Midterm

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)

Get to studying!

Ockham Weeps

What do you think: is this woman's explanation the best? Let us know in the comments to this post.

Murder on the Abductive Express

I think abductive reasoning is the most effective tool we have when faced with the myriad uncertain, ambiguous issues and decisions that everyday life throws our way.  Here are some links:

• Here's a paper (pdf) that explains why I disagree with our textbook's explanation of the scientific method. It's important to consider and test multiple possible explanations rather than a single hypothesis. 
• (NOTE: Platt uses the word "inductive" in a more general way than we do in class, to refer to any non-deductive kind of reasoning--that is, arguments that don't attempt to absolutely prove their conclusion.) 
• I'm 75% through reading this book: Inference to the Best Explanation by Peter Lipton. 
• Remember when I was talking about Einstein's theory of general relativity having predictive power? This is what I had in mind.  
• Everything you ever wanted to know about William of Ockham and his famous razor.
• Lastly, here's a dinosaur comic murder mystery.

Child Abduction

Psychologist Alison Gopnik gave a great TED talk recently on how children are natural abductive reasoners; playing and making pretend is often about coming up with and testing various hypotheses. Here's the talk:

Gopnik's book, The Philosophical Baby, is great.