Testing an Argument

There are three tests that an argument must pass in order for the argument to be deemed good. First, the premises must have a good reason to be true. Second, the premises has more reason to be true than the conclusion. Third, the argument must be either valid or strong.

An example argument would be Michael Scott eats fast food every day. People who eat fast food are overweight. Michael Scott is overweight.

This argument is considered valid, because although the first premise and the conclusion may be true, the second premise may not be true. There is no way to tell that everyone who eats fast food everyday is overweight. Take for example Chad Ochocinco who is a pro football player. He says he eats McDonalds everyday and is not overweight. This is a bad argument, because there is no way of knowing whether the premises are actually true or not.

The three tests that we must run on this argument will either validate or invalidate how strong the argument is. The first question we must answer is whether the premises provided are plausible. From an observation we can tell that Michael Scott eats fast food every day. The second premise cannot be validated in complete truth, because not everyone who eats fast food every day is overweight. As mentioned earlier Chad Ochocinco says he eats fast food every day. He is not overweight, because he works out every day. The second question asks if the premises are more plausible than the conclusion. We can make an observation that Michael Scott comes to the office and eats fast food everyday for lunch. Our conclusion which states that he is overweight is a subjective claim. A person’s description of overweight varies from person to person. And lastly the argument is only considered valid because if the premises were true there is no way the conclusion would be false. This argument given as an example is therefore a bad argument.