How to Defend Your Philosophy

An essential part of philosophy is being able to back up your claim and support it with valid arguments. Nobody is going to agree with your view if you cannot convince him or her why yours is the best choice. Therefore, your arguments must be good ones and to be able to produce good arguments, you must first understand the nature of arguments. Although it may seem a bit elementary, for most people believe they understand what arguments are, you would be surprised at just how many people present structurally flawed arguments due to the fact that they do not fully understand all the pieces that comprise an argument.

When an argument is spoken of in the philosophical sense, it does not refer to a shouting match, a fistfight, or any other kind of contentious dispute. In philosophy, an argument is a set of statements in which one or more of the statements attempt to provide reasons or evidence for the truth of another statement. For example, if you make a statement that you believe humans have free will, you must then give reasons as to why you think that, what proves that statement. These reasons that defend your previous statement are your argument.

An argument consists primarily of three statements. However, the most important ones are the premise and the conclusion. A premise statement is one in an argument that serves to provide evidence for the truth of a claim. The conclusion statement is the one in an argument that the premise is claimed to support of imply. Perhaps the most important step in analyzing an argument is correctly identifying the premise and conclusion statements. Most of the time, the premise is the first statement in the argument and the conclusion is the last. However, as that is not always the case, it is important to know the clues that help you to identify and distinguish between the two.

When identifying the premise, there are certain terms, called premise indicators, that usually indicate that a premise will follow. Such terms include words such as because, since, for, and given that. Likewise, there are conclusion indicators that hint that a conclusion will follow. They are words such as therefore, so, hence, thus, and consequently. So if you are ever unsure of whether a statement in an argument is the premise or the conclusion, recognizing these words can help you to distinguish which one is being referred to.

Another important part of arguments is for them to flow logically, or effortlessly. For instance, an example of a logical argument would be: "If he is a celebrity, then he is famous. He is a celebrity. Therefore, he is famous." If these statements had been different or any other order, they would not have made as much sense. For example, suppose you said: "If he is a celebrity, then he is famous. He is famous. Therefore, he is a celebrity." That one change in the order of the words and sentences completely changed the argument and made it less comprehensive and fluid.

Being able to argue your point is important when making a philosophical claim. However, to do this, you must correctly understand the components of an argument and how to use them correctly. This is important both is listening to another's argument and presenting your own.