Arguments help us to acquire new beliefs and gather information which was not previously known. However, not all beliefs can be considered as arguments. When you read an opinion article in the newspaper, listening to some debate show on television or having a discussion with friends on a hot topic, it is possible that they are not arguing but only stating their beliefs. Stating beliefs without reasons is not an argument.
There are several statements that may sound like an argument but actually are non-arguments. These can be things like explanations, reports, instructions, and so on. Let’s look at some types of non-arguments.
Explanation
An explanation is a set of statements that are facts, that help to clarify the causes, context, and consequences of those facts. An explanation has statements that are presented as premises without giving a conclusion. Therefore, explanations are used to emphasise the facts rather than to convince you about those facts. An example of an explanation can be the following statement.
In 2018, New York University wanted to publish a yearly magazine, as per the agreement with the publishers the cost of the magazine was decided to be $35 for the university students. However, several university students received the magazine for $50 and raised complaints about the same. This led the university to get in touch with the publisher. Eventually, the reason for not receiving the discount was realised. The magazine was not received by the students at the expected price because the person with whom the university had discussed the discount had left the company. As the new employee was not updated about the price changes the magazine was not received at a discount.
In the above example, the statements are not made to convince you about the discount but statements are made to lay out the sequence of events for the students so they understand what happened and why they did not get the discount.
Advice
Like statements, advice is not given to convince but as a collection of statements to give an opinion or recommendation as a guide to action.
An example can be the following,
A good way to caramelise onions faster is to add baking soda
The above statement does not argue that you should add baking soda to caramelise onions but just a recommendation for trying to caramelise the onions faster. The advice, however, could be used as part of an argument, since it is a statement.
So to form an argument the above sentence could be used in the following form:
Onions take long to caramelise and a good way to caramelise them faster is to add baking soda. Therefore, you should add baking soda to your onions for faster caramelisation.
Instruction
Instructions are not arguments as they do not providing reasons for anything. Basically, instructions are not trying to make a point, they are just there to provide detailed information about how something should be done or operated. For example, a recipe for baking bread, just states what steps should you follow to get the perfect bread.
The lesson to learn from this is that it is not always easy to identify arguments. Sometimes it looks as though some information is presented as an argument when it is not. In the next section, we will learn about recognising arguments.