MC 4 Module 5-9
MC 4 Module 5-9
MODULE V-IX
Deductive Arguments, Inductive Arguments, and Fallacies
MODULE DESCRIPTOR:
This module covers the introduction to Deductive Arguments, Inductive
Arguments, and Fallacies. It includes different activities that will enhance the
student’s knowledge after the discussions.
NOMINAL DURATION:
This module’s timeframe is from September 13-October 12, 2021.
I NT R O D U C T I O N
The premises of any argument are put forth as reasons for accepting
its conclusion. Two questions thus arise:
1. Are the premises true? We should doubt a conclusion based
on premises known to be false.
2. Is the argument logical? That is to say, would the premises,
if true, provide strong support for the conclusion?
To decide whether premises are true, we need information about the world, about the
meanings of words, or both. For example, suppose a financial analyst argues that the
stock market will go up because the Federal Reserve Bank is going to reduce interest
rates. To know whether the Fed intends to reduce rates, we need to know whether
there has been an official announcement by the Fed or whether the analyst is
depending on an insider’s tip or hunch.
The analyst’s argument relies also on an unstated premise about the connection
be- tween falling interest rates and a rising market. This correlation often holds, but
there are important exceptions. In some circumstances, reducing rates will not stir a
sluggish market.
Example
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Our study of arguments focuses on the question of whether the premises would, if
true, support the conclusion. We can do this without knowing whether the premises are
actually true. The analyst’s argument is logical, which is to say that if the analyst has
the facts straight (if both premises are true) and if other relevant information is not being
ignored, then probably the market will rise.
To investigate the logical strength of ordinary-language arguments, we look at the
contexts in which they occur, the meanings of the terms in the argument, and certain
structural features of the arguments. We can analyze structures, or forms, of arguments
in a general way, without reference to specialized factual knowledge. In the sample
argument above, for example, an important structural feature is that the claim made in
the first pre- miss is linked with the claim made in the conclusion by a generalization
that states that two types of things (falling rates and rising markets) regularly go together.
This structural feature occurs in many arguments and can be discussed without
reference to the factual content of the arguments. We can thus examine in a general
way the structures that various arguments share as well as how structural features
strengthen or weaken arguments.
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alleged evidence offers only very weak support or is irrelevant to the conclusion. We
have already seen that in the fallacy of equivocation, the premises are irrelevant to
the conclusion because of a shift in meaning of some crucial term. Fallacies also occur
when the premises make some irrelevant appeal to our emotions instead of providing
evidence for the truth of the conclusion. Still other fallacies have structures that
resemble those of deductive or inductive arguments while violating some standard of
deductive or inductive reasoning. These pretenders can be called deductive fallacies,
or invalid arguments, when they resemble deductive arguments or inductive fallacies
when they resemble inductive arguments. The premises of fallacious arguments,
even if true, do not guarantee or even make it probable that the conclusion is true. The
conclusion of a fallacious argument might be true, but its premises are not good
reasons to believe it.
Arguments (either deductive or inductive) that provide the proper kind of sup- port
for their conclusions and also have all true premises are called sound arguments.
(Terminology on this point varies. Some writers prefer to apply the term sound only to
deductive arguments and use a different term, such as cogent, to refer to an inductive
argument with all true premises.)
In this chapter, we look at examples of deductive and inductive arguments to learn
more about the differences between them. Recognizing each type is important
because different standards apply for evaluating inductive and deductive arguments.
This chapter also discusses some general characteristics of fallacious arguments and
considers a few examples of fallacies.
Dedu c ti v e A rg u m e n t s
In a deductive argument, if all the premises are true, the conclusion cannot be false.
This guarantee—that true premises will yield true conclusions—is the outstanding
characteristic of deductive arguments, and it is obviously a valuable feature. How is
the truth of the premises preserved? The conclusion of a deductive argument puts
together or restates information that is contained in the premises without adding new
information about the world. For example, the conclusion of the argument might de-
pend on the definition of some expression in the premises:
Jack is a bachelor.
He has no wife.
The conclusion of this argument makes explicit something about the meaning of
bachelor rather than telling us something new about Jack. Because the truth of the
conclusion depends solely on the truth of the premise, given conventional linguistic
meanings, the conclusion contains no new information about the world.
The conclusion of a deductive argument might be an instance of a general principle
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Again, to see that the conclusion cannot be false if the premise is true, we need only
to understand the meaning of the premise (that is, reordering the terms to be added
does not change the value of the sum) and to understand that the conclusion says the
sum of 3 and 4 is the same as the sum of 4 and 3. Alternately, the conclusions of some
deductive arguments follow as a result of connections drawn among the premises by
important logical terms, such as and, or, not, all, and some:
Examples
The next argument is as old as the first text in logic—written more than 2,300
years ago.
The first premise is a universal generalization. It contains the information that all
members of one class, or type of thing (the class of men), are also members of another
class (the class of mortals). The second premise provides the information that the
individual whose name is Socrates is a member of the class of men. The conclusion of
the argument combines the information contained separately in the two premises.
Strictly speaking, the conclusion contains no new information not already present in
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the premises. Neither premise says explicitly (in just those words) what is said in the
conclusion, but the information in the conclusion is implicit in the premises. Moreover,
this is true not only for the simple arguments in the three examples above but also for
every argument in which the conclusion follows deductively from its premises.
Deductive arguments preserve truth because they recombine and restate
information that is contained at least implicitly in the premises. Whereas the
conclusion of a deductive argument can restate or recombine information, put it
together in novel ways, and thus make explicit what was formerly only implicit, such a
conclusion can- not go beyond what was already present, at least implicitly, in the
premises to advance our knowledge of what the world is like. Deductive arguments
preserve truth, but they cannot extend factual knowledge.
If deductive arguments cannot give us any new information that was not already
present in the premises, what purpose do they serve? Why should we bother to state
a conclusion if all of the necessary information is already provided in the premises? If
all arguments were as simple as the example about Socrates, there would be little
reason to state conclusions. The mere statement of both premises together would be
sufficient for most people to get the point or “to put two and two together.” Sometimes
such simple arguments are presented without their conclusions. For the same reason
that premises can be omitted, conclusions can also be unstated. It is boring to dwell on
the obvious.
Not all deductive arguments are simple, however. Sometimes the chain of reasoning
that connects the premises to the conclusion is long and complex. When this is so,
even though the conclusion contains no new information (in the sense that it only
selectively recombines information stated in the premises), the conclusion will seem
new because we had not put together the information in the premises in just that way.
Even the person constructing the argument might be surprised to see where the
premises lead, because although the premises jointly imply the conclusion, the
conclusion is not merely a restatement or specific instance of one of the premises.
Thus, although the conclusion of a correct deductive argument cannot yield new
information, it can put information together in ways that might not have occurred to
anyone before. We can and do deduce conclusions that are new from a psychological
standpoint. Even when the conclusions of deductive arguments are novel, surprising,
or startling in this sense, however, they can only draw out what was already there in
the premises.
Example
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Jones: Ouch.
The reasoning in this argument is mathematical, and its deductive character depends
on the calculations by which the conclusion is reached. Mathematical proofs are
primary examples of deductive reasoning. Although mathematicians may believe on
inductive grounds that a particular theorem holds in every case because it holds in
every case tested so far, they do not regard the theorem as proven until it has been
established as the conclusion of a deductive argument. Deductive arguments pervade
our every- day lives, especially in our use of mathematics, including simple arithmetic.
Balancing checkbooks, counting change, and setting up a budget all require deductive
reasoning. Although you probably do not use geometry much in your everyday life now,
if you studied it in high school you were intensely involved in constructing and
evaluating deductive arguments. You began the course in geometry with a set of first
principles— axioms, postulates, and definitions—and then proceeded to derive
theorems (conclusions) on the basis of those principles. This was an exercise in
deductive reasoning, and, as you no doubt remember, some parts of it were subtle.
Even though you had the required premises in hand, it was not always obvious how to
combine those premises to deduce the theorem you were supposed to prove.
All other areas of mathematics, including those that, unlike geometry, are not
formulated as axiomatic systems, essentially depend on deductive arguments. All
mathematical proofs, including proofs in statistics and mathematical probability, are
deductive arguments. Furthermore, we can regard mathematical proofs as the purest
form of deductive reasoning because even the premises contain no information about
what the real world is like. The mathematical principles that form the basis for
mathematical proofs are themselves usually considered to be true by definitions of the
terms involved or to be true claims about abstract constructions of the human mind,
such as numbers or geometric figures. This is what Bertrand Russell (1959) was
referring to when he said “I fear that, to a mind of sufficient intellectual power, the whole
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Russell does not believe that all mathematics is trivial to our minds, for our intellectual
powers are limited. When we apply mathematical reasoning to factual claims, as we
did in the preceding example about Jones’s commuting time, the results may seem
surprising—just as the results of a complicated mathematical proof may seem
surprising. The point is that the use of mathematical calculations in an argument does
not introduce any information about the world that goes beyond what is already stated
in the premises.
I nd u c t i v e A r g u m e nt s
Inductive arguments can have false conclusions even when all the premises are true
and support the conclusion in the sense of contributing to or upholding its probability.
Inductive arguments lack the definitive and valuable truth-preserving feature of
deductive arguments. This apparent shortcoming, however, is more than offset by a
feature of inductive arguments that is lacking in deductive arguments. Inductive
arguments can extend or amplify our factual knowledge. For this reason, we call
inductive arguments ampliative. Conclusions of inductive arguments amplify or go
beyond the in- formation found in their premises. Conclusions of ampliative arguments
contain new information that is not present, even implicitly, in their premises. Although
the field of mathematics is well suited to the almost exclusive use of deductive
reasoning, in all other fields of human endeavor—natural science, the social sciences,
history, literary criticism, the practical knowledge of everyday affairs, and even ethics—
inductive inferences and arguments are indispensable.
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Darwin noted differences among members of the same species of domestic plants and
animals, such as dogs. The range of types from Chihuahuas to Great Danes is far
more varied than that found in wild species such as elephants, which come only in two
varieties (African and Asian). Darwin concluded that differences within a single species
occur because humans breed plants and animals under a much greater variety of
conditions than the conditions to which wild species are exposed. Humans have bred
dogs for centuries in almost every part of the world—for sport, show, work, and a
variety of other purposes. Elephants flourish in highly specialized environments in only
a few places.
Causal arguments are among the most common inductive arguments. Other
familiar types of inductive arguments include the following:
That a stone will fall, that fire will burn, that the earth
has solidity, we have observed a thousand and a
thousand times; and when any new instance of this
nature is presented, we draw without hesitation the
accustomed inference.
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The statistical information shows that a policy designed to be fair (50–50 division of
property in divorce settlements) has unexpected implications. This information may
have an influence on future financial calculations for divorce settlements.
Generalizing on the basis of samples is one of the most useful ways in which we
extend our knowledge through inductive reasoning.
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small experience with guns I had never hit anything I had tried
to hit. And I knew I had done my best to hit him.
—Parade Magazine
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and 8 to 10 per cent of men, this information supports the conclusion that hereditary
factors are important in the development of alcoholism. Additional information from
Swedish studies of adopted children—which clearly showed that the children of
alcoholics are four times more likely than other children to become alcoholics even if
the children are adopted early in life by people who do not abuse alcohol—makes the
argument in sup- port of the hereditary character of alcoholism even stronger.
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After experiments showed that heated wine did not sour, Pasteur inductively concluded
that his belief about yeast causing the wine to sour was correct. This conclusion follows
inductively rather than deductively; although the yeast cells were killed by heating, it is
possible that some other agent that also could be destroyed by heating was the causal
factor in wine spoilage. Even with a deductive component, arguments of this type have
an overall inductive structure because the conclusion about the cause does not follow
with certainty from the premises concerning the success of the experiment. Arguments
of this type are fundamental to scientific reasoning
FALLACIES
Two familiar fallacies are the fallacy of black-and-white thinking and the fallacy of
equivocation. The first occurs in arguments that base a conclusion on a limited set
of alternatives—such as a choice between loving and hating someone—when a
broader range of possibilities is available. The fallacy of equivocation involves using
an expression, such as “mad,” in one sense in one of the premises and a different sense
in another premise or in the conclusion of an argument. If the premises state that
someone is “mad” in the sense of “angry” and the conclusion uses the term in the sense
of “crazy,” we can- not use the term to connect premises and conclusion. Many other
fallacies arise as a result of violating logical standards for valid deductive arguments
and strong inductive arguments.
Fallacies can mislead us for many reasons. Sometimes our emotions interfere with our
power to make unbiased judgments. A conclusion can be so attractive that we are
ready to accept almost anything offered as evidence in support of it. Swindlers and
confidence men present preposterous “evidence” for the reliability of their money-
making schemes, but they count on the desire for money to cloud the judgment of their
victims. Alternatively, an assertion may be so repugnant that we will accept almost any
statement as evidence against it. (How can I believe that someone I love has betrayed
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In other cases, we feel a strong like or dislike, or respect or disapproval, for the
person who makes a claim. This can so prejudice us that we fail to consider the
strength of the evidence. Fond parents, for example, are notorious for their willing-
ness to accept a child’s word as sufficient evidence. Although sometimes the authority
of a person making a statement is a legitimate reason for accepting it, critical thinking
requires that we not let emotional feelings about the person making the statement
mislead us.
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Since things that are causally connected with one another occur together in a regular
way, the premises of causal arguments often include statements that such regularities
have been observed. But to argue for a causal connection merely on the basis of the
fact that things have occurred together occasionally in the past is to argue
fallaciously. The observed co-occurrences could be coincidental. All sorts of things
hap- pen together without any causal connection existing between them. For example,
in 1993 Hanna Gray ended her tenure as president of the University of Chicago, and
Mike Ditka ended his tenure as coach of the Chicago Bears. Neither announced any
definite plans for the following year. Yet, it is unlikely that these matters are causally
linked and even more unlikely that, as a Chicago alumnus suggested, “Hanna Gray is
Coach Mike Ditka in disguise.”
All men are mortal. Socrates is mortal. Therefore, all men are Socrates.
The transparent way in which this fallacious argument parodies the classic example of
deduction makes it amusing rather than deceptive. Life would be simpler if all fallacies
were so easy to detect.
Stereotypic thinking is not always this obvious (or obnoxious). Psychologists have
demonstrated that fallacious reasoning involving stereotypical thinking is common
even in the absence of any racial or other type of prejudice. Two psychologists
presented the following problem to several student groups and professional
colleagues (Tversky, A., & Kahneman, D. (1974). Judgments under uncertainty.
Science, 185, 1124).
Persons to whom the problem was presented were told that the following had been
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drawn at random from a collection of 100 personal descriptions (30 of lawyers and 70
of engineers):
John is a 39-year-old man. He is married and has two
children. He is active in local politics. His favorite hobby
is the collecting of rare books. He is competitive,
argumentative, and articulate.
On the basis of the results of this and similar experiments, the psychologists who
conducted the study concluded that people are the captives of certain stereotypes
pertaining to lawyers and engineers. Presumably, the general stereotype of a lawyer is
formed by the media’s representation of high-powered trial lawyers, who are
competitive, argumentative, and articulate. Collecting rare books can be an expensive
hobby, and prominent lawyers earn large incomes. In addition, many high-level political
offices are held by men and women trained in the law. None of the information presented
in the description is incompatible with the engineering profession, however, and a large
number of lawyers lead less glamorous lives than those lawyers who exemplify the
stereotype. If the solid information is ignored that descriptions of engineers in the
sample far outnumber those of lawyers, then a judgment that a lawyer (not an engineer)
is being described could be accounted for by stereotypical mental pictures of lawyers
and engineers.
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