This isn't at the top of the book—my goal is to teach a skill, not a philosophical subdiscipline—but it's there. It wouldn't exist without David Kaplan, who invented UCLA's critical reasoning course in the 1970s, invited me to teach it (again and again), and gave me a vision of what the course—and thus the book—should be. O'Briant, University of Georgia (whom you may not remember that in the early 1970s he gave me a B, perhaps better than I deserved, in my only undergraduate philosophy course); Michael F.
Part One: Reasoning and Arguments
GOOD REASONING
Aristotle, in the other main quote, may be over-enthusiastic when he says that good reasoning leads to the best, most pleasant, and happiest life. Knowledge is better than opinion alone for answering the questions you care about, so good reasoning trumps bad reasoning.1. Use good reasoning if you want to know the answers to the questions that are important to you.
GOOD ARGUMENTS
Typically, each premise can be decided independently, without paying any attention to the other premises or to the conclusion. Suppose the conclusion of the garlic argument was There was pepper in the sauce you ate, or that Gould's conclusion was Larger animals require relatively more brains to do as well as smaller animals. Third, the argument must be conversationally relevant - that is, the argument must be appropriate for the conversation, or for the context, that gives rise to it.
HOW WE NORMALLY REASON
Note that a model contains only selected properties of the object or event it represents. Seeing a shape in the flames gave him an idea; this was part of his discovery of the shape of the benzene molecule. In other cases, beliefs seem to just happen without conscious consideration of the issue.
INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES
And the right thing to want, in the case of good reasoning, is knowledge of the truth. Three of the biggest barriers to intellectual honesty are self-interest, cultural conditioning, and overconfidence. It is sometimes hindered by an over-reliance on the power of good reason to yield a knowledge of the truth.
HOW THIS BOOK CAN HELP
SUMMARY OF CHAPTER ONE
An important intellectual virtue is the virtue of critical reflection—the practice of asking (when both the time and meaning of the question warrant) what the argument is for each belief and whether that argument is sound, clear, and relevant. Another is empirical research - the practice of seeking evidence from the world around us. And a third virtue is intellectual honesty - the habit of wanting above all to know the truth about the questions we ask; this virtue allows us to express and judge arguments unfettered.
GUIDELINES FOR CHAPTER ONE
We usually think not through carefully constructed arguments, but through various quick-and-dirty shortcuts, or judgmental heuristics. For example, we tend to rely on the most vivid information, we tend to jump to conclusions based on similarity, and we strongly prefer pre-existing beliefs. These inclinations must not be wholly rejected, but tempered by the cultivation of other habits - by the cultivation of intellectual virtues.
GLOSSARY FOR CHAPTER ONE
Good Reasoning - The kind of thinking that is most likely to cause you to have good reasons, and therefore the kind of thinking that is most likely to give you knowledge. Inconsistent Argument - An argument that has at least one false premise or is illogical (or both). According to the definition in Chapter 1, an argument is a set of statements in which at least one of the statements is offered as a reason for believing another.
STATEMENTS: THE BUILDING BLOCKS OF ARGUMENTS
So not only does it serve its clear interrogative function, it also serves a declarative function—that is, it also functions as a statement. In this context, however, each sentence is clearly intended to serve the same declarative function as a statement. Give four other sentences that are not demonstrative that perform the same declarative function.
STATEMENTS THAT OFFER A REASON FOR BELIEF
Identify the inference marker in each of the following short passages and state whether it represents the premise or the conclusion. Two of the passages do not have a conclusion indicator (these two are not arguments). This leaves you in the dark if the logic of the argument is bad—that is, if there is no plausible connection between the premises and the conclusion.
STATEMENTS THAT DO NOT OFFER A REASON FOR BELIEF
The statement for which it is offered as a premise is the main conclusion of the complex argument.3. A simple argument is a series of statements in which at least one of the statements is offered as a reason to believe another. Simple argument - a series of statements in which at least one of the statements is offered as a reason to believe another.
Part Two: Clarifying Arguments
This provides a simple way to refer to the elements of the argument in your evaluation.). It is no part of the literal meaning of the terms I have used - that is, it is not logically implied. The strawman fallacy is a certain kind of missing the point—the fallacy of setting up a version of the argument that is easy to dismantle.
Non-essential features of the argument are removed so that they do not get in the way of the evaluation. The discounted clause is not part of the argument, so it is eliminated from the clarification. Identify the discount and the discount indicator in each of the following passages (many of which are not arguments).
Note the repetition of the premise in the passage; also note that the last sentence of the passage is not part of the argument.). The other way to do it is to make the logic of the argument as reasonable as possible. It is now clear that the premises cannot support the conclusion - that the logic of the argument does not work.
It is not the case that Robespierre counts his personal enemies as enemies of the state. The content of an argument is the part of the argument that can vary without varying the logical form of the argument. Content - the part of the argument that can vary without varying the logical form of the argument.
Part Three: Evaluating Arguments
I cannot decide whether the argument is sound, since I cannot decide whether one of the premises is true. And we add to it the evaluation of the second simple argument—the evaluation of the argument for C. The argument is probably sound, but it is not shown to be so by the rest of the argument.
Notice that in assessing the conversational relevance of the argument, I hedge my criticism a bit by saying that it almost certainly begs the question. Without any knowledge of the context, it is still safe to rate such an argument as probably committing the fallacy of begging the question. At the same time, its presence in the simple argument to 3 infects the rest of the argument.
The most famous example of the fallacy of appealing to consequences comes from the 17th century philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal. Otherwise, you are also guilty of shifting focus away from the merits of the argument. Both the ad hominem fallacy and the fallacy of appeal to authority are genetic fallacies—that is, fallacies that call attention to the source of a viewpoint rather than the viewpoint's merits.).
Otherwise, you are also guilty of shifting focus away from the merits of the argument.
Part Four: Evaluating the Truth of the Premises
You wouldn't include Socrates in bold in your clarification, so it doesn't matter if it's true or false. the law of non-contradiction says that no statement is both true and false. According to one poll, 62 percent of American adults believe that “there is no such thing as the absolute truth.” The proportion rises to 74 percent for those ages 18 to 25.2. The term self-evident lends itself easily to misuse; Ambrose Bierce defined it as "obvious to himself and no one else." The point is not to use it as another way of saying "it's clear to me".
12,000 per annum." On other occasions new words are introduced and defined by stipulation, usually to select a concept for which we have no convenient term; "By blik," the philosopher R. Suppose, after I have laid down the former definition of the poor, I say : "So stop saying you're poor; you make almost $13,000 a year for your family." The conclusion relates to someone's concern about being poor; as such, he uses poor in its usual sense, which includes not only annual earnings but also the number of people earning a living, the other financial resources the family has, and the family's necessary expenses.Now the argument can be seen to commit another argumentative fallacy—the fallacy of missing the point.
In this case, prior simply means independent of the observation; and it is epistemic probability that is referred to.). That wouldn't mean you didn't see one - the news account could have been wrong, or a black swan might have stopped by to visit the day you were there. In short, the more absurd the belief—that is, the lower its prior probability—the stronger the evidence to support it.
The brochure for the Brooks collection calls him "our best critic" and continues: "These essays are vintage Brooks." The brochure for Rubin's book calls him "one of the very best of our literary critics" and goes on to affirm that "these essays are vintage Rubin."
