Fluent Essays

1 · One (1) Original Post addressing one of the three question choices. Minimum of 250 words. Due Sunday at 11:59PM ET. Your Original Post must answer the question fully in all its parts and address possible objections to your reasoning. You must also connect your Original Post to the course by having at least one full sentence quote and citation from one of the Required Readings of the week. The quote should be word for word and contained inside quotation marks and then followed by an inline citation. Once you quote something or even reword something you did not originally write then you need to have it in a reference section at the end of the post (again in MLA format). Please refer to the following resources for help on MLA citation.  · MLA Citation:  http://sites.umgc.edu/library/libhow/mla_tutorial.cfm   · MLA Citation Examples:  http://sites.umgc.edu/library/libhow/mla_examples.cfm   DISCUSSION QUESTION CHOICE #1: Analyzing Published Arguments: Find an Op-Ed or opinion piece, political or otherwise, from a reputable online news outlet (not a blog, or discussion forum post) published in the last week and analyze its inductive and deductive reasoning and arguments. Identify premises and conclusions. Identify enthymemes. Identify strong/weak inductive or sound/valid deductive reasoning. Also, post any questions you might have on the self-assessment ungraded quiz questions. DISCUSSION QUESTION CHOICE #2: Deductive and Inductive Reasoning in Everyday Life. Describe arguments and decisions that you have made, or regularly make in your everyday life (outside of work)  that employ deductive and inductive reasoning. Write these arguments out so the premises and conclusions are clear. Discuss the strength and weakness of your inductive reasoning and the soundness and validity of your deductive reasoning. Also, post any questions you might have on the self-assessment ungraded quiz questions. DISCUSSION QUESTION CHOICE #3: Deductive and Inductive Reasoning at Work. Describe arguments and decisions that you have made, or regularly make, at work that employ deductive and inductive reasoning. Write these arguments out so the premises and conclusions are clear. Discuss the strength and weakness of your inductive reasoning and the soundness and validity of your deductive reasoning. Also, post any questions you might have on the self-assessment ungraded quiz questions. Supplemental Online Readings (1) Groarke, Leo, “Informal Logic.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Plato.stanford.edu (2017) An expansive article on the subject of arguments and informal logic in philosophy. (2)  IEP Staff, “Deductive and Inductive Arguments.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. iep.utm.edu (2020) A basic overview of inductive and deductive arguments and their assessment. (3)  Hansen, Hans, “Fallacies.” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Plato.stanford.edu (2020). A thorough discussion of fallacies in informal logic. Supplemental Online Audio/Video (1) “Ho8/16/22, 3:08 PM Reading 2.1: What is Logic, Proposition, Argument? - PHIL 336 6380 Ideas Shaping the 21st Century (2228) https://learn.umgc.edu/d2l/le/content/717197/viewContent/26959984/View 1/2 What Is Logic, Proposition, Argument? What you will learn in this reading What the object of the study of logic is What the definition of a proposition is What the definition of an argument is What conclusions and premises are In Logic, the object of study is reasoning. This is an activity that humans engage in—when we make claims and back them up with reasons, or when we make inferences about what follows from a set of statements. Like many human activities, reasoning can be done well, or it can be done badly. The goal of logic is to distinguish good reasoning from bad. Good reasoning is not necessarily effective reasoning; in fact, as we shall see, bad reasoning is pervasive and often extremely effective—in the sense that people are often persuaded by it. In Logic, the standard of goodness is not effectiveness in the sense of persuasiveness, but rather correctness according to logical rules. In logic, we study the rules and techniques that allow us to distinguish good, correct reasoning from bad, incorrect reasoning. Since there is a variety of different types of reasoning, since it’s possible to develop various methods for evaluating each of those types, and since there are different views on what constitutes correct reasoning, there are many approaches to the logical enterprise. We talk of logic, but also of logics. A logic is just a set of rules and techniques for distinguishing good reasoning from bad. There are many logics; the purpose of this introductory module is to give an overview of some of the most basic ones. So, the object of study in logic is human reasoning, with the goal of distinguishing the good from the bad. It is important to note that this approach sets logic apart from an alternative way of studying human reasoning, one more proper to a different discipline: psychology. It is possible to study human reasoning in a merely descriptive mode: to identify common patterns of reasoning and explore their psychological causes, for example. This is not logic. Logic takes up reasoning in a prescriptive mode: it tells how we ought to reason, not merely how we in fact typically do. Basic Notions: Propositions, Arguments, Conclusions, Premises Reasoning involves claims or statements—making them and backing them up with reasons, drawing out their consequences. Propositions are the things we claim, state, assert. Propositions are the kinds of things that can be true or false. They are expressed by declarative sentences. ‘This book is boring’ is a declarative sentence; it expresses the proposition that this book is boring, which is (arguably) true. Other kinds of sentences do not express propositions. Imperative sentences issue commands: ‘Sit down and shut up’ is an imperative sentence; it doesn’t make a claim,8/16/22, 3:09 PM Reading 2.3: Deductive and Inductive Arguments - PHIL 336 6380 Ideas Shaping the 21st Century (2228) https://learn.umgc.edu/d2l/le/content/717197/viewContent/26959986/View 1/6 Deductive and Inductive Arguments What you will learn in this reading: How to recognize and evaluate deductive arguments by soundness and validity How to create a counterexample to determine the invalidity of an argument How to recognize and evaluate inductive arguments by strength or weakness As we noted earlier, there are different logics—different approaches to distinguishing good arguments from bad ones. One of the reasons we need different logics is that there are different kinds of arguments. In this section, we distinguish two types: deductive and inductive arguments. Deductive Arguments First, deductive arguments. These are distinguished by their aim: a deductive argument attempts to provide premises that guarantee, necessitate its conclusion. Success for a deductive argument, then, does not come in degrees: either the premises do in fact guarantee the conclusion, in which case the argument is a good, successful one, or they don’t, in which case it fails. Evaluation of deductive arguments is a black-and-white, yes-or-no affair; there is no middle ground. We have a special term for a successful deductive argument: we call it valid. Validity is a central concept in the study of logic. It’s so important, we’re going to define it three times. Each of these three definitions is equivalent to the others; they are just three different ways of saying the same thing: An argument is valid just in case… 1. Its premises guarantee its conclusion; i.e., 2. IF its premises are true, then its conclusion must also be true; i.e., 3. it is impossible for its premises to be true and its conclusion false. Here’s an example of a valid deductive argument: All humans are mortal. Socrates is a human. ----------------------------- / Socrates is mortal. This argument is valid because the premises do in fact guarantee the conclusion: if they’re true (as a matter of fact, they are), then the conclusion must be true; it’s impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion false. Here’s a surprising fact about validity: what makes a deductive argument valid has nothing to do with its content; rather, validity is determined by the argument’s form. That is to say, what makes our Socrates argument valid is not that it says a bunch of accurate things about Socrates, humanity, and mortality. The content doesn’t make a difference. Instead, it’s the form that matters—the pattern that the argument exhibits. 8/16/22, 3:09 PM Reading 2.3: Deductive and Inductive Arguments - PHIL 336 6380 Ideas Shaping the 21st Century (2228) https://learn.umgc.edu/d2l/le/content/717197/viewContent/26959986/View 2/6 Later, when we undertake a more detailed study of deductive logic, we will give a precise definition of logical form. For now, we’ll use this 8/16/22, 3:09 PM Reading 2.2: Recognizing and Explicating Arguments - PHIL 336 6380 Ideas Shaping the 21st Century (2228) https://learn.umgc.edu/d2l/le/content/717197/viewContent/26959985/View 1/6 Recognizing and Explicating Arguments What you will learn in this reading: How to explicate the premises and conclusion of an argument How to identify premises and conclusions by indicator words How to paraphrase an argument in order to explicate it How to recognize when a tacit proposition (enthymeme) is present in an argument in order to explicate it What the difference between arguments and explanations is Before we get down to the business of evaluating arguments—deciding whether they’re good or bad— we need to develop some preliminary analytical skills. The first of these is, simply, the ability to recognize arguments when we see them, and to figure out what the conclusion is (and what the premises are). What we want to learn first is how to explicate arguments. This involves writing down a bunch of declarative sentences that express the propositions in the argument, and clearly marking which of these sentences expresses the conclusion. Let’s start with a simple example. Here’s an argument: You really shouldn’t eat at McDonald’s. Why? First of all, they pay their workers very low wages. Second, the animals that go into their products are raised in deplorable, inhumane conditions. Third, the food is really bad for you. Finally, the burgers have poop in them. The passage is clearly argumentative: its purpose is to convince you of something, namely, that you shouldn’t eat at McDonald’s. That’s the conclusion of the argument. The other claims are all reasons for believing the conclusion—reasons for not eating at McDonald’s. Those are the premises. To explicate the argument is simply to clearly identify the premises and the conclusion, by writing down declarative sentences that express them. We would explicate the McDonald’s argument like this: McDonald’s pays its workers very low wages. The animals that go into their products are raised in deplorable, inhumane conditions. McDonald’s food is really bad for you. Their burgers have poop in them. --------------------------------------------- / You shouldn’t eat at McDonald’s. We separate the conclusion from the premises with a horizontal line, and we put a special symbol in front of the conclusion, “/”, which can be read as “therefore.” 8/16/22, 3:09 PM Reading 2.2: Recognizing and Explicating Arguments - PHIL 336 6380 Ideas Shaping the 21st Century (2228) https://learn.umgc.edu/d2l/le/content/717197/viewContent/26959985/View 2/6 Speaking of ‘therefore’, it’s one of the indicator words to look out for when identifying and explicating arguments. Along with words like ‘consequently’ and ‘thus’, and phrases like ‘it follows that’ and ‘which implies that’, it indicates the presence of the conclusion of an argument. Similarly, wo