Friday, February 12, 2010

Suppose an argument has a conclusion that you believe to be true. how many of the followin is true?

Suppose an argument has a conclusion that you believe to be true. List all of the following that are definitely true of each and every such argument.


A. If you believe that the argument is valid, then you should believe that at least one of its premises is true


B. It is well-formed


C.The argument is strong for you.


D.If it is ill-formed, then it has true premises.


E.If it is ill-formed, then it has false premises.


F.If it is ill-formed, it is invalid.


G.If you believe at least one of its premises is false, you should think it is invalid


H.None of the above.Suppose an argument has a conclusion that you believe to be true. how many of the followin is true?
A, C, GSuppose an argument has a conclusion that you believe to be true. how many of the followin is true?
Well your bold question and your stated question are sorta different. One says if you believe the conclusion is true...in which case I'd answer A. But then A says that you believe the whole argument to be valid..which isn't necessarily the case. I can agree with someone's conclussion but see that their argument is all wrong. Usually they have at least one point that is strong though. So...Either A or H.


Also, you can AGREE with anything. LOL...there aren't any rules to that.
The wording of the question asks for your opinion of your own reasoning skills (by basing your acceptance of the conclusion on ';belief'; rather than logic), so there is no correct or incorrect answer. :-)
None of these statements is true of every argument. Each situation has its own dynamic that cannot be covered by a blanket statement such as 'always true'. There are some that are more likely to be true at certain times than others. Choices D, F and G are totally untrue in my estimation.
I like F and G. But if one is going to be picky, one must distinguish whether you are really talking about the argument being true, or just whether the conclusion is true; these are not at all the same thing.

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