Okuzeka
Philosophy vocabulary · Logic and Argument

Valid

Meaning in philosophy, with examples

/ˈvælɪd/adjectiveCore term

In philosophy, valid means: Describes an argument whose form guarantees that if all the premises are true, the conclusion must be true as well.

In Turkish: geçerli

How it is used

In logic, validity is about form, not about truth: a valid argument can have false premises and a false conclusion. The noun is validity. In everyday English valid just means acceptable (a valid point, a valid ticket), which is much looser.

Example sentences

  1. 'All fish can fly; salmon are fish; so salmon can fly' is valid but obviously unsound.

  2. To test validity, ask whether the premises could be true while the conclusion is false.

Common collocations

  • valid argument
  • logically valid
  • valid form
  • test for validity
  • soundDescribes a deductive argument that is valid and has only true premises, so that its conclusion is guaranteed to be true.
  • 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.
  • deductionReasoning in which the conclusion is meant to follow necessarily from the premises, so that true premises guarantee a true conclusion.

This word in other fields

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

More terms: Logic and Argument

Practise with graded reading

Reading at the right level is the fastest way to make new words stick. Pick free English books by level: