Understanding Arguments 101 | Ep 38

This week we get practical about critical thinking so we can tell the difference between a solid argument and a flashy one that falls apart on inspection. We break down premises and conclusions, then map out deductive, inductive, and abductive reasoning so you can spot what is reasonable to believe and what simply does not follow. 
• why we care about logic more than winning debates 
• how “good reasons” differ from irrelevant reasons 
• deductive arguments as premises leading to certainty 
• what “valid” and "sound" means in philosophy 
• what makes an argument sound rather than merely valid 
• inductive reasoning as pattern based probability 
• abductive reasoning as inference to the best explanation 
• Occam’s razor and avoiding unnecessary assumptions 
• why debate often fails without truth seeking 

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Transcript

Late Upload And Quick Apology

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to episode thirty eight of the Ministry of Man Pod. Now I need to start off with an apology because I know that the the other ministers, the people that are listening to this, the other ministers they notice that I'm a day late and they're probably like, Uncle Zed, what's going on? Uncle Zeddy. What's what's happening? We don't know what to do because we normally are just on the edge of our seat waiting for the next ep to drop. And I'm a day late. So that's my bad. That's my apologies. Had some camera issues. We got it fixed. So now we're

Why Learn Arguments In Philosophy

SPEAKER_00 0:52

on. And today we're going to be talking about critical thinking and arguments in the in the philosophical sense. How to construct an argument, what uh certain terms mean. Because the last couple of weeks I've done some episodes on I suppose answering some hard questions regarding Christianity or questions that Christians might face. So if you're new here, I am a Christian, and but I love philosophy, I love arguments, uh, I don't necessarily love arguing, but logic is incredibly interesting and incredibly fun. And constructing an argument is also an important thing in order to find truth. So I'm not really interested in debates as such. I like listening to them, they're a lot of fun. But more so to make sure that things are cogent and they're coherent and people aren't just just saying nonsense. And you know, you'll hear people make arguments and you're like, okay, well, that's fallacious, or you'll say, oh, that's just a logical leap. Like there's just no, that doesn't follow, and there's too many assumptions there, or whatever. So rather than giving my opinions or my answers to certain questions, I think it would be a good idea to go through what is a good argument versus a bad argument and how to construct them. And so then no matter what you believe, you'll just be, you'll have the tools. Like you'll just be able to identify it. But be warned because once you learn some of these things, it's very, very you can't go back, basically. Once you learn it, you'll see flaws everywhere, and you'll you'll be you'll be misunderstood and you'll see where they've misunderstood you, and you'll be like, no, that's not what I'm saying. And sometimes, oftentimes, no matter how much you explain it, if you're talking to the wrong person, they're not going to ever get you. They're never going to understand. Like I've said this before, but you you are always at the behest of the level of intelligence and understanding of the person that you're speaking to. So you could give the best argument ever that's completely sound, completely logical, and someone might call you stupid because they don't understand it. Like the amount of Jordan Peterson gets this a lot. People go, oh, it's just word salad. And you're like, you're really exposing yourself. Because when you if you have, I suppose, a good a relatively decent linguistic understanding, then like Jordan Peterson, it's not word salad. Like you understand everything he's saying. Like, I I've never understood the whole word salad thing, but I can definitely see why people might not understand him. Like, if you don't understand the terms that he's using, if you don't understand the point that he's making, you you might check out, and then you'll be like, he's just saying a bunch of words, and there's no point there. It's like I've never heard a single sentence of him speaking that I've just thought, this is just garbage nonsense. Like, I don't understand what he's trying to say. Like, you always understand what he's trying to say if you understand the language that he uses and you understand the point that he's making. So, but the the issue is with stupidity, is that like I heard this quote. Someone said, when someone dies, they no longer experience the pain. The pain is is felt by everyone else around that that's left behind. In the same way, a stupid person doesn't realize and experience the effects of their own stupidity. It's just everyone else around experiences the the effects of their stupidity, which is hilarious, but also frustrating.

Stupidity Confidence And Dunning Kruger

SPEAKER_00 4:55

And it really takes me back, man. Like preparing for this one, it takes me back. The first episode I spoke about Carlos Cepola's five laws of human stupidity. And I might revisit that one day and maybe talk about it again. Because like Sopola and like you know, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, uh like a lot of people, they think that the most dangerous people in the world are stupid people. And as time's gone on, that has become truer and truer. And so if I can do anything to help even one other person to understand how to how to structure an argument or just to be a little less maybe illogical, then I've done I've done something to contribute to the world, to maybe make someone's life a little less frustrating. And that's not to say that I'm some sort of logical expert or that I am even an intelligent person. I just happen to know a few things about arguments just because I've I was taught it. And so, you know, some people the only reason they don't know it yet is just because they haven't been taught it yet. It's like there was a guy, there was a guy on a on a podcast I was listening to an Australian comedy podcast, and this guy was going, Yeah, it was it was quiet entertaining, and then they were like, What? What did you just say it was like did you say quiet instead of quite? And then he was like, What's the difference? I thought that was the same word, and he he didn't know that quiet and quiet were two different words, with like he just always thought they were just interchangeable, and he just yeah, he didn't know, and then so they were going, You are the dumbest person ever. He goes, How is that dumb? I just hadn't learnt it yet, and there was kind of he's kind of right in one sense. Like, obviously, there's some things that's like crazy that you didn't know that, or that you didn't pick up on that at somewhere along your life that that just like it never crossed your mind, or you, or that that information just never got to you. But at some point, everyone didn't know that, and so he just took longer before that information got to him, and now that he knows it, he knows it. And so, so he's trying to argue and say, like, how is that stupid? Like, I just didn't I just haven't learned it yet. Like, someone that knows all about I don't know, mathematics or someone that knows all about rocket ships or whatever, and they've spent their whole life knowing this, and then they say something to someone that's never spent any time looking at rocket ships, and they go, How do you not know that? I've known them since I was like five years old. He's like, Yeah, well, like I just haven't come across that information. So, yeah, so I mean, yeah, so that's kind of true. Uh, and so I regardless, all that to say, some of these things, people are not necessarily stupid for not knowing these things, it's just something you just haven't learned yet. Uh, the stupid part really is is the confidence that people have. I said this to my brother the other day: no one is more confident than a person that heard something once from a professor or a teacher, and that that's it. Like learning like people will learn one thing, they'll hear someone say one thing, and then they just go, now I know all about it. It is real, it is really the Dunning Kruger effect. I mean, that's yeah. I guess the the hardest thing is that people don't no no one has really the people that need to know that they're stupid will never ever know it. Like, I've met people that would say, yeah, like I'm just not like super smart, and I think they're smarter than the people that think they're super smart and aren't anyway. I'm I'm going on a tangent now, I'm venting a little bit to be honest.

Critical Thinking And Better Reasons

SPEAKER_00 9:05

So I'm gonna start with just explaining like so the the importance of critical thinking. So obviously, critical thinking is your ability to be able to make a decision or draw a conclusion from good arguments and to be able to discern a good argument from a bad argument. So obviously, you could say someone goes, Tom isn't coming to the party tonight, and you go, Oh, okay, why do you say that? And they go, Well, I don't like Tom and he's annoying at parties. And so you would say, Okay, well, that's a bad reason to believe that he's not coming. Like there's nothing in that. There's no those reasons that you've given are bad reasons. A good reason would be, oh, I don't think he's coming tonight because he's overseas and he won't get back in time for the party. So you go, okay, that's a good, that's a I'd say that's a pretty good reason. Um, so it's just like knowing the difference. I mean, another good reason, and I'll go into the differences between these as well, because that's obviously guaranteed, but there's there's certain reasons that might not be guaranteed, but they might be good reasons still as well. So you could say, well, he doesn't like parties, and he's really shy and socially awkward, and I know that he's got a lot of study to do. So even though he might come to the party, it's probably still a relatively good reason to believe that he won't, even if it's not guaranteed and he still might come. But that this is the difference between deductive arguments and ampliative

Deductive Arguments Valid Versus Sound

SPEAKER_00 10:32

arguments. So a deductive argument, the the premises of an argument mean the conclusion must be true. So let me let me try and break it down between the two. So I'm gonna start with deductive arguments and then I'll look at ampliative arguments because when it comes to deductive arguments, if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true. With ampliative arguments, the premises can be true, but the conclusion probably will be true, but might not be. So those are the two. So I'll start with deductive reasoning. So the the structure of an argument is always going to have premises that lead to a conclusion. So premise one, you could say all dogs have fur, and premise two, you could say Tom has a dog. So the conclusion would be Tom's dog has fur. That would be a very simple and basic kind of argument. So um, within this as well, in in philosophy, you you've got valid arguments and sound arguments. And valid, it's not like I know we in current kind of modern English, we can say anything is valid, we kind of just throw that that word around. We say, oh yeah, valid or sound in whatever way, but in philosophy, it's specifically used to mean something like directly. So valid means that if the premises are true, the conclusion must be true, but the the key word there being if, if the premises are true. So it doesn't necessarily mean that the premises are true. Uh if they are true, then that would be a sound argument. So if it's proven that the premises are true and the conclusion is true, that's a sound argument. If if the premises aren't true necessarily, uh it could still be a valid argument because it kind of makes sense. So maybe I'll give an example. So um you could say all apples are red. Everyone who eats apples, so let's do this. Premise one, all apples are red. Premise two, everyone who eats apples likes the color red. Premise three, Tom eats apples, so the conclusion, Tom likes the color red. So obviously we know not all apples are red, and we know that not everyone who eats apples likes red, and also the conclusion would be true if they were true. So that's how that's that's how it's a valid argument, I suppose. So another one you could you could say maybe this would be a little bit easier. Beyoncé was born in Paris, everyone born in Paris likes cheese, therefore Beyoncé likes cheese. So we know Beyoncé wasn't born in Paris. We also know that everyone in Paris doesn't necessarily like cheese. So that's a valid argument, but it's not a sound argument because we know that the premises are false. It's valid because if they were true, the conclusion would be true. So it's cogent, it's it's coherent in its form, but it's just not that it's not true. So that's kind of the difference between a valid argument and a sound argument. So these are all, by the way, this is all forms of deductive reasoning. So keep in mind that word deductive reasoning. Yeah, so it's a sound argument when all the premises are true and the conclusion is also true. So you might say something like, All humans are mammals, Socrates was uh a human, therefore the conclusion, Socrates was a mammal. That's kind of an easy one that gets used a lot. So a deductive argument will always either be valid or sound, uh, and in order for it to be a deductive argument. Whether or not you believe the argument will come down to whether the premises are true or not. So, and also whether the conclusion is reasonable to believe as well based on the premises. So you could have true premises and the conclusion be false, and so that wouldn't that wouldn't be either a valid or a sound argument, even if the premises are true. So an example of that would be vegans don't eat meat, Tom doesn't eat meat, therefore Tom is a vegan. Well, he might not necessarily be a vegan. So that you couldn't say that that's a valid argument because the conclusion, that the premises must mean that the conclusion is true. You can't just have true premises and just assume that the conclusion is going to be true just because the premises are true. There's obviously things that we know in that phrasing, in that statement, or in that argument, that there are lots of people that don't eat meat that aren't vegan. So yeah, it's not a matter of the premises being true. The conclusion must also be true if the premises are true as well. So that's basically a deductive argument. Now, when using deductive arguments, they will always seek certainty. So, like I said before, we're looking for guaranteed answers. In inductive arguments, it's it's probability. With deductive arguments, they're always it's always this top-down approach to finding the the truth. So looking at generalities or like more broad truths in order to find a specific conclusion. The broad truth might be if you run a lot, you get fit. Tom is has started to run a lot, therefore, Tom will get fit. So the the broad term is that people that run a lot tend to get healthier or fitter. So that's the broad, more like the wider definition. And then you're narrowing it down to a more specific conclusion, I suppose. So that's usually this top-down kind of framing of an argument.

Inductive Reasoning And Probability

SPEAKER_00 16:59

So inductive looks at the smaller, more specific truths and implies a general, more broad conclusion from there. So it is kind of the opposite. It is the uh it is bottom-up kind of looking at things. So you'll go, uh, two days ago the sun rose. Yesterday, the sun rose. Today the sun rose. That means I can conclude tomorrow the sun will rise based on pattern recognition and that sort of stuff. So inductive arguments are a lot of like pattern recognition type of type of thing. So uh it the the goal though isn't to arrive at certainty because you you can't. It's not it's not supposed to, though. So these are ampliative arguments. So I'm gonna go through two different types of ampliative arguments, which is inductive and abductive. So inductive, we'll look at the moment. We with ampliative arguments, the goal isn't to find a guarantee, it's to find what is the most likely or the most probable using information that we have. So an inductive argument by contrast to deductive is one whose conclusion is merely made probable by the premises. So you could put different premises in to come to a conclusion. It doesn't necessarily prove it, but it gives you good reason to believe that it could be true. Um, so you could say all swans are white, but basically when you say that, if you've used in inductive reasoning, what you're really saying is all swans that I've seen are white, because obviously you haven't seen all swans, so you can't necessarily be certain of that, you can't guarantee that it is this different kind of approach to knowledge and and to understanding. So again, when you say the sun always rises, it's only probably true in if you're using inductive arguments because you you've only ever seen it rise, but that doesn't mean that it's certain it's certain to rise again, or at least it doesn't prove that it will rise again, not you not using those methods. So there's obviously it's it's irrational to think that it won't rise just because it it always has, but it literally might not. Like there is no way using inductive reasoning to say that it's definitely going to guarantee because we just don't, it's just that's not what um ampliative arguments or inductive arguments are trying to do, though. It's not trying to get a guarantee, it's just trying to say that this is the most probable thing. So this is um this is what Lee will lead me into abductive arguments.

Abductive Reasoning And Occams Razor

SPEAKER_00 19:55

Abductive arguments is another form of ampliative arguments where the the argument or the conclusion will rest on inference to the best explanation possible. So if someone you see someone's cheek turn red right after someone tells them that they have a crush on them. And so you might think, okay, the best explanation is probably that they're bashful or that they're embarrassed, even though that might not be true. So they it's possible that they just ate a chili beforehand. It's it's possible that the temperature of the room rose, someone turned a thermostat up and it got really hot, but those wouldn't be the most likely explanation. Uh, and so you're you're kind of just you're gathering information to try and make what you what you think would be the best explanation, but it doesn't necessarily mean that it's that it's true. So this is similar to Occam's razor, which I talked about last week. Occam's razor is it just stays basically that like the least complicated reason is probably most likely to be true, or the simplest explanation is probably a better way to explain Occam's razor. So it's it's whatever would come with the fewest assumptions. So if you if you walk into a room and you see that there's papers all over the floor, and you're trying to figure out, okay, why is there papers all over the floor? And you see and you look that there's a window open and there's kind of like a breeze coming in, and you know that the stack of papers was sitting on the desk under the window. So even though you didn't see it, and even though you can't confirm it or guarantee it, the best explanation would be that the wind just blew the papers. You you wouldn't think that even though it's possible, someone could have come into the room, grabbed the papers, and just thrown them all over the room. That it takes a lot of assuming to do that. You would have to, you'd have to come up with a reason why someone would do that if someone was around. Like there's so much, like so much more goes into that rather than well, the papers were there. I know that wind um can blow paper really easily. So you would just assume that it's there. So you Just want to try and look for the best explanation. Um, we know in in abductive arguments, we know what is true, so certain premises are true, we just don't know what the conclusion is for sure. So that's kind of the best uh way to explain that. Now, obviously, like it comes to a point where certain things it's unreasonable to not believe it. So, in in case of like the papers, for example, it would be unreasonable for you to think that a group of ten people broke into your house, each grabbed one piece of paper each and threw it onto the ground and then snuck out before anyone noticed. That's uh that's like an unreasonable belief, even though it's possible. So there's always a limit to what's reasonable to believe and what's unreasonable to believe. So if you're dealing with certain arguments, now obviously there's there's a lot of arguments that are that people can use abductive reasoning and come to completely different conclusions, and then that's where debate comes into play, because you can go, okay, well, look at this, this, and this. And the other person goes, okay, well, what about this, this, and this? They both they're both kind of looking at similar things, whatever the phenomenon is that's happened, or whatever the event that's happened or taken place, and and they debate.

Debate Rhetoric And Courtroom Logic

SPEAKER_00 23:29

So that's probably one of the benefits of debate if both people are interested in finding out the truth. Unfortunately, most debates are more concerned with just winning. This is why a lot of philosophers in ancient Greece didn't actually like debate because they found that that was in fact the case. Aristotle talks about rhetoric, and he talks about rhetoric in the sense that he's like truth isn't necessarily enough to win arguments. So you can be you you can know something to be true and people still not believe you, and if that's the case, then that's kind of your fault. I love this is I'll digress for just a moment. But Aristotle says if a man has this obligation to train himself physically to be able to protect himself, then why shouldn't he have the same obligation to train himself verbally to be able to protect his ideas? When when someone maybe accuses you of having bad ideology or bad philosophy or bad politics or whatever it might be, you should have the ability to be able to defend yourself. And one of the ways that you can do that is using rhetoric, using logic, using arguments, all these sorts of things. So uh, but rhetoric is a little bit different. That's you you don't necessarily need to be logical to use rhetoric, but so I won't go into that today. But either way, it is um that's where a lot of debates will come in in terms of when we can't get deductive reasoning and it's not clear. Well, this is maybe like a court case. You see a lot of abductive reasoning used in courts of law because they're trying to find the best explanation for what's happened. Um, and so it's kind of where that happens. So this is why you you should really know when trying to call out logical fallacies on people using um ampliative arguments, you have to be careful because they're not necessarily making truth truth claims in the same way that a deductive argument is making a truth claim, even though you can still have you know people using ampliative arguments, like abductive and inductive arguments, they can still be fallacious, but you have to be careful because they're they're the the types of fallacies will be different. So with deductive reasoning, you you can say this person's come to a conclusion because it's fallacious because you said A equals B, therefore C equals B. And you're like, well, that's just like that's a non-sequitar fallacy. It's just not that that doesn't logically follow kind of thing.

Fallacies And Weighing Religious Claims

SPEAKER_00 26:14

And I guess you can still do that with different forms, like you can so I guess what I'm trying to say is there the I used an example in a previous episode where I said the the Scientology one, based on the fact that the guy that wrote it is a science fiction writer, he uh he came to the conclusion by himself, and he uh came came to the he discovered it in the 1950s. So if it was deductive reasoning, saying that the guy is a fiction writer is uh is an ad hominem, and that that doesn't that would be a logical fallacy because you're attacking the person rather than the the idea of Scientology itself within itself. So, but using abductive reasoning, there's there's good reason to to believe, in my opinion, that it's false based on certain pieces of evidence. So we know that he wrote fiction, you know that he wrote more than 250 works of fiction in the realm of sci-fi, science fiction, and and fantasy. So that's one piece of information to that we just hold on to, right? It doesn't mean anything, it's just a piece of information that might draw a picture or paint a picture. Next, he was the only one to verify the information. So, like other religions that exist, people have come to the the idea or the understanding of it. Uh well, multiple people have from different sources. So, taking the Bible, for example, 60 different books written by 40 different people over the course of 1500 years, a lot of different people, and by the way, that the books weren't, they were all individual initially, they were compiled together to make a Bible now, but initially these books were all separate, written individually, and the reason they were compiled is because they're all talking about the same thing. So it's like, oh, okay, so all these people seem to be having the same idea, they've come to the same tr relative relevantory truths. So that's why they get compiled together. So to me, that holds a bit more weight than just one person coming to the realization because it's kind of like you can't verify with anyone else. And then obviously, in the he uh founded it in the 1950s, so for thousands and thousands and thousands of years, no one's ever heard of it. So, you know, even something like Hinduism, I think, would hold more credibility, being that that was first, I guess, spoken about 5000 BC or something. So if if we're looking at what religion could be true, if any are true, then then you would say, okay, well, it's it's it looks like based on all these inform you know pieces of information, we'll put it together, try and paint a little bit of a picture. You would state your case and go, I I propose that it's true, uh, that this religion is false. Now, because it's abductive reasoning, it doesn't mean that it is, it doesn't guarantee that it is, but it's also not fallacious because you're not saying that it is definitely uh false, because new information can always come into the into the realm that would possibly change people's minds. So it's it's similar to to calling you know someone fallacious for believing that this person is a murderer when it's like, okay, so this person, you know, was sending hate mail to someone and then they they were caught at the scene of the crime and they had a victim's blood on their clothes and their fingerprints on the murder weapon. You go, okay, well, I think it's this person. You go, well, it it might not be though. Like, you know, what if they were just walking by and someone else actually killed them, and then they just heard the smash of the window of them breaking in, and they ran into the the house and they just was like, oh no, what's going on? They picked the weapon up and were like, oh no, and um, they were trying to help them and actually revive them, and that's how they've got blood in their clothes, so there's all these like things you go, okay, well, yeah, that is possible. So, but we're not we're not using deductive reasoning here, we're using abductive reasoning, and so it's not fallacious to to propose that the person, this particular person that had the blood on their clothes is is the murderer. So it's just how you solve cases, I suppose. So it's not the purpose isn't to find certainty, as I've said many times, the purpose is to find what is the most probable or the most likely. So that is the difference, anyway. So that is like the most entry-level, like this is argument 101 uh that you can get. So if that's if if that interests you and you want to find out more about it, like you can go and do your research and look into a little bit more. I guess my what I like about this podcast is like I I want to be the entry level to things that people might not have heard before. I want to touch on a lot of different topics that I like and that I enjoy. I'm not expert in anything. I just like to read and I like to learn and like to share those things as well. And if anyone wants to come with me on the learning journey, we can do it together. Uh, anyway. So that's about all I have to say about that. There's so much more that you can go into that we can when when it will, at least when it comes to philosophy, like arguments is just one thing. Like you can look at metaphysics, you can look at epistemology, you can look at ethics, you can look at language philosophy, you can look at the mind, there's oh my gosh, there's your theory of knowledge. I mean, there's lots of different things in philosophy. So much to learn. And I'm I'm only scratching the surface. I find it interesting, I find it beneficial, and uh, and I like it. So, yeah, but I just wanted to go over a few of those structures, just so you can keep an eye out for

Arguing Politely Online And Farewell

SPEAKER_00 31:56

it. Like how to construct an argument, how to find out if it's good or if it's if it's valid, if it's sound, that sort of stuff, to learn some of the terminologies that you might see online, because obviously there's there's I don't know if anyone else has noticed, but there has been a bit of a boom in philosophy and people, I guess, m arguing online. It's so hostile at the moment, but it's fine. It's fine. Um, it's not always bad to engage. I've been engaging in arguments. I'm trying to not I'm trying to practice arguing politely, and it's so hard, dude. I'm not good at that. That is a big flaw in my character to argue with people online, like in person, it's so easy because you you've got the person standing right in front of you, but like you miss that humanness when someone's standing right there. Like, you miss the humanness if someone's online. So yeah, you really gotta take breaths. Anyway, thanks for listening. Christ is king, Jesus loves you, and he's coming back soon. So get to know him, and um, and thanks for listening. You guys are amazing, and peace out, my brothers and my sisters.