Chapter 1 HW

The reasons set forth for accepting a claim, consisting of a premise and a conclusion

Argument

Unconsciously assigning a probability to a type of event on the basis of how often one thinks of events of that type

Availability heuristic

An unconscious tendency to align one's thinking with that of other people

Bandwagon effect

The tendency to evaluate reasoning by how believable its conclusion seems

Belief bias

In an argument, the reason set forth for accepting a claim

Premise

A belief that can be expressed in a declarative sentence.

Propositional Belief

A claim that is made true or false by your thinking that it is true or false

Subjective Claim

"The TV show The Sopranos might have been a pretty good series without the profanity that occurred all the way through it. But without the profanity, it would not have been believable. Those people just talk that way. If you have them speaking Shakespearean English or middle-class suburban English, then nobody is going to pay any attention to the message because nobody will see it as realistic. It's true, of course, that like many other programs with some offensive feature—whether it's bad language, sex, or whatever—The Sopranos would never appeal to the squeamish." The primary issue here is whether

The Sopranos would have been believable without the bad language.

June 1970: A Miami man gets thirty days in the stockade for wearing a flag patch on the seat of his trousers. June 2011: Miami department stores sell boxer trunks made up to look like an American flag. Times have changed.

Times have changed.

American Idol may not be having its best season, but when you remember whose careers were launched by AI, you know it is the best talent show on TV.

it is the best talent show on TV.

"The United States puts a greater percentage of its population in prison than any other developed country in the world. We persist in locking more and more people up despite the obvious fact that it doesn't work. Even as we build more prisons and stuff them ever more tightly, the crime rate goes up and up. But we respond, 'Since it isn't working, let's do more of it'! It's about time we learned that fighting criminals is not the same thing as fighting crime."—Richard Parker, radio commentary on CalNet, California Public RadioThe primary issue here is whether

the United States should realize that reliance on imprisonment is not an effective method of reducing crime.

"The county has cut the library budget for salaried library workers, and there will not be enough volunteers to make up for the lack of paid workers. Therefore, the library will have to be open fewer hours next year." The primary issue here is whether

the library will have to be open fewer hours next year.

"It's clear that the mainstream media have lost interest in classical music. For example, the NBC network used to have its own classical orchestra conducted by Arturo Toscanini, but no such orchestra exists now. One newspaper, the no-longer-existent Washington Star, used to have thirteen classical music reviewers; that's more than twice as many as the New York Times has now. H. L. Mencken and other columnists used to devote considerable space to classical music; nowadays, you almost never see it mentioned in a major column." The primary issue here is whether

the mainstream media have lost interest in classical music.

There is trouble in the Middle East, there is a recession under way at home, and all economic indicators are trending downward. It seems likely, then, that the only way the stock market can go is down.

the only way the stock market can go is down.

"In Miami-Dade County, Florida, schools superintendent Rudy Crew was inundated with complaints after a police officer used a stun gun on a six-year-old student. As a result, Crew asked the Miami-Dade police to ban the use of stun guns on elementary school children. Crew did the right thing. More than 100 deaths have been linked to tasers." The primary issue here is whether

the superintendent did the right thing by asking the police to ban the use of stun guns on elementary school children.

The assumption that our attitudes and those held by people around us are shared by society at large

False consensus effect

General rules we unconsciously follow in estimating probabilities

Heuristics

A question raised about a subject

Issue

Identify the subjective claims below and drag them into the column.

Leno tells better jokes than Letterman. Your teacher should complain if you wear a baseball cap in class. Halloween IV was lousy. A total letdown. Golf is a waste of time. Movies like Halloween IV lack redeeming social value. John Kerry has quite an unusual chin.

The assumption that whether something is right or wrong is purely subjective

Moral subjectivism

The tendency that people have to weigh negative information more heavily than positive information

Negativity bias

A claim that is not made true or false by your thinking it is true or false

Objective Claim

Identify the objective claims below and drag them into the column.

On a baseball field, the center of the pitcher's mound is 59 feet from home plate. Staring at the sun will damage your eyes. Yellow is Jennifer's favorite color. Green is the most pleasant color to look at. Driving while drowsy is dangerous. Pit vipers can strike a warm-blooded animal even when it it pitch dark.

Another word for "belief"; sometimes used to denote that which is expressed by a subjective claim

Opinion

"Let me tell you why Hank ought not to take that math course. First, it's too hard and he'll probably flunk it. Second, he's going to spend the whole term in a state of frustration. Third, he'll probably get depressed and do poorly in all the rest of his courses." The primary issue here is whether Hank

Ought to take the math course

"In pre-civil war Spain, the influence of the Catholic Church must have been much stronger on women than on men. You can determine this by looking at the number of religious communities, such as monasteries, nunneries, and so forth. A total of about 5,000 such communities existed in 1931; 4,000 of them were female, whereas only 1,000 of them were male. This proves my point about the Church's influence on the sexes." The primary issue here is whether the

Catholic Church's influence was greater on women than on men in pre-civil war Spain.

A belief, judgment, or opinion that is expressable in a declarative sentence

Claim

In an argument, the claim itself

Conclusion

Thinking about "thinking"

Critical Thinking

That which is stated by a true objective claim

Fact

"This year's National Football League draft lists a large number of quarterbacks among its highest-ranking candidates. Furthermore, quite a number of teams do not have first-class quarterbacks. It's therefore likely that an unusually large number of quarterbacks will be drafted early in this year's draft." The primary issue here is whether

an unusually large number of quarterbacks will be drafted early in this year's draft.

"From information gathered recently, it has become clear that the single biggest environmental problem in Russia—many times bigger than anything we have to contend within the United States—is radioactive pollution from nuclear energy plants and nuclear weapons testing and production. Soviet Communist leaders seemed to believe they could do anything to hasten the industrialization process and compete with Western countries and that the land and natural resources they controlled were vast enough to suffer any abuse without serious consequence. The arrogance of the Communist leaders produced a burden of misery and death that fell on the people of the region, and the scale of that burden only recently became clear. Nuclear waste was dumped into rivers from which downstream villages drew their drinking water; the landscape is dotted with nuclear dumps that now threaten to leak into the environment; and the seas around Russia are littered with decaying hulks of nuclear submarines and rusting metal containers with tens of millions of tons of nuclear waste. The result has been radiation poisoning and its awful effects on a grand scale."A science advisor to former Russian president Boris Yeltsin said, 'The way we have dealt with the whole issue of nuclear power, and particularly the problem of nuclear waste, was irresponsible and immoral.'"—Adapted from the Washington PostThe primary issue here is whether

nuclear waste problems in Russia are much worse than had been realized until just recently.

"Pollution of the waters of the Everglades and of Florida Bay is due to multiple causes. These include cattle farming, dairy farming, industry, tourism, and urban development. So it is simply not so that the sugar industry is completely responsible for the pollution of these waters." The primary issue here is whether

pollution is caused by cattle farming, dairy farming, industry, tourism, and urban development.