A detailed examination of the elements of an argument

A detailed examination of the elements or structure of something, typically as a basis for a deeper discussion or assessing the criteria used to sustain an interpretation.

To break into smaller --yet significant pieces-- to determine how the parts and the whole supportively relate or cohere together.

Similar words: investigation, inspection, survey, study, scrutiny; exploration, probe, research, review, evaluation, interpretation, dissection.

Next.

How is the quality of any analysis necessary, or sufficient, to make a clear point?

Basic to any analysis is a description of how we know something with evidence and examples sufficient to a) define broad terms with examples, b) establish an argument's component parts, and c) review what criticisms others have made.

advanced

any analysis may be improved by a thesis statement or clearly stated working hypothesis to which examples are attached in order to provide evidence to support or refute the premise of research.

Generally the more vague or sweeping an argument is the more evidence is required to sustain its assertions.

The more particular and specific the argument is, the clearer the examples need to be with respect to an explicit premise.

historical

Many historic questions raise serious problems about how we know from a range of evidence from material remains, to written records,or transcriptions of orally derived traditions, or graphical materials such as paintings, sketches, maps, drawings, plans and the like.

Without a means of weighing the evidence the question of veracity -- or who do we believe-- is a nagging influence on writers who seek to distinguish facts from fiction and authoritative estimations from guesses or opinions.

We all have opinions, or doxa in the Greek tradition that are often biased, if not at complete odds with reality.

For example, the Roman's had no knowledge of the Mayan civilization of Central and southern Mexico (and vice versa) but that did not mean that these cultures did not exist in reality.

The veritas, or truth of the matter is both advanced civilizations were ignorant of one another's vast achievements.

History is filled with errors, masquerading as facts.

Philosophy is --in many senses-- on a tangent to history because philosophers ask how we know anything, let alone the ways we distinguish the fictions from the facts.

• By fictions --for example-- consider that people believed that the earth was the center of the celestial movement of stars, planets and even the sun.

• The fact is that the sun in the heavens is at one focal point in an ellipse around which the other planets, asteroids, comets and even our earth revolve.

Philosophical discussion that bears on the quality of scientific, historical, and technological questions.

features -- readily distinguishable qualities -- distinctive attribute -- part.

elements -- separable entities -- an essential part, or aspect of the whole.

structure -- the way in which anything fits together ; hence the arrangement of and relations among or between the parts or elements of something complex.

characteristics -- the qualities and quantities, timing and distribution of the defining facets that describe a situation, people places, or things.
or
a feature or quality belonging typically to and serving to identify a person, place, or thing.

Next.

Scientific evidence must be necessary and sufficient to establish a refutable statement -- that is a premise that can be challenged by finding evidence to sustain, refute or not influence the standing of a proposition.

The ideas about the veracity of findings in science involve concepts about necessary and sufficient conditions.

The following explanations are from:

Copyright © Norman Swartz, 1997
Department of Philosophy
Simon Fraser University

• sufficient, "it suffices (i.e. it is sufficient for) an object's having four sides that it is a square. Or, again, it is sufficient for your having something to drink that you have a glass of " wine or water.

• necessary, "we all know that air is necessary for (human) life. Without air, there is no (human) life. Similarly, a microscope (or some other instrument) is necessary for human beings to see viruses. (Viruses are too small to be seen by the naked eye.)"

• necessary and sufficient

"Pick any two conditions whatsoever. The relationship between the two conditions must be exactly one of the following four possibilities:

The first is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for the second; or
The first is a sufficient, but not a necessary, condition for the second; or
The first is both a necessary and a sufficient condition for the second; or
The first is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for the second."

The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy suggests the following:

"A handy tool in the search for precise definitions is the specification of necessary and/or sufficient conditions for the application of a term, the use of a concept, or the occurrence of some phenomenon or event.

For example, without water and oxygen, there would be no human or other forms of life; hence these things are necessary conditions for the existence of human beings."

Next.

for example, the case of:

Nature versus nurture; or inherited versus acquired traits

Like most people we tend to see our behavior and that of others as the products of either nature or nurture. By nature we mean our inherited disposition or genetic endowments as opposed to nurture which refers to our upbringing and conditioning in society, the families and institutional settings.

There is the very ancient argument over inheritance or environment as the most decisive factor in a person or a societies' success or failure in meeting worldly challenges. Yet this may be far too simple a dichotomy with which to understand people and history.

Today, however there is a great debate suggesting that nature (genetics) and nurture (environment) are not sufficient to explain how we behave, develop and thrive.

In some cases, both the inherited and the existing conditions bring out hidden abilities.

Still, there's no reason to ignore the debate, but to place it in the proper perspective that allows us to see that each piece fits together to for a more coherent whole; thus people and societies are products of both environment and inheritance. Nature is certainly necessary for our understanding of the roles that nurturing or nourishment perform, but by themselves, neither nature nor nurture are necessary and sufficient to explain what we see in ourselves, others and the creatures around us in this world.

It remains uncertain whether either nature or nurture is more decisive than the other for it appears to be both that happen to shape the personal, if not the social conditions of our existence, but both point to yet another kind of criteria -- known as emergent properties that are apparent only when the necessity of nature is sufficiently nurtured to produce the observed effects.

There are diseases, as well as developmental conditions in biology that reflect the role of all three (Nature, nurture, and emergent properties) in creating the living world we see and the study of these conditions in biology is called epigenesis.

See also:

What really are genes?

The Triple helix?

Genetics

Index to genetic's related topics