General Claims

Chapter eight in the Epstein book is about General Claims. One of the most important things that the first section covered was when and how to use words like all, some, no, and only. Those words are very strong and leave no room for anything else. All means every single one without any exceptions. Some means at least one, so it might be smarter to say some rather than all. An example of this is when someone says " all professors give easy exams". That is saying that every single professor in the world gives easy exams. That is clearly not the case so you would not be making a valid argument if you said all. Now i'll look at it the other way. If someone says "some professors give easy exams", you would be much more inclined to listen to them. It makes sense that some professors give easy exams and that is definitely believable. If you say that all professors give easy exams then you clearly are lying. You have not had all professors, so you do not know. That is a very valid point and this section was very good in explaining that it is important to reason using general claims.