Usually if there is reason for doubt in an argument, that should give reason to believe that the argument is weak or false, especially if there is no substantial proof that supports the premise. An argument must not be faulty and should have little room for error or different possibilities. According to the Critical Thinking text, there are three main tests to check whether an argument is good. The three are the premises are plausible, the premises are more plausible than the conclusion, and the argument is valid or strong. A plausible premise is a claim that has good reason to be true. When a premise is more plausible than the conclusion, then the evidence and support of the premise should outweigh the evidence that the conclusion would be false. When an argument is valid or strong, then there should be little reason to believe that the claims made by the premise should not be true and strong enough to support the conclusion.
I have one example that comes to mind when I think of argument. I usually argue with my brother to see whether or not my mom is home. But we are often too lazy to go downstairs to check to see if she is home. So usually my argument is “My mom is always home when her van is parked at home. My moms van is in the driveway. Therefore, my mom is home.” The first premise is not more plausible than the conclusion. This sets up the second premise to fall down a slippery slope. The premises in this argument are very much plausible. However, this argument is weak because my mom could be out of the house by having someone pick her up. Or she could have switched cars with my dad and could have taken his car out. The argument fails all three tests.
The argument could be made stronger if I added more supporting premises. One example would be that when my mom is home, her car keys and purse are also placed on the table. My moms van is home and her car keys are placed on the table. This argument is much stronger because the premise gives more evidence to back up the fact that my mom is home without actually seeing that she is home. There is good reason to believe that my mom is home and the argument is much stronger than the last one. With these supporting premises, the premises are in fact plausible. However, it is still possible that my mom is out of the house. For example, she went out for a jog or she got picked up by her friend.
With possibilities such as these, this renders the argument weak, but not invalid.
The argument could be made even stronger if my mom were to swear that she would never leave the house without her keys and purse. The argument in full is, “ My mom is always home when her van is parked at home. My moms van is in the driveway. Her keys and purse are placed on the table. She swears that she would never leave the house without her purse and key. Therefore my mom is home.” The premises in this argument are plausible. They are also more plausible than the conclusion. There is also a possibility that the premises are true and the conclusion false, but they are very unlikely. This makes this argument strong. By adding more supporting premises, I created a strong argument that passed all three tests and is most likely true.
Very good analysis and explanation on the three tests to determine what makes a good argument. Personally, this post has made it clearer to me, and it confirms pretty much what I struggled to understand. That's because this subject can be confusing, and it can take a few times to really fully understand the concept. I liked how you provided an example for each a strong and weak argument because providing one example does not mean I will understand what is a weak argument. Your example pretty much follows exactly what the text is saying about strong and weak arguments. Keep up the good work, I look forward to reading more of your well-explained posts of each lesson.
ReplyDeleteGood explanations to test if your arguments were good. You showed a good example about you and your brother assuming your mother was there. Each paragraph were clear to me when I read this to better understand how to test the three steps for a good argument. I liked how you added more claims to make a stronger argument about your mother. It was good to put explanations for both a strong argument and a weak one and tested all three on the good argument test. Reading your blog has helped me in writing mine. Good job with the post and the personal experiences.
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