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Philosophy vocabulary · Logic and Argument

Claim

Meaning in philosophy, with examples

/kleɪm/nounCore term

In philosophy, claim means: A statement that someone puts forward as true and is ready to defend, often the main point that an essay or argument tries to support.

In Turkish: iddia, sav, tez

How it is used

Found everywhere in philosophical writing: make, defend, support, challenge or reject a claim. It is also a verb (Hume claims that...). When reporting other views, philosophers prefer neutral verbs such as claim, argue and hold to says.

Example sentences

  1. My central claim is that the objection misreads Kant's idea of duty.

  2. That is a strong claim, and you need more than one example to support it.

Common collocations

  • make a claim
  • defend a claim
  • central claim
  • strong claim
  • knowledge claim
  • argumentA set of statements in which some of them, the premises, are offered as reasons for accepting another one, the conclusion.
  • premiseA statement that is given as a reason in an argument and from which the conclusion is supposed to follow.
  • conclusionThe statement that an argument tries to establish, supported by the premises that lead up to it.
  • objectionA reason given against a claim, theory or argument, suggesting that it may be false, unclear or badly supported.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Logic and Argument

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