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Philosophy vocabulary · Logic and Argument

Sound

Meaning in philosophy, with examples

/saʊnd/adjectiveCore term

In philosophy, sound means: Describes a deductive argument that is valid and has only true premises, so that its conclusion is guaranteed to be true.

In Turkish: sağlam

How it is used

Used in logic classes and critical discussion: valid form plus true premises makes a sound argument. The noun is soundness. Outside logic, sound simply means reliable or sensible (sound advice).

Example sentences

  1. The argument is valid, but it isn't sound, because the second premise is false.

  2. Critics rarely question the logic; they question whether the argument is sound.

Common collocations

  • sound argument
  • logically sound
  • soundness and validity
  • validDescribes an argument whose form guarantees that if all the premises are true, the conclusion must be true as well.
  • premiseA statement that is given as a reason in an argument and from which the conclusion is supposed to follow.
  • argumentA set of statements in which some of them, the premises, are offered as reasons for accepting another one, the conclusion.
  • truthThe property a statement or belief has when it matches how things are; philosophers disagree about what this matching really consists in.

More terms: Logic and Argument

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