PHIL 2020 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Gun Control, Deductive Reasoning, Collectively Exhaustive Events
30 Aug 2016
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Document Summary
When we reason, we use relationships among propositions to push our knowledge beyond the limits of what we can experience directly. Rivers in taiwan flow downhill: this statement is a proposition. Has a subject + predicate: is either true or false. Truth cannot be determined through one observation. Argument is a series of propositions, one or more of which support the truth of the last proposition. Argument is a set of propositions in which some propositions (premises) are asserted as evidence for another (conclusion) We can also say that the conclusion is inferred from the premises, so we might call an argument an inference. An argument is distinguished from other elements by its ability to support a statement logically. In an argument, we are presented not only with a statement the author takes to be true, but also with reasons that support the truth of the statement, reasons why we ought to accept the statement as true.
