​

An argument is arbitrary when it rests on nothing more than preference. Watch for:

  • Mere opinion – a raw claim with no supporting reasons is not an argument and gives you no reason to accept it.
  • Relativism – the stance that nothing is absolutely true or false. It is self-defeating: if everyone is always "right," there is no point in arguing or persuading at all.
  • Ignorant conjecture – treating the merely possible as if it were probable or actual (you could win the lottery, but that is no reason to expect to).
  • Universal claims from particular experience – inferring "all politicians lie" from a few cases. This is anecdotal evidence and the hasty generalization fallacy, and it foreshadows the deeper problem of induction (covered later): a universal conclusion is always stronger than any finite evidence can support.
  • Bias – presenting only a leaning rather than reasons. As before, bias is a reason to question a claim, not to reject it, since a biased person can still be right.

Inconsistency​

The clearest grounds for dismissing an argument:

  • Logical fallacies / invalidity / contradiction – a structural flaw means the argument does not actually reach its conclusion, so you need not accept it.
  • Reductio ad absurdum – assume a position and follow it until it yields an absurd or contradictory result, signaling a problem (often with the starting assumption). Zeno's paradoxes (Achilles and the tortoise) try this against the possibility of motion.
  • Hypocrisy – when someone's actions or other beliefs contradict their claim. It does not make the claim false, but it is a red flag: if the speaker doesn't seem to believe it, why should you?
  • Presuppositional tensions – holding two background beliefs that cut against each other (the example given: a materialist view of the person sitting uneasily alongside belief in a future resurrection, since with no continuity it is unclear how the restored being is the same person).

Consequences of ideas​

Ideas have consequences, some good, some bad. Following a position out to its likely (and especially its actual, historically observed) outcomes can be a legitimate argument against it, or at least against the wisdom of adopting it, e.g. asking what a proposed economic or political system has produced when tried before.

Presuppositions​

A presupposition is an unstated background assumption that an argument needs in order to make sense, its preconditions of intelligibility. Take the example of open debate: merely engaging in it presupposes that logic exists, and logic is non-material. So a strict materialist (everything is matter and motion, which also tends toward determinism) is in a bind: to argue at all, they must rely on something non-material, undermining their own base assumption. More broadly, debate presupposes a mind that reasons by inference (not mere causation), absolute truth and standards for good vs. bad arguments, final causality (goal-directedness, the purpose of persuading toward truth), the reality of logic, abstract entities and essences (against pure nominalism), and an inductive principle (which cannot itself be proved without circularity).

Two procedural errors​

When responding to an argument you dislike, avoid two very common mistakes:

  1. Refuting the conclusion is not refuting the argument. Arguing for a contrary conclusion is fine, but if you never show where the original argument goes wrong, and it happens to be sound, then its conclusion stands.
  2. Refuting the argument does not prove the conclusion false. A bad argument can still have a true conclusion ("all dogs have two legs; Big Bird is a dog; therefore Big Bird has two legs", terrible argument, but a true conclusion would not be disproven this way).

A complete response must therefore do both: refute the opposing argument and present a positive argument for the contrary conclusion.

Where this leads​

This is only an overview; the formal testing of validity comes later. The next session moves into informal logic, beginning with the informal fallacies of ambiguity.