November Exam Cards Flashcards
Statement
- claim or assertion
- proposition+ assertion
- made/ advanced by a speaker that commits to the truth of that statement
Premise
- statements given as reasons for believing conclusion
- assumed/ taken for granted
- supports the conclusion—
Conclusion
- statement that’s is advanced/defended in argument
- supported by premises
- not taken for granted
Argument
- group of two or more statements one of which is the conclusion
- premises support conclusion if the assumption that the premises are all true increases the probability that the conclusion is true
- can be valid and have fallacies
- being deductively valid or non-deductively strong a necessary but not sufficient condition for being a good argument
Compound argument
- two or more arguments
- linked by common statements
- include intermediate conclusions
Rational argument
- premises support the conclusion
* premises are true/ there is good reason to believe they are true
Intermediate conclusion
- supported by premises
- therefore is a conclusion
- but acts as a premise in the overall argument
Proposition
- an expressed thought/ idea that is “truth conditional”
* can be true or false
Conditional statement
- links to or more propositions
- through if…then
- one proposition is a condition for another proposition
- may be asserted without any of the individual propositions being asserted
- if antecedent is true, consequent is true
- consequent may be true even if antecedent is not true
Antecedent
- governed by if
* truth of antecedent is sufficient but not necessary for truth of the consequent
Consequent
- conditioned by/ flows from antecedent
- truth of consequent is necessary but not sufficient for the truth of antecedent
- truth of consequent is possible without the truth of the antecedent
Explanations
- consists of two propositions
- not intended to support truth of its propositions
- intended to establish an explanatory relation between the propositions
Explanandum
- a proposition describing the event/state of affairs
* taken for granted
Explanans
- one or more propositions
* describes the causal or other factors thought to explain the state of affairs
Implication
• one proposition logically implies another if the argument from the first to the second is valid
Cognitive biss
- natural pattern of reasoning that impedes the process of reaching rational or logical conclusions
- confirmation bias
- availability heuristic
Confirmation bias
- skews non-deductive reasoning
- people tend to be biased in favor of beliefs or hypotheses that they like
- people tend to be biased in favor of confirming evidence rather than disconfirming evidence even when they are personally indifferent toward the hypothesis or belief in question
Ad hominem fallacy
- undermine a claim by appealing to negative or prejudicial features of the character, views, interest, circumstance of one or more persons who support that claim
- criticisms/ suggestions irrelevant to the question of whether the conclusion is true
Irrelevant appeal to authority fallacy
• conclusion advanced or strength of claim that X accepts proposition
• X doesn’t have real authority on the subject matter
• a non expert is entitled to trust an experts opinion 1) there is consensus
2) reasonable to believe that the field is rationally grounded
Irrelevant appeal to popular opinion fallacy
• irrelevant to its truth or falsity
Irrelevant emotional appeal fallacy
Emotions not relevant to truth not falsity of conclusion
Argument from ignorance fallacy
- based on the claim that is opposite
- has not been proved/ established
- to make a claim one must show evidence, cannot claim: there is no evidence that it doesn’t therefore it does
- if p not p
Straw man Fallacy
- attack position- misrepresentation or misinterpretation- easier to criticize
- attacking something weaker than the actual argument
False dilemma fallacy
- fails to cover all the relevant alternatives
* presupposes too few alternative possibilities
Fallacy of ambiguity
• strength/validity disappears when the argument is re-expressed without the use of ambiguous words or expressions
Circular argument fallacy
- conclusion is presupposed
- would not accept the premises without accepting the conclusion independently
- claimed itself already assumed in the premises
Hasty generalization fallacy
• inductive generalization based on a sample that is too unrepresentative or too small to make the conclusion probable
Gamblers fallacy
• belief that statistical imbalances in random events will occur in the future
Ecological Fallacy
• correlations that hold for a population are assumed to hold for individuals within that population
Regression fallacy
- thinking that the effect of a deviation is a cause of regression to the mean
- deviation from the mean is usually followed by a regression to the mean
False cause fallacy
- argument for a causal relationship on the basis of a correlation between the relevant factors that is too limited or might be accidental
- inference based on an accidental correlation
- argument from the premise that one event preceded another to the conclusion that it caused it
Only explanation fallacy
- to suppose that an explanation is supported just because it is the only available explanation
- argument to the effect that a proposition is true because it gives the only available explanation of one or more states of affairs specified by its premises
Deductively valid
- truth of premises guarantee conclusion is true
- conclusions follow with certainty
- all premises true—> conclusion is true( not always true)
- premises false—> conclusion false
- premises false—> conclusion true
- intend to guarantee truth of their conclusion
Deductively sound
- valid: all premises are true
- premises certify the conclusion
- guarantee the truth if the conclusion
Inductive
- projection intact is not deductively guaranteed by the evidence
- generally based in frequency in the sample
- sample must accurately represent the entire group about which the conclusion is reached
Inductive generalization
Projection of statistical regularities onto new cases
Deductive strength
- measured on: premises of argument support its conclusion significantly more than they would support the opposite conclusion
- it is possible for conclusion to be false even if all premises are true
Non-deductively strong
- premises still provide good support for conclusion
- if premises are true= COGENT
- if premises true significantly increase the likelihood that the conclusion is true
Formal inductive arguments
• number is assigned to the degree of probability
Informal inductive arguments
• do not assign numbers to probability
Availability heuristic
• people tend to judge the probability of an event by the ease at which they can bring to mind instances or examples of that event
Cogent arguments
- guarantee the truth of their conclusions
* strong argument with true premises
Abductive arguments
- arguments to the best explanation
- argument from supposed facts- to a proposed causal explanation of those facts
- explanations that are advanced involve concepts that are not involved in the description of the facts that they are meant to explain.
- used to generate hypotheses about particular facts given general laws and theories
- intended to be strong
- conclusion goes beyond the available evidence
- apply criteria of adequacy for explanations
Abductively strong
- situation described by the conclusion would provide a good explanation of the circumstance described by the premises
- yields predictions that could turn out false
- do real work in relation to the supposed explananda mentioned in the premises
- can be supported by one observed phenomenon
Explanations
- must be internally consistent: free of contradiction
* must be externally consistent
Criteria for adequacy
- testability
- fruitfulness
- scope
- simplicity
- conservatism
Valid arguments
- all premises true—> conclusion true
- one/ more premises false—> conclusion false
- one/more premises false—> conclusion true
- no possible argument with this form in which all premises are true and the conclusion is false
Formally valid
• depends on the logical form or logical structure
Materially valid
- depends on the meanings of non-logical words
* can be formally invalid
Modus ponens
- ALWAYS VALID
- P—>Q
- P therefore Q
Affirming the consequent
- ALWAYS INVALID
- P—> Q
- Q therefore P
Denying the antecedent
- ALWAYS INVALID
- P—> Q
- ~P therefore ~ Q
Modus Tollens
- ALWAYS VALID
- P—> Q
- ~Q therefore ~P
Sound argument s
- guarantee the truth of their conclusion
* valid argument with true premises
Strong arguments
- make conclusion probable ONLY if they have true premises
- don’t need to have true premises
- may have conclusions that are not probably true
Argument is rationally convincing
- the truth if it’s premises would either guarantee or significantly increase the probability that the conclusion is true
- the argument has true premises
- good reason to believe that its premises are true
Deductive argument
- intended to guarantee the truth if its conclusion
- if argument is sound/ valid good reason to believe conclusion
- intended to be strong
Deductively valid argument
• it is not logically possible for all its premise to be true and its conclusion false
Sounds argument
• a deductively valid argument that has true premises
Inductive arguments
- intended to support their conclusion on the basis of considerations about frequencies
- determining the quality of the arguments sample
- rationally convincing if argument is cogent
- truth of premises increase probability that conclusion is true
Confirmation bias
• a cognitive bias towards favoriting confirming evidence over disconfirming evidence
Inductive sample
• is either too small or fails to represent
Abductive argument
• rationally convincing if the argument significantly raises the probability that its conclusion is true
Conservative explanation
• an explanations that fits with established beliefs
