Saturday, October 9, 2010

Reasoning in a Chain

In chapter six, Epstein talks about the different kinds of reasoning. One them is reasoning in a chain with conditional which means "If A, then B. If B, then C. So if A, then C. An real life example of a chain reasoning could be if I do not finish my homework, then I will fail my art class. If I fail my art class I will not be accepted into the animation program. So if I do not finish my homework, I will not be accepted into the animation program.
In this section, Epstein also explains what the "slippery slope" is. The slippery slope argument "is a bad argument that uses a chain of conditionals, at least one of which is false or dubious." So if I changed one of my claims in my reasoning to "If I fail my art class, then I will be the biggest failure at school." my reasoning would be a slippery slope argument because the last part is not necessarily true and does not make sense. This would also make my argument bad.

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