Argument evaluation Module notes:

Just a reminder: Valid Deductive arguments lack any counter-examples. Strong

Non-deductive arguments will always have counter-examples, but lack effective
counter-examples. Either way, if the argument has sufficient logical support, then we need to
start assessing the truth of the premises. And of course, we don't want to assess the truth of
irrelevant premises, because we don't care about those premises at all.

Argument Evaluation is the process of determining whether an argument is good or

bad.

We assess the logical support of the argument first as: it's usually faster to check logic than
truth; it often leads to some premises of linked arguments being removed; and a failure of
logical support is more decisive than a false statement in dismissing an argument as bad. If
the argument lacks logical support, we don't need to check the truth of the premises at all.
This will hopefully become second nature to you, as you work through this module's
examples and exercises.

Sound and Cogent Arguments:

So far we have talked about the two standards of logical support that we use to evaluate
arguments: Deductive and Non-deductive. We said an argument is valid if it's a Deductive
argument for which the premises succeed in providing conclusive logical support for the
conclusion. And an argument is strong if it's a Non-deductive argument in which the
premises succeed in providing strong logical support for the conclusion. By that, we mean
that, if the premises are true, then the conclusion is likely to also be true.

A good argument is an argument that is sound or cogent.

A bad argument is an argument that is not good.

Validity and strength of arguments do not on their own tell us whether arguments are good or
bad. We've already seen some rubbish arguments that were valid. That's why we need to
introduce two further concepts for arguments: being sound and being cogent. This is where
we require the premises to be true as well.

Sound Arguments:

A sound argument is a valid Deductive argument that has true (or acceptable) premises.

Firstly, a sound argument is a Deductive argument. It's trying to establish conclusive logical
support for its conclusion. Secondly, the argument is valid: the premises, if true, would
guarantee that the conclusion is also true. And on top of all that, the premises are actually
true. Therefore, a sound argument guarantees that its conclusion is true.

A sound argument is a good argument. It is a good argument because it guarantees that the
conclusion is true. It would be irrational for you not to believe the conclusion of a sound
argument. Of course, sound arguments are rare, because the truth of premises is often hard
to establish. But, some arguments are sound.

For example, these are sound arguments. Can you see why?

Tim drank coffee this morning; therefore Tim drank something this morning.

It is true that Tim drank coffee this morning. To drink coffee is to drink something, as coffee is
something. So Tim drank something this morning.

Patrick got married on January 4, 2014. Patrick has not been divorced, and Patrick is not a
widower. Therefore, Patrick is not a bachelor.

It is true that Patrick got married on January 4, 2014, that he has not divorced and that he is
not a widower. So Patrick is not a bachelor because a bachelor is an unmarried male, by
definition.

Cogent Arguments:

A cogent argument is a strong Non-deductive argument that has true (or acceptable)
premises.

Cogent arguments are also good. A cogent argument is strong, so the premises, if they were
true, would provide probable support for the conclusion. And finally, the premises are
actually true. So the conclusion does have probable support. For instance:

Patrick was born in North America, and Patrick

wasn't born in Mexico. It's thus quite probable that Patrick was born in the USA.

That is a cogent argument. If all you know about Patrick is what's contained in the premises,
and those premises are true (they are!), then that's a fairly strong argument, because the
population of the USA is over 300 million, whereas that of Canada is under 40 million – and
the only countries in North America are Canada, Mexico and the USA. This means that the
odds Patrick was born in the USA are roughly 88%, which makes the support for the
conclusion quite strong. Furthermore, the premises are true. Therefore, the argument is
cogent, and so it is a good argument, even though the conclusion is false. Let's consider
another example:

I consumed coffee this morning. Therefore, it's quite likely that I drank something this
morning.

This is a strong argument with true premises, so it is cogent and therefore good. But the
conclusion is not guaranteed. It may be that I had coffee cake this morning, or had coffee
some other way. But of course this is unlikely, so the argument is strong, although it is
possible that the conclusion is false.

Evaluating Arguments:

You can safely and reliably evaluate an argument by following the procedure that Patrick is
about to explain. This is the primary learning outcome of the first part of the course. Of
course, you'll need to use a range of techniques and tools that we've already discussed to
do this well, but once you can evaluate arguments accurately and quickly, you've mastered
the core of Critical Thinking.

Patrick's packed a lot into this video. Here is the evaluation procedure he outlined:

1. Identify the main argument, put it in standard form, and apply charity.
2. Determine if the argument is Deductive or Non-deductive.
3. Check if the argument succeeds logically. Any counter-example causes a
Deductive argument to fail. Only effective counter-examples cause a
Non-deductive argument to fail. A reasoning gap is the mental space that the
counter-examples fit through. Non-deductive arguments need a big reasoning
 gap for their effective counter-examples to fit; any reasoning gap in a Deductive
argument is a reasoning error.
4. Check the premises:
1. if a premise is a sub-conclusion supported by further premises, check
if the sub-argument is good using this same process.
2. If a premise is unsupported, check if it is true (or it cites a relevant,
high-quality reference).
5. If the argument offers enough logical support, and its premises are true or
supported by good sub-arguments, the argument is good. Otherwise the
argument is bad.

Note that Patrick quickly gestured at how to evaluate sub-arguments by applying the whole
process again. This is called recursion. It's a favourite of logicians and computer
programmers, because it means you don't need to specify another process – just apply the
same steps in the same order to the smaller argument, and then resume your place in the
original process. Don't worry too much about this yet – we'll practice evaluating complex
arguments next week.

Evaluation Diagram:

You can also understand this diagram as describing three steps:

1. What standard of logical support does the argument claim?

(Deductive / Non-Deductive)
2. Does the argument have enough logical support?
(Valid / Invalid), or (Strong / Weak)
3. Does the argument have true premises?
(Yes / No)

Arguments with enough logical support and true premises are Good. Otherwise they are
Bad.

Evaluation Examples:

Standard Support Premises Example Evaluation

Deductive Invalid -- Jan studies Philosophy or Law. Jan studies Bad
Philosophy, so they don't study Law.

Deductive Valid some Bad

If there is a purple elephant in the hall,
false
then I am a giant turkey. There is a purple
elephant in the hall, therefore I'm a giant
turkey.

Deductive Valid all true Liliane is Patrick's full sister, and Patrick is Good
Sylvie's full brother. Therefore, Liliane is
Sylvie's full sister.
Non-Dedu Weak -- I have a very strong feeling that my lottery Bad
ctive ticket is the winning ticket, so I'm likely to
win a lot of money tonight.
Non-Dedu Strong some If you smoke pot, even only once in your Bad
ctive false life, you are very likely to start using
heroin. You do smoke pot. Therefore, you
will probably start using heroin.

Non-Dedu Strong all true About 97% of climate experts agree Good
ctive humans are causing global warming.
Therefore, probably, humans are causing
global warming.

The Good, The Bad. and the Ugly:

Example 1: If (1) you are a confident driver and have never been in an accident, then driving
over the speed limit is not dangerous for you or others. (2) You are a confident driver and (3)
have never been in an accident. Doubtless, then, (4) driving over the speed limit is not
dangerous for you or others.

Hmm. This argument seems reasonable in some sense, but I don't think the conclusion
seems quite right. Let's take a closer look.

What's the conclusion?

Driving over the speed limit is not dangerous for you or others.

Is the argument Deductive or Non-deductive?

Deductive, as evidenced by the use of the Affirming the Antecedent argument form.

Is the argument valid?

Yes, the argument is valid, since it's impossible for the premises to be true and the
conclusion false.

Is the argument sound?

(Here we're just asking if the premises are true, as we know it is valid.) The first premise is
false. It's not true that if you are a confident driver and have never been in an accident,
then driving over the speed limit is not dangerous for you or others.

Speeding is well known to be one of the main causes of accidents, regardless of the skills
and confidence of the speeding driver. For a start, there are other drivers on the road, not all
of whom are confident drivers that have never been in an accident, and they might react in
dangerous ways to the presence of the speeding driver. Hence, the argument is not sound.
Even though the argument is valid, it has a false premise, so it is a bad argument.
Example 2: (1) We left our parrot in the house this morning. (2) The nearest neighbour lives
one kilometre away. (3) When we got home from work, the parrot was gone. It's most
probable that (4) our neighbour stole the parrot.

What's the conclusion?

Our neighbour stole the parrot.

Is the argument Deductive or Non-deductive?

Non-deductive, as evidenced by the words "it is most probable". But also, it doesn't seem
like the argument is giving the kind of reasons that would guarantee that the conclusion is
true.

Is the argument strong?

Not really. It's a bit quick to accuse your neighbour of stealing the parrot. Think of other
things that could have happened... maybe it flew out the window! So the argument is
weak. It's a bad argument.

Also (though we didn't need to check because the argument is weak), the premises are
false. This is a bad argument.

Example 3: (1) In the last decade, there have been many popular uprisings in Arab
countries. (2) There's been a popular revolutionary uprising in Tunisia, which is a North
African Arab nation. (3) There's been a popular revolutionary uprising in Libya, also a North
African Arab nation. (4) There's been a popular revolutionary uprising in Egypt, another
North African Arab nation. (5) There's been a popular revolutionary uprising in Bahrain, yet
another North African Arab nation. (5) Finally, there's been a popular revolutionary uprising
in Iran, which is an Arab nation. So (6) there will be a popular revolutionary uprising in at
least one other Arab country in the next decade.

What's the conclusion?

There will be a popular revolutionary uprising in at least one other Arab country in the next
decade.

Is the argument Deductive or Non-deductive?

There are no clear indicator words in this argument to help us in making a choice. If we
take the argument to be Deductive, it would be quite easy to show that it's invalid.
Furthermore, the argument does not try to demonstrate beyond doubt that there will be a
popular revolutionary uprising in at least one other Arab country in the next few years, but
rather to suggest that this is quite likely to happen. We will thus treat the argument as a
Non-deductive one.

Is the argument strong?

Given the number of Arab countries there are, we'll say the argument is reasonably
strong. You might not agree with me, but here's an explanation: If all premises are true,
then they provide evidence that there's some political instability that is spreading in that
region of the world, and this makes it quite probable that the spread won't stop. You may
not agree with me, but for the sake of the exercise, accept for now that the argument is
(reasonably) strong.

Is the argument cogent?

That is, are all the premises true, given that the argument is strong? The answer is "no"!,
because: (1) Iran is not an Arab nation; (2) Bahrain is not a North African Arab nation. So
at least two premises of the argument are false. Hence, the argument is not cogent, and is
therefore bad.

Does that mean that the conclusion of the argument is false?

Not necessarily. All we can conclude is that the reasons provided in this argument do not
give grounds to believe the conclusion, but it may be that another argument with better
premises and the same conclusion is a good one. And regardless of whether or not
there's a good argument for the conclusion, it may still be that there will be a popular
revolutionary uprising in at least one other Arab country in the next decade. All we can
conclude is that the reasons given in this argument are not enough to make you believe in
the conclusion. We could then consider whether a charitable reading of the argument
could result in it being significantly stronger.

Notice that if you didn't agree that the argument was strong, then you thought it was weak,
and a weak argument is a bad argument, so we would agree that the argument is bad – but
would have different reasons for thinking so.

Premise Truth:

If an argument succeeds logically, that is the first step towards its being a good argument.
But there can be logically successful arguments that are completely worthless because their
premises are false. Having discovered that an argument succeeds logically, we still need to
investigate the truth of the premises: it is a good argument only if it succeeds logically and all
of its premises are true.

In some cases a statement will be backed up with a sub-argument: then what we have to do
in order to decide whether to treat the statement as true is to evaluate the sub-argument.

In other cases a premise will be so obviously true that there is no need for further
investigation into it. For example, "Some women are mothers" is common knowledge, and if
it was used as a premise in an argument we would simply accept it.

For premises that are not common knowledge and that are not backed up by a
sub-argument, we may need to do some research to find out whether or not the premise is
true. Suppose, for example, an argument has as a premise "Alcohol is a factor in 33% of
fatal road accidents in NZ." This fact, if it is a fact, is not common knowledge – we should not
just believe it without investigating it. We should check the claim by looking up a reputable
source. Not every source is a reputable source – if someone you've never heard of tweeted
this statistic, you should not say "Ah, that premise is true" and move on with the evaluation
of the rest of the argument. A source like the website of Land Transport NZ

Links to an external site.

would be the right sort of place to look for information about this particular premise. (Of
course, even reputable sources can be mistaken or misleading; we don't require absolute
certainty in order to accept a premise.)

It's reasonable to treat a premise as true, at least provisionally, if it's coherent with what you
know about the world and if most people, including relevant experts, would agree with it. The
more unsurprising it would be for a premise to be true (given other information you know
about the world) the more reasonable it is to accept that premise.

Here are some examples of statements it seems reasonable to think are true:

● Québec is in Canada.
● There is no life on the Moon.
● There are infinitely many prime numbers.
● Time slows down for an object as its speed approaches the speed of light.

And here are some examples of statements (some true, some false) that you probably
shouldn't believe if they turned up, unsupported by further argument, as premises in an
argument:

● Water can catch fire.

● There are rocks that move.
● Your present incarnation is the result of past lives in various material bodies,
including animals, plants, and possibly rocks.
● Sagittarius doesn't get along with Ophiuchus.

If you are uncertain about a premise, then you need to do research. Sometimes you'll find
the answer with a simple Google search. Sometimes you might have to ask an expert. Some
statements are unknown, or unknowable. These last are not acceptable premises, except
perhaps in some religious contexts.
There are some controversial issues on which experts disagree. So, you may ask a question
to two experts on the topic, and get two different answers. If the vast majority of experts
agree, then that's acceptable. But if the appropriate authorities are thoroughly divided, then
the statement is controversial. Statements whose truth or falsity is controversial aren't
usually acceptable.

Note that statements which upset some people, and so cause controversy, are a different
case. Just because someone doesn't want a statement to be true is not grounds to reject it.
But you may have to provide reasons for them to accept the controversial premise (or at
least provide emotional support, so they can feel brave enough to accept it). Sometimes
accepting the truth is an act of bravery.

Premise Acceptability:

Some statements are acceptable as unsupported premises. Other statements are not
acceptable without evidence, and so become sub-conclusions that are argued for.

An acceptable premise is one which it is reasonable to take as true for the current
argument.

What makes a statement acceptable as a premise? It can't be certainty. Almost nothing is

truly certain. Rene Descartes once spent months philosophically contemplating this very
issue, until he declared "cogito ergo sum" (I think, therefore I am). His premise – that he
thought – was supported by the claim that if he doubted that he was thinking, he must be
thinking, because doubting is itself a type of thought. His position is generally taken as overly
optimistic.

Mathematics is sometimes taken as the ideal of certainty. But where do the initial axioms
(maths talk for premises) come from? And how can we be confident that each step is
correct? Like everything else, we can't be absolutely sure.

We very rarely know with certainty our premises are true. And yet no rational agent should
want to reduce themselves to a quivering mass of sceptical uncertainty. We reason and act.
Or we die.

Acceptability:

"true". Premises are acceptable if any of:

● All sides of a dispute agree they are true

(regardless of whether they are).
 ● The consensus of relevant experts agree on them (unless we have very strong
grounds to reject their expertise).
● All sides of a dispute will entertain them, to see where an argument goes (this is
important to understand arguments from differing worldviews).
● The current balance of agreed evidence suggests they are true.
● They are traditional, customary, or similarly constitutive of the community (these
assumptions and suppressed premises are ubiquitous; we may not even be
aware that they are in effect).
● There are some reasons to think they are true (such as testimony – one of the
arguers makes a claim), and no currently obvious reasons to doubt them.

But premises are unacceptable when:

● One person objects, requesting justification (if this is done in good faith).
● New evidence casts doubt on a previously accepted premise.
● One person withdraws their willingness to entertain the premise.
● People disagree on what the statement means, and thus what it supports.
Vagueness, ambiguity and lack of clarity are some of the key issues here, as is
whether the definitions of key terms are agreed.

In the first three cases, the unacceptable statement can now be argued for. The statement
then becomes a sub-conclusion, to be supported by acceptable statements. In the last case,
we can try to find a better statement that avoids the lack of clarity and precision.

Some types of premise are always unacceptable because

they cannot be true:

● Incoherent or nonsensical statements. e.g., "The colourless green sheep sleep

furiously."
● Self-contradictory statements. e.g., "Petra is here and yet she is not."
● Premises that contradict other premises or the conclusion. (if they are true, the
argument is bad)

There are also a number of fallacies that are often described as unacceptable. We'll look at
them later in this module. They include false dilemmas, decision point fallacies, and slippery
slopes which are all problems linked to vagueness or ambiguity; and circular reasoning,
faulty analogies, and fallacy fallacies, which are all reasoning errors that fundamentally
misuse premises.

Controversial Premises:
We've said that controversial premises are never acceptable. These are premises where
experts disagree. While there will usually be a fact of the matter, it's often unreasonable for
laypeople to try to decide on claims in technical areas when authorities cannot.

A controversial premise whose truth is disputed by relevant parties, and thus is

unacceptable.

If you ask two experts about a topic, and get two substantially different answers, the topic is
controversial. Statements whose truth or falsity is controversial aren't acceptable.

When you are an expert, you can make

controversial claims, because your job is to challenge other experts, and you have the
knowledge to appreciate the evidence for each view. However there is a duty of care to
non-experts to present them with the consensus view, or any major opposing views to your
own, so that they understand that your view is controversial, and that they can't freely use it
themselves.

Expertise doesn't seem to apply to many claims in the civic sphere. It seems to be OK to
make controversial claims about celebrities or politics, or art, even if you know nothing about
the subject. But maybe that's just because we don't really accept that there are authoritative
experts in these areas – or perhaps it's because we are primarily interested in people's
opinions, not facts. Conversations based on opinions tell you about the person, not the topic,
and generally aren't relevant to Critical Thinking, although they are essential to a
well-rounded social life. So we'll avoid these topics until the last week.

You might wonder about religion, which has a history of great thinkers, and of controversy.
Generally, we can only reason well within an intellectual tradition, such as Catholic
Christianity, Sunni Islam, Theravada Buddhism, or Atheism. If reasoning across traditions,
we need to carefully search for common ground, so that we can find some premises that are
acceptable to all members of a conversation.

Remember that the controversy applies to whether a premise is true, not whether it's
emotionally upsetting or morally repugnant. We don't need to morally accept a premise to
regard it as acceptable. For example, we can have a list of unacceptable working conditions
as premises – we all accept they are happening, but we don't accept they should continue.
And sometimes we need to reason about topics which we really wish never occurred, such
as child abuse; just because a topic is upsetting doesn't mean that we can always ignore or
deny the premises.

Argument Support Diagrams:

Arguments can get fairly confusing to analyze and evaluate. When we start dealing with
complex arguments in the next module, this will be all the more apparent. Diagrams can be
useful for understanding arguments - especially long ones - in standard form. There are lots
of argument diagramming systems, and they each represent different types of argument
subtleties in different ways. We will just cover some very basic and common ideas here, and
introduce some more in the next module.

An Argument Diagram shows the support relationship between the statements in the
argument.

Before you read further, you might want to think about how you already visualise your
argument structure. How do the various statements relate to each other? How might you
represent these relationships? Many people like to use lines or arrows. Are there several
different ways of understanding how the argument might fit together? How might we treat
premises that are used in multiple different sub-arguments? Or conclusions that are
supported by multiple different sub-arguments?

In the video below, Dôna will introduce a simple diagram method. (She prefers to talk about
'reasons' rather than 'premises'. She's also really keen on premise and conclusion
indicators.) She then moves on to talk about different types of small diagrams with different
support structures – dependent and independent premises – these will be the smaller
diagram "units" that make up our complex diagrams.

Link the two premises ⇒ use the residual premises (which are not in previous statements) in
the next.

Argument Diagram Basics:

Diagramming is used for two different purposes: when Reading arguments, and when
Writing or re-writing arguments. These Reading and Writing Diagrams might look the same,
but what we put in each box is very different. In both cases, when we are dealing with large
arguments (which are are about to), we don't follow Dôna's example and writing the entire
statement in each box. Instead we will use a symbol for the statement:

● For Reading Diagrams, number each statement in the argument as written, and
draw a box for each number (1, 2, 3, etc).
● For Writing Diagrams, put the argument into standard form first, and draw a box
for each statement label (P1, C2, etc).

The reason for this is that if you are Reading an argument, you cannot add or remove or
substantially re-write any statements - you have to analyse what is given. Numbering each
existing statement, and using these numbers, prevents us from changing the argument as
we draw our Reading diagram. We can then easily see the original argument's gaps and
misstatements. But when we are Writing an argument, or charitably re-writing it, we may
notice that there are suppressed statements we need to add to the argument, and irrelevant
statements that should be removed. Using standard form notation allows us to add and
subtract statements, include suppressed statements if we are re-writing someone else's
argument, and in general capture the entirety of (our charitable interpretation of) the
argument's structure. Our Writing diagram needs to reflect the new argument, and standard
form labels are an easy way to do this.

Whether you are making a Reading or Writing Diagram, the rest of the process is identical.
After we have placed the statements in their respective boxes, we draw lines of support from
the premises to the conclusion they support. We have two different ways of drawing these
lines depending on how the premises support the conclusion, and this difference is
important. With one premise, however, it is hard (but not impossible!) to go wrong. Here is a
very simple argument for us to Read:

Today is Friday; therefore, I have rugby practice.

Numbering the claims in the argument:

(1) Today is Friday; therefore (2) I have rugby practice.

The conclusion indicator word "therefore" tells us (2) is the conclusion. Remember that we
do not include the indicator word in the conclusion. The conclusion is just the claim that "I
have rugby practice." The argument has a single premise and its Reading diagram is like
any of these:

It doesn’t matter if it is hand-written or computer-generated, or if we use squares or circles,

so long as the statements are clearly labelled and the lines of support shown correctly with
arrows. Putting the argument into standard form, there is nothing to repair, and we might
decide not to add the suppressed premise "On Fridays I have rugby practice":

Statement # Standard Form

(1) P1: Today is Friday
Therefore,
(2) C: I have rugby practice.
Using the notation for standard form, the Writing diagram is:

Obviously, very few arguments we're interested in diagramming will consist of so few
statements. And in this case, the Reading and Writing diagrams have the same structure.
But we are starting with the basics! In the next article, we'll see some of the complexities
involved with adding just a single additional premise.

Diagramming Support Types:

Now that we have our diagram basics, we can start looking at how to communicate different
kinds of support in our diagrams: specifically, whether the premises depend on each other to
support a conclusion, or work independently of each other. This will be important for
understanding how longer arguments are structured and whether the argument will be able
to succeed overall, even when some parts of the argument aren't up to scratch.

Dependant Premises:

Next, we can start considering how to diagram different kinds of simple arguments. We'll
start with arguments where the premises in the argument work together to support the
conclusion. This is the case in almost every argument we've seen so far. We'll call these
"dependent" premises.

Dependent premises work together to support a conclusion.

Consider this argument:

"Party boy": John is coming to dinner, and if he comes, we will have fun this evening;
therefore we will have fun this evening.

We want to analyse the argument without changing it, so we first locate the different
statements and number them.
(1) John is coming to dinner, and (2) if he comes we will have fun this evening; therefore (3)
we will have fun this evening.

To test whether two premises are dependent on one another we can ask ourselves whether
each considered alone would provide any support for the conclusion. If they would provide
no support at all or much less support than they do if they are taken together, then they are
dependent premises. This test, however, will not tell us what the author thought the
relationship between the premises would be. If we find that the argument is a Valid
Deductive argument, then it's plausible to suppose that that is what the author intended. But
people make mistakes, and we might discover that the argument is fallacious, and that the
premises actually don't support the conclusion.

In the case of "Party Boy", the premises are dependent on one another: the argument is an
instance of Affirming the Antecedent, and removing one of the premises would destroy the
support for the conclusion. Our Reading diagram is as follows:

A horizontal line joins all the premises, and a single arrow then joins this to the conclusion. If
there are several premises, the horizontal line sits below the premises, so we can see they
are all joined together, rather than in pairs. Here's "Party Boy" in Standard Form, again
without any changes:

Statement # Standard Form:

(1) P1: John is coming to dinner
(2) P2: If John comes to dinner we will have fun this evening
Therefore,
(3) C: We will have fun this evening.

We can now construct our Writing diagram of the argument:

Argument 1 is a Valid Deductive argument, Affirming the Antecedent. If we assume that the
premises are all true, then the conclusion is true, too. If the premises are in fact true, the
argument is Sound and so a Good argument. But things can get tricky. Suppose on the other
hand the argument given was:

"The Last Hope": John is coming to dinner and we will have fun this evening only if he
comes; therefore we will have fun this evening.

Numbering the statements, we get:

(1) John is coming to dinner and (2) we will have fun this evening only if he comes; therefore
(3) we will have fun this evening.

Here, things are a little bit different. The author presumably thought that the premises were
dependent on one another, but the reason why we might think that can't be because the
premises only support the conclusion when taken together. This argument is Invalid, and so
the premises taken together don't support the conclusion. We are told that we will not have
fun unless John comes to dinner, not that if he comes to dinner, then we will have fun – we
might still have a bad time even with John there. So the author commits the fallacy of
Affirming the Consequent.

But, it still seems as though the author intended the premises to be working together. Both
statements are about John coming to dinner, with one telling us what can happen only when
he does. We do our best to diagram the argument as the author intended it. So the Reading
diagram is
Notice that both the Valid argument "Party Boy" and the Invalid argument "The Last Hope"
have the same diagram. Even though argument diagrams can help guide the Evaluation
process, they cannot tell you whether the argument has enough support.

Independent Premises:

Dôna talked about different "themes" for premises in an argument. We will call premises with
different themes "independent" premises.

Independent premises support the same conclusion via different themes, reasoning, or
evidence.

Consider this argument:

We need more motorways. Here are two reasons: Firstly, commercial traffic needs to flow
more smoothly from business to business. Secondly, we need to make the centre of town
more attractive to visitors by removing cars.

Numbering the statements made, we have:

(1) We need more motorways. Here are two reasons: Firstly, (2) commercial traffic needs to
flow more smoothly from business to business. Secondly, (3) we need to make the centre of
town more attractive to visitors by removing cars.

The phrase "Here are two reasons" indicates that two independent premises are about to
follow.

The premises in this argument do not work together to support the conclusion. Rather, each
provides support quite independently of the other; ignore or remove one of them and the
other still supports the conclusion. We can see that the attractiveness of the centre of town is
a very different reason than the practical concerns involved in the smoothness of traffic as it
moves from business to business.

In this argument the premises are independent, and our Reading diagram is:

Counter-Examples with Independent premises:

Because independent premises provide separate arguments (as we've made clear in the
standard forms by writing a separate argument for each independent part) we also need to
provide a counter-example for each independent argument to show the whole argument is
bad.

Counter-example 1: To allow commercial traffic to flow smoothly from business to business,

we can build more effective public transport to remove single user cars on the roads instead
of building new motorways.

Counter-example 2: We can make the town centre more attractive to tourists by preventing
cars altogether in the centre and making public transport more efficient to give people
alternative ways to come to town. New motorways are not required to solve this problem.

Note that each sub-argument is part of a larger argument, so your counter-examples must
make all the premises in the larger argument true. It's much easier, but pointless, to create
counter-examples for sub-arguments that other parts of the argument rule out.

We've just touched on the basics of using argument diagrams. When we consider longer
arguments with many sub-arguments and suppressed premises, the size and complexity of
our diagrams will also expand, and so will their usefulness!

Psych: Being Wrong:

Sometimes we get things wrong. It happens to everyone. And it should – even if we could be
always perfectly rational and reasonable (which no one is!), because we deal with complex
situations, incomplete information, and Non-deductive reasoning, unforeseen circumstances
can mean that we end up believing or doing the wrong thing.

So why do some people have a really hard time admitting that they are wrong?

What can we do about people who never admit they are wrong?

Now, the thing I really like about this video, in addition to the harassed-but-patient tone, is
that a person who thinks they are always right often believes they are dealing with people
who are wrong and can't admit it. Then if they follow the advice in the video, they are making
things worse.

If most people around you are wrong and won't admit it, it's almost certainly you who is
wrong. If there's only one or two people like that, and everyone else thinks that person is a
problem, it's not you.

But I’m never Wrong (about Important Stuff):

If you have trouble admitting you are wrong, have a think about why. There are several
common causes:

●
Insecurity and Anxiety.
● Large but fragile Ego.
● Social Embarrassment / Shame.
● Fear of Punishment for Errors.
● Arrogance.
● Inability to Question your own Assumptions.
● Privilege and Entitlement.

None of these characteristics are easy to admit. And that's part of the problem. To learn to
admit you can sometimes be wrong when it's not natural for you to do so, you need to admit
that you have a significant character flaw, which is a harder version of the same problem.
And then to start changing yourself.

In this module, we also talk about Epistemic Humility, which is the disposition of having the
right degree of confidence in your beliefs, not too much nor too little. We'll discuss how to
change your attitude.
But for the moment, it's enough to admit that you might need to sometimes admit you were
wrong. It's simply part of being rational in a complex, exception-riddled world.

Fallacies: of Unacceptable Premises:

Fallacies of Unacceptable Premises attempt to introduce premises that, while they may be
relevant, we shouldn't accept as part of the argument. We also have videos on most of these
fallacies.

Fallacies of unacceptable premises occur when an argument contains an unacceptable

premise, or a Weak sub-argument containing such premises, that make it psychologically
compelling – it appears to be a Strong argument, but is not.

Circular Reasoning:

Description: Circular reasoning (sometimes known as 'begging the question') is using a

premise or assumption which is what you are trying to prove as a conclusion.

Example:

Arthur: God exists.

Barbara: How do you know?
Arthur: Because it says so in the Bible.
Barbara: How do you know what the Bible says is true?
Arthur: Because the Bible is divinely inspired. Everything it says is true

The Bible could only be divinely inspired if God existed. So Arthur's appeal to the Bible to
prove the existence of God assumes the very thing he's trying to prove.

The Slippery Slope Fallacy:

Description: Arguers say that an innocent-looking first step should not be taken because
once taken, it will be impossible not to take the next, and the next, and so on, until you end
up in a position you don't want to be in.

Example: Don't get a credit card. If you do, you'll be tempted to spend
money you don't have. Then you'll max out your card. Then you'll be in real debt. You'll have
to start gambling in the hope of getting a big win. But you'll normally lose. Then you'll have to
steal money to cover your loses. Then your partner will leave you. And you won't be able to
feed the dog, and it'll die. And it would be bad if the dog died. So you mustn't get a credit
card.
Slippery Slope arguments are fallacious if it is possible to stop at one of the steps: couldn't I
get a credit card with a maximum, or exercise a bit of control, or get the local animal
protection society to help me feed the dog?

Decision Point Fallacy or the Sorites Paradox:

Description: Sometimes the conditions that make the use of a term appropriate vary along a
continuum and there is no sharp cut off between circumstances in which the term is correctly
applied and those in which it is not. If an arguer claims that because we cannot identify a
precise cut-off or decision point, we cannot distinguish between correct and incorrect uses of
the term, they are arguing fallaciously.

Example: One grain of wheat doesn't make a heap. Suppose 1 million does. Take one away.
Surely we still have a heap: if a million makes a heap, surely 999,999 does too. One grain
can't turn a heap into a non-heap. Take another away. We still have a heap: if 999,999 does,
surely 999,998 does too. One grain ... etc. Take another away. We still have a heap .... etc.
But if one grain doesn't make a difference, then it seems that we will be forced to conclude
that 1 grain does make a heap. But that means we can't talk about heaps of wheat at all: we
don't know when we can describe a collection of grains of wheat as a heap and when we
can't.

Example: At conception an embryo is not a person. At birth, a baby is a person. There is no

non-arbitrary way of determining exactly when the embryo became a person. Therefore,
there is no moral difference between the embryo and the baby at birth.

But we can tell the difference between people who are bald and not-bald, between heaps
and non-heaps, and embryos and babies, even if we can't tell exactly when something
stopped being one thing and became the other.

False Dilemma or False Dichotomy:

Description: occurs when an argument presents two options and gives the impression that
there are no other possible options: one of them must be true.

Examples: Either Shakespeare wrote all the plays attributed to him, or Bacon did. There's
good reason to think Shakespeare didn't write all the plays attributed to him. Therefore
Bacon wrote all the plays attributed to Shakespeare.

It's possible that Shakespeare didn't write all of the plays attributed to him, but that doesn't
mean Bacon did: there are other possibilities. In the Shakespeare/Bacon case the false
dilemma was explicit (either Shakespeare wrote all the plays ... or Bacon did), but often the
dilemma is implicit.

If I spend all of the week partying, I won't have time to study and I'll fail. If I spend all week
studying, I'll be over-prepared and stressed and I'll fail. So I'm going to fail either way. I might
as well spend the week partying.

Here the dilemma is unstated – "The only options are to spend all week studying or to spend
all week partying" – and once stated it surely isn't plausible: the student could spend some of
the week studying and some of the week partying?
Hasty Generalisations:

Description: Arguer draws a general conclusion from a sample that is biased or too small.

Example: The oldest woman in the world, Jeanne Calment (122 years, 164 days) smoked
until her early 110s. Therefore smoking isn't really bad for you.

Example: Andrew Wakefield claimed to have shown a correlation between the MMR vaccine,
bowel disorders and autism, but – among other flaws – his research focused on children
already thought to have the conditions he claimed were caused by the vaccine.

The claim that smoking carries significant health risks isn't falsified by a single case and
trials drawing population-wide conclusions must recruit representative study-populations.

Faulty Analogies:

Description: The conclusion of an argument depends upon a comparison between two (or
more) things that are not actually similar in relevant respects, or without pointing out how the
two differ and why it does or does not matter. (See our later discussion of reasoning by
analogy).

Example: I need a new car. My last three cars have all been reliable, and they were blue. So
I'm going to buy a blue car.
Colour is usually not a relevant aspect of car reliability.

Example: A letter to the editor following a report someone had been turned away from an
after-hours medical clinic because she couldn't pay for treatment for her feverish, vomiting
child: "Why do people attend private clinics for medical treatment with insufficient funds to
cover fees? Do these same people go to the petrol station, fill up, toss $5 out the window
and say "I'll be back with the rest later," or perhaps after dining out one evening, pay for the
meal and promise to return next week, month or year to pay for the wine? I think not. The
answer is simple – don't go to a private clinic."
There is a relevant dissimilarity between the need for urgent medical attention, and the
desire for fine dining.
 Example: Carrots and people are both living organisms. You
shouldn't eat humans. So you shouldn't eat carrots either.
The relevant differences between carrots and humans include that we can't hear carrots
scream; they don't have big eyes to look at us knowingly; we don't name and befriend them;
and they cannot talk or plead their case. But these probably aren't the most relevant
differences, morally speaking.

Carefully specify the similarities and dissimilarities between visits to an after-hours medical
clinic with a sick child and visits to a fine restaurant. Can you tweak the analogy slightly to
make it much stronger, or much weaker?

The Fallacy Fallacy:

Description: The fallacy of inferring that merely because an argument contains a fallacy, its
conclusion must be false.

Example: Bob told me that I shouldn't steal because everyone knows that stealing was
wrong, but I recognised immediately that argument contained an Appeal to Popularity fallacy,
so I concluded that it was OK to steal the apple.

The conclusion of an argument may be true, even if the argument contains a fallacy. Finding
a fallacy just means that the arguer needs to look for other, better reasons in support of their
conclusion.

Dispositions: Epistemic Humility

We all 'know' a lot of facts. Many of these are wrong. The less we know about a subject, the
less information that we have to help us to determine whether we are wrong. And even if we
know quite a bit on a subject, there's usually someone else who knows more. And they still
could be wrong.

Assume you might be wrong. Especially when you are sure you are right.

Epistemic humility includes admitting that many of your strongly held beliefs are likely to be
false. And that they probably aren't the ones that you think are suspect.
Epistemic humility is the disposition or attitude that you could always be wrong, and so
are open to correction or more learning, even when you are confident of your beliefs.

Your blind spots often aren't in the places you are looking. Epistemic humility is a more
subtle form of being open-minded, that takes into account relative knowledge, and the
possibility of your own poor evaluation of your relative knowledge. Epistemic humility doesn't
require that you listen to idiots, or give everyone the same amount of time and attention; but
it does require you to allow for the possibility that it's you who is the idiot this time.

We can't reliably know about a topic just by skimming an article on Wikipedia or

half-remembering some conversation from last year. We can't assume that because we are
a third-year med student, or look older than the other person, or have an uncle who used to
do something related, that we won't be spouting a pile of crap. In fact, there is a disturbing
correlation between a lack of epistemic humility, and a lack of knowledge. There are several
explanations for this. One is that people who don't question themselves tend not to correct
themselves, so stick with whatever they first learned, which is likely to be an incorrect,
misunderstood out-of-date oversimplification. Another is that it often takes a certain amount
of knowledge in an area to realise that your 'common sense' gives the wrong answers, and
that you don't know very much at all. Another disturbing correlation is between the level of
education in one area, and confidence in completely unrelated areas. That is, the more you
know about one topic, the more you assume you know about everything else. Put that way, it
sounds pretty stupid. But it's very common.

The same doubt and scepticism should apply to pronouncements by other people, but only
to exactly the same extent. Yes, some people are experts on a subject, and their statements
on that subject should carry more weight, but there are very few people who are experts on
more than one subject. Expertise is really difficult to get, and takes a lot of time to get, and if
someone has taken the time to become an expert on, say, evolutionary biology they are
extremely unlikely to have had the time, energy, and talent to devote to also becoming an
expert on, say, creationist theology. Or vice versa.

Also, there are different standards of expertise, such that by one standard you are an expert
and by another standard you aren't. You never know whether someone actually knows a
whole lot more than you in the relevant field, even if you think you are an expert, unless you
listen and are open to changing your mind.

Several aspects of epistemic humility are emphasised in the current philosophical literature.
They include:

● Having proper beliefs about your own beliefs (higher order beliefs).
● Having an emotional insensitivity or indifference to social importance or status
(i.e. loss of face)
● Owning your intellectual and dispositional limitations, and so revising your beliefs
or quarantining the bad effects of your beliefs, while regretting your current
limitations and trying to reduce or overcome them.
● Preferring slow, careful, systematic (System 2) thinking over the intuitive,
heuristic-based, snap judgements of rapid (System 1) thinking.
You can read more about Epistemic Humility in the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy

Links to an external site.

On the bright side, developing your Epistemic Humility means never having to admit that you
are right..