By Matthew Van Cleave
A
good argument is not only valid, but also sound. Soundness is defined in terms of validity, so
since we have already defined validity, we can now rely on it to define
soundness. A
sound argument is a valid argument that has all true
premises. That means that the conclusion
of a sound argument will always be true.
Why? Because if an argument is
valid, the premises transmit truth to the conclusion on the assumption of the
truth of the premises. But if the
premises are actually true, as they are in a sound argument, then since all
sound arguments are valid, we know that the conclusion of a sound argument is true. Compare the last two Obama examples from the
previous section. While the first
argument was sound, the second argument was not sound, although it was valid. The relationship between soundness and
validity is easy to specify: all sound arguments are valid arguments, but not
all valid arguments are sound arguments.
Although soundness is what any argument should
aim for, we will not be talking much about soundness in this book. The reason for this is that the only
difference between a valid argument and a sound argument is that a sound
argument has all true premises. But how
do we determine whether the premises of an argument are actually true? Well, there are lots of ways to do that,
including using Google to look up an answer, studying the relevant subjects in
school, consulting experts on the relevant topics, and so on. But none of these activities have anything to
do with logic, per se. The relevant
disciplines to consult if you want to know whether a particular statement is
true is almost never logic! For example,
logic has nothing to say regarding whether or not protozoa are animals or
whether there are predators that aren’t in the animal kingdom. In order to learn whether those statements
are true, we’d have to consult biology, not logic. Since this is a logic textbook, however, it
is best to leave the question of what is empirically true or false to the
relevant disciplines that study those topics.
And that is why the issue of soundness, while crucial for any good
argument, is outside the purview of logic.
