SSH 105 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Inductive Reasoning, Logical Reasoning

• School: Ryerson University
• Department: Social Sciences and Humanities
• Course: SSH 105
• Professor: Klaas Kraay

Document Summary

This is the notion of a cogent argument . Inductive argument: intending to try to prove that the premises given are probable, not conclusive support for the conclusion (not very ambitious like deductive arguments) Cogency: an argument is cogent when if and only if it is not valid, but the premises of the argument are good reasons for the conclusion (conclusion is probably true) Ex: quitting smoking tends to improve health, mary has quit smoking, mary"s health will improve (from 1,2) *in the instance of cogency, the therefore symbol as well as the word probably must be inserted before writing the conclusion. Non-cogent arguments are called ill-formed arguments in that it lacks the logical connection between the premises and conclusion. Common cogent argument patterns (i) (ii: most a"s are b"s, x is an a, x is a b, x is an a, x is a b, most a"s and b"s are c"s, x is a c.