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I'm trying to come up with some basic arguments to construct a philosophy paper and I am wondering if the following arguments are valid and sound. Thanks for the help!

If humans have flaws then they are imperfect beings. Humans have flaws. Therefore they are imperfect beings.

Either humans are perfect or they have flaws. Humans aren’t perfect. Therefore they have flaws.

Either beauty is objective or subjective. Beauty is not the same for everyone. Therefore beauty is determined by personal opinion.

If laws achieve order then laws benefit society. Laws provide order. Therefore laws benefit society.

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  • The first argument seems to use synonyms. Flaw and imperfect express the same thing. The second, uses flaw as well. The third is is fallacious. Because beauty is not the same does not make the term beauty subjective. Perhaps the definition of objective is not clear & that is why different people say something else. Your conclusion will be off because if that. The third argument is misleading but simple. All laws certainly do not benefit society. You can say for sure some laws like those about stop signs benefits society. Valid does not mean true in reality.
    – Logikal
    Commented Apr 11, 2018 at 13:21
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    Soundness expresses the argument must be valid and the premises must also be true in reality. None of the argument examples are sound that you provide. You will not be able to have a false premise in an argument for it to be sound.
    – Logikal
    Commented Apr 11, 2018 at 13:25
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    What your goal ? You can manufacture an inifinite number of them: All men are mortal,... Commented Apr 11, 2018 at 13:29
  • The third one (regarding beauty) is debatable. Commented Apr 11, 2018 at 13:29
  • Why trying to collect of "catalogue" ? The [Aristotelian] discovery of "formalization" i.e. of representing valid argument with schema: "All A are B. All B are C. Therefore: All A are C." is exactly to encode with a single formula an infinite collection of instances. Commented Apr 11, 2018 at 14:03

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If humans have flaws then they are imperfect beings. Humans have flaws. Therefore they are imperfect beings.

Valid, although ambiguous in quantifiers. This could be fallacious if the inconsistent quantifiers are added. Two examples of consistent insertion of quantifiers would be "If a human has a flaw, then that human is an imperfect being. Some humans have flaws. Therefore those humans are imperfect beings." and "If all humans have flaws, then all humans are imperfect beings. All humans have flaws. Therefore all humans are imperfect beings." An example of inconsistent quantifiers would be "If a human has a flaw, then that human is an imperfect being. Some humans have flaws. Therefore all humans are imperfect beings."

Either humans are perfect or they have flaws. Humans aren’t perfect. Therefore they have flaws.

Also valid, with the above caveat.

Either beauty is objective or subjective. Beauty is not the same for everyone. Therefore beauty is determined by personal opinion.

Invalid. The first sentence introduces a claim that isn't used at all. The second sentence is presented as if it proves the third, but it doesn't. The second sentence eliminates one possibility (beauty is determined by something constant across all humans), but one cannot conclude, just because one possibility has been eliminated, that a second possibility must be the case. That is implicitly a false dilemma.

If laws achieve order then laws benefit society. Laws provide order. Therefore laws benefit society.

Has the quantifier issue mentioned before, and switches form "achieve" to "provide". Other than that, valid. The quantifier issue is more of a red flag here than in the previous argument; I can easily see someone arguing "Laws provide order, X is a law, therefore X provides order", which is fallacious if "Laws provide order" is a statement about laws in general, and not all laws. That is, it's possible for one law to not provide order, but it to still be the case that the total effect of all laws taken together is to provide order, just as it's possible for the total amount of work done by a team to be positive, even if one team member doesn't do anything. Another issue is the ambiguity of "benefit". "Benefit" can mean "provide something positive", or it can mean "has a net effect that is positive". So if a law has one effect that is positive, but another effect that is negative and of larger magnitude, the law would satisfy the first definition but not the second.

As for whether the arguments are sound, that has an element of opinion, and depends largely on how you're defining your terms.

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