2 - 1 - Lecture 1-1 - Why Arguments Matter (754)

8/13/2019 2 - 1 - Lecture 1-1 - Why Arguments Matter (754)

1/5

[BLANK_AUDIO].Hi.Welcome to our Coursera course.This is the first time we've ever taughtan online course, and we're very excitedabout it.>> All right![LAUGH].>> I'm Walter Sinnott-Armstrong fromDuke University.And my co-teacher is Ram Neta from theUniversity of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.Say hi, Ram.>> Hi.>> Thanks.This is going to be a great course.It's going to cover a lot of importantpractical issues, raise some fascinatingtheoretical questions.We'll also try to have some fun, becausethere'relots of wacky examples where people makesilly mistakes and

arguments in everyday life.And we'll try to teach you how to avoidthose.The title of the course is Think Again.How to reason and argue.And the title pretty much tells you whatthe course is about.We'll try to teach you to think againabout awide range of issues that effect your lifein various ways.We're not going to try to convert you toour point

of view or, or teach you to believe whatwe believe.Instead, we want you to think in a new wayandin a deeper way about the issues thatmatter to you most.The subtitle of the course, How to Reasonand Argue, tells you that we're going tofocus ona particular type of thinking, namelyreasoning, because mostpeople don't want to be arbitrary or haveunjustified beliefs.

They want to have reasons for what theythink and do.But how do you get reasons?Well, we're going to approach reasons byway ofarguments, because arguments are just waysto express reasons.And if you can understand arguments, youcan understand reasons.And if you can formulate good arguments,


2/5

you can havegood reasons for the ways in which youthink and behave.So that's one way in which it's importantto understand arguments, namely toget better reasons for your own beliefsand actions.But, another way in which it's veryimportant to understand arguments, is toavoid mistakes.because there's lots of charlatans outthere who aregoing to try to convince you to think theway theywant you to think and to behave the waythey want you to behave by giving you badarguments.So you need to spot them and avoid them.Just think about a used car salesman whotries to convinceyou to buy a, a car, because it looksreally cooland you'll look even cooler if you'resitting in the car.

Well, that might be a good reason to buy acar and it might not.And you're going to have to figure outwhich kindsof arguments to believe and which kindsnot to believe.Consider another example, say a lawyer ina courtroom, and you'resitting in the jury, and they're going totry to convince youeither to find the defendant guilty or tofind the defendant not guilty,but either way, you don't want your

decision to be like flipping a coin.You want to have reasons for what you'rethinking.And for the verdict that you reach.as a member of the jury.Or, an evangelist tries to convert you totheir religious beliefsand to get you to give up your oldreligious beliefs.Well, you don't want to make that kind ofa decisionarbitrarily either because it's soimportant.

And then what about your personal life.You might have a friend who says let's gofor a cross-country trip.It'll be great.Well, maybe it will and maybe it won't.But you don't want to commit yourself tosucha big endeavor without having thought itthrough properly.How are we going to study arguments.


3/5

Well, in this course we'll have fourparts.The first part,we'll teach you how to analyze arguments.That might seem really simple, you justread the passage and hear what they'resaying.But actually it's quite hard because somepassages or some sets of words,if we're talking about spoken language,contain arguments and others don't.Here's an example.Consider a letter to the editor.Some letters to the editor don't havearguments at all.They justsay, thank people for having behaved innice ways or done nice things.On the other hand, other letters to theeditor include arguments.They try to convince you.To vote for a certain political candidatefor example.So you need to distinguish which passages

include arguments and which passages don'tinclude arguments.Then, you need to look at those passagesandfigure out which of the words, which partsof those passages contain the argument.Then you need to separate out those parts,putthem in a certain order, which we'll callstandard form.And, often these arguments will havemissingparts and you'll have to supply those

missingparts or suppressed premises in order togeta full picture of how the argument works.And that's what we'll do in part one.Then in part two,once we've got the argument in shape, wecan start to evaluate it.But evaluations are going to depend a loton what the purpose of the argument is.Some arguments try to be valid in alogical way[SOUND]

and those are deductive arguments.So we'll start first by looking atdeductivearguments and the formal structure ofdeductive arguments.We'll look at propositional logic, thencategorical logic.That'll be part two of the course.Then in part three, we'll look at adifferent kind of


4/5

argument, inductive arguments that don'teven try to be deductively valid.Here there are just a lot of differentkinds.So we'll look at statisticalgeneralizations,applying generalizations down toparticular cases.We'll look at inference to the bestexplanation and arguments from analogy.We'll look at causal reasoning andprobability and decision making.So it'll be a lot of different types ofinductive arguments covered in part three.Then in part four, we'll look atfallacies.These are common.The very tempting ways to makemistakes in arguments.Some of them have to do with vaugeness.Others have to do with ambiguity.Some of them are irrelevance, likeargumentsad hominem and appeals to ignorance and

we'llalso look at a major fallacy calledbeggingthe question that people commit all thetime.And in the end, we'll teach you ageneral method for spotting and avoidingthese common mistakes.So that'll be part four.And at the end of each part, we'll have ashort quiz with some questions to makesure you understood.So we're very glad to have you in this

course, andwe're very honored that there's so manystudents in this course.But that raises one problem.Namely, we cannot answer emails fromstudents.So please do not email us individually.There will be discussion forumswhere you can go and talk to otherstudents about the material in the course.And I bet that if you go to those forums,not only will you get your questionsanswered, but if you

go to those forums and help answer otherpeople's questions, everybodywill learn more and that's what thiscourse is all about.So, thanks very much for joining us onthis adventure and we hope you stick withit because we've got a lot of fun and alot of important things to cover.One final recommendation.We've done these lectures so that you can


5/5

just watch thelectures by themselves and do theexercises and take the quizzes.However, if you're listening to a lectureand you'rehaving a little trouble understanding it,or if you'rereally fascinated and you want to get moredetail,then there is an accompanying textbookcalled, Understanding Arguments.by myself and Robert Fogelin.Many, many, many of the best ideasin this course come from him, he's been aleader in this field of understandingarguments for many decades and I owe awfullot to him and I really appreciate that.So, I want to do a little shout out tothanks toRobert Fogelin before we get started onthis course and the next lecture.

Documents

2 - 1 - Lecture 1-1 - Why Arguments Matter (754)