5. Refutation Flashcards
acceptability
feature of premises, a premise is more acceptable the more likely it is to be accepted
adequacy
feature of all premises taken together, premises are more adequate the more they support the conclusion
relevance
feature of individual premises, premises are more relevant if they provide support for the conclusion
burden of proof
when a controversial claim is put forward, the person making it is expected to offer reasons
counterarguments
an argument intended to show that the conclusion of another argument is false
counterexamples
an example that shows a general claim is false
method of absurd examples
showing that an argument form is not valid by providing an instance of that form in which the premises could be true while the conclusion is false , most effective when premises are true and conclusion is false
descriptive statistics
recording and analyzing data about observations, easy for it to be misleading because you decide what to include
strengths and weaknesses of mean, mode, median
- mean is sensitive to outliers, median and mode are not
- if you want the average, use the mean
- if the data is very high or low on one end, you might want the median
inductive generalization
arguing from features of an unobserved population to features of an observed population
n% of observed G objects of F, therefore n% of all G objects are G
statistical syllogism
arguing for a claim about a sample based on features of a population
n% of G objects are F, therefore a given G object is n% likely to be F
criteria required for persuasive inductive generalization
size of sample
representative sample
stratification
a way of achieving a random sample by ensuring that proportions of relevant subgroups in your sample match the proportions of those groups within the population
pitfalls for surveys
voluntary response surveys and selection effects
biased questions
