Different Types of Arguments - Marianne Talbot
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- Опубліковано 30 тра 2024
- Are you confident you can reason clearly? Are you able to convince others of your point of view? Are you able to give plausible reasons for believing what you believe? Do you sometimes read arguments in the newspapers, hear them on the television, or in the pub and wish you knew how to confidently evaluate them? In this six-part course, you will learn all about arguments, how to identify them, how to evaluate them, and how not to mistake bad arguments for good. Such skills are invaluable if you are concerned about the truth of your beliefs, and the cogency of your arguments.
I really wish this was taught to secondary school students long before they go to college. There is some logic taught in geometry courses, but it seems so limited. Kids are graduating from high school (here in the U.S.) without having any idea how to (or even why they should) provide logical support for the things they hear and say.
We used to be told simply that deductions are: when you deal with a deduction it's extrapolating an observation of an individual case to bring forth a generalised conclusion for a number of situations for the future. That is, you attempt to theorise. And induction is just the opposite: you draw a conclusion on a specific situation from a known generalisation you've been told about (permanent truths, theories, usual happenings observed, or some widely known knowledges), etc. That is, you try to apply an extant theory on a specific problem. But just how true is it that if you can master philosophy-type logics you can master anything? Or, do you not have to re-learn the logics of each subject or field? Anyway, I think each field has its own language and words (even if sometimes they say the subject matter is based rigourously on an assumption only), you could still fail if you don't know those when applying logics to a specific field or subject matter. One example given in the class like a disjunctive syllogism example (the either-or premise) about the weather either being sunny or rainy is only good as far as the grammar of formal logic is concerned, but "it's either sunny or rainy" is wrong as a premise in terms of human knowledge and experience - not that the grammar is wrong, but the assumption or fact is wrong, highly biased and unobjective. If you ask any weatherman, he would tell you there is something in between, like cloudiness (some dim sunshines but no rain). There was another example saying someone doesn't take the dog out for a walk, and therefore the sun does not come out! Some of the comments made by the blog visitors are also so inherently value-laden also, but not the values of the average person, but values of some specific, well-trained scientists in their respective sciences. But why did Ms Talbot say "the sun is coming out, so the rain should stop soon" is inductive? Is it or is it not? Can it not be read in a way that the whole "if-so" structure is merely a statement enshrining a permanent truth or a generalised observation as a whole. It is certainly a premise, but there is no conclusion part stated in this example. If she had added the bit, "The sun is coming out, so I'm going out for some sports soon," then that would be a possible conclusion. Even more aptly she could have framed the conclusion the bit this way, too: "I'm seeing some silver linings, so the rain should stop within the next ten minutes or so" - even if it's still raining briefly in the sun at the moment. But concerning the universe-pocket watch example, which she asked the students to take home with to form a canonical argument, actually the way it was laid out on the screen is already an acceptable form. Those statements sound right. One good thing Ms Talbot has mentioned is the cyclical nature of Time, a concept widely subscribed to in the science and humanities circles. But of course, the ability to drive that cyclical momentum to move back to the starting point itself also hinges on a few other factors, in addition to logicality.
Marianne wears jeans on Friday during the day at work and switches into a dress for the evening. At the time the conclusion is drawn, it could be false because Marianne is NO LONGER wearing jeans on this particular Friday, although she WAS wearing jeans. This amounts to "equivocation" in the overloading of the term "always wears" to mean two separate things: a) Marianne wears jeans AT SOME POINT on Friday vs. b) Marianne wears jeans THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE DAY on Friday.
I've seen a few different videos on types of arguments on youtube today. This one is done very well, progressing from basic to a bit more advanced. I edit for professors and students on a daily basis and often run into clarity of the argument and transitions between sentences in support of those arguments.
In the example of disjunctive syllogism: I don't understand why she says that if it were "not both" type of disjunction it would not work? It seems to me that it doesn't matter wether it's an "either or" or "not both". The argument should still be valid.
@mdiem
About to graduate high school here, and I don't know if I agree. While I do think it would be wonderful if all students could learn basic logical skills as soon as possible, it is questionable when students develop the ability to do these kinds of mental gymnastics. Then again, this is me speaking from a time when my class had a socratic seminar discussing whether it would be proper to teach logic to elementary schoolers...
I doubt very much people ever use inductive reasoning. People reason rather this way:
1. Every time I've seen M, she was wearing earrings.
2. People are likely to behave uniformly.
3. Therefore, M is likely to wear earrings tomorrow.
This is inductive.
Just take the uniformity assumption as a premise and change, if necessary, the conclusion to a probability statement, and you get a deductive argument.
Only deductive arguments are logically valid.
This looks like boolean logic functions, but she's not showing the formulas.
=IF((friday),(always),true))....etc.
The universe is currently thought to be about 13.7 billions years old. Our Sun is about 4.6 billion years old (and the earth slightly younger, at around 4.567 billion years).
Induction and deduction are indeed opposites, but not in the sense most theorists of scientific reasoning seem to think. Scientists, at least since Galileo, deduce causes but induce effects. The two are clearly complementary and time relativistic: what I do to induce luminous effects in the lab becomes what I deduce to be causing those effects in the northern skies. What I deduce to be the kind of nuclear reaction going on in the sun becomes the one I induce in the tokamak. All scientific reasoning is therefore deduction. Induction isn't reasoning at all but making things happen, action. Having an idea about what tomorrow will bring based on yesterday, or what colour the next swan will be based on what the ones before, is deduction. On the other hand, taking control of tomorrow's events or the next swan's colour is induction. After a blinded Phase 2 drug trial we deduce (not "induce") the conclusion that the results are caused by the drug and not by experimenters' knowledge of which patients received it.
An Answer to the Jeans on Friday argument...She could be wearing Jeans durning the day time and then went out on a date or something, changed into a dress or something more appropriate...still Friday, still wears jeans on Friday, but not all day.
Premise 1. It is Friday.
Premise 2. Marianne always wears jeans on a Friday.
The conclusion that Marianne is wearing jeans only follows if Marianne always wears jeans ALL DAY on a Friday.
I could get more technical and question the wording of premise 2. Marianne assumes it means that "Every Friday, Marianne wears jeans". But it could be saying "Whenever Marianne wears jeans, it is a Friday", in which case the conclusion would not necessarily follow.
I know I'm being picky, but sentences can often be interpreted multiple ways, and it would be good if people paid attention to that when designing a course like this one.
Perhaps this was just an unfortunate example to introduce a deductive argument.
A counter example that would make the conclusion FALSE given the premises are TRUE is if Marianne showed up (on a Friday) wearing slacks because she thought it was Thursday.
I thought that too when she gave that example, don't understand why you are makign a big deal though it ahs absolutely no impact on the example it doesn't even make the argument in question worse/better
OOOOOOOOOOH! Controversy! Or Controversy, rather.
If you think of a day not as a fixed measure of time, but as the span of time of the actual rotation of the Earth, then we could consider that premise to be true, at least in an aproximate way, as the Sun and the Earth have aproximately the same age.
This information is very interesting, but the teaching method is a bit confusing(as if you need to be in her head in order to understand her train of thought), even so the teacher confuses herself (only a bit) at 38.30. Very good video overall! A++
The Sun might explode tomorrow. However, more likely that the earth would, given that it's far smaller and could therefore more likely be destroyed by collision.
She creates more confusion than clarity.
My hair is a bird
your argument is invalid
This have no sens without any true purpouse. Just learning language because it's a course... Worth nothing. Intelligence come from curiosity and passion. I don't feel it in your class at all. Education is a duty now, not a passion where to develop. It's sad. Well thanks for the course, was usefull and comforting for some reasons.
She is wearing jeans - is it Friday
it isn't not important because she may wear jeans all day