Final Exam Words Phil252

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Ad Baculum or Appeal to Force

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A common fallacy forcing someone into a certain position.

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Ad Hominem or To the person

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The fallacy of rejecting an argument on the bases of the person making the argument.

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Ad Misericordian or To misery

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The fallacy of appeal to pity which gets someone to accept an argument because he or she feels pity for someone or something.

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Affirming the consequent

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Invalid deductive argument form:
If A the B
B
A

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Ambiguity

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A term in a context is ambiguous if it has more than one relatively distinct meaning.

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Analogical reasoning

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Reasoning that justifies the claim that an item has certain characteristics by appeal to a sufficiently similar item, which is known to have the characteristic in question. It justifies an argument on the bases of an analogy between two things.

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Appeal to authority

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Appealing to someone whose expertise is not relevant to the issue at hand or appealing to someone who is famous or admired, but not an expert on the issue at hand.

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Appeal to force.

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The fallacy is committed when the arguer tries to get you to agree by indicating that you will be harmed if you don't agree.

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Argument

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A structured piece of discourse in which a statement is made which is the conclusion and which contains other statements that provide reasons for why that conclusion is the case.

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Begging the question

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An argument that rests on the premise that is either a restatement of the conclusion, or that would be doubted for the same reasons as the conclusion would be doubted [petitio principii]

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Causal Reasoning

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Reasoning that one thing typically is correlated with another thing, and therefore the one thing must cause the other thing.

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The principle of charitable interpretation.

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A maxim for interpreting argumentation that tells the critic to give the arguer the benefit of the doubt, and choose to interpret the passage as much as it is possible in such a way that the premises give the best support to the conclusion.

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Conceptual theory

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A statement of the conditions under which a certain concept applies to an object.
A theory that tries to explain the concept of a certain thing or process...its characteristics. It is typically criticized by finding counter examples and pointing out for the need of a more illuminating statement of conditions.

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Conditional

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A statement of an if-then argument. The if is the conditional or antecedent of the argument and the then part is the consequent.

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Confound

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In a causal argument, the X-factor that might be the actual cause.
This is what really causes them both....is what is called the confound.

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Conjunction

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A statement of the and form that links to other statements.

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Consistency

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A group of statements is consistent if it is possible for all of them to be true at the same time. If it is impossible for them all to be true at the same time, then it is impossible for all of them to be true at the same time.

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Contradiction

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A statement that cannot logically be true. It is inconsistent in all contexts.

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Controlled experiment

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An experiment designed to determine whether one thing causes another, that helps rule out the X-factor as an alternative explanation.
It seeks to rule out whether there is perhaps an underlying cause for the correlation between two things through experiments.

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Counter-consideration

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In a convergent argument considerations weighing against the conclusion.
The cons to the conclusion.

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Counter example

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As criticism of a premise that expresses a generalization, a clear example that that that is not always the case. In deductive arguments, a clear case in which the premises are true, but the conclusion false.
Or an argument that shares the same pattern, but is false. For a conceptual theory, a counterexample either clearly fits the concept, but not conditions of the theory or it fits the conditions, but not the concept.

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Deductive argument

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An argument in which the premises are put forward to guarantee the truth of the conclusion in the sense that it is logically impossible for all the premises to be true and the conclusion false.

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Denying the antecedent

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A invalid argument pattern of the form;
If A the B
Not A
Not B

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Distraction fallacy

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The general category of fallacies that tend to persuade by taking the audiences attention away from weak points.

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Elucidation

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A criterion for evaluating conceptual theories. A conceptual theory can be criticized by showing that it uses terms that are no easier to understand than the concept that it seeks to explain. This argument fails to elucidate.

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Emotion fallacies

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The general category of fallacies that tend to persuade by making it desirable to believe an arguers position rather than by giving evidence to believe it. Do this for me kind of thing.

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Emprical theory

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Empirical theories are designed to explain why things happen for example why some people suffer from depression or how children learn to read. It seeks to explain and go beyond what is obvious.they are criticized by pionting out that expected regularities did not occur, that crucial concepts of the theory cant be tested, or by offering a rival theory that is more plausible.

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Epistemology

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The philosophical study of the nature and conditions of knowledge.

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Equivocation

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An argument in which an expression shifts its meaning form one premise to another making the pattern invalid. Equivocation can exploit either ambiguity, or vagueness [unclear boundaries between objects to which the term applies and objects to which it does not.

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Expertise .

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Specialized knowledge in a restricted domain

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Explanation

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An attempt to indicate why or how something occurred rather than justifying our believe that it did.

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Fallacy

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Arguments that tend to persuade that should not.

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Fallacy of the false dilemma

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An argument that claims that there are only two alternatives when in reality there are more.

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Generalization

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A statement that applies to some number of individuals rather than to a particular case.

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General to particular reasoning

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Non-deductive, inductive reasoning that moves from statistical premises including those using words like most, a a conclusion about a particular item.

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Hasty generalizations

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Embracing a generalization on the basis of an unrepresentative sample, either one that was too small or selected in a biased way.

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Implicit Premise

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An unstated premise. We determine that such a premise should be added to the reconstruction of an argument in accordance with the principle of charitable interpretation. Typically such a premise is needed to render the argument deductively valid.

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Inconsistency

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A set of statements is inconsistent if it is impossible for all of them to be true simultaneously.

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Inductive argument

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An argument in which the premises are put forward to make the conclusion likely or more probable but not logically guaranteed.

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Linked argument

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A deuctive argument in contrast to the convergent argument. The name suggests logical links that connect all premises to the conclusions.

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Misleading definition

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Occurs when the premises include a word that has an uncertain, technical meaning of which mist readers will not know the definition.

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Modes Ponens

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A valid argument form in which we affirm the antecedent of a conditional statement. It has the pattern
If A then B
A
B
It affirms the antecedent.

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Modus tollens

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Mode of denying. A valid argument pattern that denies the consequent and has the pattern form
If A then B
Not B
Not A

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Necessity

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What must occur,In a valid argument, if the premises are true it is neccesary that the conclusion is true also.

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Nondeductive argument

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An argument in which the premises are not put forward to guarantee the truth of the conclusion, put simply to make the conclusion more or less likely.

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Non sequitur

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A phrase for showing that the conclusion does not follow from the premises even though it purports to.

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Particular to general reasoning

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A type of non-deductive, inductive argument that moves from evidence from particular situations to conclusions about a larger population. it is also called a sampling argument.

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Persuasiveness

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Legitimate persuasiveness has premises and a conclusion that the audience can understand and will be inclined to believe. Fallacious arguments are persuasive due to the use of tricks and gimmicks.

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Post Hoc, ergo propter Hoc

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The fallacy of moving from a correlation between one thing to another to the unjustified move that one thing causes another thing.

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prejudicial language

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happens when the arguer uses language that biases you in favor of his or hers argument and against the opponents view.

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Reconstruction

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The reformulation of arguments, conceptual theories and empirical theories that makes their structure clearer. This can include adding implicit premises to be able to place the argument into standard form.

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Regularity

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an observed trend or regularity..a pattern that most often occurs in that specific circumstance

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Relativism

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The believe that one opinion is always as good as another. And that when two people disagree it can never be determined whose position is more reasonable to hold.

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Representativeness of a sample

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A sample is likely to be representative of the population it was drawn from if it is sufficiently large, and done in an unbiased manner.

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Requirement of total evidence

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is a principle that states that in an inductive argument with statistical premises, all relevant evidence will be included in picking relevant evidence. All available evidence is to be used.

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Resemblance fallacy

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The fallacy occurs if an argument is presented in a manner in which the form of the argument looks like that of a successful argumnet form.

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Sample

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A selection of cases from a population.

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Sampling argument

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a particular to general inductive argument.

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Sampling frame

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A listing of a population from which a sample is drawn.

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Slippery slope

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A fallacy that states that is we don't do something it will probably lead to that, and therefore we should not do it...but some of the steps are not true...will that really happen?

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Sound argument

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An argument whose form is valid and whose contents are true.

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Standard form

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A way of diagramming arguments so that they will be easier to properly analyse.

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Statistical premises argumnet

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A general-to-particular, that takes general statistics and then draws them into a particular case.

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Statistical significance

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Something is statistically significant are properties true of a sample that are likely to be true of the population from which it was drawn
A difference detected in a sample can be statistically significant without being scientifically or policy significant.

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Straw man fallacy

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The fallacy is committed when the arguer makes his position seem stronger than it really is and that of his opponent significantly smaller than it really is.

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Subordinate conclusion

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Occurs in the reconstruction of complex deductive argument, when the conclusion of one argument serves as a premise for another argument.

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Successfulness

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A deductive argument is successful if it is valid, has true premises and is legitimately persuasive. An inductive argument is successful if the premises make the conclusion likely,the premises are true, the argument is legitimately persuasive.

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Truth Table

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A term is vague in a context if it is unclear where to draw the boundary between things to which the term does apply and the things to which it does not.

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Validity

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An argument is valid if and only if it is impossible for all the premises to be true and the conclusion false.

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Venn diagram

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In causal arguments, a possible underlying cause that could have caused both of the items.