Final Exam: Basics revised Flashcards
1
Q
What are the three theories of truth?
A
- Correspondance
- Truth corresponds to the world. It describes what happens or happened.
- Coherence
- Truth is coherent with the world.
- Unless something violates a claim or law of the world, it is true.
- Redundancy theory of truth
- the word true is redundant
- “snow is white is true” just means “snow is white”
2
Q
What does “begging the question” mean?
A
- It means that the argument would not convince anyone, who did not already believe its conclusion to be true.
- It refers to circularity
3
Q
What are logical validity and soundness?
A
- An argument is deductively valid, if and only if its conclusion has to be true, if all its premises are true.
- Structural attribute of an argument
- An argument is sound if it is deductively valid and all its premises are true. Only deductively valid arguments can be sound
4
Q
What is reductio ad absurdem?
A
- Method of proving an argument is true.
- You take the opposite thesis of what you want to prove and then expand on it, until it reaches an absurd conclusion. Thus proving the opposite wrong, an the inital argument right.
5
Q
What is the surprise principle?
A
- inductive arguments become stronger, if evidence would not be surprising if they were true and if evidence would be surprising, if they were not true.
6
Q
What is the “only game in town” fallacy?
A
- Even if you cannot come up with a better explanation for something, that does not serve as reason to accept an unlikely theory.
7
Q
What are abductive arguments and what does determine their strength?
A
- non-deductive, “inference to best explanation” arguments
- Strength depends on
- Plausibility of theory
- Plausibility of rival theories
8
Q
What are inductive arguments and what does affect their strength?
A
- Non-deductive argument, that predicts something based on observation or samples.
- Strength affecting factors:
- sample size
- sample bias
