Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Good Argument?

There are three tests that prove whether an argument is a good one or not. The first test is that the premises must be plausible. This means that there has to be good reason to believe the argument. The second test is that the premises have to be more plausible than the conclusion. The third test is that the argument has to be valid or strong. An example of an argument could be, Mike is a basketball player. All basketball players are tall. Mike is tall. The first test to see if this is a good argument or not is to decide whether the premises are plausible. I believe they are plausible because if you look at the basketball players in the NBA, they are mostly tall. The second test is to decide whether the premises are more plausible than the conclusion. I believe that the premises are definitely more plausible than the conclusion because it is much easier to believe that Mike is a basketball player than it is to believe that he is tall because if you have never met him, you wouldn't know how tall he is. The third and final test would be to decide whether or not the argument is valid or strong. My argument is neither valid nor strong. It is a weak argument. This is because it is possible and not unlikely for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false. There are many basketball players who are under six feet tall, so to say that all basketball players are tall would be false. In conclusion, my example is a bad argument.

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