Lecture 7

Question 1

What should you do to avoid improper wording?

Answer 1

• follow the principle of charity: make the argument as strong as possible
• be consistent with the language

Question 2

How do you avoid missing premises?

Answer 2

• include all the premises explicitly given by the author/speaker.
• include all the implicit premises
• reword the explicit premises so that they conform to one of our standard patterns
• include parenthetical justification

Question 3

How to avoid unnecessary premises

Answer 3

• don’t include non-argumentative material
• A speaker, author may repeat a premise conclusion, but just put it in the standard form reconstruction once.

Question 4

The point of evaluating arguments

Answer 4

• Evaluating the argument is not being hypercritical, excessively negative, nit-picky, or winning

it is about figuring out “What is reasonable to believe”

Question 5

What should you do if an argument is ill-formed?

Answer 5

Point out that the premise just don’t support the conclusion

Question 6

What should you do if the argument is valid

Answer 6

Focus on whether the premises are r/j/r to believe .

Question 7

What should you do if the argument is cogent

Answer 7

(i) whether the premise are r/i/r to believe
(ii) whether the argument is defeated

Question 8

Why shouldn’t you accept an argument simply because you believe a conclusion?

Answer 8

there can be weak argument for true conclusions

Question 9

Why shouldn’t you accept an argument simply because you believe a conclusion?

Answer 9

there can be a weak arguments for true conclusions

Question 10

Why should you focus on wether or not an individual premise is rjr to beleive

Answer 10

(i) you have good reason to think the premise is false or

(ii) you have good reason to suspend judgment about it .

Question 11

How should we categorize individual inferences

Answer 11

As either invalid or not cogent

Question 12

What is substantial criticism of a premise

Answer 12

Is not r/j/r to believe because either
- you have good reason to think the premise is false or
- you have good reason to suspend judgment about it

Question 13

What is a good test of wether a criticism is substantial

Answer 13

how a reasonable defender of the premise/ argument would react?

Question 14

how do you criticize the premise in the main argument

Answer 14

you should criticize the reason offered for

Question 15

Some guidelines for evaluating premises

Answer 15

Based on the total available evidence you have at a given time you should either believe,
disbelieve or suspend judgment about such claim whatever is most appropriate

Question 16

When is it legitimate to object to an intermediate conclusion?

Answer 16

when you think the sub-argument is inductive and is defeated

Question 17

How do you evaluate conjunction sentences (A and B)

Answer 17

• Evaluate each of the continents separately.
• If either conjunct is false the whole conjunction is false

Question 18

How do you evaluate conjunction sentences (A or B)

Answer 18

• Inclusive interpretation: A or B or both
• Exclusive interpretation: A or B but not both

On the inclusive interpretation, only one disjunct has to be true