Chapter 15

For the last post of this week I am going to discuss about chapter 15 of Epstein. This chapter was a little bit long though amusing.  The chapter is simply about the cause and effect concept but it also describes about other materials that are related to it.  I first thought that this chapter was straightforward since cause and effect was an easy concept.  After reading this chapter, I found that there was more to it. One concept that I found useful is the tracing the cause backward. For instance, the example in this chapter about Spot’s barking caused Dick to wake up could go on forever backward.  Tracing the cause backward is often use as an excuse from my point of view.  Another concept that I found amusing were the criteria for cause and effect.  In Epstein, the fundamentals that is necessary for the criteria for cause and effect states:

• The cause happened (the claim describing it is true).
• The effect happened (the claim describing it is true).
• The cause precedes the effect.
• It is (nearly impossible for the cause to happen (be true) and the effect not to happen (be false), given the normal conditions.
• The cause makes a difference-if the cause had not happened (been true), the effect would not have happened (been true)
• There is no common cause.

Mission Critical Website

The Mission Critical website was a very amusing website. It’s a website that I believe contains almost everything that we learned so far in critical thinking; there are also addition concepts that I didn’t know either. I knew most of the materials that were in the basic arguments, several concepts in the analysis of arguments, and fallacies.  Some of the materials that I didn’t know about were universal syllogisms, non-universal syllogisms, circular reasoning, and unfair fallacies. I am not sure if we have cover these materials in the text yet because they seem new to me. 

Overall I find this website to be very helpful for those who still have trouble with some of the types of arguments. The exercises that are provided in this website are really helpful. Most of the concepts that are on this website have the exercises option to help those understands the material better.   It’s almost like a database for most of the critical thinking materials.

Cause and Effect Website

I found that the Cause Effect Website to be really helpful and interesting.  The website pretty much explains about the concept of causal argument, which is similar to the inductive argument. I also learned several materials that were related toward this type of argument that I didn’t know. For instance, there are two rules when it comes to causation, the first is that “The cause must precede the event in time”, and the second is that, “Even a strong correlation is insufficient to prove causation”. According to the website it describes three fundamentals that strengthen the causal argument: 

1.How acceptable or demonstrable the implied comparison is

2.How likely the case for causation seems to be

3.How credible the "only significant difference" or "only significant commonality" claim is

It was confusing at first but after reading it a few times I sort of got the idea of it. The example and exercises that were provided in this website were certainly helpful, because it made these concepts much easier to understand.

Deductive and Inductive Reasoning

When I was doing the post about the examples of the different types of reasoning, I had a little trouble coming up with the examples for inductive and deductive reasoning. It was confusing at first because I got mixed up with the two of them. Anyway after doing a little research on the internet I found that it was quite easy to understand once you understand it. The deductive premise pretty much starts out like a hypothesis or an assumption. The premise or the argument can’t really be argued because the premise is can not be proven; the unproven premise can only be accepted by the person value.  As for inductive reasoning the premises uses data and observation to determine the conclusion.  It doesn’t use unproven premise like deductive that leads to the conclusion.

The website I found was quite helpful with explaining these two types of reasoning. Here the link:http://ocw.usu.edu/English/english-1010/inductive-and-deductive-reasoning.html

Reasoning by Examples and Reasoning by Criteria

I find the reasoning by example and reasoning by criteria to be really useful and amusing. Reasoning by example is usually used when giving evidence into your argument.  This is pretty common in most of the conversation we often have when explaining to others. For example, when my friend and I were talking about TV shows, and I said, “Hey you should watch this show. My cousin told me, he watches this show yesterday and says it was hilarious”. In this example I show evidence to support my previous premise; this type of reasoning often works really well for convincing others.  For reasoning by criteria, it’s about assumption.  Instead of saying something straightforward such as, “Get this one!”  It should be something with more reasoning to it. For instance, a better version of the example above should be like this:  “I think he want something looks cool. How about this one” 

Which is much reasonable that the example before it.

Types of Reasoning

 Here are the different forms of reasoning that we are suppose to cover this week.

1. Reasoning by Analogy

Ex: Bob is a genius because he’s smart. Jack is smart too. Therefore Jack is a genius.

2. Sign Reasoning

Ex: Bob didn’t come to class today, so I guess he’s busy with something else.

3. Causal Reasoning

Ex: I slept in my math class today, because I was up all night doing my economic homework. 

4. Reasoning by Criteria

Ex: Your little sister will want something that’s cute and fluffy for her birthday. How about this pillow that looks like a turtle?

5. Reasoning by Example

Ex: You shouldn’t cheat in college. One of the students in my chemistry class got caught cheating during an exam and he was expelled.

6. Inductive

Ex: All students that we have seen wears backpacks, therefore all students wears backpacks.

7. Deductive

Ex: All apples are fruits. All fruits grow on trees. Therefore, all apples grow on trees.