Primer: Difference between revisions

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This can be the landing page for the primer.
§1 Overview
 
    §1.1. Propositions
* §1. Overview
§1.2 The Anatomy of an Argument 2
 
§1.3. The Uses of Arguments 4
Over your first few years of life, you learned how to do a lot of things: how to speak, how to think, how to walk, how to grasp and manipulate objects, etc. But you learned most of these things implicitly—that is, without having words for what you were doing and how. For example, you learned many words before you knew the word “word” and you learned how to put words together into sentences before you had the word “sentence” or words for the parts of speech (much less for the rules of grammar). Here’s another example: Many of you have probably never thought much about how to walk, but if you’ve ever had physical therapy to recover from an injury or taken a movement class as part of learning how to dance or to act, you may have learned to analyze the act of walking into component parts and this will have given you more control over the way you walk. Likewise, when athletes train, they often learn to analyze movements they learned as a child into simpler movements, and this process gives them finer grained control over their movements. It is possible to gain greater control of your thinking in the same way, by learning to analyzing the complex activity of thinking into the various mental acts that make it up.  
§1.4. Mapping the Relations Between Arguments 6
 
§1.5. Why Some Arguments are Stronger than Others 8
In this primer we’re going to focus on a part of our mental activity that looms large in our daily lives, in the sciences, and in philosophy: the activity of arguing. We will learn what an argument is, how to analyze an argument into its parts, and how to use this analysis to methodically assess an argument.
§1.6. How to Assess Argument 15
 
Glossary of Key Terms from §1 24
In §1, I provide an overview of the whole process, and §2–5 deal in greater detail with different aspects of the process.
§2.  How to Analyze an Argument 25
§2.1 Finding the Arguments 25
§2.2 Identifying the Conclusion and All the Premises 27
§2.3 Implicit Premises 27
§2.4 Multi-Step Arguments and Multiple Arguments to the Same Conclusion 29
§2.5 Distinguishing Arguments from Explanations 30
§2.6 An example of a complex map 32
§3.  Assessing Premises 33
§3.1 Epistemic Status as Relative to An Audience but Objective 33
§3.2 The Continuum Between Knowledge and Ignorance 35
§3.3 The Epistemic Statuses: Certainty, Probability, Possibility, and Arbitrariness 37
§3.4 The Structure of Knowledge and the Danger of Circular Reasoning 42
Glossary of Key Terms from §3 45
§4. Assessing Inferences 45
§4.1 Deduction 45
§4.2 Arguments Applying Statistics 53
§4.3 Induction 56
§4.4 Statistical Generalization 58
§4.5 Inference to the Best Explanation 58
§4.6 Analogical Argument 64
§4.7 Reductio ad Absurdum 65
§5. Assessing Conclusions in Light of Multiple Arguments 69
§5.1 Refutations of Arguments (and the Burden of Proof Principle) 69
§5.2 Assessing Arguments for Incompatible Conclusions 72
§5.3 Combining Multiple Arguments for the Same Proposition 73

Revision as of 11:53, 4 August 2022

§1 Overview 

   §1.1. Propositions

§1.2 The Anatomy of an Argument 2 §1.3. The Uses of Arguments 4 §1.4. Mapping the Relations Between Arguments 6 §1.5. Why Some Arguments are Stronger than Others 8 §1.6. How to Assess Argument 15 Glossary of Key Terms from §1 24 §2. How to Analyze an Argument 25 §2.1 Finding the Arguments 25 §2.2 Identifying the Conclusion and All the Premises 27 §2.3 Implicit Premises 27 §2.4 Multi-Step Arguments and Multiple Arguments to the Same Conclusion 29 §2.5 Distinguishing Arguments from Explanations 30 §2.6 An example of a complex map 32 §3. Assessing Premises 33 §3.1 Epistemic Status as Relative to An Audience but Objective 33 §3.2 The Continuum Between Knowledge and Ignorance 35 §3.3 The Epistemic Statuses: Certainty, Probability, Possibility, and Arbitrariness 37 §3.4 The Structure of Knowledge and the Danger of Circular Reasoning 42 Glossary of Key Terms from §3 45 §4. Assessing Inferences 45 §4.1 Deduction 45 §4.2 Arguments Applying Statistics 53 §4.3 Induction 56 §4.4 Statistical Generalization 58 §4.5 Inference to the Best Explanation 58 §4.6 Analogical Argument 64 §4.7 Reductio ad Absurdum 65 §5. Assessing Conclusions in Light of Multiple Arguments 69 §5.1 Refutations of Arguments (and the Burden of Proof Principle) 69 §5.2 Assessing Arguments for Incompatible Conclusions 72 §5.3 Combining Multiple Arguments for the Same Proposition 73

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