Hoofdstuk 1:
- Claim: When a belief (judgment, opinion) is asserted in a declarative sentence, the result is
a claim, statement, or assertion.
- Objective claim vs. subjective claim: An objective claim is true or false regardless of
whether people think it is true or false. Claims that lack this property are said to be
subjective.
- “Fact vs. opinion”: People sometimes refer to true objective claims as “facts,” and use the
word “opinion” to designate any claim that is subjective.
- “Factual claim”: An objective claim. Saying that a claim is “factual” is not the same as
saying it is true. A factual claim is simply a claim whose truth does not depend on our
thinking it is true.
- Moral subjectivism: Moral subjectivism is the idea that moral judgments are subjective.
“There is nothing either good or bad but that thinking makes it so.”
- Issue: A question.
- “Argument”: People sometimes use this word to refer just to an argument’s premise.
- Arguments and issues: The conclusion of an argument states a position on the issue under
consideration.
- Cognitive bias: A feature of human psychology that skews belief formation. The ones
discussed in this chapter include the following:
- Belief bias: Evaluating reasoning by how believable its conclusion is.
- Confirmation bias: A tendency to attach more weight to considerations that support
our views.
- Availability heuristic: Assigning a probability to an event based on how easily or
frequently it is thought of.
- False consensus effect: Assuming our opinions and those held by people around us
are shared by society at large.
- Bandwagon effect: The tendency to align our beliefs with those of other people.
- Negativity bias: Attaching more weight to negative information than to positive
information.
- Loss aversion: Being more strongly motivated to avoid a loss than to accrue a gain.
- In-group bias: A set of cognitive biases that make us view people who belong to our
group differently from people who don’t.
- Fundamental attribution error: Having one understanding of the behavior of people
in the in-group and another for people not in the in-group.
- Obedience to authority: A tendency to comply with instructions from an authority.
- Overconfidence effect: A cognitive bias that leads us to overestimate what
percentage of our answers on a subject are correct.
- Better-than-average illusion: A self-deception cognitive bias that leads us to
overestimate our own abilities relative to those of others.
- Truth: A claim is true if it is free from error.
- Knowledge: If you believe something, have an argument beyond a reasonable doubt that it
is so, and have no reason to think you are mistaken, you can claim you know it.
Hoofdstuk 2:
, - Arguments always have two parts, a premise (or premises) and a conclusion.
- The same statement can be a premise in one argument and a conclusion in a second
argument.
- The two fundamental types of reasoning are deductive demonstration and inductive
support.
- A deductive argument is used to demonstrate or prove a conclusion, which it does if it is
sound.
- An argument is sound if it is valid and its premise (or premises) is true.
- An argument is valid if it isn’t possible for its premise or premises to be true and its
conclusion to be false.
- An inductive argument is used to support rather than to demonstrate a conclusion.
- An argument supports a conclusion if it increases the likelihood that the conclusion is true.
- Support is a matter of degrees: An argument supports a conclusion to the extent its premise
(or premises) makes the conclusion likely.
- An argument that offers more support for a conclusion is said to be stronger than one that
offers less support; the latter is said to be weaker than the former.
- Some instructors use the word “strong” in an absolute sense to denote inductive arguments
whose premise (or premises) makes the conclusion more likely than not.
- If it doesn’t make sense to think of an argument as providing evidence or support for a
contention, it is probably because it is a deductive argument.
- Inductive arguments and deductive arguments can have unstated premises.
- Whether an argument is deductive or inductive may depend on what the unstated premise is
said to be.
- If an argument is written, diagramming it may help you understand it.
- Balance of considerations reasoning often involves deductive and inductive elements.
- Inference to best explanation is a common type of inductive reasoning in which a
supposition is said to be true because it states the best explanation of something we have
observed or otherwise know.
Hoofdstuk 3:
- Vague: wanneer we niet met zekerheid kunnen zeggen wat er wel of niet bij hoort.
- Ambiguous: wanneer iets meer dan één betekenis heeft.
- Semantic ambiguity: door een dubbelzinnig woord toe te voegen.
- Grouping ambiguity: wanneer het niet duidelijk is of een woord in een zin verwijst naar
een groep in het algemeen of naar de leden van de groep individueel.
- Syntactic ambiguity: komt voor wanneer een zin op meerdere manieren kan worden
geïnterpreteerd.
- Ambiguous pronoun references: wanneer het niet duidelijk is naar wie of wat een
voorzetsel verwijst.
- Generality: een gebrek aan specificatie.
- Lexical definitions: definities zoals we die in woordenboeken vinden.
- Precising or stipulative definitions: definities die bedoeld zijn om een term preciezer te
maken, minder vaag.
- Claim: When a belief (judgment, opinion) is asserted in a declarative sentence, the result is
a claim, statement, or assertion.
- Objective claim vs. subjective claim: An objective claim is true or false regardless of
whether people think it is true or false. Claims that lack this property are said to be
subjective.
- “Fact vs. opinion”: People sometimes refer to true objective claims as “facts,” and use the
word “opinion” to designate any claim that is subjective.
- “Factual claim”: An objective claim. Saying that a claim is “factual” is not the same as
saying it is true. A factual claim is simply a claim whose truth does not depend on our
thinking it is true.
- Moral subjectivism: Moral subjectivism is the idea that moral judgments are subjective.
“There is nothing either good or bad but that thinking makes it so.”
- Issue: A question.
- “Argument”: People sometimes use this word to refer just to an argument’s premise.
- Arguments and issues: The conclusion of an argument states a position on the issue under
consideration.
- Cognitive bias: A feature of human psychology that skews belief formation. The ones
discussed in this chapter include the following:
- Belief bias: Evaluating reasoning by how believable its conclusion is.
- Confirmation bias: A tendency to attach more weight to considerations that support
our views.
- Availability heuristic: Assigning a probability to an event based on how easily or
frequently it is thought of.
- False consensus effect: Assuming our opinions and those held by people around us
are shared by society at large.
- Bandwagon effect: The tendency to align our beliefs with those of other people.
- Negativity bias: Attaching more weight to negative information than to positive
information.
- Loss aversion: Being more strongly motivated to avoid a loss than to accrue a gain.
- In-group bias: A set of cognitive biases that make us view people who belong to our
group differently from people who don’t.
- Fundamental attribution error: Having one understanding of the behavior of people
in the in-group and another for people not in the in-group.
- Obedience to authority: A tendency to comply with instructions from an authority.
- Overconfidence effect: A cognitive bias that leads us to overestimate what
percentage of our answers on a subject are correct.
- Better-than-average illusion: A self-deception cognitive bias that leads us to
overestimate our own abilities relative to those of others.
- Truth: A claim is true if it is free from error.
- Knowledge: If you believe something, have an argument beyond a reasonable doubt that it
is so, and have no reason to think you are mistaken, you can claim you know it.
Hoofdstuk 2:
, - Arguments always have two parts, a premise (or premises) and a conclusion.
- The same statement can be a premise in one argument and a conclusion in a second
argument.
- The two fundamental types of reasoning are deductive demonstration and inductive
support.
- A deductive argument is used to demonstrate or prove a conclusion, which it does if it is
sound.
- An argument is sound if it is valid and its premise (or premises) is true.
- An argument is valid if it isn’t possible for its premise or premises to be true and its
conclusion to be false.
- An inductive argument is used to support rather than to demonstrate a conclusion.
- An argument supports a conclusion if it increases the likelihood that the conclusion is true.
- Support is a matter of degrees: An argument supports a conclusion to the extent its premise
(or premises) makes the conclusion likely.
- An argument that offers more support for a conclusion is said to be stronger than one that
offers less support; the latter is said to be weaker than the former.
- Some instructors use the word “strong” in an absolute sense to denote inductive arguments
whose premise (or premises) makes the conclusion more likely than not.
- If it doesn’t make sense to think of an argument as providing evidence or support for a
contention, it is probably because it is a deductive argument.
- Inductive arguments and deductive arguments can have unstated premises.
- Whether an argument is deductive or inductive may depend on what the unstated premise is
said to be.
- If an argument is written, diagramming it may help you understand it.
- Balance of considerations reasoning often involves deductive and inductive elements.
- Inference to best explanation is a common type of inductive reasoning in which a
supposition is said to be true because it states the best explanation of something we have
observed or otherwise know.
Hoofdstuk 3:
- Vague: wanneer we niet met zekerheid kunnen zeggen wat er wel of niet bij hoort.
- Ambiguous: wanneer iets meer dan één betekenis heeft.
- Semantic ambiguity: door een dubbelzinnig woord toe te voegen.
- Grouping ambiguity: wanneer het niet duidelijk is of een woord in een zin verwijst naar
een groep in het algemeen of naar de leden van de groep individueel.
- Syntactic ambiguity: komt voor wanneer een zin op meerdere manieren kan worden
geïnterpreteerd.
- Ambiguous pronoun references: wanneer het niet duidelijk is naar wie of wat een
voorzetsel verwijst.
- Generality: een gebrek aan specificatie.
- Lexical definitions: definities zoals we die in woordenboeken vinden.
- Precising or stipulative definitions: definities die bedoeld zijn om een term preciezer te
maken, minder vaag.
