The midterm will be held at the beginning of class on Tuesday, March 20th. It's worth 15% of your overall grade, and will cover everything we've done in class so far:
- definitions of 'logic,' 'reasoning,' and 'argument'
- evaluating arguments (Chapter 6)
- types of arguments:
-deductive (aim for certainty, are valid/invalid and sound/unsound) (Chapter 8)
-inductive (generalizing from examples, are evaluated based how large and representative the examples in the premises are) (Chapter 7)
-args about cause/effect (correlation vs. causation) (Chapter 7)
-args by analogy (evaluated in terms of how similar the things compared are, and how relevant the similarities are to the conclusion being drawn) (Chapter 7)
-abductive (inferences to the best explanation, evaluated in terms of coherence with background theories, simplicity, predictive power, falsifiability, etc.) (Chapter 12) - the 11 fallacies covered in class so far (Chapter 5)
That midterm was super hard.
ReplyDeleteSounds like a great learning opportunity!
ReplyDelete"The formal study of complex systems is really, really hard."
Everybody should start randomly recommending extra credit for everything.
ReplyDelete