Chaudhary Charan Singh Basic of Formalized Critical Thinking Questions Please answer the question separate in different word doc Question 5 in one word do

Chaudhary Charan Singh Basic of Formalized Critical Thinking Questions Please answer the question separate in different word doc

Question 5 in one word doc

Question 6 in one word doc

Question 7 in one word doc

Question 8 in one word doc

Please read carefully the requirement, the read word is the question but please go over what’s he requirement. Required Review Question #5: What are the parts of an argument?
Required Review Question #6: How can you detect what is implied?
Required Review Question #7: What can understanding fallacies add to your life?
Required Review Question #8 (feel free to try an alternative format for this): Formalize the
following argument: The university should have free parking. Parking is expensive. Tuition
is expensive enough. The university should not add another major expense.
In this module you will:
Understand formalized arguments and their relation to language.
Use knowledge of implicit vs. explicit claims to identify different sorts of claims.
Demonstrate a basic understanding of fallacies.
Develop a basic ability to identify, analyze, and evaluate arguments.
Demonstrate a basic understanding of propositional logic
There are some assumptions that are the basis of teaching critical thinking. The first
assumption is that there is value in formalizing thinking. As previously discussed, we model
the world. When we model the world we translate it. Translation requires filtering out
information. Some strategies of filtering are formalizations. The central assumption is that
there is a benefit to understanding these formalizations. It is not a matter of always using
the formalizations in their full form, but understanding them will help you even if you don’t
use them.
The Basic of Formalized Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is concerned with support. It is concerned with arguments. What is an
argument? It is a series of claims one or more of which is intended to support one of the
others. So arguments and critical thinking are all about support. There are many things that
are not intended to offer support. I can assert an answer to a question without supporting
it, ‘yes’, instead of ‘yes because…’. Questions are not intended to support anything.
Imperatives or commands don’t offer support. Explanations assume that the claim in
question is uncontested and so it doesn’t need to be supported, only explained. In a sense
these are not about support and so not the primary concern of critical thinking which puts
the emphasis on support.
The parts of an argument are the premises, which are the claims that offer support, and the
conclusion, which is being supported. Something can be both a premise and conclusion if it
offers support and is supported. The ultimate conclusion of an argument is often called the
main conclusion or the thesis.
There are a number of rules and strategies for figuring out whether something is an
argument or not and what each part is. I find these formalizations to be problematic
because they are trying to formalize something that we are actually better at if it is not
formalized. Most people seem to get the best understanding of how arguments work and
what their parts are by just spending some time and practicing it. Spend a little time right
now playing with this. Look at some articles, ask yourself, is this offered as support? Which
parts are intended to support others?
Consider this claim: ‘Looks like rain, you should bring an umbrella.’ This is probably an
argument. The only way it makes sense is if ‘you should bring an umbrella’ is the
conclusion and it is supported by ‘looks like rain.’ It would be odd to assume that these 2
claims are unrelated. It would be more odd to assume that ‘you should bring an umbrella’
justifies ‘looks like rain.’ Understanding what an argument is and what its parts are is not
best understood based on formalizations, it is something that most people can do quite
well, if they just try. Really spend some time on this, think about support, it’s the only way
to learn it.
The game I like to play (yes, it’s a game) is to think about what would count as support for
certain claims. What would be support for today being Thursday? What would be support
for the existence of vampires? What would be support for sugar being good for you?
Once you can identify the first two parts, you are ready for the third part, the inference. The
inference is the relationship between the premise and the conclusion. The inference is
really the part you want to get into, how the premise supports the conclusion. However,
since the inference is a weird sort of thing, it’s a relationship, we struggle to talk about it. In
the above example the inference is the relationship between the two claims. How do we
talk about that relationship? We lack language and experience with this sort of thing. This
is where formalizations become valuable, when doing something that is otherwise difficult.
Is the inference supposed to be certain or probable? Does it need further information? Is it
about causation? Is it statistical? Is it a generalization? Is it an analogy? These are all
formalizations of inferences that have different established sets of rules.
It’s easier to work with simple arguments, things like ‘All dogs are mammals, Patches is a
dog, Patches is a mammal.’ Arguments get complicated and are harder to figure out, real
world support is a complicated thing. But practicing formalizing the simple arguments will
help us with the complicated ones even if we can’t formalize them. Arguments can get
complicated in a number of ways. The easiest one is adding steps. ‘You should study so you
can get a degree, you should get a degree because it will get you a good job’. The conclusion
‘you should study’ is supported by the premise ‘you can get a degree’, but ‘you should get a
degree’ is also a conclusion that is supported by ‘it will get you a good job.’ One argument,
multiple steps. Another way that arguments get complex is if the inference is based on
multiple claims. ‘You should check the garage, I saw your keys there and you are looking for
your keys.” The conclusion, ‘you should check the garage’ is not supported by either ‘I saw
your keys there’ or ‘you are looking for your keys’ individually, only by the two of them
together. What makes this much harder is that we often have arguments of this form where
the inference is based on multiple claims, but all of the premises are rarely stated. In fact,
this is a common issue with arguments, things are rarely stated explicitly, they are usually
implied. The last way that arguments get more complicated is based on our evaluation of
them. We want to say that some support is better than others and we have ways to
formalize that.
Implied vs. Explicit, Definitions, Vagueness, and Ambiguity
I’m going to work in a different order than the one that I introduced things. We’re going to
start with implied vs. explicit. Something is explicit if it is stated directly. Something is
implied if it isn’t stated directly. ‘Today is Friday’ is explicitly claiming that today is Friday,
which can be true or false. It also implies that tomorrow is Saturday, and that yesterday
was Thursday. Under certain circumstances might also imply that you should come hang
out, c’mon ‘Today is Friday’. Or that someone is out of it: ‘How many days until Friday?’
‘Today is Friday.’ The reason why I’m starting with implied vs. explicit is that arguments
are often implied. In fact, the inference, which I said is so important, is usually implied. We
don’t usually explain the relationship between the premises and the conclusion, we just let
people figure it out, it is implied. Additionally, most inferences require extra information.
This extra information is usually implied. If I say, ‘Today is Friday, so tomorrow is Saturday’
is explicit about the premise, ‘today is Friday’ and the conclusion ‘tomorrow is Saturday,
but it leaves the required premise ‘Saturday follows Friday’ implied. While most arguments
leave the inference implied, and many leave some premises implied, many also leave the
conclusion implied. Figuring out what is implied by an argument or making someone be
explicit about their premises, conclusion, or inference goes a long way in helping critical
thinking. Try it.
The challenge here is that while we can formalize the division between implied and explicit
and make rules of language around them. When it comes to real communication you
already have be detecting claims that are both implied and explicit for most of your life. You
are already a master at hearing the things that people don’t say but still want you to
understand. When someone says, ‘it’s getting late’, you hear ‘we should leave.’ When
someone says, ‘It’s just ok’ they are often implying, ‘it isn’t very good.’ We are masters at
understanding what is implied, we actually err on the side of hearing more rather than less.
This relates to types of claims as well. We often hear statements in questions. ‘Are you
paying attention?’ is taken as saying ‘you should be paying attention’, despite the fact that it
is technically a question and the claim is only implied. You already have great skill at
identifying what is implied, so good that you might not even notice that the claim is only
implied. This is the point of formalizing ‘implied’, not to teach you a new skill but to add
some structure to improve a skill that you already have.
One strategy to imply rather than be explicit is to be vague. Something is vague if there is a
low amount of detail. The less detail the more vague it is. ‘I’ll see you sometime’ is very
vague, but less value then ‘I might see you sometime.’ I’ll see you tomorrow’ is less vague
and ‘I’ll see you tomorrow around 4’ is less vague than that. I’ll see you tomorrow at 4:13
and 4.27 seconds is less vague than that. Vagueness is a way that we imply things rather
than say them explicitly, but vagueness is often implied. Saying that ‘the flight leaves at 6’ is
usually less vague than saying ‘dinner is at 6’ because we think of flight schedules as being
specific in a way that dinner plans usually are not. The point of this is that understanding
what is implied is also understanding vagueness. Think about some vagueness, explicit and
implied.
Another strategy to imply is metaphor. If I say that ‘love is a song in your heart’ I do not
literally mean that there is a song in a heart. Instead I am making a claim about one thing by
talking about something else. In this case you compare a feeling to a song to make your
point. This is both vague and implied. The metaphor says nothing explicitly but implies a
great deal. Models are generally metaphors and they contribute both vagueness and rely on
implying.
Most of the inferences are implied, so one strategy for bringing out implied information has
been to formalize types of inferences. Some inferences are causal (no auto-correct not
‘casual’); they make claims about one thing causing another thing. These arguments have
specific rules because we can’t see causation, only correlation. Some inferences are
generalizations; we create rules by generalizing and then apply general rules to specific
instances. Almost no mammals lay eggs, so we generalize that mammals don’t lay eggs.
Then we go the other way, mammals don’t lay eggs, so that dog is not laying eggs. (did you
notice the implied premise that dogs are mammals?) We also generalize from statistics. In
addition, a specific type of model argument is called an analogy. This is where you argue for
one thing by comparing it to something else. We formalize these arguments into different
types and then we can develop and apply more specific rules that work to understand and
evaluate that type of argument. When we are studying these arguments we actually
evaluate them in two different ways. Sometimes we evaluate them based on their form and
sometimes we evaluate them based on their content. If I say that most dogs are friendly,
Stormy is a dog, therefore Stormy is friendly, we can talk about the form ‘Most A are B, C is
an A, therefore C is a B’, or we can talk about the content, ‘are most dogs friendly?’ These
are different standards of evaluation and both have been studied.
Another place where we rely on implying is definition. Unless you spend your time defining
words, the definitions of those words are left as implied. I can say ‘bacon is delicious’
without defining ‘bacon’, ‘is’, or ‘delicious.’ Often the nature of our support depends on the
definition of our words. Who is the ‘head of your household’? That phrase could have many
definitions. That possibility made it hard for people to fill out their taxes, so the IRS
redefined that phrase to mean: the person who earns the most money. They redefined the
term to make their lives easier. Who is your ‘best friend’? That might be a tough question. I
might define ‘best friend’ as the person who makes me the happiest, the one who won’t let
me down, the person I spend the most time with (lucky for you if all of these are the same
person). Working with definitions is one way that we can better understand implying and
vagueness.
One part of an argument that we regularly imply is the ‘standard’. This is the manner by
which the evidence for a claim will be evaluated. In a way finding the standard is the first
step to understanding the inference. If someone says, ‘the milk served at the local high
school comes from rats because that’s what it says on Facebook’ there is an implied
standard that says, ‘if Facebook says something it is true’ that is required to help you get
from the premise, ‘Facebook says the local high school serves rat milk’ to the conclusion,
‘the local high school serves rat milk’. Few arguments are explicit about the inference and
much can be learned about the inference by being explicit about the standard being used to
go from the premises to the conclusion.
Fallacies
Philosophers haven’t just formalized approaches to studying and bringing out inferences,
they have formalized approaches to evaluating them. Some inferences have been identified
as both common and bad. We call these fallacies. A couple of important things to remember
about fallacies is that they are about the inferences. Without talking about the inference
you cannot talk about the fallacy. Also fallacies are a formalization so they are about
filtering out information and often important stuff is lost in that filtering. The Internet
Encyclopedia of Philosophy lists 227 of the most common previously catalogued
fallacies. https://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy/ Notice how that implies there are many more,
and there are. I’m going to go through a couple of fallacies so that you have a sense of them.
We’ll start with a category called ‘fallacies of relevance’. A fallacy of relevance is when the
evidence being offered is not relevant to the conclusion. This is a category of fallacies
because when discussing formalized fallacies it is not enough to say that the argument’s
premises are not relevant, it must be the case that they are not relevant but they seem
relevant for a particular reason. One of my favorites is the ‘ad hominem’ fallacy which
occurs when someone attacks a person rather than the argument they are making. It is only
a fallacy if the attack is irrelevant way. If someone says makes an argument and I say, ‘you
are drunk’ that is probably an ad hominem fallacy. Of course, if their initial claim is that
they don’t drink, then that could be relevant. But if their argument is about sound fiscal
policy in Paraguay, then I need to address the argument and not their sobriety. We often
attack people’s credibility rather than their argument. This is due to a lack of
understanding of how inferences work.
Another fallacy of relevance is the ‘appeal to ignorance’. This occurs when someone claims
that because we haven’t proven something is false, then we should believe it is true. This
relates to something that we often call the ‘burden of proof’. The burden of proof is held by
the person who must prove their claim. The burden of proof is complicated. One of the
things that makes it hard is that most people aren’t willing to just withhold belief and not
believe things one way or another. While burden of proof is complicated, there are cases of
it that seem pretty clear. Violating these is usually a fallacy of relevance. If you say that I
shouldn’t believe that there is an elephant in this room because there is no evidence that
there is one, that’s probably ok. If you say that we should believe in invisible monsters
made of pasta that are very good at hiding because there is no evidence against them, that’s
probably a problem.
Another fallacy, though not of relevance, is ‘false cause’. The fallacy of false cause occurs
when two things that happen together are treated as being in a causal relationship, even
though they are not. Kill a spider and it will rain is a traditional false cause superstition.
Right now there are a number of people who claim that violent video games cause violent
behavior, but there is no evidence to support this, so it’s probably a false cause.
‘False dilemma’ is a fallacy where the inference makes it seem like there are fewer choices
then there are. Anytime I unnecessarily restrict options to force you pick between them
there is a false dilemma happening. If I say: ‘if you don’t get this then you must be a bad
student’, I am guilty of a false cause because I have ignored a number of other possible
options, like I’m a bad teacher or you are a good student who just struggles with logic. You
don’t need to include all options, but if you make your inference seem better than it is by
excluding plausible alternatives, then you are guilty of the false dilemma fallacy.
The ‘strawman’ fallacy is when you rephrase an argument that you wish to attack in a
manner that makes it more vulnerable to criticism. If you say that you think we should get
burgers, and I say we can’t get burgers every night, I have committed a strawman by
implying that you said we should get burgers every night. The fact that many arguments
rely on implied claims make the strawman fallacy very common.
The ‘definitional dodge’ fallacy, also known as the ‘No True Scotsman’ fallacy is based on
changing what your original claim was if it starts to run into trouble. The historical version
of this fallacy goes something like this: ‘No Scotsman wears anything under his kilt.’ ‘What
about Boaty McBoatface over there, he’s a Scotsman?’ ‘Ahh, no TRUE Scotsman wears
anything under his kilt.’ (I changed the name, sue me) The fallacy is still common today. ‘No
Christian want to give money to poor lazy people.’ ‘What about Jesus?’ ‘Jesus wasn’t dealing
with the sort of poor lazy people we see today.’ The whole point here is that the argument
brings out hidden information that wasn’t reasonably implied by the earlier argument and
changes the original argument. It is sort of the opposite of the strawman. The strawman
gets the original argument wrong so it can be attacked, the definitional dodge changes the
original argument so that it cannot be attacked.
It is worth your while to try to categorize bad inferences, but remember, you need to
identify the inference first, and the categorization only improves your ability to understand
inferences.
True Formalization
The sort of formalization and categorization that we have discussed above is minor
compared how far some have taken it. There are a number of heavily formalized systems
that allow us to learn about inferences. Remember that in order to formalize you need to
emphasize some things and filter other things out. The emphasis on the formal system that
we will be working on, which is commonly called ‘propositional logic’, is truth. More
specific it is on inferences that preserve truth. Even more specifically, it is on inferences
that will not let you go from a true claim to a false one. This means that whatever claim is
made is filt…
Purchase answer to see full
attachment