ABSTRACT
The term argument often refers to a verbal disagreement. In that sense, an argument is something that contentious people enjoy but that agreeable people attempt to avoid. In the context of deductive logic, however, an argument is a sequence of assertions, some of which are premises and one of which is called the conclusion. The scientific method may be viewed as a repetitious process in which induction and deduction occur in an alternating fashion. Based on observations of natural phenomena or on the results of controlled experiments, one induces hypotheses in terms of which to explain the phenomena one has observed. The distinction between logical and plausible arguments is very similar to the distinction between deductive and inductive inference, but is somewhat more general. Sometimes arguments are easy to recognize, and sometimes they are not. Usually when a logical argument is expressed in a formal way, the conclusion is the last assertion.
