The title of the course is: "Think Again: How to reason and argue"

Walter Sinnott-Armstrong from Duke University Ram Neta from the University of North

Carolina, Chapel Hill.

The course is going to cover: a lot of important practical issues, raise some fascinating theoretical questions.

We'll try to teach you to think about a wide range of issues that affect your life in various ways.

We're not going to try to convert you to our point of view or, or teach you to believe what we believe. Instead, we want you to think in a new way and in a deeper way about the issues that matter to you most.

we're going to focus on a particular type of thinking, namely reasoning, because most people don't want to be arbitrary or have unjustified beliefs. They want to have reasons for what they think and do.

But how do you get reasons?

Well, we're going to approach reasons by way of arguments, because arguments are just ways to express reasons. And if you can understand arguments, you can understand reasons. And if you can formulate good arguments, you can have good reasons for the ways in which you think and behave. So that's one way in which it's important to understand arguments, namely to get better reasons for your own beliefs and actions.

In the I part

we'll teach you how to analyze arguments figure out which of the words, which parts of

those passages contain the argument then you need to separate out those parts, put

them in a certain order, which we'll call standard form

often these arguments will have missing parts and you'll have to supply those missing parts or suppressed premises

In the II part

once we've got the argument in shape, we can start to evaluate it. But evaluations are going to depend a lot on what the purpose of the argument is. Some arguments try to be valid in a logical way [SOUND] and those are deductive arguments. So we'll start first by looking at deductive arguments and the formal structure of deductive arguments. We'll look at propositional logic, then categorical logic.

In the III part

we'll look at a different kind of argument, inductive arguments that don't even try to be deductively valid. Here there are just a lot of different kinds. So we'll look at statistical generalizations, applying generalizations down to particular cases. We'll look at inference to the best explanation and arguments from analogy. We'll look at causal reasoning and probability and decision making.

In the IV part

we'll look at fallacies. These are common. The very tempting ways to make mistakes in arguments. Some of them have to do with vaugeness. Others have to do with ambiguity. Some of them are irrelevance, like arguments ad hominem and appeals to ignorance and we'll also look at a major fallacy called begging the question that people commit all the time. And in the end, we'll teach you a general method for spotting and avoiding these common mistakes.

Lecture 1.2

we need to understand arguments. arguments are not fights, (verbal fight), yelling,

abuse, complaining, contradiction ( is just to deny the person or contradict what they said)

argument is an intellectual process an argument is a connected series of

statements to establish a proposition arguments are trying to put statements into a

certain structure that reflects the order of reasoning in order to establish the proposition according to Monty Python.

But Monty Python, no matter how great they are, and they are great, didn't get it quite right because the purpose of an argument is not always to establish a proposition because some propositions that are conclusions of arguments, we already knew.

So sometimes arguments are intended to establish a proposition, like Monty Python said, but in other cases they're intended to help us understand the proposition and the reasons why the proposition is true.

We'll think of an argument as 1. a connected series of sentences or statements

or propositions, 2. where some of these are premises, 3. and one of them is the conclusion, 4. where the premises are intended to provide

some kind of reason for the one that's the conclusion.

Lecture 1.3, 1.4

purpose of arguments: PERSUADING or CONVINCING, JUSTIFYING, UNDERSTANDING, EXPLANING

Lecture 1.5

Explaning is giving a reason why something happened (or why is it true). Notice that when you explain something, you assume that it's true.

When you try to persuade someone to believe something, that thing doesn't have to be true

The goal of explanation:

!! is to increase understanding (is to help people

understand why something is true) to fit particular phenomenon into a general

pattern,

4 types of causes (explanations)according to Aristotle

1.Efficient causation or casual explanation: it tells us why something happened: "Why did the bridge collapse? The earthquake shook it" That explains why the bridge collapsed.(which interact so as to be an agency of the change or movement; By means of what is it?)

2. Teleological or purposeful or final explanation it is looking at the purpose of the goal: "Why did Joe go to the grocery store? To buy milk" His goal of buying milk is what explains why he went to the grocery store.

continuation: 4 types of causes (explanations) acc. to Aristotle

2. Teleological or purposeful or final explanation. (That for the sake of which a thing is what it is; For the sake of what is it? )

3. Formal explanation: "Why doesn't this peg fit in that round hole? The peg is square" the answer is, because the peg is square and the hole is round. That's why it doesn't fit in the hole and that explains it, that helps you understand why it didn't fit. (caused by the arrangement, shape or appearance of the thing changing or moving. What is it?)

continuation: 4 types of causes (explanations) acc. to Aristotle

!4. Material explanation: "Why is this golf club

light? It is made of graphite." (the material which the moving or changing things are made of. Out of what has a thing come?)

why does the train emit such a loud noise? what causes it to make that noise is that the

conductor pull a lever on the train, which creates that noise. (causal explanation).

(the teleological explanation): the train was crossing an intersection with cars, and wanted the cars to know that they're coming.

(formal explanation), because the whistle on the top of the train has a certain shape that makes the air come out with a certain vibration.

why does the train emit such a loud noise? (material explanation), because air has a

certain density and a certain material that makes it create that kind of sound. So we can give all four types of

why Joe fell when he jumped out of the airplane.

Joe jumped out of an airplane (skydiving). That's what caused him to fall. But then, why did he jump out of the airplane? to get excitement. Why did he fall so fast? Because of his shape, it was aerodynamic, and because of the material that he was made out of, heavy flesh, which was a lot denser than the surrounding air.

Explanation in a form of an agrument

One premise usually states some kind of general principle that can apply to a lot of different situations.

the second premise talks about the current situation and says that those types of features that the principle mentions are instantiated (ejemplificado) in this case.

And then the conclusions says: that explains why it happened this way, in this case.

Explanation in the form of an agrument:

!General principles of laws

Initial conditions ________________________ Phenomenon to be explained

Explanation in the form of an agrument:

When an object is freely suspended in a medium and when a medium is more dense than the

object, then the object rises. !

The hellium balloon is less dense than the surrounding air.

___________________________________ The hellium balloon rises

Explanation:

An attempt to fit a particular phenomenon into a general pattern in order to increase understanding and remove bewilderman or surprise.

any generalization could be used for explanation false Bode's law can be used to predict all the

distances between planets and the sun, this law is a generalization that held for all the

planets that they knew in Bode's day and also used to predict new observations of planets.

it actually turns out to fail.

Bode's law, is an example, where you can get a prediction, without explanation

example where you have explanation without prediction: we have an explanation of why the child is HIV positive when it is, but we don't get any prediction that it will be HIV positive and we don't justify the belief that the child is HIV positive. We can have explanation without prediction and without justification.

Explanation is not:

! persuasion, or justification, or generalization, or prediction. !Those are other uses of argument.

what are arguments made of?

- language (sentences, statements and propositions) -humans = the animal that argues. -acc. to Aristotle the rational animal, the animal that reasons because other animals don't do that. Humans are the only one that argues and reasons

4 basic points about lg:

1. important. 2. conventional (conventions seem to be kind of arbitrary, but language is far from completely arbitrary, because the conventions of language have limits because lg: 3. representational (refer to objects in the world and describe facts in the world) you can't change objects or facts by changing your language 4. social language evolved because of its social function

Different levels of rules and conventions that lg have

-semantic constraints (semantics- meaning of words) -physical production constraints (volume, pronunciation etc) -structural combination rules (syntax- rules of grammar) -etiquette rules

Lecture 1.7- Meaning

linguistic meaning referential or descriptive view of language. referential or descriptive theory of meaning !Ludwig Wittgenstein, the great 20th century Austrian philosopher who agrued that: meaning is use

3 levels of lg:

!-linguistic act- a meaningful utterance you perform -speech act level occurs even when it doesn't affect your actions at all -conversational level- the production of certain effects bring about a certain effect on your behavior or your thought or your attitudes