Philosophy of the humanities

Chapter 1.1. Introduction to logic

An argument consists of two parts: the premises and the conclusions.

The premises are what we presuppose – Conclusions are what we conclude from the premises.

Ex.1:

No medieval king hand absolute power over his subjects (p1)

Louis VII of France was a medieval king (p2)
So, Louis VII of France did not have absolute power over his subjects (c).

It is necessary to consider between valid and invalid arguments:

An argument is valid when the conclusion really follows from the premises (as the Ex.1).

Ex.2:

No medieval king had absolute power over his subjects (p1)

Louis VII of France was a great horseman (p2)
So, Louis VII of France did not have absolute power over his subjects (c).

This example (Ex.2) is not valid, is invalid, because the conclusion doesn’t follow the premises.
The validity of the argument is nothing to do whether the premises or conclusions are truth.
On the other hand, it is also possible to have a valid argument based on false premises.

There are also two kinds of arguments: deductive and inductive arguments:

An argument is deductive when the truth of the premises absolutely guarantees the truth of
the conclusion (as the Ex.1). The only way for the conclusion of a deductive argument to be
false, is if one of the assumptions is false. If the assumptions are truth, the conclusions are
guaranteed to be truth as well. So deductive arguments never introduce false “information” if
they weren’t already there. So, deductive arguments are very strong because they’re not very
risky.

The form of a deductive argument is enough to determine is validity – independent of its

content being truth or false:

No A is B (p1)
C is A (p2)
So, C is not B

That is really important, because that means that we can see when something is a good
argument without making any prior theoretical assumptions about the content matter. If we
believe that scientists first collect data and then come to conclusions about which theories are
right and wrong, this is exactly what we would expect. They only need the data and some valid
arguments which can be shown to be valid independent of any theories or ideas, and then
they draw their conclusions – it would be great if science worked like that, but it doesn’t.

And it doesn’t work like that because most important arguments in science are not deductive,
but inductive:
An argument is inductive when the truth of the premises gives good reason to believe the
conclusion but does not absolutely guarantee the truth of the conclusion.

Ex.3:

None of the medieval texts we have studied argues against the existence of God (p)
So, nobody in the Middle Ages argued against the existence of God (c).

That’s a valid argument – the conclusion is plausible, but only plausible. So in an inductive
argument, the truth of the premises makes the conclusion likely, but it doesn’t guarantee it.
And that’s the general case in science: we have some limited data and we want to draw some
general conclusions from those, and our data makes the conclusion likely, but they don’t make
it certain. Induction is a lot more problematic than deduction.

Chapter 1.2. Induction and background theories