Seven types of argument

We've explored 4 types of arguments about reality and practised distinguishing between them.

Before we move on, we're going to practice them, or rather we're going to practice asking the types of questions that would require factual, causal, definitional, or resemblance arguments.

And we're going to do it Balderdash-style.

For example, here's a picture of a guy who's fallen over in the storage room in an office.

We'll make up 4 questions based on each of our 4 reality-based argument types.

Specific vs general scale arguments

Before we do another example, we should point out that you can argue about issues of any scale:

• You can argue about specific situations with specific people, places, things, and actions.
• Or you can argue about general trends involving wider populations, regions, forces, and events.

In the example above, we asked questions about the specific situation in the image—asking questions about a specific accident involving a specific person in a specific room.

For this page, let's stick with the specific scale (we'll try a general scale later).

Here's another example. Let's ask a question for each argument type, based on this specific situation:

Do you get the idea?

• Treat the image as a specific situation with a specific person.
• Make up four questions, each based on one of the argument types we've seen.
• Try to think of questions that might actually be contested in this imagined scenario, questions you can imagine characters arguing about.

If you think you've got the hang of it, let's move on to some new argument types!