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Philosophy

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    See Argument and Argumentation with a large Bibliography: "An argument can be defined as a complex symbolic structure where some parts, known as the premises, offer support to another part, the conclusion. Alternatively, an argument can be viewed as a complex speech act consisting of one or more acts of premising (which assert propositions in favor of the conclusion), an act of concluding, and a stated or implicit marker (“hence”, “therefore”) that indicates that the conclusion follows from the premises."
    – Mauro ALLEGRANZA
    Commented May 10 at 13:39
  • i think it would help if you narrowed down the focus of your question.
    – andrós
    Commented May 10 at 22:41
  • There is a minimal definition, as in Wikipedia or IEP, which says, basically, that an argument is a list of premises followed by the conclusion, all of them truth-apt. However, in practice, one also expects a chain (or interconnected chains) of inference steps that connect the former to the latter, and the steps are expected to be self-explanatory. This is closer to what is called derivation in formal theories. If a text can be parsed into such chain(s) of inferences philosophers call it an argument.
    – Conifold
    Commented May 11 at 5:46