week 5 - Validity and "Good Argument"

Week 5

Validity and “Good Argument”

This week I learn about validity and good argument. When evaluate an argument, I need to ask whether the premises are true or not and the premises provide good reasons to accept the conclusion or not. I accept an argument when I agree with the conclusion. When I reject an argument, I disagree with the conclusion. The premises are not provide a good reason for accept the conclusion when the premises are true but the conclusion is false, the conclusion is true but the premises are false and the premises are true but it is irrelevant to conclusion. Those conditions are grouped as not a good argument. A good argument is when the premises are true and lead to a true conclusion.

Arguments can divide into two groups, deductive and inductive argument. Deductive argument contains both valid (good or bad) and invalid (bad or unsound) statement. Inductive argument contains invalid statements which are strong and weak. Valid deductive argument’s conclusion follows necessarily from the conclusion. It is impossible for the conclusion to be false, if the premises are true. Valid deductive, good argument has all true premises and deductively sounds (good). Here I learn that good argument must be valid and have all true premises. While, valid deductive, bad argument has one or more false premises or both, it is deductively unsound (bad).

Moreover, invalid deductive argument is the conclusion does not follow necessarily from the premises called invalid. It is possible for the premises to be true and the conclusion is false, the argument is invalid. For a better understanding of deductive and inductive argument, I am going through a lot of examples more than three times in the lecture note.

Bad arguments can happen when the statements in the argument are vague, the premises not support the conclusion, one or more premises are untrue, the conclusion is not true and the premises are irrelevant to conclusion. There are some things to remember about validity. Valid does not mean true. It means the argument is well reasoned, the patterns of reasoning are logic and the conclusion follows necessarily from the premises. In a basic deductive validity, the argument’s premises are true then the conclusion is true, it is valid. If the premises are true and conclusion is false, it is an invalid statement.

Now, let’s see inductive argument. A strong inductive argument is one in which the conclusion follows probably from the premises; we can say it “very strong”. If the conclusion to be false and the premises are true, then it is a “very weak” inductive argument. Invalid arguments can range from “very strong” to being “very weak”. Here I stressed that inductive argument that is range from very strong to very weak is different from being “valid” or “invalid”. Inductive argument consists of inductive generalisation, statistical argument, predictive argument and analogical argument.

The lessons I gained from this week is very useful to me because I score fully for the question; I know how to evaluate source materials. Lastly, I score full for question; if I am not sure about something, I will research to find out more. So, I basically like to Google out if I don’t know anything.