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An argument that is not valid is said to be "invalid". An example of a valid (and sound) argument is given by the following well-known syllogism: All men are mortal. (True) Socrates is a man. (True) Therefore, Socrates is mortal. (True) What makes this a valid argument is not that it has true premises and a true conclusion.
An argument can be valid but nonetheless unsound if one or more premises are false; if an argument is valid and all the premises are true, then the argument is sound. For example, John might be going to work on Wednesday. In this case, the reasoning for John's going to work (because it is Wednesday) is unsound. The argument is only sound on ...
Being a valid argument does not necessarily mean the conclusion will be true. It is valid because if the premises are true, then the conclusion has to be true. This can be proven for any valid argument form using a truth table which shows that there is no situation in which there are all true premises and a false conclusion. [2]
deductive argument An argument where the conclusion necessarily follows from the premises, intended to provide conclusive proof of the conclusion. deductive consequence See syntactic consequence. [81] deductive validity 1. The property of a deductive argument where, if the premises are true, the conclusion must also be true. [82] 2.
Such reasoning itself, or the chain of intermediates representing it, has also been called an argument, more fully a deductive argument. In many cases, an argument can be known to be valid by means of a deduction of its conclusion from its premises but non-deductive methods such as Venn diagrams and other graphic procedures have been proposed.
The name "disjunctive syllogism" derives from its being a syllogism, a three-step argument, and the use of a logical disjunction (any "or" statement.) For example, "P or Q" is a disjunction, where P and Q are called the statement's disjuncts. The rule makes it possible to eliminate a disjunction from a logical proof. It is the rule that
It is possible to have a deductive argument that is logically valid but is not sound. Fallacious arguments often take that form. The following is an example of an argument that is “valid”, but not “sound”: Everyone who eats carrots is a quarterback. John eats carrots. Therefore, John is a quarterback.
In this example, the first premise is a conditional statement in which "P" is the antecedent and "Q" is the consequent. The second premise "affirms" the antecedent. The conclusion, that the consequent must be true, is deductively valid. A mixed hypothetical syllogism has four possible forms, two of which are valid, while the other two are invalid.