To use another example, if you praise a person for risking her life in order to save a drowning child, then you are making an evaluative comment about the person's ethical conduct. To evaluate an argument is to criticize or assess an argument. To evaluate an argument is to assess its persuasiveness. We are determining whether or not the argument is persuasive. By this it is not meant that we simply are asking if anyone accepted the argument.
People accept poor arguments quite frequently.
Rather, we are asking if the argument is worthy or being accepted. More specifically, we are asking if the premises are good reasons to accept the argument's conclusion. Notice that the word premises is italicized. This is to emphasize that when we evaluate an argument are not asking if we agree with the conclusion . We are asking if the premises are good reasons to believe the conclusion .