Comparative Reasoning: Using Analogies

(Glitches in) (Failure of) Obamacare website is like:

Bush's Katrina disaster

Bush's Iraq War disaster

Rollout of new iPhone or iPad: Glitches come with any technological rollout, we don't abandon the technology

Other comparisons:

The United States budget is just like your family budget.

Page 232 of your text

Your own?

Comparisons connect intellect and emotion

Five Criteria for Evaluating Comparative Reasoning

(235)Familiarity

Simplicity

Comprehensiveness

Productivity

Testability

Four Tests of Worthy Arguments (234)

Are the premises all true?

Are there realistic counterexamples?

Are the premises relevant to the conclusion?

Does any premise's truth depend on the conclusion's truth? (Circularity)

Uses of Comparative Reasoning (240)

Legal argumentation & Use of Precedent

Ethics discussions

Business and Professional Life

Politics

FIXATION OF BELIEFCHARLES SANDERS PEIRCE

Doubt vs. Belief Peirce elaborates in his essay, "How to Make Our Ideas Clear." The state of doubt is the cause of thought -- the purpose of thought is to resolve doubt and bring us into a state of belief. Once we are in that state, our thought on that subject will end. Peirce explains, "The soul and meaning of thought...is the production of belief" (9). Any action we take will of necessity have an underlying belief that causes that action; conversely, we cannot act in a certain way unless we have a previous belief that is the source of that action and predisposes us to act in that way.

Habits determine our actions

Belief predisposes us to act in a certain way; it produces "habits of action" (30). All of our actions are results of beliefs. Peirce says, "The essence of belief is the establishment of habit" (29). While belief will not necessarily cause us to immediately go out and act in such-and-such a way, it will cause us to act in a certain way when the appropriate situation comes up. We tend to think or believe a certain way, and draw conclusions from the facts and statements given to us, on the basis of HABIT -- we have thought that way before, we have walked that path before, and so our first inclination when presented with a new or similar situation is to do the same thing again. (And the more we engage in a path or course of action, the more likely we are to do so in the future.)

REALISM

The problem is thus how to distinguish between true beliefs from false beliefs. True beliefs approximate, correspond to, describe the "real" world; false beliefs do not.

The successful person will have beliefs that approximate reality more closely than other beliefs might.

Fixation of beliefHumans are driven to "fix" their belief -- to come to a feeling of certainty and decision on any given subject. There are essentially only two mental states: "doubt" and "belief". Both are positive states in different ways. The state of doubt, while useful in that it predisposes us to question and examine the topic at hand, is extremely uncomfortable for us, and we are compelled by an inner need to resolve it -- to leave the state of doubt, and enter the state of belief, which is much more comfortable for us. Doubt causes "thought," which is mental action aimed to come to a state of belief (a decision about the way things are, which then presupposes us to act in a certain way). When doubt ceases, thought (regarding that particular subject) then ceases.

Four Ways of Fixing Belief

The Method of Tenacity

The Method of Authority

The Method of A Priori

The Method of Science

The Method of Tenacity

...means to simply continue believing the way we have always believed and not to accept any new belief that contradicts our previously held beliefs. The problem here is that this does not cause our beliefs to approximate reality, and the social impulse, which exposes us to other people's thoughts, will cause us to be swayed from our held traditionally beliefs.

The Method of Authority

....is to believe something because some authority has told us to believe that way, or told us that such things are so. Examples might be the church, our community, a teacher, or governmental authority. The method of authority can be voluntarily employed or it may be forced on us, such as has happened in some communist societies, or at times in the history of the Catholic church. This method fails on many counts.

The Method of A Priori

...arises from thinkers conversing with each other and coming to conclusions and systems of thought based simply on what seems "agreeable to reason" (15) or harmonious and artistically pleasing. The problem, for Peirce, with this is that this method of fixing our beliefs most often has no basis in any observed facts.

The Method of Science....can distinguish between right and wrong

beliefs. Peirce says there is a "reality," a real world out there, which "affect[s] our senses according to regular laws" (18), and by examining it objectively with our senses, we can know how things really are. (Peirce also says in a later essay that things exist whether any mind is present to perceive or understand them, and whether any mind is capable of knowing they exist.) Peirce writes, "To satisfy our doubts, therefore, it is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may be determined by nothing human, but by some external permanency -- by something upon which our thinking has no effect" (18). So the method of science also settles differences in opinions, since everyone exists in and examines the same reality, they must come to the same conclusions if using the same scientific method.

The Method of Science is Best, says Peirce

For our world view to correspond to reality, Peirce says we must use only ONE method of fixing our beliefs: The Method of Science. The methods of tenacity, authority, and "a priori" will produce false beliefs except by accident. In addition, the method of science resolves arguments about contradictory beliefs; reality is independent and external from what any man may think about it, and when examined and discovered and described by science, will cause our ideas to conform to each other as our ideas begin to conform more closely to the real world.

Idealogical Reasoning

Top-down thinking

Examples: page 251, 253

Ideological Reasoning (Ch. 13)

Deductive thinking (252)

Rarely qualified

Axiomatic (253)

Belief, value-based; absolutist

Assumes the Premises on Faith (254)

"Our level of faith and conviction is no measure of the truth of the beliefs we hold dear" (255).

Are our premises true?

Possibilities for proof (257-258):

1) Abdicate the attempt to show they are true

2) "Trust me"

3) Mutually trusted sources

4) Offer reasons

Assessing Our Convictions

Do the Exercise on page 255

Uses and Benefits of IR

Shape our community and provide identity

Provide absolutes in a relativistic world

Answer novel questions (261)

U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence based on Axioms “We hold these truths to be self-evident…”

Risks of IRPervasive and powerful

Clouds reasoning and obstructs reality: black and white thinking

Socially normative: ostracizes and condemns others

Prevents progress of knowledge and society: constrains and limits

Non-scientific: cannot prove or disprove faith

Creates zealots, absolutists, and bigots

Nazi Germany, Taliban, KKK based on axioms

Empirical Reasoning (Ch. 14)

Bottom-up: Inductive reasoning

Self-corrective

Open to Independent Verification

Scientific Method (pp. 274-275)

Evaluating ER: (276)

Benefits of ER (277)

Helps us understand "why"

Anticipates and predicts the future accurately

Approximates reality better than other methods

Fair-minded, honest, equalizer

Knowledge progresses

Testable, can prove right or wrong