Build Your Brain By Making Better Arguments

Making formally sound and psychological convincing arguments is hard mental work.    It is a form of critical reasoning and therefore practicing it is a great technique for improving your thinking (cognitive) skills.   Argumentation and how to use it to improve cognitive performance will be a frequent topic on the Next Brain Blog.

We can learn how to make good arguments much as we can learn to make good food, music or art.   It takes an understanding of the fundamentals of argumentation, tons of practice and taking on new and challenging situations regularly. Fortunately, the fundamentals of argumentation are clear, there are many opportunities to constructively practice at home, work and in the community and new challenges are presented to us daily.

Getting started in the art of argument requires a clear statement of the point you want to make  (the conclusion) as well as a clear statement of what justifies it (premises).

Just writing down your premises and conclusion can be a difficult challenge but one that adds enormously to the clarity of thought.

A good argument is one where the conclusion can be logically inferred from the premises, is free of logical fallacies, anticipates and deflates counter arguments, has well-justified premises and clearly delineates factual claims from opinions.

For a great introduction to the ideas of formal and informal validity of arguments check out the post, What Makes a Good Argument? on the Thinking Matters Blog.  It covers the 9 types for formal validity you are likely to use as well as 8 common informal mistakes you are likely to commit.

You can show that your argument is formally valid by demonstrating the conclusion (Q) follows from the premises (P) using one or more of the rules of deductive logic.  For example, one rule is called modus ponens  (and I quote from Thinking Matters):

“Modus ponens is Latin. It means “the mode which affirms”. Knowing the English translation makes it very easy to follow:

  1. P –> Q
  2. P
  3. Q

In plain English: if P, then Q; P, therefore Q. “P” and “Q” represent propositions, so it’s helpful to substitute in simple phrases for them, to get a better idea of what the rule is saying. For example, let P mean “it is raining”, and let Q mean “the ground is wet”. So:

  1. If it is raining, then the ground is wet.
  2. It is raining.
  3. Therefore, the ground is wet.

As you see, this is really a very simple and obvious rule—as you’ll find that all the fundamental rules of logic are.”

Formal validity is not enough. Your argument must also must avoid falling into a logic trap. For example, consider the argument from ignorance (quoting from Thinking Matters):

“Arguing that a belief is false because there is insufficient evidence for it.

  • No one can disprove the existence of God. Therefore, God exists.
  • There’s no evidence that the Red Sea was ever parted. Therefore, the account in Exodus is a myth. (Notice, though, that an argument saying that there is evidence that the Red Sea was not ever parted would not be fallacious.)”

I have heard many arguments made this way. It may  take you an hour or so to work through all 17 principles and really understand each one. However, it is well worth your time.  With a basic understanding you can use them as a quick checklist to refine the clarity, power and validity of your arguments.

I am interested to hear from readers that practice the art of argumentation and how it has impacted your effectiveness as a thinker.

Sources: Image of Thinking Cap, Image of Logical Fallacy