Chapter 5 Flashcards
Premises: What to accept and why
Q: What is a priori statement?
A: A statement that can be known to be true or false on the basis of logic and reasoning alone, prior to experience. The statement “All squares have four sides” is a priori. If a claim is known a priori to be true, it is acceptable as a premise is an argument. If it is known a priori to be false, it is unacceptable.
Q: What is a posteriori statement?
A: A statement that cannot be known to be true or false on the basis of logic and reasoning alone. On the contrary, it requires experience or evidence. The statement “Calcium is needed for strong bones and teeth” is posteriori. A posteriori statements are also called empirical.
Q: What is empirical?
A: See posteriori
Q: What is common knowledge?
A: A statement that is known by most people or is widely believed by most people and against which there is no known evidence. What is a matter, of common knowledge, will vary from time and place.
Q: What is a testimony?
A: Typically, statements based on personal experience or personal knowledge. A statement is accepted on the basis of a person’s testimony if his or her asserting it renders it acceptable. We can rationally accept a claim on the basis of another person’s testimony unless (1) the claim is implausible, or (2) the person or the source in which the claim is quoted lacks credibility, or (3) The claim goes beyond what the person could know from his or her own experience and competence.
Q: What is authority?
A: One who has specialized knowledge of a subject and is recognized to be an expert on that subject. Appeals to authority are legitimate provided the claim supported is in an area that is genuinely an area of knowledge; the person citied is recognized as an expert within that field; The experts in the field agree; and the person citied is credible and reliable
Q: What is the faulty appeal to authority?
A: Argument based on authority in which one or more of the conditions of proper appeal to authority are not met.
Q: What is provisional acceptance of conclusion?
A: Acceptance of a conclusion because it is related, by proper reasoning, to premises that have been provisionally accepted. In such a case, the conclusion can be said to be provisionally established: if the premises are acceptable, the conclusion is acceptable too.
What is the provisional acceptance of premises?
A: Tentative supposition of premises in a context where there is no special basis for regarding them as unacceptable.
Q: What does refuted mean?
A: A statement is refuted if and only if it is shown, on the basis of acceptable evidence, to be false.
Q: What is Inconsistency?
A: Two statements are inconsistent with each other if, putting them together, we would arrive at a contradiction. A single statement is also inconsistent if it entails a contradiction. Such a statement is not acceptable because we know a prior that it is false. Explicit inconsistency occurs when the contradiction is apparent on the surface, in the way the statements are worded. Implicit inconsistency occurs when the meaning of the statements allows us to infer, by valid deduction, a further statement that is a contradiction.
Q: What is begging the question?
A: A fallacy that occurs when one or more premises either state the conclusion (usually in slightly different words) or presuppose that the conclusion is true. Arguments that beg the question are also sometimes called circular arguments
