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Essay on Philosophy-5
An argument is a connected series of statements or propositions, some of which are intended to provide support, justification or evidence for the truth of another statement or proposition. Arguments consist of one or more premises and a conclusion. The premises are those statements that are taken to provide the support or evidence; the conclusion is that which the premises allegedly support. For example, the following is an argument:
The death penalty should be adopted only if it deters murder. However, it could only do this if murderers understood the consequences of their actions before acting and since this is not so, we must reject adopting the death penalty.
The conclusion of this argument is the final statement: "we must reject adopting the death penalty." The other statements are the premises; they are offered as reasons or justification for this claim. The premises of an argument are sometimes also called the "data", the "grounds" or the "backup" given for accepting the conclusion.
Because arguments are attempts to provide evidence or support for a certain claim, they often contain words such as "therefore", "thus", "hence", "consequently", or "so" before their conclusions. Similarly, words or expressions such as "because", "inasmuch as", "since", "for the reason that", etc., are often found accompanying the premises of an argument. Such "indicators" can aid in the task of identifying the conclusion of the argument, which often comes last in the series of statements making up the argument, as in the example above, but can also come first, or even in the middle, such as in these examples:
Councilwoman Radcliff is the best person for the job. This is because she has the most legislative experience of all the candidates, and she will not place the interests of corporations above those of the people............
