We seem to argue all the time. People disagree on many issues and let each other know it, often at high volume. On the other hand, people too rarely give reasons for their positions. In that sense, arguments are not very common and not common enough. So, are arguments numerous or rare? That depends on what counts as an argument. This chapter will explore that question.

How much would you pay for an argument?

In order to understand what an argument is, we need to begin by asking what an argument is not. Some of the main contrasts are illustrated by an insightful troupe of philosophers named Monty Python in their famous skit ‘The Argument Clinic’. If you have not seen it or do not remember it, you should watch it.1 It is a gem.

The skit begins with a customer walking up to the receptionist in the clinic and saying, ‘I’d like to have an argument, please.’ The receptionist replies, ‘It’s one pound for a five-minute argument, but only eight pounds for a course of ten.’ Despite the savings in bulk, the customer decides to purchase only one five-minute argument.

The receptionist then needs to find an employee in the clinic to argue with the customer. She looks at the schedule and says, ‘Mr Du-Bakey’s free, but he’s a little bit conciliatory.’ What’s wrong with being conciliatory – that is, likely to give in easily? Anyway, the receptionist instead directs the customer to Mr Barnard in room 12.

The customer walks down the hall and enters the first room to find Mr Barnard seated behind a desk. He aggressively yells, ‘WHAT DO YOU WANT?’ then calls the customer a ‘snotty-faced heap of parrot droppings’ and a ‘vacuous, toffee-nosed, malodorous pervert’. Annoyed, the customer explains that he came for an argument. Mr Barnard nicely replies, ‘Oh! I’m sorry. This is abuse … You want room 12A, next door.’

This silliness introduces our first contrast with arguments. Abuse is not an argument. I cannot argue for my position or against your position simply by calling you a ‘pervert’. Why not? Presumably because calling you a pervert is not the same as giving you reasons why I am opposed to your position, much less any reasons for my own position. It is surprising how often people forget this simple point.2

Skipping ahead in the skit, the customer enters a different room, and Spreaders hits him on the head. When the customer reacts, he is told, ‘No, no, no. Hold your head like this, then go Waaah.’ Then Spreaders hits him again. It turns out that this room is for ‘being-hit-on-the-head lessons’. This concept is absurd, but it reveals a second contrast with arguments. Arguments are not physical fights – or verbal fights. The goal of an argument is not to make an opponent’s head hurt (either by hitting him hard or by making him think hard).

When the customer finally reaches the correct room, a professional arguer named Mr Vibrating is sitting behind a desk. The customer asks, ‘Is this the right room for an argument?’ The clinician calmly replies, ‘I’ve told you once.’ The heat rises from there: ‘No, you haven’t’, ‘Yes, I have’, ‘When?’, ‘Just now!’, ‘No, you didn’t’, ‘Yes, I did’, ‘Didn’t’ … ‘I’m telling you, I did’, ‘You did not’. The repetition is finally broken when the clinician asks, ‘Is this a five-minute argument or the full half-hour?’ Then the customer realizes what is going on: he is already arguing. Or is he? The customer and clinician continue to say Yes-No-Yes-No-Yes-No until the customer bursts out, ‘Look. This isn’t an arguments … it’s just contradiction … an argument’s not the same as contradiction.’

Now we have a third contrast with arguments. Contradiction here means denial, so the lesson is that arguments are not mere denials. If you make a claim, I cannot argue against your claim simply by saying, ‘No’. It is again unfortunate how many people forget this simple lesson. They think that they can refute someone merely by denying what they say. They can’t.

Why not? What is missing from a bare denial that is present in an argument? The customer tells us, ‘Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of anything the other person says.’ It is not clear what makes something intellectual, but one interpretation is that an argument needs to present some kind of evidence or reason, whereas a bare denial does not present any evidence or reason against the claim that is denied. To say merely that some claim is false is not to give any evidence against it or any reason why it is false.

This point then leads to the customer’s definition: ‘An argument is a connected series of statements to establish a definite proposition.’ This reference to establishing a proposition is a great start, but it is still not quite right. The first problem is that to establish something is to put it on a firm basis. However, some arguments are not firm or even intended to be firm. For example, if we are deciding whether to go to a park or to a museum, I might say, ‘We went to the park last week, so maybe we ought to go to the museum today. What do you think?’ I intend to give some reason for the proposition that we ought to go to the museum, but I need not claim that it is strong enough to establish that conclusion. Some arguments are too weak to establish anything, but they still give some reasons.

Another problem is that you cannot establish what was already established in advance. To establish a country is to create one that did not exist before. Analogously, to establish a conclusion is presumably also to bring the audience to believe what they did not believe firmly before. However, we often argue for conclusions that everybody strongly believed already. Just imagine that one mathematician had already proven the Pythagorean theorem (the square of the hypotenuse in a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides). Then another mathematician comes up with a new proof that is shorter and makes fewer assumptions. Both proofs are arguments, but the purpose of proving the theorem the second time is not to convince people who did not believe the theorem. Everyone already believed it. Yet mathematicians still might want to prove it in fewer steps with fewer assumptions in order to determine why it is true and which axioms or premises its truth depends on. Their proof aims to explain the theorem but not to establish it. In this respect, Monty Python’s definition is not quite right.

What is an argument?

One small change is enough to solve these problems with Monty Python’s definition. We just need to replace ‘establish’ with ‘present a reason for’. Then an argument can be defined as ‘a connected series of statements intended to present a reason for a proposition’.3 Reasons do not need to be strong or firm and can support what we already believed, so this change allows weak reasons as well as proofs of the Pythagorean theorem to count as arguments.

The statements that present a reason are called premises. The proposition that they are supposed to be a reason for is called a conclusion. Hence, we can say that an argument is a connected series of premises intended to present a reason for a conclusion.⁴

This definition tells us a lot about arguments. It specifies the material that arguments are made of (language, though not necessarily writing or speech), what form they take (premises and conclusions – declarative sentences that can be true or false) and what purposes they serve (to present reasons of some kind). This definition thus covers the aspects – material, form, purpose and cause – that Aristotle required for complete explanation.⁵

It also tells us what arguments are not. Following Monty Python’s definition, ours shows how arguments differ from abuse, fights and denial. In addition, it explains why dictionaries and price tags do not include arguments, since they are not intended to present reasons for any conclusion.

Even where we do expect an argument, we are often disappointed. Speakers can spend a lot of time describing a problem or stating a position without arguing for anything. Many examples occur in political debates and interviews. It is amazing how long politicians can talk without giving any arguments. Reporters or others ask politicians questions about issues of the day. Politicians reply by talking around the issues and then abruptly announcing their stands. They make it clear how their views differ from their opponents’ positions, but they still do not argue for their own positions. Our definition tells us why all of their words together do not amount to an argument. It is because they do not even try to present any reasons at all.

What purposes do arguments serve?

Reasons come in many kinds, and our definition does not specify which kind or kinds of reasons are intended in arguments. This lack of clarity, however, is a feature, not a bug. The non-specific notion of a reason enables our definition to be flexible enough to cover a variety of arguments.

Some arguments give reasons that justify belief in their conclusions. For example, if you doubt that ancestors of the Shona tribe in Zimbabwe used to rule a much larger area, then I can show you a book about the Great Zimbabwe. It will cite established facts that are premises in an argument that will give you strong reasons to believe the conclusion that ancestors of the Shona tribe in Zimbabwe indeed used to rule a much larger area. The cited facts make you justified in believing a conclusion that you did not believe before.

Other arguments give reasons that justify actions instead of beliefs. For example, if you are deciding whether to visit Beijing, then I can show you a book about the Forbidden City. This book will have pictures of the beautiful buildings and artifacts that you can see if you tour Beijing. This book will provide reasons for you to visit Beijing. Of course, I could also cite other facts, such as those about air pollution in Beijing, to give you a reason not to visit Beijing or maybe to give you a reason to visit Beijing in August instead of December. These reasons for action can also be presented in arguments.

It is important that both kinds of justification are distinct from mere persuasion. Imagine that I trick you into believing that ancestors of the Shona tribe in Zimbabwe used to rule a much larger area by showing you a book of pictures of the Forbidden City and somehow convincing you that they are pictures of a monument in Zimbabwe called the Great Zimbabwe. I am not trying to give any real reason, but I am trying to present what you will see as a reason. If you are tricked into believing this conclusion, then I did persuade you, but I did not justify your belief (even though it is true), because your belief is based on falsehoods that are not real reasons for the conclusion that you believe. Hence persuasion is yet another purpose of arguments that is distinct from justification of beliefs or of actions.

Yet another kind of reason is one that explains why something happens – it explains phenomena instead of justifying belief in those phenomena. Imagine that you visit the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan and see that it lies in ruins. You know that it was destroyed. You can see that. But you still wonder what destroyed it. The well-known explanation is that it was destroyed by a tsunami. This explanation can be put in a simple argument: ‘This power plant was hit by a tsunami. Any power plant that is hit by a tsunami is destroyed. That is why (as well as how) this power plant was destroyed.’ This argument gives you a reason why it was destroyed, even though you had already believed that it was destroyed. It explains the phenomenon without justifying belief in the phenomenon.

Is it a problem that our definition allows arguments to give any of these kinds of reasons? No, not at all. On the contrary, it is a virtue of our definition that it encompasses so many kinds of reasons, because arguments can be used to give all of these different kinds of reasons. Just as reasons can justify beliefs or actions or explain phenomena, so can arguments. Arguments can be defined as presenting reasons because the vagueness (or, more precisely, non-specificity) of the notion of reasons matches the variety in the purposes of arguments.

When is an argument (being) given?

Fine, you might think, arguments present reasons. Still, that does not yet tell us how to identify when an argument occurs. How can we tell when speakers are arguing and when they are not? We just need to figure out when they are presenting reasons. But how can we determine that?

It is often surprisingly simple, because speakers use special words to mark arguments and reasons. Imagine that someone says only this:

Marco Polo opened a trade route from Europe to China.

Countries that trade with each other affect each other.

What happened in China affected Europe.

So far, this is just a list of three sentences or propositions. We can turn it into an argument simply by adding the little word ‘so’.

Marco Polo opened a trade route from Europe to China.

Countries that trade with each other affect each other.

So, what happened in China affected Europe.

The word ‘so’ marks this list as an argument by indicating that the first two propositions are presented as reasons for the last proposition. We can pull the same trick with other words:

Because Marco Polo opened a trade route from Europe to China,

and countries that trade with each other affect each other,

what happened in China affected Europe.

In this way, words like ‘so’ and ‘because’ signal that an argument is being given, so we will call them argument markers. Sometimes the sentence after the argument marker is the premise or reason, and we can call these words reason markers or premise markers. In other cases, the sentence after the argument marker is the conclusion, and we can call these words conclusion markers. In our examples, the word ‘so’ is a conclusion marker and the word ‘because’ is a reason marker. Of course, there are many more conclusion markers, including these: ‘therefore’, ‘thus’, ‘hence’, ‘accordingly’, ‘which shows/establishes/proves/is evidence that’, and so on. There are also many more reason markers, including these: ‘since’, ‘for’, ‘which can be shown/established/proven by the fact that’, and so on. All of these words and others like them indicate that an argument is in the offing.

This move is amazing. Adding one little word can miraculously turn a mere list of sentences into an argument. ‘It is raining, and I am carrying an umbrella’ is not an argument, but ‘It is raining, and that is why I am carrying an umbrella’ is an argument, as is ‘It is raining, because I am carrying an umbrella.’ Of course, this second argument is horrible, because my carrying an umbrella cannot explain why it is raining. Still, it is an argument, even if it is a very bad one.

It matters whether a speaker is presenting an argument, because it changes the kinds of criticism the speaker is subject to. If I say, ‘Honghong is short, which shows that she is not a good football player’, then I am offering an argument and can be criticized if the argument is bad – that is, if shortness is not a strong enough reason why someone is bad at football. In contrast, suppose I say only, ‘Honghong is short, and she is not a good football player.’ Now I merely assert both sentences, but do not claim any relation between them. I am not arguing from one to the other or claiming that one is a reason for the other. Hence I cannot be criticized if the argument is bad. That is why it matters whether a speaker is offering an argument.

Because it matters, we need to be careful. Argument markers indicate the presence of an argument – but not always. We cannot simply look at the words. We need to think about what they mean in the context. One of my favourite music albums is Aereo-Plain by John Hartford. One of its songs begins: ‘Because of you I close my eyes each time I yodel, and so shall it be for now.’ Here the word ‘so’ is not being used as an argument marker. If it were, then we could figure out which claim is the premise and which is the conclusion; but there is no premise or conclusion in ‘so shall it be for now’. Another indication is that we cannot substitute a different argument marker; it makes no sense to say, ‘… and therefore shall it be for now’. Instead, what this clause means is simply ‘that is the way it will be for now’.

What about ‘because’? Here there is a conclusion: ‘I close my eyes each time I yodel.’ But what is the premise? The word ‘you’ is not a premise or a reason. Besides, we cannot substitute another argument marker; it makes no sense to say ‘since of you’ or ‘since you’. Hence he might not be using ‘because’ as an argument marker either. In any case, we cannot safely assume that he is giving an argument simply because he uses the word ‘because’ any more than we can assume that he is giving an argument simply because he uses the word ‘so’. We need to look beyond the surface form of the words and think about what those words mean and how they fit into their context in order to determine whether the speaker intends to present some kind of reason for a conclusion. One useful test, which we just saw in action, is to try to substitute other argument markers for the word that we are not sure of.

An argument can be given without any argument markers at all. Sometimes the argument marker is assumed rather than asserted. Indeed, sometimes even the conclusion is not stated openly but only suggested. For example, South Korean President Park Geun-hye was criticized for obtaining cosmetic Botox injections. One of her supporters, Kim Ku-ja, replied, ‘What’s so wrong about a woman getting Botox shots? Why is that a problem?’6 Kim Ku-ja’s rhetorical questions clearly suggest that she believes that there is nothing wrong at all and there is no problem with receiving Botox injections. She suggests this argument: ‘There is nothing wrong with getting Botox shots. People should not criticize anyone for doing what is not wrong. So, people should not criticize Park Geun-hye for getting Botox shots.’ Nonetheless, Kim Ku-ja does not actually assert any premise or conclusion. She only asks questions, and questions cannot be premises or conclusions in arguments (since they are not declarative). Hence, Kim Ku-ja does not actually assert any argument – she only indirectly suggests one.

Implied arguments like this demonstrate why we need to be careful in thinking about whether a speaker is offering an argument and also about what argument they are giving. Our definition can guide this investigation by leading us to ask whether the speakers intend to present any kind of reason, but the answer will remain unclear in some cases. When we are not sure whether a speaker intends to offer an argument, we can still ask what the argument would be and whether it would be any good. After all, what matters is whether there is a reason for the conclusion.