PHIL 210

Unit Notes

Lesson 1 notes
Lesson 1: Deductive Argument
★ An argument: a series of statements that together purport to support a claim, which is the
conclusion of the argument.
○ The statements are referred to as premises.
○ An argument is valid if, and only if, it is impossible for all the premises to be true and
the conclusion false.
○ Note that whether the premises are in fact true is irrelevant for validity.
★ Even though an argument is valid, it does not make it sound.
○ A sound argument is a valid argument whose premises are all true.
★ Validity is entirely a matter of form; it depends on the way in which the sentences are, so to
speak, arranged in the argument. But soundness depends not only on form, but also on the
actual truth-value of the premises; an argument cannot be sound if its premises are not true.

Chapter 1: The Parts of Public Thinking: Deductive Argument

Textbook notes
★ Deductive arguments
○ the sort of arguments that are logically airtight
HAVING REASONS
★ Common goal = reasonable beliefs
○ An action or a belief has a justification or warrant: in other words, it can be rationally
defended on the basis of evidence.
○ Not only are there reasons for our beliefs, in the sense that there are explanations for
why we come to hold our beliefs, but we moreover have reasons for believing what we
do.
○ From time to time, a belief that seems basic and straightforward to some people will
turn out not to be shared by others.
■ Disagreement
■ Sides then must express their reasons for their beliefs
ASSERTIONS AND ARGUMENTS
★ Overview:
○ Typically the point of saying something we think is true is to have other people also
accept that it’s true.
 ■ if they don’t agree, at least it is useful and enlightening to have their
disagreement explained, so we can see where they part ways with what’s been
said.
○ To present some claim as if it were true is to assert it.
■ Assertion: a declaration of opinion or belief, either positive or negative
■ To assert is, among other things, to undertake a kind of obligation: the
obligation to defend or retract the assertion in the face of questioning or when
confronted with evidence to the contrary.
● For this reason the fundamental units of rational exchange are not
assertions, but arguments
○ Argument: a set of statements that are presented as true and that have a very important
internal relation: some of the statements are premises, which are intended to provide
rational support for (and ideally to establish the truth of) a further statement, the
conclusion. An argument is premises given in support of a conclusion.
○ The property of an argument that succeeds in supporting its conclusion is soundness.
Strictly speaking, a sound argument proves that its conclusion is true.
■ This property can be broken down into two sub-properties of the argument:
● first, that it is valid, and
● second, that it has all true premises.
● Like the term “argument” itself, “sound” and “valid” have ordinary
uses that can vary widely. Below we will define them in more
specialized ways that let us speak precisely about the virtues and failings
of argument.
○ ***Assertions rest on arguments that support them
○ It’s important to understand that one of the people who might be informed and
affected by some argument you produce in support of an assertion is you.
■ The process of making reasons public is not just about persuading other
people. It’s also about evaluating one’s own reasoning by putting it in the
clearest and most explicit form possible.
WHAT MAKES AN ARGUMENT (GOOD)?
★ Definition 1: Argumentation is a rational practice.
○ Stresses the fact that arguing is a process, one that occurs in a communicative context.
○ Argumentation is a practice by which we aim to show the reasonableness of an
assertion, up to whatever standard of reasonableness is called for in that context.
○ An argument can be a means of education or of explanation.
 ○ A good argument is the presentation of a collection of premises that jointly are
rationally persuasive of a conclusion. Taken together, the premises make it reasonable
to believe the conclusion.
★ Definition 2: Arguments are linguistic or logical objects.
○ Argument → a set of sentences or propositions, factoring out considerations about the
speaker, the audience, the context, and the broader goal of giving the argument.
○ A good argument in this sense can be defined in terms of the truth of the premises and
their logical relation to the conclusion, without any allusion to speakers or hearers or
context.
○ It is in this sense that a good argument is defined as sound.
■ This means that it is valid: its premises are relevant to its conclusion in such a
fashion that if the premises are true, then the conclusion must be true. And,
second, a sound argument has all true premises. More precisely (since an
argument might contain some irrelevant premises) we should say that all its
essential premises—the ones that would remain if all irrelevancies were
removed—must be true.
SOME BASIC VOCABULARY OF COMMUNICATION AND ARGUMENTATION
★ Assertion:
○ The act of stating something as if it were true.
★ Proposition, statement, sentence, claim:
○ What you say in order to make an assertion. I will use these terms interchangeably for
the most part, though for some purposes there are important technical differences
among them.
★ Premise:
○ A statement intended to provide rational support for some other statement (a
conclusion), often in conjunction with other premises.
★ Conclusion:
○ A statement intended to be rationally supported by a set of premises.
★ Argument:
○ A collection of premises that justify, or are supposed to justify, a conclusion.
★ Validity:
○ A structural property of arguments. An argument is valid just in case there is no way
for the conclusion to be false if all the premises are true.
★ Soundness:
○ A two-fold property of arguments; an argument is sound if it (i) is valid and (ii) has all
true premises. By definition, a sound argument proves its conclusion.
 ★ Inference:
○ The act of reaching a conclusion on the basis of some premises.
IS GOOD ARGUMENTATION A MATTER OF BEING LOGICAL?
★ “Logic”
○ There is a broad sense in which it means something like the study of rules of correct
inference, and there is a singular sense in which it means a particular system of
inferential rules.
○ Logic is not a single universally received system of rules. In fact, there is considerable
debate over what ought to count as logical laws, with each different set of proposed
logical laws giving rise to a different system of logic. Inferences that are valid in one
system may not be valid in another.
DETAILS MATTER
★ A common error is to confuse infer with imply. Implication is the abstract relation between the
premises and conclusion of a valid argument. People infer conclusions; premises imply
conclusions.
★ Example:
○ Wrong: This evidence infers that we should support public libraries.
○ Right: I inferred from this evidence that we should support public libraries.
○ Right: This evidence implies that we should support public libraries.
★ Intuitionistic logic
○ a well-developed formal system that does not include the Law of Excluded Middle as
an axiom. This approach may tolerate vagueness and fuzzy boundaries better than
classical logic, which tends to idealize and sharpen distinctions conveniently but
(potentially) inaccurately. Intuitionism also sets the bar higher for certain kinds of
proof, since, without Excluded Middle, you can’t just take a disproof of not-P as a
proof of P. You need a direct proof in intuitionistic logic.
★ Dialetheic logic
○ keeps the Law of Excluded Middle, but gives up (or restricts) the Law of
Non-Contradiction. The latter tells you that if a collection of propositions contains a
contradiction, the collection is incoherent. But in some situations, dialetheists argue,
this produces such unwelcome consequences that we should limit the application of
Non-Contradiction. For instance, in a system of legal judgments, different precedents
may deliver contradictory results for a single case without it being clear that one
precedent has the priority. In that sort of case we can either look around for arbitrary
grounds on which to claim priority for one precedent, or we can discard that subset of
 the legal system as incoherent, or we can accept that there is at least a small class of
acceptable contradictions.
★ Still other logical systems are extensions of classical logic, with certain complications factored
in. Such complications can include the formalization of more notions like belief, knowledge,
obligation, possibility, and temporality, among others.
○ These systems are called modal logics.
WHAT ISN’T AN ARGUMENT?
★ Fallacious argument
★ Insisting, repeating, declaiming, vowing, defining, and stipulating should not be confused with
arguing (though of course such acts may be part of giving an argument). Nor should mere
assertion itself.
EXPLANATION VERSUS ARGUMENT
★ More subtle is the distinction between arguments, in which evidence is given in the form of
premises to defend a conclusion, and explanations, in which we appeal to some facts in order to
rationalize, or make sense of, some other facts.
★ Explanation is a form of reasoning that is broadly distinct from argument while often
overlapping with it.
○ A working definition of the difference is that arguments aim at showing some
statement to be worth believing, while explanations aim to make better sense of
something already believed.
○ In the case of arguments, explanations can have implicit elements—parts that are
supposed to be understood from the context. The explanation above is just such an
example.
○ Sometimes an explanation is causal, describing (in part) the prior conditions that
caused some event.
○ Explanations too are open to an analogous problem of pseudo-explanation, primarily a
matter of providing a triviality or a mere label when an explanation is called for.
UNDERSTANDING VALID ARGUMENT FORMS
★ The fact that there are two conditions that a sound argument must meet means that there are
broadly two ways an argument can fail to be sound: by having one or more false essential
premises, or by having an invalid structure.
○ In general it’s harder to discover whether premises are true than to determine whether
the argument is valid.
★ Example
○ First, here is an argument that is valid but unsound:
 ■ 1. If Pierre Trudeau was the prime minister, then he was a professional dance
instructor.
■ 2. Pierre Trudeau was the prime minister.
Therefore,
■ 3. Pierre Trudeau was a professional dance instructor.
○ Since Premise 1 is false, the argument is not just goofy but unsound. A sound
argument has all true premises. Still, for all its silliness this argument has an important
virtue: it is valid. Its premises relate to its conclusion in such a way that, if the premises
were both true, then the conclusion would be true as well.
○ The arguments are valid because this is a valid form of argument; its technical name is
Modus Ponens.
★ Another basic and important valid argument form is called Modus Tollens:
○ 1. If P then Q
○ 2. Not Q
Therefore,
○ 3. Not P
★ Example
○ This argument has all true premises—indeed, it has a true conclusion—but it is invalid,
and hence unsound.
■ 1. 42 is a number.
■ 2. Continents drift.
■ 3. Pigs grunt.
Therefore,
■ 4. Socrates is Greek.
★ Now let’s consider an example of a sound argument that falls outside the conditional mould:
■ 1. Either foxes are mammals or rabbits are birds.
■ 2. Rabbits are not birds.
Therefore
■ 3. Foxes are mammals.
○ This argument also has a valid form for which there is a name: Disjunctive Syllogism.
CHECKING AN ARGUMENT’S VALIDITY: THE METHOD OF COUNTER-EXAMPLE
★ Method of Counter-example
○ Our definition of validity tells us that there is no way for the conclusion of a valid
argument to be false if all the premises are true. This means we can tell that an
argument is invalid if we can think of ways for the premises all to be true while the
conclusion is false
VALID ARGUMENT FORMS
★ Simplification
○ P and Q
Therefore,
○ P
★ Conjunction
○ 1. P
○ 2. Q
Therefore,
○ 3. P and Q
★ Addition
○ 1. P
Therefore,
○ 2. P or Q
★ Hypothetical Syllogism
○ 1. If P then Q
○ 2. If Q then R
Therefore,
○ 3. If P then R
★ Constructive Dilemma
○ 1. P or Q
○ 2. If P then R
○ 3. If Q then S
Therefore,
○ 4. R or S
★ Destructive Dilemma
○ 1. If P then R
○ 2. If Q then S
○ 3. Not R or not S
Therefore,
○ 4. Not P or not Q
OTHER STRUCTURAL PROPERTIES OF ARGUMENTS
★ Most of the arguments we have examined so far can be classified as linked arguments: their
premises essentially tie together to support a single overall conclusion.
○ Modus Ponens is a clear and simple example of this: by themselves, neither P nor If P
then Q are grounds to conclude Q. But together they link up to imply the conclusion.
 ★ Linked arguments are really the most fundamental sort of argument. But arguments can be
structured in more complex ways that build on linked arguments.
○ Convergent argument
■ in which a range of independent grounds for a conclusion are assembled
together as premises. No premise in a convergent argument requires the other
premises in order to support the conclusion; rather, each premise directly
supports the conclusion.
TRUTH CONDITIONS
★ The first element of soundness is validity; now let’s consider the second element. What does it
mean to say that a premise is true?
○ When we evaluate the truth of a premise, we are in effect checking to see whether there
is an appropriate fit between the state of the world and the how the claim represents
the world as being. We use the term truth conditions to mean how things would have
to be in order for the statement to be true.
TRUTH AND REASONABLENESS
★ It is arguments, and not single statements, that are valid or invalid, sound or unsound. On the
other hand, it is statements and not arguments that are true or false. The term “reasonable” is
broad enough to apply at various levels, but we will use it, like truth, to apply to individual
statements rather than arguments. A reasonable statement on our definition is one with
sufficient evidence, all things considered, to render it acceptable in a given state of information.
★ Truth is often formally understood to be a discrete concept: either a statement is true or it is
false, with no intermediate cases.
○ Another way of putting this is to say that statements have one of only two truth values.
Strictly speaking, statements are not “sort of true” or “pretty much true.” On this view,
the word that means “approximately true” is “false.”
NECESSARY TRUTHS AND DEFINITIONAL TRUTHS
★ An important class of true statements is those that must be true, either because they are truths
of logic and mathematics, or because they are true by definition in a broader sense.
TRUTH CONDITIONS OF COMPOUND SENTENCES
★ Simple (or atomic) statement
○ A sentence that does not contain another sentence as one of its parts. For example, “My
dog has fleas” and “Continents drift.”
★ Conjunctive statement, or conjunction
○ A compound statement containing two or more sub-statements (called conjuncts),
usually joined with the words “and” or “but.” A conjunction is true if and only if both
of its conjuncts are true. To put it slightly more technically, a statement of the form “P
 and Q” is true just in case P is true and Q is true. Near-synonyms like “as well as” might
be used instead. A term like “but” indicates a different speaker’s attitude than “and”
but also creates a conjunction.
★ Disjunctive statement, or disjunction
○ A statement of the form “P or Q” is true just in case at least one of P and Q is true.
★ Conditional statements
○ A statement of the form “If P then Q” is true unless P is true but Q is false.
★ Negation
○ A statement of the form “Not-P” (that is, “It is not the case that P”) is true if and only
if P is false.
COMPLEX STATEMENTS
★ A crucial aspect of analyzing reasoning is understanding how much information a quite short
statement can express
○ how many distinct claims are encoded by a grammatically complex sentence.
★ Overall the lesson is that being really precise in one’s claims requires great care in how one
frames them. On the flip side, someone else’s claims may require very careful evaluation to
separate what’s reasonable and clear in them from what is vague and unreasonable.
FACTUAL AND NON-FACTUAL STATEMENTS
★ The most-discussed class of statements for which these views have been widely held are
value-theoretic statements
○ Statements involving moral concepts like right and wrong, good and evil, and
statements involving aesthetic notions like beauty and ugliness.
★ Both within and without professional philosophy, many people have thought that moral
statements either have no real truth conditions—they are neither true nor false—or they have
truth conditions involving something other than what the statement seems to be about.

Lesson 1 slides notes

UNIT 1: basic notions
Statements and Arguments
★ Statements and Arguments
○ When we reflect, when we converse with others, when we respond to a question, when
we figure out what happened in a particular situation, or when we try to explain a
phenomenon, we make statements: we put forward propositions that we represent as
true.
★ It is distinctive of statements (claims, assertions) that… they are either true or false.
 ○ But not all sentences can be used to make statements… 'Please feed the cat' does not
make a statement because it is neither true nor false.
★ Examples of sentences that can be used to make statements:
○ The cat is hungry.
○ The cat should not each chocolate.
★ Examples of sentences that cannot be used to make statements:
○ Leave the cat alone.
○ Please take the cat for a walk!
★ Why?
○ Why are they statements?
■ 'The cat is hungry' and 'The cat should not eat chocolate' are statements
because they are either true or false.
○ Why are they not statements?
■ 'Leave the cat alone' and 'Take the cat for a walk' are not statements because
they are neither true nor false.
○ When we make a statement, we legitimize the expectation that we could defend the
statement if questioned. We can make good on this expectation by pointing to some
considerations that support the statement—in other words, by providing an argument.
Two Approaches to Arguments
★ We might distinguish between two ways of approaching arguments.
○ In the first approach, arguments are put forward by speakers in particular contexts for a
variety of practical or epistemic goals—to persuade, justify, educate, and so on.
○ In the second approach, arguments are mere collections of statements, some of which
serve as premises, and one of which serves as conclusion. Neither the contexts in which
arguments are deployed nor the goals of the speakers who deploy them are relevant on
this approach.
■ Pursuing the second approach helps us make progress with the first approach.
By understanding what it is for premises to support a conclusion, we shed light
on the way in which offering an argument can play various functions in human
life.
Validity
★ The notion of validity is central to the study of arguments.
○ An argument is valid if and only if it is impossible for all the premises to be true and
the conclusion false.
★ Example
○ (P1) If Margaret Atwood was born in Montreal, she was born in Québec.
 ○ (P2) Margaret Atwood was born in Montreal.
○ Therefore,
○ (C) Margaret Atwood was born in Québec.
■ The argument is valid because it is not possible for the premises (P1 and P2) to
be true without the conclusion (C) also being true.
■ Note that whether the premises are in fact true is irrelevant for validity.
■ In our example, P2 is false; Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa. But if it
were true, and if P1 were also true, the conclusion C would also have to be
true; it could not be false.
Logic
★ Logic is the investigation of correct reasoning or inference. (We shall use ‘reasoning’ and
‘inference’ interchangeably.)
○ Logic does not study the reasoning in which people actually engage; it is not a branch
of psychology. People might reason in ways that deviate from how they ought to
reason.
○ The investigation of correct reasoning might lead to the articulation of a variety of
logical systems, characterized by different inference rules.
★ Three principles that have special significance for logic
○ These three principles were formulated by Aristotle in the fourth century BCE.
Arguably, something that does not minimally conform to these three principles does
not count as reasoning at all.
■ 1. The law of identity: Whatever is, is.
■ 2. The law of non-contradiction: Nothing can both be and not be.
■ 3. The law of excluded middle: Everything must either be or not be.
○ Note that the principles seem to be about the world, or about what is the case. But we
can also formulate them in terms of propositions.
★ Some logicians, such as the proponents of intuitionistic logic, contest the law of excluded
middle.
○ They object to the idea that we are entitled to infer that a claim is true from a successful
argument to the effect that it is not false.
○ The discipline of critical thinking shares in logic’s focus on correct reasoning. But
unlike logic, which is focused on deductively correct reasoning, critical thinking
operates with a wider conception of correct reasoning
Soundness
★ Sound arguments are arguments that are valid and whose premises are all true.
★ Example
 ○ Although valid, our previous example involving Margaret Atwood is not an instance of
a sound argument, because, as we have noted, its second premise is false.
★ An argument is unsound either because:
○ It has an invalid structure.
○ One of its premises is false.
★ Thus, in order to determine whether an argument is sound, it is not enough to attend to the
form of the argument; we must also attend to the world and determine whether the premises
align with the world.
○ Note that only arguments can be said to be valid or sound. Claims or statements are
not the sort of things that can be valid or sound. For instance, it would be a mistake to
say that the claim that Margaret Atwood was born in Ottawa is valid, even though the
claim is true.
○ Note also that only claims or statements can be said to be true or false. Arguments are
not the sort of things that can be true or false.
Unit 1 knowledge check notes:
★ It is distinctive of statements (claims, assertions) that they are either true or false.
★ An argument is valid if and only if it is impossible for all the premises to be true and the
conclusion false.
★ Logic is the investigation of correct reasoning or inference.
★ Sound arguments are arguments that are valid and whose premises are all true.
UNIT 2: valid and invalid argument forms
Recognizing Validity
★ How do we determine whether an argument is valid?
○ As we said before, an argument is valid if and only if it is impossible for all the premises
to be true and the conclusion false. So, we should ask: is it possible for all the premises
of the argument we are inspecting to be true and the conclusion false? If the answer is
yes, the argument is invalid.
★ Validity
○ The way in which the statements are arranged in the argument that ensures that, if the
premises of the argument are true, the conclusion is also true.
Identifying the Form of an Argument
★ We can represent the form or structure of an argument by abstracting away from what the
argument is about.
○ This requires that we identify the most basic constituents of that argument: the simple
statements and the logical relationships in which they stand
 ○ It also requires that we replace the simple statements with letters of the alphabet which
can be taken to stand for them.
★ Examples:
○ A statement such as ‘If Margaret Atwood was born in Montréal, she was born in
Québec’ is a complex statement: it consists of two atomic sentences linked by a
conditional.
○ A statement such as ‘Either Margaret Atwood was born in Montreal or she was born in
Toronto’ is also a complex statement: it consists of two atomic statements linked by a
disjunction.
○ A statement such as ‘Margaret Atwood was born in Montreal and she was born in
Toronto’ is also a complex statement: it consists of two atomic statements linked by a
conjunction.
Some Valid Argument Forms
★ Modus Ponens
★ Modus Tollens
★ Hypothetical Syllogism
★ Disjunctive Syllogism
★ Constructive Dilemma
Some Invalid Argument Forms
★ These forms of reasoning are not valid, because the truth of the premises does not guarantee
the truth of the conclusion. They (and other invalid forms of reasoning) are often confused
with valid forms of reasoning. The study of the discipline of critical thinking cultivates our
awareness of the difference between valid and invalid forms of reasoning and enables us to
avoid the latter.
○ One invalid argument form, which may be mistaken for Modus Tollens, is Denying the
antecedent:
■ If P, then Q
■ Not P
Therefore,
■ Not Q
○ Affirming the consequent
■ If P, then Q
■ Q
Therefore,
■ P
Unit 2 knowledge check notes:
 ★ Validity is a matter of the form or structure of an argument. It is the way in which the
statements are arranged in the argument that ensures that, if the premises of the argument are
true, the conclusion is also true.
★ ‘If Margaret Atwood was born in Montréal, she was born in Québec’ is a complex statement: it
consists of two atomic sentences linked by a conditional.
★ A statement such as ‘Either Margaret Atwood was born in Montreal or she was born in
Toronto’ is also a complex statement: it consists of two atomic statements linked by a
disjunction.
★ A statement such as ‘Margaret Atwood was born in Montreal and she was born in Toronto’ is
also a complex statement: it consists of two atomic statements linked by a conjunction.
UNIT 3: general considerations concerning arguments
Arguments can be linked, sequential, or convergent.
★ In a linked argument, the premises interrelate in order to form a single case for the conclusion.
★ A sequential argument contains one or more sub-conclusions that in turn function as premises
for the overall conclusion.
★ In a convergent argument, the premises provide multiple distinct lines of support for the
conclusion. Non-deductive arguments are sometimes convergent, as we shall see.
Truth and Reasonableness
★ We are concerned with statements, and that statements are either true or false (in other words,
they have a truth value).
○ The truth conditions of statements specify… what is required for them to be true.
★ In addition to being true or false, statements can be… reasonable or unreasonable.
★ Reasonableness does not have to do with whether the statement aligns with the world… but
with whether there is sufficient evidence to support it.
★ It might be reasonable to make a particular claim in a particular context, even though that
claim is false.
○ For instance, it might be reasonable for me to believe that Octavia the cat is on the mat,
even though she is on the balcony (perhaps my roommate, who is generally reliable,
said that she is on the mat).
○ What we aim at when we make claims is truth. We pursue this aim by being properly
responsive to evidence and reasons.
Necessity and Contingency
★ Some statements are not just true, but necessarily true; other statements are only contingently
true.
★ Examples:
 ○ It is necessarily true, for example, that it is not the case both that it is raining and it is
not raining in Montreal; it couldn’t both rain and not rain.
○ But it is contingently true that Octavia the cat is on the mat; she could have been
elsewhere.
★ Some things are necessary for other things. For instance, a necessary condition for an argument
to be sound is that it is valid.
○ More generally, to say that X is necessary for Y is to say that you cannot have X without
Y. Consider some other examples:
■ Truth is a necessary condition for knowledge, because… a claim cannot
constitute knowledge if it is not true.
■ Using an oven is necessary for baking a pie, because… one cannot bake a pie in
the absence of an oven.
★ Some things are sufficient for other things. For instance, a sufficient condition for an argument
to be valid is that it is sound.
○ More generally, to say that X is sufficient for Y is to say that if you have ­Y, then you
must also have X. Consider some other examples:
■ Knowledge is… a sufficient condition for truth.
■ Having baked a pie is… a sufficient condition for having used an oven.
○ Thus, as all the examples above show, if X is necessary for Y, then Y is sufficient for X.
Unit 3 knowledge check notes:
★ In a linked argument, the premises interrelate in order to form a single case for the conclusion.
★ A sequential argument contains one or more sub-conclusions that in turn function as premises
for the overall conclusion.
★ In a convergent argument, the premises provide multiple distinct lines of support for the
conclusion.
★ The truth conditions of statements specify what is required for them to be true.

Key Glossary Terms for Lesson 1:

★ Affirming the consequent An invalid argument in the form ‘If P then Q

(premise 1). Q (premise 2). Therefore, P
(conclusion)’. This invalid form is often
confused with the valid form Modus Ponens.

★ Antecedent In a conditional that has the form ‘If P, then Q’

(or ‘If P, Q’), P is the antecedent.
★ Assertion (or statement) Either the act of advancing a sentence as true or
the product of that act.

★ Conditional A complex sentence of the form ‘If P, Q’ or ‘Q if

P’. It involves two elements: P is the antecedent,
and Q is the consequent.

★ Conjunctive statement (conjunction) A complex statement consisting of two sentences

(conjuncts) that are joined by a conjunction,
such as ‘and’ or ‘but’.

★ Consequent In a conditional that has the form ‘If P then Q’,

Q is the consequent.

★ Constructive dilemma Deductively valid argument form of the

following variety:
(1) P or Q
(2) If P then R
(3) If Q then S
Therefore,
(4) R or S

★ Disjunctive statement (disjunction) A complex statement that consists in two

sentences that are presented as alternatives.

★ Disjunctive syllogism Deductively valid argument form of the

following variety:
(1) P or Q
(2) Not Q
Therefore,
(3) P

★ Hypothetical syllogism Deductively valid argument form of the

following variety:
(1) If P then Q
(2) If Q then R
Therefore,
(3) If P then R

★ Modus ponens Deductively valid argument form of the

following variety:
(1) If P, then Q
 (2) P
Therefore,
(3) Q

★ Modus tollens Deductively valid argument form of the

following variety:
(1) If P, then Q
(2) Not Q
Therefore
(3) Not P

★ Necessary condition A condition that must be met for a claim to be

true.

★ Necessary truth A necessary truth is a claim that is true in all

possible scenarios.

★ Soundness For an argument to be sound is for it to be valid

and for all its premises to be true.

★ Truth conditions The truth conditions of a sentence or claim are

the conditions that must be obtained in order for
that sentence or claim to be true.

★ Validity For an argument to be valid is for the truth of its

premises to guarantee the truth of its conclusion.

Lesson 2 slides notes

UNIT 1: non-deductive reasoning
★ Not All Reasoning is Deductive
○ Deductive arguments: arguments whose conclusion can be deduced from their
premises.
○ A conclusion can be deduced from premises if… one can arrive at the conclusion solely
by applying logical principles (or inference rules) to the premises.
○ It is, after all, an essential feature of deductive arguments that the conclusion follows
from… the premises in virtue of their logical form alone.
○ There is thus a sense in which, in a deductive argument, the conclusion is already
contained in the premises.
○ Consider the following argument:
 ■ 1. Octavia is a cat.
■ 2. Cats are wise.
Therefore,
■ 3. Octavia is wise.
● In moving to (3), we are rendering explicit a piece of information that
is in some sense already present in (1) and (2).
● Of course, it need not be obvious that a conclusion is contained in a
particular set of premises, and it is often not obvious in the case of
more sophisticated arguments.
○ Gottlob Frege (1848-1925), who founded modern logic at the end of the 19th century,
said that the conclusion is contained in the premises “as plants are contained in their
seeds, not as beams are contained in a house.”
★ Ampliative Reasoning
○ Arguments that go beyond what is deductively implied by the premises are called
ampliative arguments.
○ Again, the fact that ampliative arguments are invalid is not a flaw, since these
arguments do not present themselves as valid. This makes them different from fallacies,
which do aim to convey the appearance of validity.
○ We determine the success of ampliative arguments by… attending to the degree of
support that their premises lend to the conclusion.
○ This support does not serve as a guarantee–only in a valid argument does the truth of
the premises guarantee the truth of the conclusion–but it does make the argument
cogent.
○ For an argument to be cogent is for its premises to make the conclusion reasonable or
rationally believable.
○ Strongly cogent arguments provide… a high degree of justification to their conclusion.
○ Weakly cogent arguments provide… only a weak (and thus easily defeated) justification.
Unit 1 Knowledge Checks
★ A conclusion can be deduced from premises if one can arrive at the conclusion solely by
applying logical principles (or inference rules) to the premises.
★ Octavia is a cat. Cats are wise. Therefore, Octavia is wise.
★ Arguments that go beyond what is deductively implied by the premises are called ampliative
arguments.
Unit 2: Forms of Non-Deductive Reasoning
★ Inductive Reasoning
○ We have seen that non-deductive reasoning has the characteristic of being ampliative,
because it goes beyond what is deductively implied by the premises. But such reasoning
still exhibits certain patterns, and we can attend to these patterns in order to draw
distinctions.
○ One type of non-deductive reasoning is… inductive reasoning.
○ In inductive reasoning, one draws a conclusion about… unobserved cases on the basis
of observed cases.
○ Consider this inference:
■ 1. Every winter up to now it has snowed in Montreal.
■ 2. So, next winter it will snow in Montreal.
○ The premise does not guarantee the conclusion; it is, after all, possible that it will not
snow next winter. But the premises do provide good reason to accept the conclusion.
○ Much of our reasoning is inductive, both in science and ordinary life. Making sense of
the world requires that we go beyond our observations, which are bound to be
confined to particular bits of that world
○ But there is more than one way of going beyond our observations, and some ways are
more reasonable than others.
○ We often draw conclusions about the unobserved in our attempt to make sense of the
causal structure of the world. The English philosopher John Stuart Mill(opens in a
new tab) (1806-1873) introduced five methods or standards characteristic of reasoning
about cause and effect.
○ Method of agreement:
■ If there is only one factor F in common between two situations in which effect
E is observed, then it is reasonable to believe that F causes E.
○ Method of difference:
■ If E is observed in situation S1, but not in S2, and the only relevant difference
between them is that S1 has factor F and S2 does not, then it is reasonable to
believe that F causes E.
○ Joint method of agreement and disagreement:
■ If in a range of situations E is observed when and only when F is present, then
it is reasonable to believe that F causes E.
○ Method of co-variation:
■ If the degree to which E is observed is proportional to the amount of F present,
then it is reasonable to conclude that F is causally related to E. (We cannot be
sure if F causes E, E causes F, or there is a common cause for both of them.)
○ Method of residues:
 ■ If we know that G causes D (but not E), and in all cases where we see G and F
we see both E and D, then we can conclude that F likely causes E.
★ Abductive Reasoning
○ The term abduction was coined by Charles Sanders Peirce(opens in a new tab)
(1839-1914), who is viewed as the founder of pragmatism (opens in a new tab). He
theorized about abduction in his work on the logic of science, where he proposed that
we distinguish between two different varieties of probable inference, inductive and
abductive.
○ Abductive reasoning is reasoning to the best explanation. If taking a claim to be true
enables us to explain a lot of what we take ourselves already to know, then that, by
itself, constitutes a good reason for accepting that claim.
○ Evidently, abductive reasoning is non-deductive: the fact that a claim best explains
some phenomenon does not mean that it is not possible for the phenomena to occur
and the claim to be false. There might be an alternative explanation for that
phenomenon.
○ Abductive Reasoning in Science
■ Abductive reasoning is pervasive in science.
■ For instance, the reasoning involved in arriving at a diagnosis for an illness is
abductive: given a set of symptoms, what hypothesis would best explain them?
○ Abductive Reasoning in Ordinary Life
■ Such reasoning is also pervasive in ordinary life.
■ For instance, I might find that there is no milk in the fridge even though I
bought a whole carton of milk yesterday. If I try to come up with an
explanation, I will attend to a wide range of facts, including facts about, say, my
roommates’ love of milk, baking habits, and so on, and try to devise the most
plausible hypothesis; this is an example of abductive reasoning.
★ Reasoning from Analogy
○ Another species of non-deductive argument is the argument from analogy. Arguments
from analogy are very common.
○ What is distinctive of such arguments is… a claim of relevant similarity between two
cases, on the basis of which it is inferred that they share a particular property.
○ More specifically, that… the property present in the uncontroversial case is also present
in the disputed case.
○ Consider, for example, the following inference:
■ 1. I did not do well in the calculus course.
■ 2. Logic is like calculus.
 Therefore,
■ 3. I will not do well in the logic course.
● The cogency of this inference depends on whether logic and calculus
are relevantly similar, that is, similar with respect to the skills required
to succeed as a student.
● It might be thought that they both revolve around the development of
a skill of operating with a symbolic language and devising proofs in
that language; this renders them relevantly similar.
■ But it might also be thought that logic is unlike calculus. After all, it aims to
provide an understanding of correct reasoning and in this way shed light, at
least in part, on the nature of the mind. Calculus does not aspire to do that.
For this reason, logic can appeal to students of philosophy in a way that
calculus cannot. This puts pressure on the claim of relevant similarity.
○ Evaluating the plausibility of an argument from analogy might be challenging.
Plato(opens in a new tab)’s argument in The Republic relies on an analogy between
the constitution of the city and the constitution of the soul, and the conversation
among Plato scholars concerning the plausibility of that analogy is still ongoing.
★ Proving a Negative?
○ It is sometimes remarked that we cannot prove a negative, but this has the potential to
mislead.
○ Consider the claim that there are no talking cats. No matter how extensively we
examine the world, it is always possible that the areas of the world where talking cats
reside remain unexamined. Perhaps this is what the maxim that one cannot prove a
negative purports to capture.
○ But note that the claim that all cats are larger than any mosquito, despite the fact that it
is not a negative claim, is just as difficult to prove as the claim that there are no talking
cats.
○ Moreover, restricting the domain does not help make sense of the claim that one
cannot prove a negative. That all the cats in my office are larger than any mosquito is
just as hard to prove as the claim that there are no talking cats in my office. In both
cases, what is required is doing a careful inventory of the office and checking whether it
includes cats; in both cases, it is possible for us to get things wrong.
○ This suggests that the difficulty of proving a negative is… just an instance of the general
challenge posed by empirical inquiry, which is governed by non-deductive standards of
proof.
 ○ Now, it can indeed be very difficult or even impossible to prove a negative in contexts
in which the domain of inquiry is indefinitely large. But this observation has a much
narrower scope than the slogan that one cannot prove a negative.
Unit 2 Knowledge Checks
★ In inductive reasoning, one draws a conclusion about unobserved cases on the basis of observed
cases.
★ According to John Stuart Mills’s method of agreement, if there is only one factor F in common
between two situations in which effect E is observed, then it is reasonable to believe that F
causes E.
★ Arguments that go beyond what is deductively implied by the premises are called ampliative
arguments.
★ Charles Sanders Peirce theorized about abduction in his work on the logic of science, where he
proposed that we distinguish between two different varieties of probable inference, inductive
and abductive.
★ The reasoning involved in arriving at a diagnosis for an illness is abductive.
★ What is distinctive of an argument from analogy is a claim of relevant similarity between two
cases, on the basis of which it is inferred that they share a particular property.
Unit 3: Thinking About Evidence
★ Context of Discovery and Context of Justification
○ In order to assess the plausibility of a claim, we need to determine the strength of the
evidence in its favour. It might be tempting to think that it would be helpful to trace its
origin.
○ But if we ask this question in the context in which we are assessing the plausibility of a
claim, we are effectively changing the topic: we shift our focus from the context of
justification to the context of discovery.
○ The reasons for accepting a claim is one thing, the history of that claim is another. The
latter does not shed light on the former.
○ I might come up with an idea for a paper (or an insight for a mathematical proof) while
dreaming, but whether the idea or insight is valuable ultimately depends on whether I
can offer an argument for it (or whether I can successfully complete the proof).
○ It is important to keep the question of where an idea came from separate from the
question of what the evidence for it is, and to recognize that the former question has
no bearing on the latter.
★ State of Information
○ Ampliative arguments are sensitive to the acquisition of new evidence.
 ○ Such evidence may strengthen the support that premises lend to a conclusion, but it
can also undermine that support.
○ Consider again our inference about winters in Montreal:
■ 1. Every winter up to now it has snowed in Montreal.
■ 2. So, next winter it will snow in Montreal.
● Suppose that climate scientists issue a warning to the effect that the
weather patterns in Montreal are rapidly changing, and winters are
expected to become significantly milder.
○ Now, such a warning would not cast any doubt on our previous observations. It
remains true that every winter up to now it has snowed in Montreal, and it is perfectly
reasonable to believe that.
○ But the warning might diminish the support that these observations lend to the claim
that next winter it will snow; it might make the argument less cogent, and the claim less
reasonable.
○ Whether a belief is reasonable is, in large part, a matter of the degree to which it fits the
overall repository of evidence or information that we have—our total state of
information.
○ Since our overall repository of information grows, the reasonableness of our
beliefs—the extent to which our beliefs are supported by the evidence we have—is in
constant flux.
★ Defeasibility and Truth
○ To have a belief is to have a commitment to the truth of that belief. If I genuinely
believe something, I am not going to give up on that belief upon encountering the
flimsiest evidence against it without scrutinizing that evidence.
○ But it is essential to our commitment to truth that… we recognize that there is a gap
between what we take to be true and what is true.
○ What we take to be true might not align with what is true; any of our beliefs might be
false.
○ A mark of being reasonable as a cognitive agent is being sensitive to new evidence and
being ready to renounce a belief if it is tension with that evidence.
○ But not any such apparent tension calls for a change of mind. Making up our minds in
the face of new evidence requires reflecting not only on the nature of the evidence but
also on the weight it has within our overall repository of information or our overall
conception of the world.
○ Sometimes, the evidence… speaks in favour of a claim.
○ Other times, it… speaks against it.
 ○ And there are also contexts in which the new evidence speaks neither in favour nor
against a claim; in such scenarios, the correct response is to suspend judgment with
respect to the truth of that claim (unless we have independent grounds to accept or
reject it, of course).
Unit 3 Knowledge Checks
★ The reason for accepting a claim is one thing, the history of that claim is another. The latter
does not shed light on the former.
★ Ampliative arguments are sensitive to the acquisition of new evidence.

Key Glossary Terms for Lesson 2:

★ Abductive reasoning Pulling together facts, making sense of them, and

arriving at conclusions based on what they seem
to suggest as a set.

★ Ampliative reasoning Reasoning whose conclusion goes beyond what

is expressed in the premises.

★ Analogical reasoning Reasoning that purports to exploit relevant

similarities between a familiar, undisputed case
and a case that is being argued.

★ Cogency A property of arguments consisting in the fact

that the premises of that argument make the
conclusion reasonable or rationally believable.

★ Defeasibility The quality of ampliative reasoning that leaves it

open to amendment in light of new information.

★ Inductive reasoning Reasoning that draws upon what is known

about observed cases to make conjectures about
unobserved cases.

★ Mill’s methods Five methods developed by John Stuart Mill to

explore the various levels of causation and
correlation: method of agreement; method of
difference; joint method of agreement and
difference; method of concomitant variations;
method of residues.
Lesson 2 Textbook notes
Chapter 2: Evidence Adds Up
COGENCY AND AMPLIATIVITY
★ A deductive argument is in some respects the gold standard of reasoning, because deductive
validity amounts to a guarantee of a true conclusion given true premises.
○ Deductive reasoning provides this guarantee because, in some sense, all the
information contained in its conclusion is also expressed in its premises. In various
domains of reasoning this is exactly the right general approach: in mathematics, for
example, or in formal logic itself.
★ An argument is cogent just in case it makes its conclusion rationally credible—that is,
rationally believable.
○ We can then qualify this notion to reflect the degrees of rational believability that a set
of premises can confer on a conclusion. A strongly cogent argument provides a high
degree of justification for its conclusion, while a weakly cogent argument might
provide only a tentative or easily overturned justification for its conclusion.
★ A deductively sound argument is fully cogent by these definitions: with true premises and
valid structure, it demonstrates the truth of its conclusion.
○ But the broader notion of cogency leaves open the prospect of arguments that are
cogent, perhaps even strongly cogent, despite being unsound. Such arguments might
provide a high degree of support for their conclusions, despite not being deductively
valid.
★ Cogency: an argument is cogent when it provides sufficient grounds for the rational belief of
its conclusion.
○ A cogent argument is by definition non-deductive, which means that the premises are
intended to establish probable (but not conclusive) support for the conclusion.
Furthermore, a cogent argument is strong, so the premises, if they were true, would
succeed in providing probable support for the conclusion.
VALID, INVALID, AND AMPLIATIVE ARGUMENTS
★ Ampliative arguments: arguments in which the conclusion amplifies on the premises,
expressing information that cannot be validly inferred from them. While strictly unsound,
ampliative arguments can nevertheless be cogent to varying degrees.
○ An ampliative argument is one for which this is not the case. In an ampliative
argument the conclusion expresses information that is not explicitly or implicitly
expressed by the premises. Consider an example:
VARIETIES OF AMPLIATIVITY
INDUCTIVE REASONING
 ★ The most important and widespread form of ampliative reasoning is inductive argument, in
which one draws conclusions about unobserved cases from premises about observed cases.
★ With sufficient evidence presented in appropriately related premises, inductive arguments can
satisfy the most general conception of a good argument; they can be rationally persuasive of
their conclusions. To denote this kind of success, we’ve introduced the term cogency: an
argument is cogent when it provides sufficient grounds for the rational belief of its conclusion.
Deductively sound arguments are of course cogent, but so too are sufficiently strong evidential
arguments, despite being strictly unsound. With cogency being a property they can share, it is
important also to note the key differences between deductive and inductive arguments.
○ A. Deductive arguments
■ satisfy, or aim to satisfy, the definition of validity.
■ do not strictly become more valid or more sound by degrees.
■ if sound, remain sound no matter what other premises might be added.
○ B. Inductive arguments
■ are strictly deductively invalid, being ampliative.
■ lend only a degree of support to their conclusion; the degree can vary.
■ are sensitive to subsequent information that may be added.
DETAILS MATTER
★ So while stating that a sound argument has all true premises provides a guarantee that a valid
argument will be sound, this is not a requirement for soundness without further restricting
what counts as an argument. To make having all true premises a requirement we would need to
stipulate that the argument is also maximally elegant: meaning, in other words, that it contains
no unnecessary premises.
DEDUCTION AND INDUCTION WORK TOGETHER
★ Deductive and evidential reasoning very often intertwine.
★ The basic structure of the deductive argument is that of disjunctive syllogism: P or Q; not-P;
therefore Q. The second premise, however, is not presented as true, but only as more likely
than the available alternative. The author is arguing from indirect evidence: since one of the
two men must be “lying” (the writer errs in not mentioning the possibility of mistaken
memory), we should consider which of them has incentive or disincentive to lie or
misremember.
ABDUCTIVE REASONING
★ In effect, the previously known facts, plus the higher-order fact that the new hypothesis would
explain them, are premises in an argument whose conclusion is the hypothesis that Clark is a
superhero. This style of reasoning is sometimes known as Inference to the Best Explanation. It
is an instance of what many scientists and philosophers call abductive reasoning, a term
 modelled on “inductive” by the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce and used to mean a leap to
a conclusion that unifies, explains, or rationalizes a set of facts. Unlike inductive argument,
abduction doesn’t (or needn’t) involve anything like a “more of the same” judgment about
unobserved cases. Like inductive argument, though, it is clearly ampliative.
CONTEXT OF DISCOVERY AND CONTEXT OF JUSTIFICATION
★ Philosophers of science have emphasized this point by distinguishing between the context of
discovery, which might include any number of arational, accidental, and sheer-dumb-luck
explanations for someone’s having that “Aha!” judgment, and the context of justification, in
which we adduce the evidence that makes it reasonable to regard the abductive judgment as
one of the successes.
ANALOGICAL ARGUMENTS
★ This sort of reasoning works by examining a familiar or uncontroversial case, noting some
feature of it, and then arguing that some other case is relevantly similar—so the feature must
also be found in the other case.
★ We may think of analogical arguments as cross-classifying other ampliative arguments.
Sometimes an analogical argument will have the “more of the same” character of an inductive
argument. More often, though, the strength of the analogy won’t reduce to the number of
analogical cases (i.e., the size of the inductive base); these cases might be viewed as having an
abductive component, so that the hypothesis of relevant similarity to the familiar case is what
explains or makes coherent the features of the unfamiliar case.
LINK
★ Most commercials aim to modify your purchasing behaviour by completely non-rational
means, rather than by giving something intended as even a bad argument.
CAUSAL REASONING
★ The philosopher John Stuart Mill proposed a thorough set of guidelines to reasoning about
cause and effect relations. Mill’s Methods, as they are known, are useful for identifying causes
in complex circumstances. They don’t tell us much about the concept of causation, and they
have limitations that are discussed below. But they are useful for beginning to distinguish
between intuitive causes and mere correlations, or patterns of co-occurrence among various
factors.
○ The Method of Concomitant Variations basically tells us to look for co-variation, or
coordinated changes, in the degree to which some factor is present and the degree to
which an effect is present in various circumstances. Maybe we can’t entirely eliminate
our subjects’ exposure to cigarette smoke over the course of many years, in an
observational study of their health.
 ■ ut if we see that the more our subjects are exposed to cigarette smoke, the more
they suffer health problems, we can infer that cigarette smoke plays a causal role
in health problems.
○ Another distinction between causes to which an explanation might allude is that
between efficient causes and structuring causes. The former are normally just what we
mean by “cause,” the direct event leading to some outcome. The latter constitute the
framework of factors that enables a chain of efficient events to occur at all. These two
kinds of distinction can both apply to a situation.
STATES OF INFORMATION
★ A key idea for understanding ampliativity, and especially for inductive reasoning, is that of a
state of information: the total evidence at our disposal when we consider the proposition or
some course of action.
○ If we aim to reason reliably in any given case of incomplete knowledge, the
fundamental problem is to come up with an accurate assessment of our state of
information relative to the issue at hand. It is easy to overlook relevant information, on
one hand, and easier still to overestimate the amount and relevance of information that
we do possess, on the other hand.
DEFEASIBILITY
★ Clearly something has gone wrong with this line of thought. Changing your mind in light of
new evidence is often the only reasonable thing to do. What is missed by the reasoning
sketched above is the fact that our beliefs can be held on the basis of a current state of
information without greatly constraining what it would be rational to believe under some
other (more complete) state of information. Believing that some proposition is true, in the
sense in which the term is ordinarily employed, is consistent with open-mindedness about the
possibility that it will be overturned.
NEUTRALITY: IGNORANCE AND EVENLY BALANCED EVIDENCE
★ Another key element of evidential reasoning is the ability to recognize when we are in a neutral
state of information, and to condition our judgments appropriately. This ability does not seem
to come very naturally to most of us.
PROVING A NEGATIVE
★ It is often said that it is impossible to prove a negative statement; that is, impossible to prove
that something is not the case, or that something does not exist. There is a kernel of truth to
this, but also a lot of confusion stemming from the difference between deductive and inductive
or empirical standards of proof.
CONCLUSION
 ★ An ampliative or evidential argument is one in which the conclusion expresses more
information than the premises express in total. These arguments can be better and worse by
degrees and are cogent when their premises are sufficiently plausible and sufficiently supportive
to warrant believing their conclusions. Inductive, abductive, and analogical reasoning are all
ampliative in nature. Causal reasoning too is broadly evidential and can involve a range of
related yet distinct concepts of cause, as well as an element of interest-relativity.
★ Critical thinking about evidence requires understanding how one’s state of information can
lend degrees of support to some proposition, including a neutral degree of support. We seem
naturally to resist recognizing neutral or nearly neutral evidential situations, in which we know
too little about something to form a very solid opinion. Moreover these degrees of support can
(and ought to) change as more evidence comes in, because the character of the new evidence
may be different or because it may undermine evidence we previously had.

Lesson 3 slides notes

UNIT 1:
★ Speech Acts
○ Language can be used in a variety of ways.
○ As we indicated earlier, we can use language not only to make an assertion, but also to:
■ Issue a command or a request
■ Ask a question
■ Make an invitation
○ It might be tempting to think that we can discern the nature of the speech act by
attending to the grammatical mood of the sentence spoken.
○ If the sentence is in the imperative mood… it must be a command.
○ If it is in the interrogative mood… it must be a question.
○ If it is in the indicative mood… it must be an assertion.

○ But it is possible to use a sentence in the indicative mood to issue a command. For
example, someone might utter the sentence ‘The soup needs more salt’ as a request.
○ Similarly, one might assert something by using a sentence in the interrogative mood.
For example, the sentence ‘Does anyone really doubt that the climate is changing?’ can
be used to assert that there is consensus about climate change.
○ We cannot come up with a method or algorithm for distinguishing genuine statements
from other speech acts. As the philosopher Donald Davidson wrote in an essay titled
Communication and Convention (1984),
 ■ There is no known, agreed upon, publicly recognizable convention for making
assertions. Or, for that matter, giving orders, asking questions, or making
promises. These are all things we do, often successfully, and our success
depends in part on our having made public our intention to do them.
★ Performatives
○ It is possible to make something be the case by saying that it is the case.
○ For instance, if I utter the words, ‘I promise to be at the airport tomorrow’, I will
thereby promise to be at the airport tomorrow.
○ In uttering these words, I do not report some independently constituted fact about
myself; rather… my uttering them constitutes the very fact of my making a promise.
■ This is an example of… a performative use of language.
○ The term ‘performative sentence’ was introduced by the British philosopher J. L.
Austin(opens in a new tab) in his lectures “How to Do Things with Words”, which he
delivered in 1955. His examples include words employed during:
■ A marriage ceremony
■ As a part of a will
■ The baptism of a ship
○ He remarks that many traditional philosophical problems are the result of,
■ taking as straightforward statements of fact utterances which are […] intended
as something quite different.
○ Again, the ability to distinguish fact-stating uses of language from other uses is essential
to discerning claims and the arguments offered to support them.
Unit 1 Knowledge Checks notes:
★ It might be tempting to think that we can discern the nature of the speech act by attending to
the grammatical mood of the sentence spoken.
★ It is possible to use a sentence in the indicative mood to issue a command. For example,
someone might utter the sentence ‘The soup needs more salt’ as a request.
★ It is possible to use a sentence in the interrogative mood to assert something. For example,
someone might ask the question ‘Does anyone really doubt that the climate is changing?’ to
assert that there is consensus about climate change.
★ It is possible to make something be the case by saying that it is the case. For instance, if I utter
the words, ‘I promise to be at the airport tomorrow’, I will thereby promise to be at the airport
tomorrow. This is an example of a performative use of language.
UNIT 2:
★ Rhetorical Questions and the Burden of Proof
○
 ○ Ordinarily, if someone makes a claim, we expect her to offer a justification. But if the
claim is turned into a question, the expectation tends to disappear.
○ For instance, if someone says that we should go on strike, we tend to expect her to offer
a reason.
○ But if she says, ‘Why not go on strike?’, it might seem that she is not required to do
anything; instead, the audience seems to be required to justify not going on strike.
○ The speaker appears to have placed the burden of proof on the audience.
○ This is a questionable move, one which we ought to point out and criticize. It is a case
of exploiting language—in this case, rhetorical questions— to dispel the appearance
that one owes one’s audience a justification.

○ Match the following aforementioned sentences ('We should go on strike' and 'Why not
go on strike?') with who would be expected to provide the burden of proof ('The
speaker' and 'The audience').
■ 'We should go on strike.': The speaker
■ 'Why not go on strike?': The audience
★ Presuppositions
○ Some utterances involve presuppositions. For example, in the question:
■ ‘Have you stopped eating meat?’
■ it is presupposed that the interlocutor has been eating meat all along; the
intelligibility of the question depends on taking this to be true.
○ When we reconstruct an argument, it is important to attend not only to that which is
stated either explicitly or implicitly, but also… to that which is presupposed in the
claims advanced.
★ Rhetoric
○ Aiming to persuade someone of the truth of a claim involves offering the best
argument available in support of that claim. This is characteristic of rational
persuasion. But the attempt to persuade someone might also exploit the aspects of
language that have no bearing on the strength of the argument, which belong to
rhetoric.
○ Consider a very simple example, involving the replacement of the word ‘and’ with
‘but’:
■ Godard is artistically fearless, and Truffaut is extremely talented.
■ Godard is artistically fearless, but Truffaut is extremely talented.
● Even though the switch makes no difference to the literal meaning of
the sentence (and thus it should make no difference to the strength of
 the argument), the second sentence suggests something very different
than the first sentence; it might be more effective than the first in
conveying a point about Truffaut’s excellence.
○ Consider also the following two sentences:
■ Dave is a good driver.
■ Dave is a fairly good driver.
● The first sentence is arguably false if Dave has one accident every year.
But it is unclear what it would take for the second sentence to be false,
and so it is unclear what sort of argument would refute it. The qualifier
‘fairly’ functions as a weasel word, namely, a word that enables the
arguer to weasel out of any refutation.
○ Rhetorical devices are ubiquitous in both written and verbal communication. If
somebody says, after knocking on someone’s door:
■ ‘Darn! He’s not home’... she is conveying a negative attitude.
■ ‘He’s not home’... she is conveying a neutral attitude.
■ Nevertheless, the two utterances seem to have the same literal meaning.
○ All these things belong to the rhetorical aspect of an utterance:
■ The tone of one’s voice
■ The facial expression one shows
■ The gestures that one makes while saying the things she says
○ But so do these things (belong to the rhetorical aspect of an utterance):
■ The use of italics in writing
■ Emphases conveyed through punctuation, such as the use of commas or
ellipses.
○ When we reconstruct an argument, it is important to distinguish the rhetorical
elements of an utterance or text from… those elements that make a genuine
contribution to the argument.
○ If we are interested in the strength of the argument… our focus should be on the latter.
Unit 2 Knowledge Checks notes:
★ Ordinarily, if someone makes a claim, we expect her to offer a justification. But if the claim is
turned into a question, the audience seems to be required to offer a justification. The speaker
appears to have placed the burden of proof on the audience.
★ In the question, ‘Have you stopped eating meat?’, it is presupposed that the interlocutor has
been eating meat all along.
★ Aiming to persuade someone of the truth of a claim involves offering the best argument
available in support of that claim. This is characteristic of rational persuasion.
 ★ The attempt to persuade someone might exploit the aspects of language that have no bearing
on the strength of the argument, which belong to rhetoric.
★ The qualifier ‘fairly’ functions as a weasel word.
★ The tone of one’s voice, the facial expression one shows, the gestures that one makes while
saying the things she says—all these things belong to the rhetorical aspect of an utterance.

Lesson 3 Textbook notes

Chapter 3: Language, Non-Language, and Argument
SENTENCES, UTTERANCES, AND COMMUNICATIVE DEVICES
★ Typically a reasonable audience will consider not merely what was said, but the point of saying
it. This distinction is involved in a great deal of communication. As the makers, recipients, and
evaluators of reasoning, we must therefore be highly sensitive to it.
★ In general, good critical reasoning requires some reflection on the range of linguistic and
extra-linguistic devices implicated in the communication of arguments and, occasionally, in the
commission of reasoning errors.
SAYING ONE THING AND (THEREBY) DOING ANOTHER
★ Language is used for many different purposes. Many of these purposes are performative—that
is, they result in the accomplishment of some act rather than just describing it.
★ Our uses of language extend to include issuing commands, asking questions, and making
assertions.
★ Commanding, questioning, and asserting are different kinds of speech-act. In the clearest cases,
performing these linguistic acts is a matter of employing the appropriate kind of sentence, since
sentences have various grammatical moods that typically correspond to different kinds of
speech-act. Imperative sentences are used to give orders, interrogative sentences are used to ask
questions, and indicative or declarative sentences are used to assert.
○ Imperative mood: Take out the trash.
○ Interrogative mood: Did you take out the trash?
○ Indicative mood: You took out the trash.
★ Constructing and analyzing arguments is largely a matter of making and identifying the
assertions that function as premises and conclusions in the reasoning. Because there is such an
obvious fit between grammatical mood and the kind of speech-act one performs by uttering a
sentence, one might think that premises and conclusions in an argument can be identified
more or less grammatically, by just looking for declarative sentences.
★ There are at least two reasons that we need to read or listen more carefully to what someone
says in order to make sense of their argument.
 ○ First, assertions can be made without employing indicative sentences. The most
common example is that of rhetorical questions.
■ It is quite common to encounter a rhetorical question in an argument where it
is plainly intended to function as a premise. In such a case it is best to think of
the rhetorical question as an assertion with the same content.
○ And second, premises and even conclusions can be implicit—that is, not written out in
any form at all, but intended to be obvious from the context.
★ Rhetorical questions and the like are part of a general way of indirectly setting out a premise or
a conclusion, known as conversational implicature. This is the practice of using an utterance to
convey a meaning beyond its literal meaning. Sarcasm most obviously employs this effect to
communicate the opposite of a literal meaning, but the general use of intended inference, over
and above literal meaning, is pervasive.
★ A careful reconstruction of an argument containing apparent uses of implicature should
explicitly note them, and either choose the most plausible interpretation given the context
(that is, either strictly and literally or factoring in implicatures), or analyze the argument
twice—once with each interpretation.
★ A related phenomenon is presupposition: a proposition that may not be explicit in some
statement, but which must be granted if the statement is to be meaningful or felicitous.
DETAILS MATTER
★ Among other things, we have in these phenomena an explanation of the distinction between
the truth conditions of a statement and the conditions for its felicitous or intelligible use.
RHETORICAL EFFECTS
★ The concept of rhetoric is sometimes defined broadly as the study and use of effective
communication, including cogent argumentation. Often, though, rhetoric is distinguished
from strict considerations of truth, accuracy, validity, and soundness. We will use this more
specific definition, under which rhetoric consists of ways of speaking or writing intended to
persuade independently of the strength of the speaker’s argument.
★ There are many different kinds of rhetorical devices in this sense, ranging from the inclusion of
subtle value judgments in assertions to the use of implicatures and aspects of prosody, or the
actual manner of speaking one employs. Most of these devices are invisible from the
perspective of truth conditions as represented by formal logic or formal semantics.
★ Rhetoric can be a matter of choosing between words that would loosely be regarded as
synonyms.
★ A rhetorical effect may also be achieved by the insertion of a word not strictly necessary from a
truth-conditional perspective, but that imposes an attitude or presupposition nonetheless. In
the least subtle cases, these interjections or expletive terms are profanities or insults (which is
 often just what “expletive” is used to mean). There is no real difference in the truth conditions
of the following pair of sentences, but a clear difference in rhetorical effect.
Vagueness
★ Many words are imprecise. Such as:
○ Small
○ Big
○ Most
○ Some
○ Plenty
○ Lots
○ Many
★ Their literal meaning is sensitive to the context… what might count as small in a context might
not count as such in other contexts.
★ For example, a food portion that counts as small in the United States… might not count as
small in Europe.
★ The phenomenon of vagueness is different from mere imprecision. Vagueness is the result of
the fact that some concepts exhibit a puzzling logic; they lack determinate boundaries.
★ Take, for instance, the concept of heap.
○ 1. A single grain of sand does not constitute a heap.
○ 2. Moreover, if something is not a heap, then adding one grain of sand to it will not
make it a heap.
○ 3. What seems to follow from these seemingly platitudinous observations is that no
amount of sand constitutes a heap, which is evidently absurd.
★ This paradox is known as the sorites paradox.
○ It is a paradox because… an evidently false conclusion is derived through seemingly
valid reasoning from seemingly true premises.
Ambiguity
★ Another variety of indeterminacy is ambiguity.
○ A sentence is syntactically ambiguous when… it can be interpreted as exhibiting more
than one structure.
○ A sentence is lexically or semantically ambiguous when… at least one of its expressions
can be taken to have more than one meaning.
★ For instance, the sentence:
○ ‘The instructor said on Tuesday there will be an exam’
○ is syntactically ambiguous: the arrangement of words leaves it open whether it is the
utterance or the exam that takes place on Tuesday.
 ○ Note that this ambiguity does not depend on any word being interpreted as having two
different meanings.
★ On the other hand, the sentence:
○ ‘They opened the port’
○ is lexically ambiguous: ‘port’ can mean a town with a harbour, but it can also mean a
variety of fortified wine that originated in Portugal.
★ An equivocation is a type of fallacy that exploits ambiguity. We will discuss it in more detail in
the next lesson, which will be devoted to fallacies.
○ Ex: “There should be no publication bans in the case of sensational violent crimes.
There is a lot of public interest in these cases, and the media should report on matters
of public interest.”
■ The argument exploits two senses of “public interest”. This term generally
means what is good for the public. For example, it can be in the public’s
interest to put fluoride in the water. But this might not be of much interest to
many people. This gives us the second sense of the notion. In the second part of
the second sentence, the expression “public interest” is used in the first sense,
but in the first part of the second sentence, it is used in the second sense.
Enthymemes
★ An argument in which one premise is not explicitly stated.
Reconstructing an Argument
★ When we try to reconstruct an argument in practice, it helps to be able to identify premises and
conclusions.
★ Some premise-indicator expressions are:
○ For
○ Since
○ Give that, etc.
★ Some conclusion-indicator expressions are:
○ Thus
○ Therefore
○ Hence
○ So
○ Consequently, etc.
★ Outside of certain academic contexts, the statements that serve as premises and conclusion,
respectively, are not marked as such. Identifying them requires careful effort.
○ The effort must be charitable. It must seek to… identify the best version of the
argument that is consistent with the interlocutor’s spoken or written words.
 ○ In other words… our attempt at understanding someone’s argument must be governed
by the principle of charity.
★ If our criticism of an argument is based on a reading of the argument that makes it easy for the
argument to be adjusted so that it is rendered immune to that criticism…
○ the criticism is pointless.
★ In the sense of the term used here, charity is not a moral virtue. It is rather a condition for the
possibility of engaging with the interlocutor in ways that matter.
Moral Arguments
★ Many disagreements concern matters of morality. It is often said in the context of such
disagreements that the way in which things are cannot dictate the way in which things ought to
be.
★ This claim can be traced to David Hume(opens in a new tab), a philosopher of the Scottish
Enlightenment, who writes in his Treatise of Human Nature (published in 1739) that an
ought cannot be derived from an is.
○ But this way of characterizing Hume’s point is potentially misleading.
■ 1. The claim that murder is wrong is a claim about how things are.
■ 2. Nevertheless, it can serve as a legitimate basis for the further claim that one
ought not to commit murder.
■ 3. This is because the notion of wrongness is a moral notion.
★ Moral notions are normative notions, which have evaluation or prescription built into their
meanings, such that it is possible for evaluations and prescriptions to be derived whenever they
are present.
★ A better (and more charitable) way of articulating the Humean dictum is to say that claims
involving moral terms (or normative terms more generally) cannot be derived from claims that
do not involve moral terms (or normative terms more generally).
○ For example, the mere fact that someone likes ice cream, which is a fact about her
psychological disposition, cannot serve as a basis for the claim that she ought to eat ice
cream.
○ The conclusion that she ought to eat ice cream might be able to be derived in light of
independent considerations about the value of ice cream or the goodness of pleasure,
which are normative considerations.
★ Cases that defy the Humean dictum instantiate the naturalistic fallacy—which purports to
derive conclusions about what is right or wrong on the basis of facts about what is
natural—which are typically specified in non-normative language.
Unit 3 Knowledge Checks:
★ Imprecise terms are words whose literal meanings are sensitive to context.
 ★ Vagueness is the result of the fact that some concepts exhibit a puzzling logic; they lack
determinate boundaries.
★ A single grain of sand does not constitute a heap. Moreover, if something is not a heap, then
adding one grain of sand to it will not make it a heap. What seems to follow from these
seemingly platitudinous observations is that no amount of sand constitutes a heap. This is
known as the sorites paradox.
★ A sentence is syntactically ambiguous when it can be interpreted as exhibiting more than one
structure.
★ A sentence is lexically or semantically ambiguous when at least one of its expressions can be
taken to have more than one meaning.
★ Strictly speaking, the conclusion that Jane is sick does not follow from the premises unless they
also include the assumption that other scenarios that would explain Jane’s absence (such as a
personal emergency) do not obtain. This assumption is implicit, which makes the argument an
enthymeme.
★ David Hume said that an ought cannot be derived from an is.
★ Moral notions are normative notions, which have evaluation or prescription built into their
meanings, such that it is possible for evaluations to be a fallacy! prescriptions to be derived
whenever they are present.
★ The Naturalistic fallacy purports to derive conclusions about what is right or wrong on the
basis of facts about what is natural.

Key Glossary Terms for Lesson 3:

★ Burden of proof The duty to provide evidence.

★ Enthymeme An argument that is technically invalid because it

has at least one premise that is not explicitly
stated.

★ False presupposition A proposition that must be assumed to be true

for a claim or utterance to be intelligible, but
which is in fact false.

★ Lexical (or semantic) ambiguity A word or expression is lexically or semantically

ambiguous when it can be taken to have more
than one meaning.

★ Misquote Saying that someone said something when they

 didn’t.

★ Naturalistic fallacy The attempt to derive conclusions about what is

right or wrong on the basis of facts about what is
natural (which are specified in non-moral
language).

★ Paradox An argument with an evidently false conclusion

that seems valid and whose premises seem to be
true.

★ Principle of charity The principle according to which we ought to

engage with the best version of the argument to
which we are responding.

★ Rhetoric The study and use of effective communication,

which focuses on the use of words to achieve a
calculated emotional effect and, more generally,
to persuade in non-rational ways.

★ Syntactic ambiguity A sentence is syntactically ambiguous when it

can be taken to have more than one structure.

★ Weasel word A vague word that can be inserted into a claim to

make it easier to escape from if it is challenged;
words such as "quite", "some" and "perhaps."

Lesson 4 slides notes

Fallacies
UNIT 1: logical fallacies
★ Types of Fallacies
○ There are many ways in which our reasoning can fail. Some of these failures exhibit
patterns, allowing us to categorize them into different fallacies.
○ Roughly, a fallacy is… a way of arguing or reasoning that is misguided.
○ We should distinguish fallacies from failures to understand the world.
■ As the philosopher Susan Stebbing (opens in a new tab) notes in her book
Thinking to Some Purpose, to fall into a fallacy is “to make a mistake in
reasoning, not in what is reasoned about”.
 ■ She also notes that it would be wrong to think of fallacies as deceptions, and
thus as likely to be present only when others present us with arguments. The
danger of ­falling into a fallacy is just as strong when we are meditating as…
genuine investigators in search of true answers to questions prompted by our
needs, whether these needs be intellectual or practical.
○ There are several kinds of fallacies:
■ Logical fallacies
● are diagnosed by attending to their logical structure.
■ Evidential fallacies
● are diagnosed by attending to the extent to which the conclusion is
made reasonable by the premises.
■ Procedural (or pragmatic) fallacies
● are diagnosed by attending to the general conditions for fruitful
rational exchange.
★ Affirming the Consequent
○ invalid form of reasoning
■ This form of reasoning is invalid because the truth of the premises does not
guarantee the truth of the conclusion.
■ Ex:
■ If P, then Q
Q
Therefore,
■ P
○ Recall that ‘P’ and ‘Q’ can be replaced with any sentences whatsoever. Recall also that a
sentence of the form ‘If P, then Q’ is a conditional.
○ A conditional is... a complex sentence involving an antecedent (‘P’) and a consequent
(‘Q’).
○ The second premise simply affirms the consequent of the conditional in the first
premise. It is an invalid argument.
■ Ex:
■ If Octavia the cat is on the mat, then she is sleeping.
■ Octavia is sleeping.
Therefore,
■ Octavia is on the mat.
● Evidently, it is possible for the premises to be true and the conclusion
false; after all, Octavia may be sleeping on the chair!
 ○ A more difficult example:
■ Only if the product is faulty is the company liable for damages.
The product is faulty, though.
Therefore,
■ the company is liable for damages.
● ‘P only if Q’ is logically equivalent with ‘If P, then Q’.
● So, the first premise, ‘Only if the product is faulty is the company liable
for damages’, is equivalent to ‘If the company is liable for damages,
then the product is faulty.’
● The second premise, ‘The product is faulty’, thus affirms the
consequent.
● (Note that the first premise does not say that the only situation in
which the product is faulty is that in which the company is liable for
damages; the product might be faulty without the company being
liable in this way, and thus the premises might be true without the
conclusion being true.)
★ Denying the Antecedent
○ Layout:
■ If P, then Q
Not P
Therefore
■ Not Q
○ Ex:
■ If love always hurts, then it’s not worth falling in love.
But love doesn’t always hurt.
Therefore
■ it is indeed worth falling in love.
○ Both Affirming the Consequent and Denying the Antecedent ignore the fact that the
consequent of a conditional may be true even when its antecedent is false. Thus, we
cannot conclude from the truth of the consequent that the antecedent is true, nor
from the falsity of the antecedent that the consequent is false.
○ Denying the Antecedent is fallacious reasoning.
★ Scope Fallacies
○ A scope fallacy involves an ambiguity of scope.
○ Take, for instance, the sentence, “Everyone is not going to the party.” It can be
interpreted in two different ways.
 ■ It is true of everyone that they are not going to the party; nobody is going to
the party. It is not true that everyone is going to the party; some people are not
going to the party. The first interpretation places the negation within the scope
of “everyone,” while the second interpretation places it outside that scope. The
grammatical form of the sentence supports both interpretations.
○ Consider another example. “A person immigrates to Canada every one minute and
seven seconds.”
■ Again, this sentence can, in principle, be interpreted in two different ways. It
might be taken to say that “every one minute and seven seconds, some person
immigrates to Canada.”
■ But it might also be taken to say that “there is a particular individual who
immigrates to, and presumably emigrates from Canada every one minute and
seven seconds.”
■ The second interpretation is much less plausible than the first, of course, but
the grammatical form of the sentence is compatible with both interpretations.
○ Our examples involve quantifiers, which can be universal (expressed by words like ‘all’,
‘every’, and ‘each’) or existential (expressed by words like ‘some’, ‘a’, etc.).
■ By failing to attend to their order and thus failing to notice that one quantifier
might be within the scope of another one, we can easily commit fallacies.
■ A common error is that of moving from a claim of the form “Every X has a Y
with which it is related” to one of the form “There is some Y that is related to
every X.”
■ For example, moving from the claim that everyone has a mother to the claim
that there is someone who is everyone’s mother.
★ Equivocation
○ A fallacy of equivocation conceals the invalidity of an argument through the use of a
single expression in two (or more) different ways.
○ Ex:
■ She is a good poker player.
Therefore,
■ she is a good person.
○ One might be tempted to think that this piece of reasoning is valid, taking it to be akin
to:
■ She is a red cardinal.
Therefore,
■ she is a red bird.
 ○ In both cases, we have a hidden premise:
■ That poker players are persons in the first case,
and
■ That cardinals are birds in the second case.
○ But there is a shift in the meaning of ‘good’ (which doesn’t have an analogue in our
second example, involving the word ‘red’):
■ Manifesting goodness as a poker player is different from...manifesting goodness
as a person.
■ One can excel at poker while… at the same time being manipulative and selfish.
○ The fact that the word ‘good’ is used in two different ways makes the inference from
the claim that someone is a good poker player to the claim that she is a good person
illegitimate.
○ We are thus dealing with a fallacy of equivocation.
Unit 1 knowledge checks:
★ Roughly, a fallacy is a way of arguing or reasoning that is misguided.
★ Logical fallacies are diagnosed by attending to their logical structure.
★ Evidential fallacies are diagnosed by attending to the extent to which the conclusion is made
reasonable by the premises.
★ Procedural (or pragmatic) fallacies are diagnosed by attending to the general conditions for
fruitful rational exchange.
★ 'Only if the product is faulty is the company liable for damages. The product is faulty, though.
Therefore, the company is liable for damages,' is an example of Affirming the Consequent.
★ 'If love always hurts, then it’s not worth falling in love. But love doesn’t always hurt. Therefore,
it is indeed worth falling in love,' is an example of Denying the Antecedent.
★ As the name suggests, a scope fallacy involves an ambiguity of scope.
★ A fallacy of equivocation conceals the invalidity of an argument through the use of a single
expression in two (or more) different ways.
Unit 2: Evidential Fallacies
★ Arguing From Ignorance
○ Evidential reasoning revolves around evidential as opposed to formal relations between
premises and conclusion.
○ Such reasoning does not purport to be deductively valid; rather, it purports to render a
conclusion (more) plausible.
■ Evidential fallacies fail to… meet this aim.
○ Such is the case of the Argument from Ignorance:
■ There is a lack of evidence that P.
 Therefore,
■ it is not the case that P.
○ For example, it would be misguided to infer from the absence of cats walking on the
street that there are no cats living in one’s neighbourhood. That absence is perfectly
consistent with the neighbourhood being inhabited by numerous indoor (or very
sneaky!) cats.
■ The mere absence of evidence for P is not enough to render the falsity of P
likely; the evidential connection between one and the other is unacceptably
weak.
○ Compare the line of reasoning above with the following:
■ There is a lot of evidence that P.
Therefore,
■ P.
● Again, both lines of reasoning are deductively invalid. But the second
line of reasoning is good evidential reasoning, for it does render the
conclusion more plausible.
● It is worth noting, though, that there are contexts in which the absence
of evidence that P is a good indicator that P is false, namely, those in
which a thorough investigation—one deploying methods that are
adequate for capturing the relevant evidence—was conducted.
● We can think of the Argument from Ignorance as a species of the
Argument from Missing Evidence. The latter has fallacious instances as
well as non-fallacious instances.
● The reasoning is non-fallacious when it can correctly be framed as
approximating a modus tollens argument:
○ If P were true, then we should expect to find evidence that P by
investigative means M.
○ Using investigative means M, we have been unable to find
evidence that P.
Therefore,
○ There are good grounds to regard P as untrue.
● The first premise is crucial: we must be entitled to regard M as an
adequate method for determining whether P is true.
● Ex: “Since I have no evidence that the prime minister died in her sleep
two days ago, I'll conclude that it is not true that she died in her sleep
two nights ago.”
★ Arguing From Vicarious Authority
○ Justifying a claim by appealing to the opinion of experts is perfectly legitimate.
However, the appeal to authority is fallacious if the expertise on which we are drawing
is not genuine.
■ It is sometime permitted to appeal to the fact that a majority endorses a certain
opinion when arguing for that opinion. If the majority in question is drawn
from a domain of people with relevant expertise, the move is permitted.
○ Authority is always relative to a field; it does not translate to other fields.
○ So, the appeal to authority is fallacious if...the authority of the expert to whom we are
appealing in order to defend a claim in a particular domain does not concern that
domain.
○ So, for instance, in the context of a discussion about the norms or policies that we
should adopt, it would be fallacious to appeal to the work of an evolutionary
psychologist. This is because evolutionary psychology purports to uncover facts about
evolution, and such facts have no implications for how we ought to live.
■ Similarly, it would be fallacious to draw on a politician’s words in the context
of a discussion about global warming.
○ Moreover, the genuinely authoritative opinion is generally the received view among
those who are in the best position to have a view. The appeal to authority is fallacious if
the expert to whom we are appealing holds unorthodox views, or views with which
many other experts disagree.
○ Generally, being in a position to assess the adequacy of an appeal to authority requires
some knowledge about the relevant field.
★ Arguing From Popular Opinion
○ It might be tempting to think that, given that everyone endorses a certain view, that
view is likely true. This instantiates a different kind of evidential fallacy, namely, the
fallacy of Appeal to Popular Opinion.
○ Obviously, an argument of the form:
■ Everyone believes that P.
Therefore,
■ P
● Is invalid: the truth of the premise does not guarantee the truth of the
conclusion
● In fact, the truth of the premise does not even… serve as good evidence
for the conclusion
 ● Facts about what people, even large groups of people, believe… do not
typically help us get closer to what is true.
● Ex: “Santa Claus is not a symbol of generosity, but a symbol of greed.
After all, everyone knows that the modern image of Santa Claus was
invented by the Coca-Cola Company.”
○ The situation is different if what is at issue are the beliefs of experts. As we indicated
earlier, the inference from the observation that most genuine experts claim that P, to P,
albeit logically invalid, can nevertheless constitute a perfectly cogent argument.
○ The more numerous the experts (and the more uncontested their expertise), the more
cogent the argument.
○ In general, it is prima facie (that is, at first glance) rational to believe what the majority
of experts in a field assert.
■ Prima facie Ex: “You say you should be mayor, but you are a drunk whose
personal and financial life is in chaos.”
★ Other Fallacies
○ We have a tendency to project causal connections where no such connections exist.
One form that this tendency takes is referred to as the fallacy of Post Hoc Ergo Propter
Hoc, which means (in Latin) after, therefore because of.
○ The tendency is fallacious because the mere fact that an event occurred after another
event does not… serve as evidence for there being a causal connection.
○ An example of such a fallacy is the readiness with which we assume that a health issue
that arose after receiving a vaccine was caused by that vaccine.
Unit 2 knowledge checks:
★ Evidential reasoning does not purport to be deductively valid; rather, it purports to render a
conclusion (more) plausible.
★ 'There is a lack of evidence that P. Therefore, it is not the case that P,' is an example of
Argument from Ignorance.
★ Justifying a claim by appealing to the opinion of experts is known as Arguing from Vicarious
Authority.
★ Authority is always relative to a field and does not translate to others.
★ It might be tempting to think that, given that everyone endorses a certain view, that view is
likely true. This instantiates a different kind of evidential fallacy, namely, the fallacy of Appeal
to Popular Opinion.
★ We have a tendency to project causal connections where no such connections exist. One form
that this tendency takes is referred to as the fallacy of Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc, which
means (in Latin) after, therefore because of.
 ○ Ex: “Two months ago you fixed my computer. I was very grateful initially, but
afterward I kept having problems with it. You obviously did not know what you were
doing!”
Unit 3: Procedural od Dialectical Fallacies
★ Ad Hominem
○ Moves that undermine reasoning by distracting the reasoners, or by damaging the
conditions for reasoning, also count as fallacies and can be taken to form a distinct
category. We will now be looking more closely at this category.
○ The appeal to some trait of the arguer (usually, though not always, a perceived negative
trait) as grounds for rejecting an argument is an instance of the Ad Hominem fallacy.
■ Strictly speaking, such an appeal counts as a fallacy only when the trait is
irrelevant to the argument.
■ If the arguer is offering considerations emanating from their own personal
authority, for example, it is not a fallacious Ad Hominem to point out relevant
facts about them, for example, the fact that they are known to tell lies.
■ The credibility of the speaker can be relevant to claims the speaker makes,
though it cannot have any relevance for the validity of the argument offered
○ The Ad Hominem fallacy should not be mistaken for a mere insult.
○ The fallacy is committed when facts about the arguer, be they positive or negative,
are...appealed to as a way of discharging the obligation to provide an argument.
○ It counts as a variety of the genetic fallacy, which is the fallacy of focusing on the origin
or source of an argument or thing rather than the properties of the argument or thing
itself.
★ Other Fallacies of Distraction
○ Interventions (either in the forms of claims or in the form of questions) that lead the
discussion away from the main topic are called Red Herrings.
○ The label is especially appropriate when there is reason to think that that this is done
deliberately, to take the discussion toward a more favorable topic.
○ Such interventions might also be viewed as instances of evidential fallacies, insofar
as...the considerations offered, being irrelevant to the topic in question, do not count
as adequate evidence for that topic.
○ Reconstructions of the opponent’s argument that fail to be charitable are instances of
the Straw man Fallacy.
■ It leads the discussion away from the topic
■ By engaging with a straw man version of the argument, one fails to engage with
the argument, and thus shifts the attention away from the topic.
 ○ Consider, for instance, the following representation of metaphysical materialism:
■ Metaphysical materialists believe that all that exists is material; there are no
immaterial souls or spirits.
■ But what about the human mind? If materialists are right, human beings are
just a bunch of organic chemicals stuck together, a collection of physical
particles.
■ But how could a pile of molecules think, or feel? The grass clippings I rake
from my yard are a pile of molecules; should I believe that a pile of grass
clippings feels hope, or thinks about its future?
○ Presumably, materialists hold that all objects are materially constituted, and that some
of these material bodies have minds.
■ There is no reason to ascribe to materialists the view that all material bodies
have minds, which is what the arguer does in the passage above.
■ So, the arguer does not really engage materialism; she is shifting our attention
to a different view, one which happens to be much less compelling.
■ She is thus guilty of committing the Straw man Fallacy.
○ Insofar as they are apt to distract the reasoners from the topic at issue, such fallacies can
be deliberately used as rhetorical devices.
★ Circular Reasoning
○ Even though these days the expression ‘beg the question’ is often taken to be
synonymous with ‘raise the question’, the notion of Begging the Question is a
technical notion that captures reasoning that is circular.
○ It assumes what it is trying to prove.
○ Consider the following piece of reasoning:
■ P
■ Q
■ R
Therefore,
■ Q
○ The reasoning is question-begging because… it assumes the truth of that which it
purports to establish.
○ Ex:
■ Everything is made of matter.
Therefore,
■ the mind is made of matter.
 ○ Again, the argument is question-begging because… the conclusion must be true in
order for the premise to be true.
○ In other words... the argument assumes the truth of the conclusion.
○ The simplest version of this fallacy has the form:
■ P
Therefore,
■ P
○ But the circularity of the reasoning is not always obvious and might take a bit of
analytical work to unearth.
○ Note that the fallacy of Begging the Question instantiates a deductively valid form:
■ it is not possible for the premises to be true without the conclusion being true,
given that the premises include the conclusion.
■ It is, nevertheless, a fallacy, because it undermines the practice of reasoning;
■ after all, reasoning aims at uncovering reasons, and someone who does not
already believe the conclusion is not provided with a reason to believe it if the
argument is circular.
■ Ex: “The government is pouring heaps of money into supervised injection
sites. These sites do nothing but encourage drug use and bring crime to
surrounding communities. This is an obvious misuse of tax dollars.”
Unit 3 knowledge checks:
★ The appeal to some trait of the arguer (usually, though not always, a perceived negative trait) as
grounds for rejecting an argument is an instance of the Ad Hominem fallacy.
★ Interventions (either in the forms of claims or in the form of questions) that lead the discussion
away from the main topic are called Red Herrings.
★ Reconstructions of the opponent’s argument that fail to be charitable are instances of the
Straw man Fallacy.
★ The notion of Begging the Question is a technical notion that captures reasoning that is circular.
★ An argument is question-begging when it assumes the truth of the conclusion.

Key terms Lesson 4

★ Ad Hominem Choosing to attack the person making the

argument rather than addressing the points
raised in the argument itself.

★ Affirming the Consequent An invalid argument in the form ‘If P then Q

 (premise 1). Q (premise 2). Therefore, P
(conclusion)’. This invalid form is often
confused with the valid form Modus Ponens.

★ Appeal to Popular Opinion An evidential fallacy that misconstrues the

significance of the fact that many people hold
some belief.

★ Argument from Ignorance An evidential fallacy that misconstrues the

significance of the fact that there is no evidence
for a particular claim.

★ Begging the Question A circular argument, one which assumes the

truth of what it purports to prove.

★ Defeasibility The quality of ampliative reasoning that leaves it

open to amendment in light of new information.

★ Denying the Antecedent An invalid argument in the form ‘If P then Q

(premise 1). It is not the case that P (premise 2).
Therefore, it is not the case that Q (conclusion).’
This invalid form is often confused with the
valid form Modus Tollens.

★ Equivocation An invalid argument in the form ‘If P then Q

(premise 1). It is not the case that P (premise 2).
Therefore, it is not the case that Q (conclusion).’
This invalid form is often confused with the
valid form Modus Tollens.

★ Evidential fallacy An argument that fails to show its conclusion to

be reasonably likely because the state of
information is too weak to support the
conclusion.

★ Fallacy A method of reasoning that is unreliable and

which results in faulty argumentation. This
result can be intended by the arguer or it can be
accidental.

★ False Dichotomy The fallacy of suggesting that there are only two
options when, in fact, other options may exist.
 ★ Genetic fallacy
★ Implicit claim
★ Logical fallacy
★ Post hoc ergo propter hoc
★ Procedural (or pragmatic) fallacies
★ Quantifier scope (or shift) fallacy
★ Red Herring
★ Straw Man Fallacy
Lesson 5 slides notes
Thinking About Numbers
Basing an argument on irrelevant facts about the
origin of a claim rather than on the evidence for
or against it.
An implicit claim is a claim that is either
presupposed or implied, but without being
explicitly stated.
An argument that is structurally deficient
because its premises, if true, do not suffice to
determine the truth of its conclusion. A logical
fallacy is deductively invalid.
The superstitious or magical line of thinking
according to which if one thing happened after
another, then it happens because of it.
Argumentative interventions that jeopardize
reasoning either by distracting the reasoners
from the issues being reasoned about or by
imperiling the conditions that make reasoning
possible.
A mistaken inference that results from failure to
attend to order of quantifiers. A very common
instance is that of moving from a claim of the
form ‘Every X has a related Y’ to one of the form
‘There is some Y related to every X’.
An argumentative intervention that leads the
discussion away from the issue.
Failing to apply the good practice of charity in
interpreting an opposing viewpoint;
misrepresenting an argument or a view in order
to refute a dumbed-down version of it.
Unit 1: Dealing With Enormously Large Numbers
★ Using Numbers as Representations
○ The idea that the world can be represented in mathematical terms is as old as
philosophy itself. In this lesson, we will not adjudicate this idea; rather, we will reflect
on reasoning that relies on or explicitly involves numbers.
○ So far, we have been investigating reasoning by attending primarily to its form, and not
to what the reasoning is about...But numbers pose special challenges.
○ First, how might reasoning involve numbers?
■ Reasoning uses numbers as representations, which is to say that it assigns a
number to a state of affairs with a view to capturing a feature of that state of
affairs.
■ The success of this assignment of a number to a state of affairs depends on how
accurately the state of affairs is represented.
■ But it also depends on whether the mathematical notions that figure in that
representation are used properly.
○ Compare the following two claims:
■ In 1900, the global average life expectancy was 32 years; by 2021, it had more
than doubled.(opens in a new tab)
■ In 1900, the global average life expectancy was 32 years; by 2021, it had more
than doubled every year.
○ Both claims involve a mathematical notion, namely, doubling. But they use that notion
in different ways.
■ The first claim, which is true, indicates that...the current global average life
expectancy is more than 64 years (which is 32 years x 2).
■ The second claim states that each year from 1901 to 2021, global average life
expectancy was double the value of the previous year, and so...the current
global average life expectancy is more than 32 years x 2120, which is an
enormously large number. The second claim is obviously false.
○ The language of the two claims is almost identical, and yet, the second claim misapplies
the doubling function. We must attend to what our mathematical notions mean in
order to avoid this kind of mistake.
★ The Chess Board Fable
○ This points us to a feature of exponential sequences.
■ Provided that the base of an exponential sequence is a bit larger than 1, the
value of that series can grow very large, very quickly.
■ PHIL.2.10 PDF
Unit 1 knowledge checks:
★ Reasoning uses numbers as representations, which is to say that it assigns a number to a state of
affairs with a view to capturing a feature of that state of affairs.
★ The success of an assignment of a number to a state of affairs depends on how accurately the
state of affairs is represented, but also on whether the mathematical notions that figure in that
representation are used properly.
★ The Chess Board Fable teaches us that we’re not always good at discerning how large a given
number is, especially if it’s described in an unusual way, like as the sum of an exponential
sequence.
★ When assessing claims that use terms like ‘exponential growth’, we must be sure to check the
size of the base, as well as the number of iterations.
Unit 2: Percentages, Averages, Rankings
★ Interpreting Percentages
○ Let’s say a mathematics department offers three introductory classes:
■ Algebra I, Calculus I, Statistics I
○ Suppose also that there are:
■ 40 students in Algebra I and 5 of them are getting A’s
■ 143 students in Calculus I and 17 of them are getting A’s
■ 239 students in Statistics I and 21 of them are getting A’s
○ What is the ratio of A students to overall enrolment in each course, and how do they
compare?
■ To answer this question, we can use percentages:
■ The ratio of A students to enrolment in Algebra I is 5 / 40 = 12.5%
■ The ratio of A students to enrolment in Calculus I is 17 / 143 ≈ 12%
■ The ratio of A students to enrolment in Statistics I is 21 / 239 ≈ 9%
○ Percentages represent ratios as fractions of a single value, namely, 100. This makes
comparisons between them easy...We can see that the Algebra I students are doing best,
and the Statistics I students are doing worst.
○ Percentages are useful, but they can be misleading. Consider this sentence:
■ The amount of A’s awarded in Calculus II increased by 50% this year.
■ This seems to suggest that the course has gotten quite a lot easier!
○ But it may be that only two students were awarded A’s the previous year, so that the
50% increase only represents one additional A.
■ If so, we are not entitled to infer that the increase is due to a change in the
course grading scheme, since a difference of one A is likely better explained by
something else (perhaps the students were simply stronger this year).
○ We must also be sensitive to the mistakes we tend to make when analyzing percentages:
■ Suppose we wanted to know what proportion of students earn A’s in
introductory mathematics classes. We may be tempted to take the mean average
(more on averages in a bit) of our three percentages.
● That is, add 12.5, 12, and 9, and then divide by three, giving around
11%. But in fact...the answer is closer to 10%.
■ This is because the classes are different sizes.
■ Statistics I is the largest of the three, and Algebra I is the smallest, so the
relatively poor performance of students in Statistics I has a larger role to play
than the relatively good performance of students in Algebra I.
■ This comes through if we add all of the students in introductory mathematics
class, and then add the sum of A's awarded, then divide the latter by the
former.
○ Finally, we must be careful that we note what we are representing with percentages.
Take another example:
■ If a camp had one hundred campers last year, what do the following three
claims mean?
● The number of campers this year is 123% of what the number was last
year.
● The number of campers has increased by 123%.
● 123% of the campers who were there last year came back.
■ The first claim represents the number of campers this year in terms of a
percentage of the number of campers last year. We can infer from that claim
that there were 123 campers this year.
■ The second claim represents the growth in the number of campers in terms of
a percentage. We can infer from that claim that there were 223 campers this
year. It is very easy to confuse this claim with the first one. That claim
represents the quantity of campers, while the second claim represents the
change in that quantity.
■ The third claim is nonsense. There are contexts in which we can speak of
percentage values larger than 100%, as in the first and second claims. But the
last claim belongs to a context in which 100% is the maximum value. The
number of campers who i) were there last year and ii) came back this year can
only be as large as the number of campers who i) were there last year. There’s
no increasing that number by 123% since this would require that we include 23
people who don’t exist.
 ○ Match the following three claims ('The number of campers this year is 123% of what
the number was last year', 'The number of campers has increased by 123%', and '123%
of the campers who were there last year came back.') with what they represent ('This
claim is nonsense', 'This claim represents the growth in the number of campers', and
'This claim represents the number of campers this year'):
★ Interpreting Averages
○ The last topic explored misinterpretations of percentages. Here is an example of a
misinterpretation of an average:
■ “The tax relief is for everyone who pays income taxes – and it will help our
economy immediately: 92 million Americans will keep, this year, an average of
almost $1,000 more of their own money.” -George Bush
■ As it happens, the Bush tax cuts were much more favourable for top earners
than for those at the bottom.
■ The highest earning segment of the American workforce benefited from about
a 5% increase in after-tax income, while… the lowest earning segment only
benefited by a tenth of that, 0.5%.
■ The lowest earning segment would have to earn $200 000 for a 0.5% increase to
amount to $1000, but...they were earning closer to a tenth that much!
■ It does not follow that Bush Lied:
● He might have just been exploiting the ambiguity of the term ‘average’.
○ The term ‘average’ is ambiguous.
■ The average can be the mean, the median, or the mode.
● After all, if I hand $10,000 to one person in a group of ten, then I can
say that the average person in the group got $1000 (the result of
$10,000 / 10). This claim would be true, but misleading, since it tells us
nothing about how the money is distributed (which is what one hopes
to learn from an average).
● In representing the average person in that group as having received
$1000, I have interpreted the average as a mean. This is the most
common way of interpreting averages, but it is not always the most
informative. There are cases in which we are better off interpreting an
average as a median, or as a mode.
○ The mean:
■ An arithmetically calculated average, representing the sum of the values of a
sample divided by the number of elements in that sample.
○ The median:
 ■ The element in the sample that has the following property: half of the
remaining elements have a greater value and half have a lesser value. (When
there is an even number of elements (hence no single central value), the median
is usually taken to be the mean of the two central ones.) For example, in the
data set:
● 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9
● the number 6 is the median because there are three numbers that are
higher and three that are lower in value.
○ The mode:
■ The most frequently occurring value. Note, though, that some samples have
no mode, since no value repeats. Other samples have more than one mode and
are multimodal. For example, the data set:
● 5, 5, 5, 6, 7, 8, 8, 8, 9
● is bimodal, since there are two modes: 5 and 8.
○ Because Bush’s tax cuts favoured high earners, their returns dragged the mean average
amount up. This concealed the fact that the majority of Americans were slated to
receive a much smaller return than $1000. We’d have gotten a clearer picture of what
the tax cuts would mean for an ordinary American if Bush had used the median
average instead.
○ It is comparatively rare to interpret an average in terms of a mode. But modes supply a
convenient way of identifying the most typical element of a sample. So, for instance, we
might use a mode to determine the most common age among the students of a course.
★ Interpreting Rankings
○ Though they sound alike, percentages and percentiles are quite different things.
Percentiles are not ratios, but collections of elements according to a ranking. So, for
instance, the mathematics students who score in the 90th percentile are those who do
better than 90% of the class.
○ We can also represent them as belonging to the highest decile:
■ The Tenth Decile: That is, were we to rank students according to grades, and
then collect them into ten equal groups, the tenth decile would refer to the
group with the highest grades.
■ The Ninth Decile: The ninth decile would refer to the group below that one,
with lower grades than the students in the tenth decile, but higher grades than
everyone else in the class, and so on.
○ Scoring 99% on an exam won’t guarantee that you’ll make it into the 99th percentile
(though it helps).
 ■ If a class has a punishing grading scheme, a student might belong to the 99th
percentile even if...she earns a relatively mediocre grade.
■ She only needs to do better than 99% of the class—so...she can do quite badly,
as long as 99% of the class does worse!
○ Likewise, in a lenient class, an A might not put a student in the 5th quintile (the set of
students with grades better than 80% of the class).
■ If enough of his peers get an A as well, and others get an A+, he may be driven
into the 4th quintile, or even lower.
■ It is all a matter of comparison.
○ This connects with an important distinction.
■ We use numbers to represent properties of states of affairs in:
● Absolute, or intrinsic, terms
■ But we also use numbers to represent properties of states of affairs in:
● Relative, or extrinsic, terms
○ So, for instance, we might say that:
■ The population of Quebec was 8 501 833 in 2021(opens in a new tab), which
is a representation of it in absolute terms.
■ Or that it was the second largest population among Canadian provinces at that
time, which is a representation of it in relative terms.
○ Examples of sentences that are absolute:
■ The population of Quebec was 8 501 833 in 2021.
■ The total private dwellings in Ontario was 5,929,250 in 2021.
○ Examples of sentences that are relative:
■ Quebec was the second largest population among Canadian provinces in 2021.
■ Ontario had the most private dwellings among Canadian provinces in 2021.
○ Corresponding to this distinction,
■ we use cardinal numbers, like: 1, 2, 3 to represent absolute values
&
■ ordinal numbers, like: first, second, third to represent relative values
○ Ordinal numbers are useful in part because they...provide a context for the
interpretation of numerical representations.
○ For example, it might not be all that informative to hear that the population of Canada
was 36 991 981 in 2021.
■ Taken in a vacuum, that is a large number, but in order to understand how
large Canada’s population is, it helps to situate it among other countries.
 ■ Learning that Canada was the 38th most populous country in 2021 (and that
it was more populous than Poland, but less populous than Afghanistan(opens
in a new tab)) tells us a good deal.
○ But as with all numbers, we must be cautious with rankings.
■ We mustn’t suppose that because the difference in ranking between two things
is large, the corresponding difference in absolute values between those things
will also be large.
■ If all the students in a class get an A+, then the difference between students in
the 99th percentile and students in the 0th percentile is.... at most, the
difference between a score of 100% and a score of 90%.
Unit 2 knowledge checks:
★ Percentages represent ratios as fractions of a single value, namely, 100.
★ The mean is an arithmetically calculated average, representing the sum of the values of a sample
divided by the number of elements in that sample.
★ The median is the element in the sample that has the following property: half of the remaining
elements have a greater value and half have a lesser value.
★ The mode is the most frequently occurring value.
★ A data set with two modes is biomodal.
★ ‘1’, ‘2’, and ‘3’ are examples of absolute values.
★ ‘First’, ‘second’, and ‘third’ are examples of relative values.
Unit 3: Fallacious Thinking Involving Numbers
★ Linear Projection
○ Suppose I tell you that:
■ The human global population increased by about 8 000 000 000 since the year
10 000 BCE.
■ That’s a lot of people, but that’s also a long time.
■ If this trend continues, it will take us another 12 000 years to reach 16 000 000
000 people.
○ Now, suppose I tell you that :
■ The human global population increased by about 1 000 000 000 between the
years 1999 and 2011.
■ That’s a lot of people, and a relatively short span of time.
■ If this trend continues, it’ll take us a mere century to reach 16 000 000 000
people.
○ Both claims are true.(opens in a new tab) But both encourage us to extrapolate
radically different trajectories for our species.
 ■ One lesson is that we can select the result we want by adjusting the scope of the
data.
■ Another lesson is that we can conceal a lot beneath the phrase ‘if these trends
continue’.
■ It is by way of that phrase that both claims commit the Fallacy of Linear
Projection, which is an evidential fallacy.
● To commit this fallacy is to think that the rate observed over a given
range, like the history of our species, can be...applied to another
unobserved range, like the future of our species.
● But rates are rarely so well-behaved, especially...the rates of something
as complex as population growth.
■ This is not to say that we must not attempt to project rates into unobserved
ranges. It is only to say that we should anticipate that new inflection points
may arise.
■ As it happens, contemporary projections of human population predict that we
will climb a little over 10 000 000 000 before the end of century, before the
population starts declining.
■ This is because it is supposed that, by that time, the social factors that cause
people to choose to have fewer children, like ready access to birth control, will
be present all throughout the globe.
■ Ex: Jane goes to the casino on Monday and wins a thousand dollars. She goes
back Tuesday and Wednesday and wins a thousand dollars each day as well. She
reasons that by continuing this practice, in one year she will have made over
$350,000.
★ Misleading Graphs
○ Numbers have the potential to be highly manipulative.
○ Numbers depicted as graphs have this potential too, only more so.
■ Graphs give the impression of making the analysis of (numerically represented)
data easy—it is as though we can see it all at a glance.
■ But the expectation that the graph does the analysis for us leaves us...vulnerable
to being misled.
○ For example, because graphs strongly suggest that there is a causal relationship between
the values represented across the axes, they tempt us to confuse causation with mere
correlation.
■ Even if we grant that the representations of global average temperature and of
number of pirates throughout history are correct (they are not), we should not
 accept the suggestion that global average temperature increased because the
number of pirates decreased.
■ These numbers are correlated (except, as it happens, between 1820 and 1860,
which the graph conceals by violating the unidirectionality of the x-axis), but
not all correlations are informative!
Unit 3 knowledge checks:
★ To think that the rate observed over a given range, like the history of our species, can be applied
to another unobserved range, like the future of our species, is an example of the Fallacy of
Linear Projection.
★ Because graphs strongly suggest that there is a causal relationship between the values
represented across the axes, they tempt us to confuse causation with mere correlation.

Key terms lesson 5

★ Cardinal Numbers Numbers used to express quantity (i.e. one, two,

three …).

★ Correlation Factors that can be seen to occur together, yet

between which no causal relationship has been
established; two phenomena or variables that
co-vary in predictable ways across different
circumstances.

★ Fallacy of Linear Projection To commit this fallacy is to suppose that the rate
observed over a given range can be applied to
another unobserved range.

★ Mean An arithmetically calculated average,

representing the sum of the values of a sample
divided by the number of elements in that
sample.

★ Median The element in the sample having the following

property: half of the remaining elements have a
greater value and half have a lesser value. (When
there is an even number of elements (hence no
single central value), the median is usually taken
to be the mean of the two central ones.)
 ★ Mode The most frequently occurring value.

★ Ordinal Numbers Numbers used to show the order of sequence

(i.e. first, second, third, ...).

★ Percentage Rate per hundred; x number out of one

hundred.

★ Percentile A term used to numerically rank values by how

they compare to other values.

★ Representative Number A number used as a representation of a state of

affairs, which purports to capture a feature of
that state of affairs.

Lesson 6 lecture notes

Probability and Statistics
Unit 1: Basic Concepts
★ Basic Concepts
○ Human beings are deeply invested in determining the likelihood of future events, as
well as in understanding the complex relationships between past events.
■ The theory of probability is concerned with...the way in which data, gathered
through observation, rationally constrains our expectations and enables us to
make predictions.
■ The theory of statistics aims to...provide a correct analysis of that data.
● The two theories provide powerful tools for our inquiry into the
world, both future and past.
○ Suppose that we want to determine some facts about a population. A plausible strategy
would be to:
1. Take a small sample of that population
2. Ascertain the relevant facts
3. Generalize the results
■ But a question immediately arises: what counts as a representative sample and
how do we ensure that our sample isn’t unrepresentative?
● Intuitively, a representative sample is...reflective of the general traits of a
population.
● An unrepresentative sample is... one that either over-represents or
under-represents some trait.
 ■ We might arrive at an unrepresentative sample in two ways:
● Having a selection technique that is biased
● Being unlucky
○ Even if there was no bias in selection procedure, your sample
can still be unrepresentative. The sample can be
unrepresentative as a result of bad luck.
■ Suppose that we want to determine the proportion of Montreal inhabitants
who attend church events. We cannot ask every Montreal inhabitant, but we
can select a sample of the population and generalize their answers.But the
generalization will be legitimate only if the sample we select is representative of
the entire population.
● Now, if we determine this by conducting a phone survey on Sunday
mornings, our results will be inaccurate. This is because:
○ The people of Montreal who do not attend church events will
be overrepresented, since not attending such events is a
necessary condition for picking up the phone while they are
underway.
○ Moreover, whenever a sample is drawn from the people who
want to share their view on a particular issue, a selection bias is
present as the sample is likely to over-represent individuals
whose views are not moderate. After all, individuals with
moderate views are often less eager to talk about those views.
○ But even without a biased sampling technique, we might just
get unlucky. When surveying the height of a population, we
might just happen to pick a set of people who are all taller than
average or shorter than average.
● How could we diminish the likelihood of being unlucky? One way of
doing so is making sure that we take the largest sample that we can.
Another way is by qualifying our confidence in our conclusions in
relation to the likelihood of being unlucky, given the size of our
sample.
● How can we make it less likely that we will end up drawing
unwarranted conclusions from a sample?
○ Avoid biased sampling techniques, Increase the sample size,
Qualify our confidence in the conclusion
★ Confidence and Precision
○ Inferences we draw from empirical data are non-deductive, which is to say that they
lend support to the conclusion only to a degree. The data does not deductively entail
the conclusion; the conclusion is merely probable.
○ There are several dimensions alongside which the strength of the inference can be
assessed:
■ On the one hand, there is the question of how confident we are entitled to be
in our probabilistic conclusion.
■ On the other hand, there is the question of how precise of a conclusion we are
entitled to draw, given our premises (or our empirical data).
○ In order to make these notions clearer, let us lay out the basics of probability theory,
which uses mathematics to represent the intuitive notion that some things are more
likely to happen than others.
■ Probabilities are quantified on a scale from 0 to 1 (or from 0% to 100%).
■ A necessary event has a probability of 1 (or 100%); an impossible event has a
probability of 0 (or 0%).
■ A contingent event, i.e. an event that is neither necessary nor impossible, has a
probability in between. For example, the chance of a randomly flipped fair coin
coming up tails is .5 (or 50%).
○ Now, what does this have to do with confidence and precision?
■ Intuitively, we are permitted to be very confident in an imprecise conclusion
such as...that the probability that it will rain tomorrow is between 0% and
100%.
● But we do not need to rely on data to have this confidence; a basic
understanding of probability immediately leads to it. (In this context,
imprecision amounts to the failure to rule out certain states of affairs or
events; the more precise a claim is, the higher the number of states of
affairs or events ruled out by it.)
■ Just as intuitively, if the conclusion we derive from some data is precise...the
degree of confidence to which we are entitled will diminish.
● For instance, if the meteorological data available is interpreted as
providing more specific predictions about the chance of rain
tomorrow—for instance, that there is a 17% chance of rain between
14:03 and 14:11—we are not rationally permitted to be as confident in
this claim as we were with respect to the claim that the probability that
it will rain tomorrow is between 0% and 100%.
○ The precision of a conclusion is specified by stating:
 ■ A confidence interval
■ A margin of error
○ Suppose that the meteorological data permits us to be 95% confident with respect to a
certain range of probabilities concerning the presence of rain tomorrow.
■ How do we specify the range?
● We might say that we are 95% confident that the chance of rain is
between 20% and 25%, in which case we would be stating the
confidence interval.
● We might also say that we are 95% confident that the chance of rain is
22.5%, with a margin of error of 2.5%.
■ The confidence interval is...the range of values within which we can be
statistically confident (to some specified degree).
■ The margin of error is...half that range, expressed relative to the midpoint of
the confidence interval.
○ Suppose we want to increase our degree of confidence in a particular claim.
■ We could do this by decreasing the precision of the claim, i.e., by increasing the
size of the confidence interval or the margin of error.
■ We could also try to gather significantly more data, which is typically a reliable
way of increasing confidence.
○ A statistical inference can be seen as a balancing act between...the precision of the claim
to which the premises (the data) lend support and the confidence in the inferential
relation that those premises (that data) allow for.
■ The notion of statistical significance purports to assess this balancing act.
■ Statistical significance depends both on the confidence we are entitled to have
in our probabilistic conclusion and on the degree of precision of the
conclusion.
■ A claim is statistically significant if the event or outcome is both unlikely to
have happened by chance and not trivial.
● In short, a set of data typically permits one to be confident, to a degree,
in some statistical conclusion that is precise, to a degree.
Understanding a statistical claim requires knowing both degrees.
★ The Null Hypothesis and Two Kinds of Error
○ When investigating the world, we usually start from observations of phenomena being
correlated. Two phenomena are correlated when they seem to be associated in various
circumstances. Statistical and probabilistic reasoning enable us to understand the
nature of such correlations; are they random or accidental, or are they indicative of
 causal relations that would enable us to make reliable predictions and offer robust
explanations?
○ The Null Hypothesis:
■ Scientific inquiry typically proceeds with an assumption, referred to as the null
hypothesis, to the effect that any correlation observed between the phenomena
under investigation is purely accidental and thus devoid of statistical
significance. The question, then, is whether the evidence compels us to reject
the hypothesis—in other words, whether the evidence forces us to think that
the correlation is in fact significant.
○ Recall our example from the previous lesson, concerning the supposed correlation
between the global average temperature and the number of pirates.
■ This case exemplifies an insignificant correlation. The alignment of these
numbers is entirely accidental. If we were to investigate the correlation
empirically, we would start by assuming this, and we would try to find evidence
that speaks against the assumption. Of course, there is no such evidence, and
thus no reason to reject the assumption.
○ More generally, if the evidence does not force us to reject the null hypothesis, we retain
it.
■ This is not to say that we are committed to its truth. Rather, we are committed
to the idea that only a substantial amount of evidence rationally compels us to
reject it.
■ This idea is at the core of the scientific method.
■ (we are not entitled to infer that a proposition is true from the lack of evidence
for its negation.)
○ There are two broad kinds of mistakes we can make on this front:
■ Type I errors (false positives)
■ Type II errors (false negatives)
○ Roughly, to make a Type I error is to...reject the null hypothesis when that hypothesis
is true.
○ To make a Type II error is to...fail to reject the null hypothesis when that hypothesis is
false.
■ This leads to four different possibilities, which are represented in the table
below:
 ○ In general, we can reduce the chances of one sort of error either by:
■ Increasing the odds of the other sort
■ Improving our data
○ It is an example of a Type I error when: The correlation does not hold + The null
hypothesis is defeated
○ It is an example of a Type II error when: The correlation does hold + The null
hypothesis is not defeated
○ It is correct to say that:
■ The correlation does not hold + The null hypothesis is not defeated
■ The correlation does hold + The null hypothesis is defeated
Unit 1 knowledge checks
★ The theory of probability is concerned with the way in which data, gathered through
observation, rationally constrains our expectations and enables us to make predictions.
★ The theory of statistics aims to provide a correct analysis of available data.
★ A representative sample is reflective of the general traits of a population.
★ An unrepresentative sample is one that either over-represents or under-represents some trait.
★ Whenever a sample is drawn from the people who want to share their view on a particular
issue, a selection bias is present as the sample is likely to over-represent individuals whose views
are not moderate.
★ When conducting surveys, even without a biased sampling technique, we might just get
unlucky.
★ A necessary event has a probability of 1 (or 100%).
★ An impossible event has a probability of 0 (or 0%).
★ A contingent event, i.e. an event that is neither necessary nor impossible, has a probability in
between. For example, the chance of a randomly flipped fair coin coming up tails is .5 (or 50%).
★ The confidence interval is the range of values within which we can be statistically confident (to
some specified degree) that the true value of a claim falls.
★ The margin of error is half the range of values of a confidence interval, expressed relative to the
midpoint of the confidence interval.
★ Statistical significance depends both on the confidence we are entitled to have in our
probabilistic conclusion and on the degree of precision of the conclusion.
 ★ Scientific inquiry typically proceeds with an assumption, referred to as the null hypothesis, to
the effect that any correlation observed between the phenomena under investigation is purely
accidental and thus devoid of statistical significance.
★ To make a Type II error (false negatives) is to fail to reject the null hypothesis when that
hypothesis is false.
★ To make a Type I error (false positives) is to reject the null hypothesis when that hypothesis is
true.
Unit 2: probability, rish, and intuition
★ The Monty Hall Problem
○ As we mentioned earlier, one goal of probability theory is to enable us to assess how
confident one can reasonably be about the truth of some proposition given an
incomplete state of information.
○ We are, by nature, poorly equipped for such assessments.
■ The problem is not (merely) that we are not good at arithmetical thinking,
but...rather that we are not good at recognizing the ways in which various bits
of information might be relevant to the truth of a proposition.
○ Monty Hall Problem
■ The Monty Hall problem is deciding whether you do. The correct answer is
that you do want to switch. If you do not switch, you have the expected 1/3
chance of winning the car, since no matter whether you initially picked the
correct door, Monty will show you a door with a goat.
■ Explanation: You are a contestant on a game show. There are three doors in
front of you. Behind one of the doors is a valuable prize (e.g., a car), while
behind the other two doors are less valuable prizes (e.g., goats). You choose one
of the doors (let's say Door #1). After you make your choice, the host, Monty
Hall, who knows what's behind each door, opens one of the other two doors
that you did not choose, revealing a goat. Now, you are left with two unopened
doors: the one you initially chose (Door #1) and the other unopened door
(Door #2).
● Admittedly, this reasoning is more complex. But we have reason to be
suspicious of the earlier piece of reasoning, even though it struck us as
intuitive and compelling.
● After all, it does not show any sensitivity to the fact that our overall
state of information has changed.
● Monty, who knows where the car is, has opened door C. Shouldn’t this
make a difference to the way in which we respond?
Unit 2 knowledge checks
★ According to the Monty Hall Problem, after you've selected one of three doors, and another
door is opened to reveal a goat, your odds of selecting the car would increase if you switched to
the other door you had not originally picked.
★ According to the Monty Hall Problem, the odds that you missed the car with your first pick
are 2/3.
Unit 3: basics of probability
★ Two Basic Laws of Probability
○ We can try to safeguard our reasoning about probabilities by laying out the basics of
the theory.
○ Recall from the first unit that probabilities are quantified on a scale from 0 to 1.
○ A necessary event has a probability of 1...an impossible event has a probability of 0.
○ Events that might or might not occur have...some probability in between.
■ The probability of an event ‘e’ can be written as ‘P(e)’.
■ We will use ‘¬e’ to mean ‘not-e’, that is, the event does not occur.
★ The First Basic Law of Probability: 0 ≤ P(e) ≤ 1
○ The first law states that the probability of any event has a value somewhere from 0 to 1,
inclusive.
○ Is there alien life on any of the planets orbiting Betelgeuse?
■ This question might be very hard to answer. But the first law of probability
assures us that the probability of alien life on any of those planets is somewhere
between 0% and 100%.
★ The Second Basic Law of Probability: Where 'S' is the set of all possible outcomes, P(S) = 1
○ The second law can be understood as stating that necessarily, something or other
happens. Alternatively, it can be understood as stating that there are no outcomes
outside S.
○ Now, if S is not well-defined, then any probabilistic calculations you might perform
using S are suspect and perhaps meaningless.
○ The second law makes it possible to perform very useful reasoning based on what will
not occur.
■ That is: P(e) = 1 − P(¬e)
■ In other words, the probability that e occurs is 1 minus the probability that it
does not occur. The probability of an event happening plus the probability of
an event not happening is always 1.
 ■ For example, the probability of there being alien life on any of the planets
orbiting Betelgeuse plus the probability of there not being alien life on any of
the planets orbiting Betelgeuse is always 1.
★ The Probability of Complex Events
○ For disjoint events (with at least one event occurring) we use ‘∪’ to mean...roughly,
‘or’.
○ For conjoint events (with all the specified events occurring) we use ‘∩’ to
mean...roughly, ‘and’.
○ How might we calculate the probability of conjoint and disjoint events?
■ Start with disjoint events:
● The probability that either A or B occurs is the probability that A
occurs plus the probability that B occurs, minus the probability that
both A and B occur.
● P(A∪B) = P(A) + P(B) − P(A∩B)
● Ex: Consider the following pair of events: getting heads on the next
coin flip, getting red on the next roulette spin.
○ The probability that either of the two events occur is the
probability that the first occurs (1/2) plus the probability that
the second occurs (18/38), minus the probability that both
occur (1/2 x 18/38). This amounts to (approximately) 74/100.
○ (A roulette wheel has 18 red spots, 18 black spots, and 2 green
spots, so the chances of getting red on any one spin are 18/38.)
○ In performing the calculation, we rely on the following
principle: if two events can occur at the same time, the
probability of both events occurring is the product of their
probabilities.
● Ex: A and B are mutually exclusive. That is, they cannot both occur.
Then P(A∩B), the probability that they occur together, is 0. So, the
last part of the equation can be dropped. We end up with:
○ P(A∪B) = P(A) + P(B)
○ This is to say that the outcome (A∪B) occurs just in case
either one of A or B occurs. So, P(A∪B) is just the probability
of A plus the probability of B.
● Ex: Octavia’s sleeping on the mat, Octavia’s sleeping on the balcony.
○ Suppose that, after careful empirical analysis of Octavia’s
behaviour, we have determined that there is a 1/8 chance that
 she is sleeping on the mat at any given moment, and 1/18
chance that she is sleeping on the balcony.
○ Obviously, Octavia cannot be sleeping in two places at the
same time (assuming that the mat is not on the balcony!), so in
order to determine the probability of Octavia sleeping on the
mat or on the balcony, we just have to add the two
probabilities.
○ We end up with (approximately) 18/100.
● Again, in the more complicated case where A and B might occur
together, we need the whole formula:
○ P(A∪B) = P(A) + P(B) − P(A∩B)
○ The presence of the last term ensures that we do not count
outcomes twice.
○ If A and B are not mutually exclusive, then some A-outcomes
are also B-outcomes.
○ Starting with P(A), if we simply add P(B) we are counting
some A-outcomes a second time, namely those that are also
B-outcomes.
● We subtract those overlapping cases, P(A∩B), to avoid this:
○ More complex cases follow the same pattern:
○ P(A∪B∪C) = P(A) + P(B) + P(C) − P(A∩B) − P(B∩C) −
P(A∩C) + P(A∩B∩C)
■ What about conjoined events?
● We mentioned earlier that, in the case of two events, the probability of
both events occurring is the product of their probabilities.
● However, we need to distinguish between the case in which the two
events are independent, and the case in which they are not.
● Independent A and B; whether A occurs is not affected by whether B
occurs.
○ The formula we shall use in this case is the following: P(A∩B)
= P(A) x P(B)
● Ex: To return to an earlier example, getting heads on the next coin flip
and getting red on the next roulette spin are independent events;
whether one occurs is not affected by whether the other occurs. This is
why we may determine the probability that they both occur by
multiplying the probabilities corresponding to each.
 ○ Dependent A and B; the probability that A occurs is affected
by B’s occurring.
○ P(A∩B) = P(A|B) x P(B)
○ Note that ‘P(A|B)’ is a conditional probability: the probability
of A given B.
● Ex: Suppose that the likelihood that Octavia is sleeping on the mat
increases when it is raining (after all, she has to sleep somewhere, and
she cannot sleep on the balcony if the weather is not nice).
○ In that case, the probability that she is sleeping on the mat is
dependent on whether or not it is raining.
○ If the presence of rain increases the likelihood of her sleeping
on the mat to a 2/15 chance, and there is a 1/5 chance of rain,
then we multiply these values to determine the chance that
both occur.
○ This produces a result of (approximately) 3/100.
■ When is the probability of A or B equal to the probability of A plus the
probability of B?
● When they are mutually exclusive
★ The Gambler’s Fallacy
○ As our discussion of the Monty Hall problem suggested, our reasoning is prone to go
wrong when considering matters pertaining to probability and statistics.
○ Here is something that a gambler might think:
■ “I’ve been losing all night, so I must win the next round!”
○ Similarly, a student might think:
■ “I’ve been failing all my exams, so I must pass the next one!”
○ In both cases, the thinking is fallacious, being an instance of...the Gambler’s Fallacy.
○ If a series of independent events has the conjoint probability p, it is misguided to think
that...the probability of any single event in the series is somehow dependent on the
series as a whole.
○ Let us conclude by considering an example of the fallacy in more detail.
■ The chance of getting red on five sequential roulette spins is 18/38 x 18/38 x
18/38 x 18/38 x 18/38, which comes to almost 2/100.
■ But this does not mean that we should bet on black if the last four spins have
come up on red. The chance of getting red on the next spin is still 18/38.
 ■ The improbability of landing on red five times in a row—that is, the
improbability of the series of events—has already been absorbed, as it were, by
the previous four spins.
■ Given that we are already this far in the series, the probability of getting red
again is properly represented in terms of the probability of a single event.
Unit 3 knowledge checks
★ The probability of an event ‘e’ can be written as ‘P(e)’.
★ The first law: 0 ≤ P(e) ≤ 1
○ The first law states that the probability of any event has a value somewhere from 0 to 1,
inclusive.
★ The second law: Where S is the set of all possible outcomes, P(S) = 1.
○ The second law can be understood as stating that necessarily, something or other
happens. Alternatively, it can be understood as stating that there are no outcomes
outside S.
★ For disjoint events (with at least one event occurring) we use ∪ to mean, roughly, ‘or’.
★ For conjoint events (with all the specified events occurring) we use ∩ to mean, roughly, ‘and’.
★ Here is something that a gambler might think: “I’ve been losing all night, so I must win the
next round!” Similarly, a student might think: “I’ve been failing all my exams, so I must pass the
next one!” In both cases, the thinking is fallacious, being an instance of the Gambler’s Fallacy.
Lesson 6 key terms

★ Bell curve A pictorial representation of the standard

deviation of a set of data; in a bell curve, the
mean is the centre line, and the number of data
points tails off symmetrically as values are farther
from the mean.

★ Conditional probability A conjoint probability of dependent events

where P(A|B) is read as "the probability of A
given B."

★ Confidence interval The range of values within which we can be

statistically confident (to some specified degree)
that the true value falls.

★ Gambler’s fallacy The mistake of thinking that if a series of

independent events has the conjoint probability
p, then the probability of any single event in the
series is somehow dependent on the probability
 of the series as a whole.

★ Margin of error Half the confidence interval, expressed relative to

the midpoint of that interval.

★ Null hypothesis The assumption that any correlation observed

between phenomena is purely random or
accidental.

★ Sample A small selection from a larger group, the

qualities or features of which purport to
represent those of the group as a whole.

★ Selection Bias The incorporation of a bias into the selection of

a sample from a group that is likely to result in
the sample being unrepresentative of the relevant
group.

★ Standard deviation A representative number that shows the spread

in the sample data.
- Standard deviation is a measure
(roughly) of the average distance a data
point is from the mean. So, the greater
the standard deviation, the more spread
out the data points are. For instance, if
everyone gets about 70% on a test, the
standard deviation is going to be quite
small. If the test scores are "all over the
map", then the standard deviation will be
large.

★ Statistical significance Statistical support for the conclusion that

something was unlikely to have happened by
chance.

★ Type I error Also called a false positive, this is the error of

rejecting the null hypothesis when it is actually
true, or of finding an explanation other than
chance when chance is in fact the right
explanation.

★ Type II error Also called a false negative, this is the error of

 failing to reject the null hypothesis when there is
another hypothesis that is actually supported, or
of inferring that something happens randomly
or by chance, and as a result disregarding the
actual explanation for the correlation or
condition.

★ Unrepresentative sample A sample that over-represents or

under-represents some trait of the general
population from which it is drawn; the product
of biased selection.

Activity:
Carefully consider the Monty Hall problem. Do you find the reasoning to the effect that one ought to
switch from the first to the second door convincing? If so, then why? If not, why not?

★ The correct answer is that you do want to switch. If you do not switch, you have the expected
1/3 chance of winning the car, since no matter whether you initially picked the correct door,
Monty will show you a door with a goat.
★ The odds of winning with the “Switch” strategy are two in three, double the odds of staying.
★ Probability of winning doubles from ⅓ to ⅔ when you switch. Switching is the statistically
superior choice, offering a higher probability of success.
★ The reason is that the odds of picking the right door on the first try are 1 in 3. That means that
there is a 2/3 probability that the car is behind one of the remaining doors. But once door #2 is
eliminated, there is still a 2/3 probability that the door you didn’t pick is correct. And with #2
no longer a viable option, the probability that #3 has the car must be 2/3.
★ The crucial insight is that Monty's action of revealing an empty door provides you with
information. It effectively tells you that one of the remaining unopened doors is definitely not
the one with the prize.
★ Conditional probability
○ Conditional probability is defined as the likelihood of an event or outcome occurring,
based on the occurrence of a previous event or outcome. Conditional probability is
calculated by multiplying the probability of the preceding event by the updated
probability of the succeeding, or conditional, event.
○ In probability theory, conditional probability is a measure of the probability of an
event occurring, given that another event has already occurred.
 ○ The convincing aspect of this reasoning is rooted in the principles of conditional
probability and the idea that new information can change the likelihood of various
outcomes. While it may seem counterintuitive, the mathematics behind the Monty
Hall problem provides a compelling case for why switching doors is the strategically
wise decision.

Lesson 7: Biases Within Reason

Lecture notes
Unit 1: Basic Concepts
★ The Notion of Bias
○ Human beings are rational creatures, but they are not fully rational creatures; they
deviate from the requirements of rationality in many ways. We tried to systematize
some of these ways in Lesson 4, where we discussed various kinds of fallacies, such as:
■ logical fallacies
■ evidential fallacies
■ and procedural (or pragmatic) fallacies
○ Fallacies: ways of arguing or reasoning that are misguided
○ But the fact that we are not fully rational creatures manifests itself not only in the form
of mistakes in reasoning and other types of irrationality.
■ It also shows itself in the fact that we have what philosophers might call an
arational (or non-rational or sub-rational) nature, a nature which, unlike the
domain of judgment and action, is not governed by standards of rationality at
all.
○ We cannot diminish our susceptibility to biases by understanding them because:
■ Biases operate below the level of rational engagement
■ Biases are features of our psychological mechanisms
■ Biases are not shaped by the search for truth
○ The domain of arationality is permeated by biases
■ Typically, by ‘bias’ we mean a form of prejudice; In ordinary contexts, the word
has a negative connotation. This is not the sense with which we are using the
notion of bias in this lesson.
■ A bias is…a disposition toward a particular kind of response.
■ Biases enable us to respond to the world both quickly and effectively.
■ Given our condition as finite beings navigating a world of enormous
complexity, we need biases to survive.
○ However, because biases are dispositions, as opposed to beliefs, judgments, or genuine
reasoning processes, they are not:
■ 1. Discernible from our ordinary perspective as thinkers who attempt to make
up their minds about what to believe and do by figuring out what reasons they
have.
■ 2. I cannot discover my biases through reflection alone, because I cannot,
through reflection alone, register facts about the way in which I’m disposed to
respond to the world.
■ 3. In order to uncover those facts, I need to observe myself in various
circumstances.
○ Consider, by way of analogy, traits of character. We determine whether someone is
generous, or courageous, or kind, by observing the way in which she acts in
circumstances that call for generosity, or courage, or kindness; it cannot be determined
through reflection alone.
■ I cannot ascertain whether I am courageous by merely thinking about it; I need
to consider my behaviour in relevant circumstances.
■ Likewise, in order to gain an understanding of my biases, I have to consider
myself from the outside, as it were, as a being in whom various mechanisms
operate.
■ This is continuous with relying on the findings of scientific disciplines such as
social psychology or behavioural science, which seek to provide a scientific
understanding of the human mind.
■ This understanding relies entirely on taking an external perspective on the
mind.
○ A characteristic feature of the operation of mechanisms specific to cognition, such as
biases, is that...they trade accuracy for simplicity in order to resolve practical problems.
■ These trade-offs may occur at the level of perceptual mechanisms, or...they may
occur at the level of cognitive mechanisms.
■ Understanding them might help us shed light on aspects of our basic
perceptual experience, as well as aspects of our basic judgments about the
world.
○ What is more, biases might also help:
■ Shed light on our tendency to engage in fallacious reasoning.
■ And, more generally, on our tendency to make mistakes.
○ We deviate from the demands of rationality in part because a constituent of our nature
is entirely divorced from those demands.
 ★ The Repetition Effect
○ In order to get a better handle on the notion of bias, consider one of the clearest
instances of it, which we might call the repetition effect:
■ the tendency to think of claims to which one has been exposed repeatedly as
more likely to be true.
■ This fact about us is exploited extensively by the advertisement industry.
■ This tendency should be distinguished from the disposition toward fallacious
reasoning. The phenomenon at issue is distinct from the case in which an
individual judges that a claim must be true because it is often repeated.
○ An example of the repetition effect is that of finding oneself attracted to a certain
product as a result of repeated exposure to claims about that product (as opposed to as
a result of rationally endorsing its qualities).
○ Biases operate below the level of rational engagement.
★ Denying the Antecedent
○ It is in the nature of reasoning that it is public, which is to say that it can be articulated
fully so that others may scrutinize it and either find it compelling or dispute it. When
we reconstruct a piece of reasoning in the form of an argument with premises and
conclusion, we make it easier for others to engage with it, and in this way make its
public nature manifest.
○ The public nature of reasoning consists in the following:
■ Reasoning can always be made intelligible to others
○ Since biases operate below the level of rational engagement, they cannot be articulated
and scrutinized in the way in which reasoning is.
■ They (or their products) are also not the sort of things that can be rationally
endorsed or disputed, either by the thinker herself of by her interlocutors.
■ This helps explain why the charge of being biased is fundamentally different
from the charge of making an error in reasoning, and why being subject to the
former charge results in feeling dismissed as opposed to being taken seriously as
an interlocutor.
■ (Criticizing someone’s reasoning is a way of rationally engaging with her and
thus a way of respecting her as an interlocutor.)
○ However, we are all biased, and understanding what this amounts to is helpful in the
broader context of understanding ourselves and the ways in which our rational
capacities might go astray.
Unit 1 knowledge checks
 ★ The fact that human beings are not fully rational creatures manifests itself not only in the form
of mistakes in reasoning and other types of irrationality. It also shows itself in the fact that we
have what philosophers might call an arational (or non-rational or sub-rational) nature.
★ A bias is a disposition toward a particular kind of response.
★ The repetition effect is the tendency to think of claims to which one has been exposed
repeatedly as more likely to be true.
★ It is in the nature of reasoning that it is public. Since biases operate below the level of rational
engagement, they cannot be articulated and scrutinized in the way in which reasoning is.
Unit 2: Perceptual Biases
★ Low-Level Bias
○ The question of how to draw the boundary between perception and cognition is
philosophical, and, as such, calls for philosophical treatment. But we do not need to
address it in order to rely on the distinction.
○ As we intimated earlier, biases belonging to the perceptual domain should be
distinguished from biases belonging to the conceptual domain.
■ Perceptual biases operate on...our basic perceptual experiences.
■ Cognitive biases operate on...our thoughts, expectations, emotions, and so on.
○ Ordinarily, the fact that we saw or heard something is a good reason to believe it
happened. But in some cases, we must refrain from forming the relevant beliefs,
especially since we know that our perceptual capacities can err.
○ We distinguish between:
■ 1. Low-level biases
■ 2. Top-down effects
○ Low-level biases are...built into our perceptual mechanisms.
■ For instance, we are naturally disposed to look for faces in our surroundings.
This enables us to represent visual information that is at best ambiguous as
indicative of a face; this has the obvious advantage of helping us easily spot
other humans. This phenomenon is known as face pareidolia.
■ Low-level biases are different from top-down effects.
★ Top-down Effects
○ Top-down effects are:
■ The result of our beliefs, expectations, and emotions influencing our
perceptions.
○ An example of a top-down effect is the McGurk effect, which also serves as an
illuminating illustration of the way in which our expectations about the world shape
our very basic perceptions of it.
 ■ The McGurk effect is multi-modal, which is to say that...it involves more than
one sensory system.
● A multi-modal effect: Involves more than one modality
■ The effect occurs when we are viewing a speaker uttering a speech sound
while...simultaneously hearing a speech sound that is different from the sound
normally heard when speakers make the relevant utterances.
○ Note that we have no control over perceptual biases. However, we can refrain from (or
be more cautious when) forming judgments whenever we take ourselves to be in
conditions that are likely to trigger them.
○ A top-down perceptual bias is:
■ When expectations influence what is perceived
Unit 2 knowledge checks
★ Perceptual biases operate on our basic perceptual experiences.
★ Cognitive biases operate on our thoughts, expectations, emotions, and so on.
★ Low-level biases are built into our perceptual mechanisms.
★ Face pareidolia is the phenomenon where we are naturally disposed to look for faces in our
surroundings. This is an instance of a perceptual bias.
★ Unlike low-level biases, top-down effects are the result of our beliefs, expectations, and
emotions influencing our perceptions.
★ An example of a top-down effect is the McGurk effect, which occurs when we are viewing a
speaker uttering a speech sound while simultaneously hearing a speech sound that is different
from the sound normally heard when speakers make the relevant utterances.
Unit 3: Cognitive Biases
★ Confirmation Biases
○ Consider the claim, which was frequently made a few decades ago and is less frequently
made today, that women are not as good at philosophy as men.
■ To support this claim, one might cite the fact that the vast majority of famous
philosophers are men, which is beyond dispute.
■ Of course, the fact that the vast majority of famous philosophers are men is not
surprising, given that women have been, throughout history, deprived of the
opportunity to pursue intellectual work.
○ More to the point, in light of this history, the fact that the vast majority of famous
philosophers are men lacks any evidential significance with respect to the
aforementioned claim. That someone committed to the claim might fail to see this can
be explained in terms of a confirmation bias.
■ Emotions, preferences, or desires toward P are sufficient for the bias to operate.
 ○ The existence (and persistence) of many stereotypes can be explained by:
■ The repetition effect
■ Confirmation biases
■ The disregarding of sources of information likely to undermine the view
○ Confirmation biases amount to:
■ The ways in which one’s beliefs, emotions, and commitments shape one’s
search for, interpretation, and assessment of the evidence.
■ This tendency shapes not just the way in which we respond to evidence, but
also the way in which we search for it.
■ As we shall see, we tend to search for evidence that confirms our existing
beliefs, as opposed to evidence that might challenge them.
★ Responding to Evidence
○ Human beings have a tendency to take a hypothesis that aligns with their existing:
■ Beliefs
■ Emotions
■ And commitments
● ...to have more evidential support than it in fact has.
○ First, we tend to lend disproportionate credence to evidence that supports our beliefs.
■ Indeed, we tend to judge supporting evidence to be disproportionately
significant or weighty, even when apparently countervailing evidence is also in
our possession.
■ Moreover, we tend not to question seemingly supportive evidence, or not to
make the cognitive effort to explore potential tensions or contradictions
between the various pieces of that evidence.
○ Second, the evidence that appears to undermine our beliefs is likely to receive a
treatment of just the opposite sort.
■ Rather than ignoring or dismissing countervailing evidence...we often subject it
to a particularly harsh and critical examination.
● By looking for faults in the source of the information,
● By elaborating at length the ways in which such apparent evidence
might be misleading,
● And by noting the degree to which it falls short of conclusive proof,
○ …we are susceptible to the risk of seriously overestimating the
extent to which the countervailing evidence might be
misleading.
★ Searching for Evidence
○ Confirmation biases occur not only with respect to the interpretation of evidence, but
also with respect to our search for it. Indeed, they might even limit our access to
evidence.
○ To begin with:
■ Confirmation biases help create the appearance of evidence by functioning in a
way similar to top-down effects on perception.
■ For instance, human beings expect children to resemble their parents. This
leads to them perceiving deep resemblances between children and their parents
even when none are present; this is likely the result of a keen search for such
resemblances, triggered by bias.
■ This points to the fact that...our strong inclination to look specifically for
evidence that supports our beliefs shapes our search methods.
■ Unsurprisingly, this engenders situations in which we are more likely to...come
across such evidence in the first place (or in which we are less likely to
encounter undermining evidence).
○ The books we read, the news platforms and journalists we follow, the experiments we
design, and the sort of questions we ask can all be chosen in a way that makes it more
likely that we will be exposed only to facts and considerations that support our
pre-existing commitments and hypotheses, and less likely that we will encounter
countervailing information or arguments. The choices we make tend to conform to
this pattern.
○ Consider again the example discussed in the previous lesson, in which we seek to
determine the proportion of Montreal inhabitants who attend church events.
■ Suppose that our firm conviction—or even our initial hypothesis—is that few
people in Montreal attend church events.
■ We decide to determine whether this is true by conducting a phone survey on
Sunday mornings.
■ As we indicated earlier, this will obviously skew our determination in favour of
confirming the initial hypothesis, insofar as the data it delivers will
overrepresent the people of Montreal who do not attend church events.
■ The fact that we opted for this method in this context can plausibly be viewed
as an instance of our confirmation bias.
○ Thus, we might deploy the idea of confirmation bias to characterize not only a feature
of our psychology, but also ...a structural aspect of a situation.
 ■ After all, a situation might itself be configured (as a result of scientific
intervention, social forces, or for some other reason) in a way that...renders
recalcitrant evidence invisible.
○ Social media platforms, whose workings are dictated by pernicious algorithms that
present us only with news sources, political commentary, and personal opinions that
are already likely to receive our approval, serve as a good example:
■ by their very nature, they shield us from the discomfort of political
disagreement.
○ Evidential neglect is when you dismiss evidence against a view without properly
considering its merit.
○ Often, when we do not just dismiss evidence that challenges our beliefs, we subject the
opposing view to a disproportionate amount of criticism. This is an example of:
■ Moving the Goal Post Fallacy
■ Confirmation bias
★ Egocentric Biases
○ Human beings have a tendency to assign special significance to the events that involve
them and to think that they might either have played a special role in such events or
have had special insight concerning them.
○ One way in which this tendency manifests itself is...the hindsight bias.
○ The hindsight bias is:
■ The error of overestimating one’s own earlier confidence that events would
happen as they actually did.
■ This enables one to view past events as predictable.
■ This tendency diminishes our sense of having gotten things wrong, which
increases our overall comfort.
○ Consider the following example of a manifestation of the hindsight bias:
■ When considering Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the summer of 2023,
someone might be inclined to think of herself as having been fairly certain, well
before February 2022, that the invasion would happen, even though, if she
were to consult her diary or to survey her previous conversations, she would
discover that she often expressed skepticism at the prospect of it.
■ This again points to the fact that the tendencies that we have been calling
biases, and which belong to our non-rational nature, are often at odds with the
project of pursuing the truth, which shapes our lives as rational beings.
■ After all, cultivating our awareness of the possibility of getting things wrong,
which is a source of deep discomfort, is crucial to this project.
Unit 3 knowledge checks
★ Confirmation biases amount to the ways in which one’s beliefs, emotions, and commitments
shape one’s search for, interpretation, and assessment of the evidence.
★ Confirmation biases occur not only with respect to the interpretation of evidence, but also with
respect to our search for it.
★ The hindsight bias is the error of overestimating one’s own earlier confidence that events would
happen as they actually did; this enables one to view past events as predictable.

Key terms lesson 7

★ Cognitive biases Biases that influence such cognitive processes as

judging, thinking, planning, deciding, and
remembering.

★ Confirmation bias A wide variety of ways in which beliefs,

expectations, or emotional commitments
regarding a hypothesis can lead to its seeming
more highly confirmed than the evidence really
warrants.

★ Egocentric bias The tendency to read special significance into the

events that involve us, as well as into our roles in
those events.

★ Face pareidolia The tendency to look for faces in our

surroundings, which enables us to represent
visual information that is at best ambiguous as
indicative of a face.

★ Hindsight bias The error of overestimating one’s own earlier

confidence that events would happen as they
actually did, and therefore seeing those past
events as predictable.

★ Low-level biases Biases that are built into our perceptual

mechanisms.

★ McGurk effect A perceptual bias built into the sensory

capacities’ ways of dealing with conflicting visual
and audio input.

★ Perceptual biases Biases that influence perceptual processes, either

 because they are built into them, or because such
processes are prone to being influenced by
cognitive processes.

★ Public nature of reasoning The property of reasoning consisting in the

possibility of it being articulated fully so that
others may scrutinize it and either find it
compelling or dispute it.

★ Repetition effect The tendency to think of claims to which one

has been exposed repeatedly as more likely to be
true.

★ Top-down effects The ways in which what we already believe,

desire, expect, or remember can shape our
perceptual experiences.

Lesson 8: The More We Get Together

Unit 1: Reasoning About other People
The Social Nature of Human Beings
★ The Social Nature of Human Beings
○ Human beings are social creatures. What is it to be a social creature? Of course, human
beings tend to live in groups, much like other species. But the nature of human
sociality goes further than this. Human beings are social in so far as active engagement
with others—which requires understanding them, their perspective on the world, as
well as their projects within that world—is essential to living a properly human life.
○ Thus, much of our reasoning and deliberation is about others;much time is spent
trying to understand what they are thinking and what they are aiming to achieve.
○ But even when our reasoning is not about others…their presence may have an effect on
it.
○ Moreover, we are so successful as reasoners—we have discovered so much about the
world, and we have determined how to adapt it to our needs—in part as a result of our
sociality.
■ Much of our reasoning relies on a sophisticated epistemic division of labour,
which enables us to know far more than any one of us, or any other animal,
could know on his or her own.
 ■ But because this social underpinning of knowledge originates in our human
nature, it has a number of imperfections. We can excel even more as reasoners
by attending to how our sociality intervenes in our reasoning.
★ The Fundamental Attribution Error
○ Most of our endeavours involve pursuing relationships with others, whether they are:
■ Members of our family
■ Classmates
■ Friends
■ Teammates
■ Teachers
■ Employers
○ Often, the success of our projects depends on the success of these relationships, which
in turn depends on our ability to understand and predict behaviour.
○ What are the distortions characteristic of this ability, and what are the ways in which it
tends to go wrong?
■ One common tendency is to explain what someone does in terms of their
character traits, overlooking salient aspects of the situation that are
explanatorily relevant.
■ This is known as...the fundamental attribution error (FAE).
○ Example:
■ “I am introduced to someone who immediately strikes me as curt and abrupt. I
judge that she is an unfriendly person, or that she is rude, or that she is
arrogant; I resolve to avoid her.”
● Is my response problematic? Note that the possibility that:
○ Her mother is very ill
○ She is anxious about meeting new people such as myself
○ She has a terrible headache
● does not even occur to me.
■ This is a straightforward illustration of the tendency to explain a piece of
behaviour in terms of character traits and dispositions, as opposed to appealing
to aspects of the situation. The former are features of the person; the latter are
features of the world. Both can play an explanatory role, and so both are
plausible candidates when we are trying to understand why a person behaved in
a particular way in a particular context. And yet, we have a very strong
inclination to privilege features of the person over features of the situation.
This is a serious obstacle for our forming a correct conception of other persons.
 ○ One study(opens in a new tab) that is taken to have revealed the FAE was done by two
social psychologists in 1967, Edward E. Jones and Victor Harris.
■ Subjects were given essays that argue either for or against Fidel Castro's
government in Cuba (at a time when this was a widely debated topic).
■ When the subjects were told that the writers of the essays were assigned
positions according to a coin toss (as opposed to simply writing what they
actually thought), they still tended to attribute sentiments favourable to Castro
to the authors who wrote pro-Castro essays (and sentiments unfavourable to
Castro to the authors who wrote anti-Castro essays).
○ Thus, even when the relevant feature of the situation was made salient...the subjects
continued to explain the writers’ behaviour in terms of (what they supposed to be)
their deep-seated convictions.
★ False Polarization Effect
○ In the conversation surrounding any controversial topic, some stereotypical positions
(i.e., positions that occupy an extreme) typically coalesce. When we participate in such
a conversation, we tend to overestimate the difference between our own view and the
view of someone who disagrees with us. Indeed, we tend to interpret the other person’s
view as closer to the stereotypical position than it is; similarly, we tend to think of our
own position as further from the stereotypical position than it is.
○ We overestimate...the extent to which our own position involves nuance, subtlety, and
compromise, And we underestimate...the extent to which the opponent’s position
involves them.
■ This misrepresents the opponent’s position, as well as the distance between us.
■ The outcome is false polarization.
○ Suppose, for example, that I learn that a friend is critical of the Liberal Party's ambition
to relocate half a million immigrants per year to Canada. Upon hearing this, I am
strongly inclined to attribute to her the view that Canada should shut its borders.
■ But as it happens, my friend is not at all opposed to the scale of the Liberal
party's policy; her complaint concerns the way in which this policy is carried
out, specifically in the prioritizing of highly skilled immigrants, which results,
she thinks, in robbing the labour supplies of other countries of their most
productive workers.
○ One way of overcoming this pernicious tendency is by engaging in careful reflection on
the reasons the opponent has for the claims she puts forward.
■ This enables us to attain a clearer view of the various elements of her position.
Unit 1 knowledge checks
 ★ One common tendency is to explain what someone does in terms of their character traits,
overlooking salient aspects of the situation that are explanatorily relevant. This is known as the
fundamental attribution error (FAE).
★ We overestimate the extent to which our own position involves nuance, subtlety, and
compromise, and underestimate the extent to which the opponent’s position involves them.
This misrepresents the opponent’s position, as well as the distance between us. This is known
as the false polarization effect.
Unit 2: Reasoning Affected by Other People
★ The Bandwagon Effect
○ Our thinking can be affected by others, even when we don’t think about them.
○ One of the clearest examples is our tendency to adopt beliefs that we take to be held by
those around us, which is known as the bandwagon effect. As a result of this effect,
when one finds oneself in a group in which most people are in agreement, it is very
difficult for one to take a divergent position. The bandwagon effect can be understood
in terms of the social costs of deviating from the opinions of the group, but it might
also be the product of the repetition effect, which was covered in the previous lesson.
○ After all, the most widely shared opinions will often be the ones to which we are most
exposed. Thus, the pressure to subscribe to them is strong. For example, it often
happens that our music preferences are formed in adolescence, and a remarkable
convergence between our preferences and those of our friends is often present. This
might be due to the fact that we choose friends who have the same tastes we do, but it
might also be because the bandwagon effect is determining our preferences without
our realizing it.
○ Moreover, if, once we leave for university, we find our tastes evolving so that we revise
our earlier preferences, this may be because—with our peer group gone—we finally feel
free to adopt a unique position. (Alternatively, we have entered a new peer group, and a
new bandwagon effect has come into play!)
★ The False Consensus Effect
○ Another way in which our thinking can be affected by others involves the tendency to
overestimate the extent to which they share our perspective on a situation.
○ Now, we saw in Lesson 3 that the effort to understand others must be charitable, in
that it must attribute to others the best version of the argument that is consistent with
their words and actions. Indeed, charity is a condition for the possibility of genuinely
understanding others.
○ In practice, the demand for charity will result in our attributing to others the beliefs
that we ourselves hold, because what it requires is essentially that we think of others as
getting things right.
■ Of course, we also think of ourselves in this way—we wouldn’t believe (or
want) the things we do unless we by and large took them to be the right things
to believe (or want).
■ This suggests that attributing to others the beliefs that we ourselves hold is
something that we are rationally required to do. The same goes for desires.
■ This presents us with a puzzle:
● How could we go wrong by overestimating the extent to which others
agree with us?
○ This is a puzzle with which philosophers such as Donald
Davidson, who offer philosophical accounts of the social
nature of the mind, grapple, and which would lend itself to a
detailed discussion in a philosophy seminar.
■ For our purposes, it is sufficient to note that there are
many varieties of belief, some of which are
mundane—for instance, beliefs such as that:
● Quebec is in Montreal
● Cats are mammals
● Healthy meals are good for children
■ And some of which are less so—for instance:
● The belief that the existence of objective moral
standards does not depend on the existence of
God
○ Similarly, there are basic preferences... like a preference for pleasure over pain, which
most people share.
○ But there are also idiosyncratic or contentious preferences...which, among other things,
determine whether we take a given thing to be pleasurable or painful.
○ Charity may require that we assume deep convergence in our mundane beliefs or
preferences, but it does not require that we expect such convergence with respect to the
issues that we recognize as contentious.
○ It is at this stage that the false consensus effect might intervene:
■ The false consensus effect is...the tendency to overestimate the extent to which
beliefs and preferences that we recognize as contentious (as opposed to beliefs
and preferences that are utterly mundane) are shared by others.
 ■ So, for instance, even though I recognize that the claim that the existence of
objective moral standards does not depend on the existence of God is a
controversial one, I am still very strongly disposed, given my commitment to it,
to treat it as a platitude and to assume that everyone accepts it.
★ The Role of Silence
○ One way in which the false consensus effect manifests itself is in our response to
silence: we tend to take other people’s silence to indicate agreement.
○ Of course, a person might opt to remain silent for a variety of reasons, including the
fact that she finds the view expressed too implausible to be worth engaging with! But
even though we are aware of this possibility, we are typically disposed to ignore it.
○ What is more:
■ We have the disposition to remain silent when we disagree with someone.
■ This is because the expression of disagreement might be perceived as hostile,
and we are disposed to minimize the risk of conveying hostility to others,
especially when we do not know them very well.
■ At the same time, we might deem silence the proper response to disagreement
in many situations.
○ Thus, we tend to interpret silence as.... expressing agreement. We tend to conceal our
disagreement...through silence.
■ Both these tendencies are akin to biases:
● Together, they account for quite a lot of the distortion that
characterizes the flow of information within a community.
Unit 2 knowledge checks
★ Our thinking can be affected by others even when we don’t think about them. One of the
clearest examples is our tendency to adopt beliefs that we take to be held by those around us,
which is known as the bandwagon effect.
★ The bandwagon effect can be understood in terms of the social costs of deviating from the
opinions of the group. But it might also be the product of the repetition effect, which was
covered in the previous lesson. After all, the most widely shared opinions will often be the ones
to which we are most exposed.
★ The false consensus effect is the tendency to overestimate the extent to which beliefs and
preferences that we recognize as contentious (as opposed to beliefs and preferences that are
utterly mundane) are shared by others.
★ One way in which the false consensus effect manifests itself is in our response to silence.
★ We tend to take other people’s silence to indicate agreement.
★ We tend to conceal our disagreement through silence.
Unit 3: The Social Flow of Information
★ Distortions in the Flow of Information
○ It might be thought that whether a claim or story is reiterated within a group can be
explained in terms of the extent to which it is supported by evidence: the more well
supported a claim is, the more popular it becomes. But this is misguided. The
popularity of a claim need not have anything to do with its plausibility, and everything
to do with the various biases of the members of the group.
○ Consider the phenomenon of rumors, i.e., claims on current topics that are passed
from person to person without evidence of their truth, and the way in which the
retelling of a claim or story tends to distort it.
■ Two phenomena in particular are worth noting:
● Leveling is...the process by which the aspects of a story that are taken to
be less central tend to get minimized or omitted over successive
retellings.
● Sharpening is...the process by which the aspects of a story that are
taken to be central tend to be overstated as the story is retold.
■ These phenomena were examined by Gordon Allport and Leo Postman, who
published The Psychology of Rumor in 1947.
● They describe a scenario in which subjects were shown detailed
drawings of scenes and situations and were given time to memorize the
details.
● The subjects were asked to summarize the scenes and situations in the
drawings to a second person, who in turn was asked to report what
they were told
● to a third person, and so on, five times.
● Over the course of the retellings, various details changed, in ways that
were clearly shaped by the subjects’ perspective.
★ The Distribution of Knowledge
○ Consider the following exchange that might take place on a winter morning in
Montreal:
■ P1: "I did not dress properly today, as I hadn’t realized the temperature is so
low! I’ll definitely catch a cold."
■ P2: "I wouldn’t worry about it. Not dressing warmly when it’s chilly will not,
all by itself, cause someone to catch a cold."
■ P1: "Surely, if that were true, I’d have heard it by now!"
 ● This line of thinking presumes that knowledge is distributed within
the community.
● Indeed, it is easy to have an exaggerated view both of the efficiency with
which our social context conveys information, and of the successful
distribution of knowledge in the community to which we belong.
● But even though the fact that one cannot catch a cold merely by failing
to dress warmly has been known for some time and is widely
communicated, some people might not have encountered a report of it.­­
Unit 3 knowledge checks
★ Sharpening is the process by which the aspects of a story that are taken to be central tend to be
overstated as the story is retold.
★ Leveling is the process by which the aspects of a story that are taken to be less central tend to
get minimized or omitted over successive retellings.
★ The popularity of a claim need not have anything to do with its plausibility, and everything to
do with the various biases of the members of the group.
Extra notes
★ We have a tendency to explain what others do in terms of their character traits, which is known
as the fundamental attribution error.
★ The fundamental attribution error is the error of explaining an instance of someone's
behaviour in terms of a character trait while ignoring any contextual explanations.
★ Liberals who believe that conservatives want to institute a pseudo-fascist state or conservatives
who think that liberals are Marxists are best seen as examples of: False polarization
○ We are disposed to overestimate both the extent to which the others’ view approximate
stereotypes and the extent to which we disagree with them.
★ In false polarization, one’s own view is also misrepresented.
★ The bandwagon effect affects what people believe.
★ The tendency to assume that people are in agreement with oneself (in the absence of any
evidence to this effect) is called: The false consensus effect
○ The false consensus effect is the tendency to overestimate the extent to which others
share our convictions.
★ The false consensus effect:
○ Is explained by the tendency to assess oneself in favourable ways
○ Involves taking other people's silence as an expression of agreement
○ Explains, for instance, why someone might be shocked when his/her superiors (with
whom he/she has a fairly friendly relationship) vote to replace him/her
 ★ One’s chances of engaging in the biased forms of reasoning discussed in this lesson can be
reduced by:
○ Considering why someone might disagree with one’s position
○ Understanding the biased forms of reasoning, which enables one to be cautious when
the circumstances like to trigger them arise
○ Aiming to be charitable
★ Sharpening is often the result of someone honestly trying to retell a story in manner that is
faithful to the original
★ We tend to remain silent when we disagree, and we tend to interpret the silence of others as a
sign of agreement.

Lesson 8 key terms

★ Bandwagon effect The tendency to align our beliefs with the beliefs
we take to be widely held by those around us.

★ False consensus effect The tendency to assume that other people are in
agreement with one’s own opinions and beliefs,
or at least to pay little notice to the discrepancies
between others’ point of view and one’s own.

★ False polarization effect The tendency to exaggerate the distinction

between one’s position and the position of one’s
opponent by taking the latter to approximate an
obvious stereotype, and by overestimating the
difference between the opponent’s position and
one’s own.

★ Fundamental attribution error The tendency to explain someone’s behaviour in

terms of that individual’s personality, character,
or disposition, while overlooking explanations in
terms of context, accidents, or the environment
more generally.

★ Leveling The process through which the elements of a

story that are perceived as minor or less central
tend to get minimized or omitted over successive
retellings.

★ Sharpening Enhancing certain details in a story, or changing

the significance or connotation of aspects of it,
 with the result that the story becomes
exaggerated and less accurate over successive
retellings.

Lesson 9: Critical Reasoning About Science

lecture notes
Unit 1: Science and Critical Reasoning
★ The Importance of Science
○ The scientific revolution radically changed the trajectory of human civilization. Much
of this change is owed to the success of certain scientific discoveries and theories in
discerning the structure of our world. In light of the enormous expansion in
knowledge that the scientific representation of that structure has enabled, it is
reasonable both to defer to science, and to classify the refusal to defer to science as a
failure in critical reasoning.
○ But what shape should this deference to science take?
■ During the COVID-19 pandemic, the slogan ‘trust the science’ was invoked as
something like a rational imperative.
■ But there is no monolithic scientific institution that can be singled out as the
science.
■ There is rather an enormous array of scientific institutions, and individual
scientists, and they sometimes contradict one another—indeed, they are
uniquely disposed to repudiate one another’s findings—so that it is impossible
to trust them all.
○ What is it, then, to trust the science?
■ The slogan ‘trust the science’ is somewhat euphemistic—in the context of the
pandemic, it is a non-adversarial way of prescribing that we distrust the claims
made by those peddling dubious COVID ‘cures’, like
hydroxychloroquine(opens in a new tab), ivermectin(opens in a new tab), and,
more remarkably, bleach(opens in a new tab) (the ingestion of which causes
acute liver failure) and injections of disinfectant(opens in a new tab) (which is
quite likely fatal).
■ While the slogan was also used to recommend mask use and vaccines, it is in
this first capacity of prescribing scepticism about, say, the healing powers of
bleach, that the slogan best reveals the connection between science and critical
reasoning.
★ Science and Scepticism
○ We ought to defer to science in the sense that we ought to recognize it as an unusually
powerful program for inquiry into the natural world.
■ This need not involve deferring to any particular scientific finding (though
disbelief in near unanimously vindicated scientific claims—that climate change
is man-made, for instance—is a reliable indicator of a failure in critical
reasoning).
■ But it does involve respecting science as an important mechanism by which we
can acquire knowledge.
○ Unfortunately, this makes science vulnerable to a special kind of abuse.
■ If it is reasonable to assign a privileged status to science, then there is an
incentive to represent claims as scientific, since that way, they are more likely to
be believed.
■ There is also an incentive to make claims seem more plausible than they are by
surrounding them with impressive science-y language, such as the language
imbued with mathematical terms that we discussed at in Lessons 5 and 6.
■ In fact, on its surface, it is the requirement that we respect science that makes
us susceptible to be misled by snake-oil salesmen who seek to sell us bottles of
poison with ‘miracle cure’ written across the label (or by their contemporary
equivalent, the social media influencer marketing a supplement or dieting fad).
Each can, and often do, point to what looks like serious scientific research to
back up their claims.
○ But we are susceptible to be misled in this way only if we misunderstand what it is
about science that merits our respect.
■ Again, it is not that we ought to defer to any particular scientific finding;
likewise, it is not that we ought to be impressed when a conclusion has the
backing of some scientific study or other.
■ Trusting the science is better understood as a kind of philosophy, a way of
investigating the world.
■ This philosophy comes through as clearly in the incredulity it prescribes—for
instance, in our doubting a study claiming that prayer improves medical
outcomes—as it does in the credulity it prescribes—for instance, in our
trusting a study claiming that lung cancer is in most cases not hereditary.
■ That is, a properly scientific disposition is as much about...the suspension of
belief as it is about belief.
 ○ In Lesson 6, we learned about the null hypothesis, which assumes that the correlations
we observe are random, that is, that phenomena under investigation are not correlated
in any meaningful way.
■ 1. Scientists suspend judgment about the presence of a meaningful correlation
until they have evidence that suffices to defeat the null hypothesis.
■ 2. This is what makes scientific investigation into the world sceptical—by
beginning with the null hypothesis, scientists guard against the temptation to
assume that their own hypotheses are correct; they only grant the truth of their
hypotheses when the evidence compels it. (Or rather, this is what the scientific
ideal prescribes. Scientists do not always realize this ideal; more on that in a
moment.)
○ In what follows, we will consider what kind of deference to science we should expect
from those who practice good critical reasoning by focusing on the role of scepticism
in science.
Unit 1 knowledge checks
★ In light of the enormous expansion in knowledge that the scientific representation of that
structure has enabled, it is reasonable both to defer to science, and to classify the refusal to
defer to science as a failure in critical reasoning.
★ Scientists suspend judgment about the presence of a meaningful correlation until they have
evidence that suffices to defeat the null hypothesis.
★ Beginning with a null hypothesis is what makes scientific investigation into the world
skeptical—by beginning with the null hypothesis, scientists guard against the temptation to
assume that their own hypotheses are correct.
Unit 2: Delineating Science
★ Counter-Intuitive Results
○ An important scientific lesson is that the world is a messy place
■ We should not expect to find everything arranged in such a way that it can be
captured by a neat and tidy set of principles.
■ Often, the precise boundaries between different aspects of the world are very
difficult to map.
■ Often, there are no precise boundaries at all!
○ This is true of science itself.
■ There is no maximally precise definition we can contrive to include only
science and exclude all the rest; there is no feature that all scientific endeavours
have, and non-scientific endeavours lack.
 ■ For instance, it is often said that it is distinctive of scientific claims that they are
verifiable, which is to say that they can be verified by evidence, or that they are
falsifiable, which is to say that there are specifiable observations or experimental
outcomes under which they would be judged false (or less likely). But this is
not true only of scientific claims.
■ The most we can manage is to identify a cluster of concepts which, taken
together, make science what it is. Attending to these concepts helps us to
distinguish between scientific and non-scientific claims; it also helps us
distinguish between good and bad science.
■ But the distinctions we draw in this way are essentially imprecise. We will have
to exercise our judgment to determine how far they apply.
■ The difficulty of articulating in precise terms the boundary between science
and non-science is known as...the demarcation problem.
○ Thinking About Numbers
■ One central feature of the scientific project is the willingness to accept
counter-intuitive claims. The scientific revolution began with the publication
of Nicolaus Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (On the
Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres), which contributed to the displacing of
the geocentric model of the universe, which places the Earth at its centre, in
favour of the heliocentric model, which places the Sun at its centre. This was
not the first time the heliocentric model had been proposed. Astronomers and
philosophers since antiquity had granted it as a possibility. But the geocentric
model tended to be favoured in large part because the suggestion that our
planet moves through space is just so counter-intuitive. What changed in the
16th century was that the expectation that the world aligns with our intuitions
was abandoned. With this done, human beings could be guided by
astronomical findings to an image of the universe that contradicted common
sense. And once it was granted that the Earth is moving, scientists turned to
other ideas to explain why ordinary experience does not reflect the way in
which the universe is arranged. It is easy to neglect the fact that it is extremely
difficult for us to recognize just how complex the world is and how remarkable
it is that science enables us to register that complexity. Take a more recent
example: in 2021, a container ship got caught in the Suez Canal. This
prevented other ships from using this vital trade route, resulting in losses of
nearly $10 billion a day. For the most part, the public response to the story was
this: “Was the pilot asleep at the wheel?” That is, the popular assumption was
 that negligence caused the problem. After all, the canal is nearly a straight line.
How could anyone fail to navigate that? But as it happens, the hydrodynamics
in play when a massive ship passes through a relatively shallow canal are
extremely complex. The water in that canal behaves in remarkably
counter-intuitive ways. As a result, even a highly skilled pilot could wind up
making a series of innocent mistakes, resulting in a ship getting caught in the
canal. This is all to say that physical inquiry into the behaviour of fluids reveals
that moving in a straight line is not always as easy as we are inclined to think.
What is the connection to skepticism?
● At its root, skepticism is the worry that the way things seem to us does
not align with the way things actually are.
● Science grants the possibility of such a misalignment. It leaves our
intuitions behind (as far as it can) and draws its conclusions from what
the data can justify.
● If the things we’re disposed to believe cannot be justified in this way,
then they do not fit within a properly scientific picture of the world.
■ This feature of science is sometimes glossed as the claim that scientists make no
assumptions at all, not unless the data suggests it. But this claim
misunderstands science.
○ It is impossible to inquire into the world without making any assumptions.
■ After all, we would not know which aspects of the world to...attend to, and
which to ignore, if we did not have some notion of what is and is not
significant.
■ Science is theory-laden: Rather than starting from data, and then devising a
theory...science starts from a theory, which it then uses to direct it in the
collection of data.
● This does not undermine the sceptical commitments of science, since
scientists are always prepared to abandon their theories should they fail
to adequately explain and predict their data.
● But the scientific method is not so straightforward as to be simply a
matter of checking our theories against the world. The relationship
between theory and data is dynamic, with each informing our choice of
the other.
★ Guarding Against Bias
○ We saw in Lesson 7 that humans are subject to a number of biases which, in some
cases, make it easier for us to understand the world, but in others prevent us from
 understanding it. We also saw that the operation of these biases on our thinking is not
transparent to introspection—we typically do not know when they are at work.
Moreover, knowing that we have these biases is not enough to protect us against them;
we have to take steps to prevent them from determining what we believe and do.
○ Scientific inquiry is in many ways designed to do exactly that.
■ The scientific method varies quite a lot from discipline to discipline, but
among disciplines that collect quantitative data by measuring phenomena in
controlled experiments, the scientific method requires that the findings of any
one lab be replicated by having other labs run the same experiments in exactly
the same way.
■ Typically, no findings are accepted until this corroboration takes place—that is,
until the data are replicated; this guards against a number of the social biases
documented in Lesson 8.
■ For instance, recall that the false consensus effect disposes us to overestimate
the degree to which others agree with us. The demands of replication serve as a
guard against this disposition. For one, I may be shown to be wrong in my
confidence that my scientific beliefs are widely held when other labs fail to
produce that data that led me to those beliefs. For another, once I expect that
others will submit my beliefs to this degree of scrutiny, I am likely to be more
careful when adopting them.
■ Moreover, the prospect of systematic group biases is constrained by the
openness of the practice to anyone who can attain competence in it. (Note
that this lends support to a feminist critique of science as traditionally
constituted; among the many reasons we have to regret the fact that women’s
perspectives are systematically excluded from science, one is that it robs us of a
corrective for group bias among men.)
■ In order to replicate quantitative results, scientists require standardized systems
of measurement. This is what makes the introduction of the metric system in
France in 1799 such an enormous advance. Once they were equipped with a
single unit for measuring space, and another for weight (and later, for time,
electricity, temperature, and luminosity), scientists could draw up their data in
a common language, so that they could be compared easily from lab to lab.
■ Ideally, scientists are sceptical of one another’s findings, and even sceptical of
their own findings. When they develop a hypothesis, they don’t set out to
confirm it—they set out to disconfirm it.
 ■ They do so by asking what facts would show their hypothesis to be false,
and...conducting experiments to determine whether those facts are true.
■ This guards remarkably effectively against...confirmation bias.
○ Again, this is the ideal; scientists are human, and they often fall short of this ideal.
■ Scientists have made mistakes, even enormous mistakes, due to confirmation
biases.
■ But when this happens, the role that replicability plays in the scientific method
typically corrects the mistake.
■ Science is, after all, a communal undertaking, pursued by a scientific
community spread out across the globe. This is manifested, for instance, in the
peer-review process, which is the process of subjecting studies to the scrutiny of
other experts.
■ We should judge its merits in terms of the performance of the community
taken together, rather than...in terms of the performance of any particular
scientist.
○ This point is well illustrated by the N-ray(opens in a new tab).
■ In 1903, the French scientist René Blondlot claimed to have discovered N-rays,
a novel form of radiation. His experiment involved the production of a spark
within an X-ray beam—he perceived a change in the brightness of the spark,
which he attributed to the presence of N-rays.
■ At the time, there was no standard unit for measuring brightness. It fell to
individual scientists to judge whether there really was any change in the
brightness of the spark.
■ Plenty ‘saw’ the change—in fact, over the two years following Blondlot’s
claim...at least forty scientists claimed to have replicated his results—but many
more did not.
● 1. Blondlot supposed that unusually high eye sensitivity was required
to recognize the change in brightness, which explained why so many
could not spot it.
● 2. To this extent the scientific method failed.
● 3. But because scientists are disposed to question one another’s
findings (even if it means being accused of having poor eyesight!), in
time, the N-ray was revealed to be an illusion.
■ In 1904, another scientist, Robert W. Wood, went to Blondlot’s lab to observe
the N-rays at the source. When the lights were dimmed, he, unbeknown to
Blondlot, made adjustments to the apparatus—he shifted a lead screen, and
 then removed an aluminium prism from the passage of the X-ray beam.
Blondlot reported the same change in brightness as though none of Wood’s
adjustments had been made.
● Blondlot and many of his colleagues were misled by the all-too-human
disposition to interpret their experiments so that they confirm what
they already believed.
● This is not to say that Blondlot was a bad scientist (by all accounts, he
was otherwise quite talented).
● All of us are vulnerable to confirmation biases—that is not something
we can change. But we can modify the processes by which we inquire
into the natural world so as to limit the effect of these biases.
★ Science as a Communal Project
○ Since science is essentially a communal project, one spanning many thousands of
different scientists across different labs, all of their different confirmation biases are
likely to cancel out.
○ As such, it is not embarrassing when...scientists, and even the whole of the scientific
community, make a mistake.
○ It belongs to the nature of the enterprise that mistakes be made. The only way to
guarantee that we do not make any mistakes is to have no beliefs at all!
■ Scientists allow themselves to be mistaken but scrutinize one another’s (and
their own) beliefs to such a degree that they are likely to catch those mistakes in
time.
■ This is why the history of science is a history of moving from one theory to the
next.
■ Many previous scientific theories have been proven false—probably, this trend
will continue, and the scientific theories of today will be proven false as well.
○ But the success of science does not lie in the success of any of its particular theories. It
lies in the success of the enterprise itself, an enterprise that encompasses the critical
assessment of theories and findings, revising some, while outright rejecting others, with
a view to improving our understanding of the world with each iteration.
Unit 2 knowledge checks
★ The difficulty of articulating in precise terms the boundary between science and non-science is
known as the demarcation problem.
★ One central feature of the scientific project is the willingness to accept counter-intuitive claims.
★ At its root, skepticism is the worry that the way things seem to us does not align with the way
things actually are.
 ★ Science is theory-laden: rather than starting from data, and then devising a theory, science starts
from a theory, which it then uses to direct it in the collection of data.
★ The scientific method varies quite a lot from discipline to discipline, but among disciplines
that collect quantitative data by measuring phenomena in controlled experiments, the scientific
method requires that the findings of any one lab be replicated.
★ In order to replicate quantitative results, scientists require standardized systems of
measurement.
Unit 3: Distinguishing Science From Pseudo-Science
★ Scientific Authority
○ We have said that deferring to science involves participating in the scientist’s sceptical
attitude, in her disposition to withhold judgment until the moment the data compel
belief. An important part of this scepticism is suspicion of claims that purport to have
the authority of science. When these claims do not in fact have that authority, they are
pseudo-scientific.
○ The most effective way to protect one’s self against pseudo-science is to defer to the
scientific findings themselves, as opposed to scientific authority, that is, the authority
of particular scientists or scientific institutions.
○ This is particularly true when the findings are replicated across many different labs in
well-run experiments.
○ Learning what these findings are, and whether or not they have been successfully
replicated,
■ requires that we acknowledge scientific testimony,
■ but it does not require that we acknowledge scientific authority.
○ Unfortunately, most of us do not have the time or training to discern when findings are
replicated in this way. Given that this is the case, we have to rely on scientific authority
as a proxy for judgments as to which findings are scientifically justified.
★ Features of Scientific Experimentation
○ So, what is the next best way to guard against pseudo-science?
■ It helps to attend to the features of scientific experimentation, and to
determine whether these features are well-observed.
■ 1. If, for example, we want to test a hypothesis that a certain drug treats cancer,
then we ought to design an experiment that isolates the effects of that drug.
Isolation requires that we produce a controlled environment in which the drug
is the only thing introduced to that environment from outside of it. If we
succeed in producing such an environment, and cancer patients within it
improve, we know it is the drug that caused that change.
 ■ 2. In practice, we are unable to produce truly controlled environments. So, in
order to eliminate any confounds—potential causes of improved health in
patients other than the drug under scrutiny—scientists separate between test
groups and control groups. The two groups are treated exactly the same way,
except the test group is given the drug, while the control group is given a
placebo. If the test group improves, but the control group does not, this
strongly suggests that the drug is the cause.
○ The use of test groups and control groups only approximates experimenting in a
controlled environment if the two groups are treated the same way. With human
subjects, like cancer patients, this requires that the study be double-blinded.
○ If the patients do not themselves know whether they belong to the test or control
group, then the experiment is... single-blinded. This rules out the placebo effect as a
potential confound.
○ If the scientists do not know whether they are administering the drug or a placebo, the
experiment is...double-blinded. This rules out the possibility that the scientists could
reveal, perhaps through body language, whether the placebo is being administered,
which would introduce another confound.
○ Of course, we rarely have the time or training to discern whether an experiment has
eliminated all the relevant confounds, or whether it was properly single- or
double-blinded.
★ Marks of Pseudo-Science
○ We are now in a position to point to some considerations that might be taken to serve
as marks of pseudoscience.
○ One characteristic of a pseudo-scientific theory is that it is... impervious to
countervailing evidence.
○ Sometimes, this takes the form of a refusal to... specify in advance what data would
play the role of lowering the probability of the relevant theory.
○ Another characteristic of a pseudo-scientific theory is its “folk plausibility”. Such
theories are often perceived as aligned with common sense.
■ The principle behind homeopathy, for instance, namely, the idea that
something that causes a symptom in large amounts will cure it in small
amounts, might strike someone as making intuitive sense.
■ However, as we saw in section 3, we ought not to expect scientific inquiry to
vindicate our intuitive understanding of the world.
○ We can explain, at least in part, the success of pseudo-science by remarking that it is
tempting to conceive of oneself as being in possession of some truth that is beyond the
 understanding of the scientist. After all, scientists (much like philosophers!) are often
resented for reasons that involve, at least to some extent, their willingness to embrace
their fallibility.
○ A recurring theme of this class is that the realization that we are mistaken does not
come easily to us;
Unit 3 knowledge checks
★ An important part of scepticism is suspicion of claims that purport to have the authority of
science. When these claims do not in fact have that authority, they are pseudo-scientific.
★ The most effective way to protect one’s self against pseudo-science is to defer to the scientific
findings themselves, as opposed to scientific authority.
★ In order to eliminate any confounds—potential causes of improved health in patients other
than the drug under scrutiny—scientists separate between test groups and control groups
★ The two groups are treated exactly the same way, except the test group is given the drug, while
the control group is given a placebo.
★ If the patients do not themselves know whether they belong to the test or control group, then
the experiment is single-blinded.
★ If the scientists do not know whether they are administering the drug or a placebo, the
experiment is double-blinded.
★ Another characteristic of a pseudo-scientific theory is its “folk plausibility”. Such theories are
often perceived as aligned with common sense.

Other important notes

★ Scientists are human, and thus subject to confirmation biases. It is the scientific enterprise as a
whole that can serve as a corrective against the influence of human biases.
★ Unfalsifiability is a hallmark of pseudo-science. A feature of pseudo-science is its
imperviousness to countervailing evidence.
★ A confound is: An alternative explanation for an observed correlation
★ What is an adequate interpretation of the slogan ‘Trust the science’?
○ We should be sceptical of claims that do not issue from a proper deployment of
scientific methods. Trusting the science can be understood as a commitment to a
specific way of investigating the world.
★ We can describe the scientific investigation into the world as sceptical because:
○ Scientists begin with the null hypothesis, and in this way guard against the temptation
to assume that their own beliefs are correct. Scientists are required to grant the truth of
their hypothesis only when the evidence calls for it.
 ★ The difference between a scientific endeavour and a pseudo-scientific endeavour is the
following:
○ With scientific endeavours, it is often clear what sort of evidence would defeat it,
whereas this is not clear with pseudo-scientific endeavours
○ Scientific endeavours cultivate a deferential attitude toward the scientific project,
whereas pseudo-scientific endeavours often cultivate a resentful attitude toward
scientists
○ The failure to replicate results is a serious problem in the context of a scientific
endeavour, but not in the context of a pseudo-scientific one
○ It is a feature of the scientific endeavour that it is open to counter-intuitive results,
whereas pseudo-scientific endeavours typically aim to deliver results that are intuitive
★ When running an experiment, we ought to include a control group because:
○ It enables us to eliminate confounds.
○ The presence of a control group ensures that alternative explanations for whatever
change we are seeing in the experimental group are ruled out.
★ The demarcation problem is:
○ The problem of articulating in precise terms the boundary between science and
non-science
★ To say that science is theory-laden is to say that:
○ A scientific experiment always starts from a theory, which it then uses to direct it in the
collection of data
★ There is no single unifying feature that all scientific endeavours share (therefore, there is no
answer to this: “any genuinely scientific endeavour must be”)

Lesson 9 key terms

★ Confound An alternative explanation for the observed

correlations between the phenomena under
investigation.

★ Control group The group included in an experiment or

scientific study for the purpose of providing a
standard of comparison for the test group (i.e., to
help distinguish the effects of the test that is
performed on the test group by showing the state
of things with subjects that were not tested).

★ Demarcation problem The difficulty of articulating in precise terms the

 boundary between science and non-science.

★ Double-blinded experiment An experiment in which the scientists do not

know whether they are administering the drug or
a placebo. This rules out the possibility that the
scientists could reveal, perhaps through body
language, whether the placebo is being
administered, which would introduce another
confound.

★ Falsifiability The requirement that there be specifiable

observations or experimental outcomes under
which a theory or explanation would be judged
false (or at least less probable).

★ Verifiability Having the quality of being able to be verified by

evidence.

★ Peer-review process The practice of subjecting academic studies and

publications to the scrutiny of experts in the
relevant field as a means of ensuring that the
methods and results of the research keep to the
expected standards.

★ Pseudo-science A set of beliefs, claims and practices presented as

scientific, but which depend upon a mixture of
prejudged conclusions, sloppy methodology,
irreproducibility and an unwillingness to give up
a relevant conviction in the face of
countervailing evidence; non-science that
masquerades as science, invoking the authority
of scientific discourse. without possessing its
virtues.

★ Scientific method The steps that that constitute the procedure for
scientific inquiry.

★ Scientism The view that the methods of science are the

only way to arrive at truth.

★ Single-blinded experiment An experiment in which the patients do not

know whether they belong to the test or control
 group. This rules out the placebo effect as a
potential confound.

★ Theory-laden data The property of data consisting in its collection

being possible by the adoption of a theory.

Lesson 10: The Mainstream Media

Lecture notes
Unit 1: The Basics
★ The Notion of Mainstream Media
○ We touched on various facets of our sociality in Lesson 8. We mentioned, for instance,
that much of our reasoning relies on a sophisticated epistemic division of labour,
which enables us to know far more than any one of us, or any other animal, could
know on his or her own.
○ As Susan Stebbing emphasizes in her work Thinking to Some Purpose (which we
mentioned before), these tendencies are, at least in part, the product of a new
conception of the role of journalism, which was adopted at the beginning of the
twentieth century by figures like Alfred Harmsworth, a British newspaper and
publishing magnate.
○ As Stebbing notes, Harmsworth conceived of the newspaper as aimed at cultivating the
impression that we (or anyway, his readers) already know everything. This is at odds
with the prior conception of the newspaper, according to which the newspaper must
cultivate the impression that the world is a complicated place and that understanding
what occurs in it requires extensive discussion and reporting, which in turn require
serious effort on the part of the reader.
○ This is at odds with the prior conception of the newspaper, according to which the
newspaper must...cultivate the impression that the world is a complicated place and
that understanding what occurs in it requires extensive discussion and reporting,
which in turn require serious effort on the part of the reader.
○ This shift in the conception of the role of journalism has had dangerous consequences.
■ Stebbing represents Harmsworth, who was very influential, as having
transformed journalism and, thereby set up an obstacle to the proper
development of a democracy. -Stebbing, Thinking to Some Purpose P. 87
■ This is because of the close connection between the development of
democratic institutions and...the development of the capacity of citizens for
thinking freely.
 ■ The development of the latter is seriously hindered if journalists conceive of
themselves as...being in the business of flattering the reader as opposed to
conveying to her the full complexity of the world.
★ Framing the News
○ The way in which a news story is reported emphasizes different aspects of it, and this
affects the impression it leaves on readers.
○ Consider, for instance, the 2023 Spanish general election, which was held on Sunday,
July 23rd, 2023.
■ The New York Times: According to the lead used(opens in a new tab) by The
New York Times, “the returns showed no party winning the support needed to
govern, leaving the country facing weeks of uncertainty.”
■ The Guardian: The Guardian, on the other hand, laid greater emphasis(opens
in a new tab) on the fact that the conservatives failed to achieve the victory they
were widely expected to secure. Neither of these framings `is misleading, but
each leaves different impressions of the political reality in Spain by emphasizing
different aspects of that reality.
○ Of course, there is no way to present a story without framing it in some way.
■ That is, there is no way for a news story to convey facts without also suggesting
a way of interpreting those facts.
■ It is in the nature of a story that it includes an interpretation.
■ But we must be mindful of this fact as we consume mainstream media. We
cannot properly settle a matter, not in its entirety, by seeing it reported on, say,
social media.
○ Even the best journalism requires effort on the part of its audience—we must not
expect it to do all the work for us.
○ Rather, as consumers of the news, we must...critically engage with what we are told,
and reflect on how it might have been differently framed.
Unit 1 knowledge checks
★ As early as 1773, Samuel Johnson wrote that “of all public transactions the whole world is now
informed by the newspapers”.
★ The mainstream media are the most popular broadcasters and publishers of television, radio,
news, magazines, and so on. We rely on it to acquire a significant amount of the information
about the world that we take ourselves to possess—from goings-on in our immediate
community to the most recent discoveries in astronomy.
★ Alfred Harmsworth conceived of the newspaper as aimed at cultivating the impression that we
(or anyway, his readers) already know everything. This is at odds with the prior conception of
 the newspaper, according to which the newspaper must cultivate the impression that the world
is a complicated place .
★ There is no way to present a story without framing it in some way. That is, there is no way for a
news story to convey facts without also suggesting a way of interpreting those facts.
Unit 2: Biases in the Media
★ Ownership Biases
○ Personal biases are bound to be present at all levels of media, though the most
significant ones are likely to be present at the editorial and ownership levels.
○ For example, the owner of a very large, albeit now-defunct, Canadian media
conglomerate was quoted in 2003 as having declared the following:
■ We contribute to Liberals, [Progressive] Conservatives and the [Canadian]
Alliance. We don’t contribute to the Bloc [Québécois] because it stands for
separation, and we don’t contribute to the national [New Democratic Party]
because it has policies that are odious to us. -M. Radler, “Mogul with a
Message,” Jerusalem Post (Online Edition), August 7, 2003.
○ However, the case in which the executive of a media corporation conceives of that
corporation as aligned with their convictions, which is likely to slant the reporting, is
different from that of a corporation being explicitly governed by clearly stated
principles on the role of the newspaper, such as The Atkinson Principles(opens in a
new tab) to which The Toronto Star subscribes.
■ After all, biases, being dispositions or tendencies of which we are not aware, are
different from orientations supported by reasons. This holds true in the
domain of the media as well.
■ As consumers of news, we should be aware of both the ownership biases that a
publication might exhibit and the principles which it explicitly endorses.
★ ​False Neutrality
○ A noteworthy source of distortion is the aspiration toward neutrality. Such neutrality is
an essential element of good journalism. But the ideal of neutrality is susceptible to
misunderstanding, and abuse.
○ Consider, for instance, the claim, made by the CBC in the lead-in to a story(opens in a
new tab) about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that:
■ “Russia and Ukraine [are] both reluctant to cede territory.” -David Common
■ Presumably, this way of framing the situation aims to...capture the fact that
each party conceives of itself as entitled to the territorial claims it is making.
■ But the territory that Russia is represented as reluctant to concede
is...internationally recognized Ukrainian territory.
 ○ The wording conveys a false equivalence, implying that both sides are equally
obstinate. It is an example of the aspiration toward neutrality being poorly pursued
and resulting in misleading claims.
○ When a conflict between two parties is being reported, the aspiration toward neutrality
might be taken to require that journalists refuse to take a side.
■ But refusing to take a side is perfectly consistent with both reporting the claims
made by each party, and assessing the accuracy of those claims.
■ In fact, the aspiration toward neutrality cannot be pursued without trying to
get clear on the facts.
○ Consider another example from the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. During
the early hours of July 17th, 2023, two explosions occurred on the Crimean Bridge. In
Reuters’ report(opens in a new tab) of the story, we find the following claim:
■ “At the end of a televised video meeting with national and regional officials to
assess the consequences of the attack, Putin called it a cruel and senseless act, as
he said the bridge “has not been used for military transportation for a long
time.”
■ This claim is not properly contextualized; it provides no way for readers to
determine whether Putin’s claim is false.
■ The Associated Press provides(opens in a new tab) the required context,
making it clear that the bridge has in fact been used for military transportation.
(This piece of information is also present in the initial story(opens in a new
tab).)
■ Journalists are right to report claims made by figures like Putin, but they must
also scrutinize those claims, and if they are false, flag them as such.
○ The news media should be neutral in the sense of not exhibiting political
partisanship;it should not favour one political party over another, for instance.
○ But favouring the truth, which requires scrutinizing claims and making clear that they
are false when they are so, is not a form of political partisanship.
★ Profit Motive
○ Most of the news organizations that comprise mainstream media are owned by
corporations with a profit motive. While the primary aim of journalism is to inform
the public, the money-making aims of media owners can, and typically do, influence
how journalism is conducted.
■ For one thing, the news reported by an organization might be slanted to
protect the financial interests of the owners of the organization.
 ■ For another, it might be slanted to attract an audience, so as to increase ad
revenue.
○ It is not unusual for an organization to be comprised of different groups with different,
even contradictory, motives.
■ 1. Corporate managers typically have a legal obligation to serve the material
well-being of shareholders.
■ 2. Journalists have an obligation to provide accurate reporting on the events
that are most salient to viewers.
■ 3. Such reporting has the potential to embarrass shareholders, which may, in
turn, decrease the value of their assets. In these cases, the two sets of obligations
come into conflict.
○ A similar dynamic can arise between journalists and advertisers.
■ The profit motive may compel advertisers to threaten to withdraw their
sponsorship in order to pressure journalists to produce ‘complimentary
copy’—news that puts their products in a positive light.
■ Reduced sponsorship results in reduced profits, which, again, puts journalistic
integrity at odds with the media managers who must see to the material
interests of the owners.
■ How that conflict is resolved is determined by how the company is organized.
It can happen that journalists are insulated from shareholder interests. But this
insulation is rarely airtight.
○ An even greater source of media bias originating in the profit margin lies in
journalism’s relationship with its audience.
■ 1. The journalist is tasked with informing her audience of the most important
events taking place in the world.
■ 2. But her audience is not always interested in hearing about these events!
■ 3. How that conflict is resolved is determined by how the company is
organized. It can happen that journalists are insulated from shareholder
interests. But this insulation is rarely airtight.
○ In a manner of speaking, the journalist must answer to her audience’s own biases.
■ Like any other human being, the consumer of the news has only so much
attention to spare, and is disposed to prioritize certain events over others, in
particular those events that (seem to) confirm what they already know, and
those that speak to certain visceral interests—those touching on safety, for
instance, like issues of crime—or to visceral emotions—those that trigger
feelings of indignation, like scandals.
 ■ Since increased viewership increases ad revenue, there is a clear profit motive to
produce journalism that activates these biases.
■ Moreover, journalists may be inclined to pursue audience attention wherever
they can get it—after all, whatever the profit motive, journalists tend to prefer a
larger audience to a smaller one.
■ Audience biases can also impact the form that news reporting takes. The
algorithms that govern the distribution of stories on social media typically cater
to these biases. Headlines and images that stimulate strong emotions, like
disgust or outrage, generate more clicks than those that do not. The algorithms
respond by prioritizing these stories, so that they are all the audience sees.
■ (And if they are all the audience sees, they may benefit from confirmation
biases and bandwagon effects.)
Unit 2 knowledge checks
★ Personal biases are bound to be present at all levels of media, though the most significant ones
are likely to be present at the editorial and ownership levels.
★ As consumers of news, we should be aware of both the ownership biases that a publication
might exhibit and the principles which it explicitly endorses.
★ A noteworthy source of distortion is the aspiration toward neutrality. Though it is an essential
element of good journalism, the ideal of is susceptible to misunderstanding, and abuse.
★ The news media should be neutral in the sense of not exhibiting political partisanship; it
should be favouring the truth, which requires scrutinizing claims and making clear that they
are false when they are so.
★ Most of the news organizations that comprise mainstream media are owned by corporations
with a profit motive.
★ It is not unusual for an organization to be comprised of different groups with different, even
contradictory, motives. Corporate managers typically have a legal obligation to serve the
material well-being of shareholders.
★ Journalists have an obligation to provide accurate reporting on the events that are most salient
to viewers.
★ The profit motive may compel advertisers to threaten to withdraw their sponsorship in order
to pressure journalists to produce ‘complimentary copy’—news that puts their products in a
positive light.
★ Audience biases can also impact the form that news reporting takes. The algorithms that
govern the distribution of stories on social media typically cater to these biases.

Other important notes

 ★ There are shifts in the way in which we conceive of the role of journalism, which influence the
extent to which journalists inform citizens.
★ All of the following claims are true of biases in journalism:
○ They are due to the fact that journalists can be subject to the bandwagon effect
○ They are due to the fact that publishers aim to be commercially successful
○ They are the product of the tendency to rely on press releases when writing a story
○ They are the result of editors’ political commitments
★ If two stories report the same facts, but frame those facts differently, there will be significant
differences in how we think about those facts.
★ The aspiration on the part of journalists to be neutral might go wrong because:
○ It can be misunderstood as indicating that the claims made by various actors should
not be critically assessed
★ Journalists have a duty to:
○ Contextualize the events they report on
○ Flag false claims made by powerful people as false
○ Aspire to be politically neutral
○ Be mindful of potential sources of biases in their reporting
★ As consumers of the news, it is recommended that we:
○ Engage critically with what we are told and be mindful of the fact that the story might
be differently framed
○ (Even the best journalism requires effort on the part of its audience)
★ While the thinking of owners and editors might be influenced by a concern with the
advertisers’ aims and fears, the advertisers themselves do not intervene in any decision-making.
★ What does a journalist’s refusal to take a side, properly understood, amount to?
○ The refusal to favour a party in the context of a political conflict
○ (The refusal to take a side is the refusal to exhibit political partisanship)

Key terms lesson 10

★ Bias A tendency toward a specific sort of

interpretation; a disposition to reach a particular
kind of endpoint in reasoning or judgment.

★ Infotainment A more entertaining style of news report that

aims to engage more viewers and readers in
current affairs; newscasts and newspapers that
include stories on quirky or funny events in
 order to broaden their appeal.

★ Mainstream media The most popular and influential of broadcasters

(television and radio) and publishers
(newspapers and magazines).