2.

How Philosophy is Done As a kind of inquiry, philosophy is aimed at establishing knowledge and
understanding. Even where certain knowledge about a particular issue can’t be had, there are often
interesting things to learn about why we can’t have certainty and what sorts of less-than-certain reasons
there are for or against holding a position on that issue. So, rational inquiry may be interesting and
fruitful even when we are denied straight-forward answers to our initial questions. Once we raise a
philosophical issue, whether about the nature of justice or about the nature of reality, we want to ask
what can be said for or against the various possible answers to our question. Here we are engaged in
formulating arguments. Some arguments give us better reasons or accepting their conclusions than
others. Once we have formulated an argument, we want to evaluate the reasoning it offers. If you want
to know what philosophers do, this is a pretty good answer: philosophers formulate and evaluate
arguments. Your introduction to philosophy should be as much a training in how to do philosophy as it is
a chance to get to acquainted with the views of various philosophers. To that end, you should carefully
study the sections below on arguments. Once a philosophical position is considered, we want to ask
what arguments can be advanced in support of or against that issue. We then want to examine the
quality of the arguments. Evaluating flawed arguments often points the way towards other arguments
and the process of formulating, clarifying, and evaluating arguments continues. This method of question
and answer in which we recursively formulate, clarify, and evaluate arguments is known as dialectic.
Dialectic looks a lot like debate, but a big difference lies in the respective goals of the two activities. The
goal of a debate is to win by persuading an audience that your position is right and your opponent’s is
wrong. Dialectic, on the other hand, is aimed at inquiry. The goal is to learn something new about the
issue under discussion. Unlike debate, in dialectic your sharpest critic is your best friend. Critical
evaluation of your argument brings new evidence and reasoning to light. The person you disagree with
on a philosophical issue is often the person you stand to learn the most from (and this doesn’t
necessarily depend on which of you is closer to the truth of the matter). Dialectic is sometimes referred
to as the Socratic Method after the famous originator of this systematic style of inquiry. We will get
introduced to some of Plato’s dialogues chronicling the exploits of Socrates in the next chapter on
Ancient Greek Philosophy. This will give you a good sense for how the Socratic Method works. Then
watch for how the Socratic Method is deployed throughout the rest of the course. 12 Truth As varieties
of rational inquiry, it’s natural to think that science and philosophy are mainly concerned with getting at
the truth about things. There are some interesting and some confused challenges to the idea that
philosophy and science are truth oriented. But for now let’s assume that rational inquiry is truth oriented
and address a couple of questions about truth. Let’s focus on just these two:  What is it for a claim to be
true?  How do we determine that a claim is true? It’s important to keep these two questions separate.
Questions about how we know whether something is true are epistemic questions. But the question of
what it is for something to be true is not an epistemic issue. The truth of a claim is quite independent of
how or whether we know it to be true. If you are not sure about this, consider the claim that there is
intelligent life on other planets and the claim that there is no intelligent life on other planets. I assume
we don’t know which of these two claims is true, but surely one of them is. Whichever of these claims is
true, its being true doesn’t depend in any way on whether or how we know it to be true. There are many
truths that will never be known or believed by anyone, and appreciating this is enough to see that the
truth of a claim is not relative to belief, knowledge, proof, or any other epistemic notion. But then what
is it for a claim to be true? The ordinary everyday notion of truth would have it that a claim is true if the
world is the way the claim says it is. And this is pretty much all we are after. When we make a claim, we
represent some part of the world as being a certain way. If how my claim represents the world fits with
the way the world is, then my claim is true. Truth, then, is correspondence, or good fit, between what we
assert and the way things are. Is Truth Relative to Meaning? There is a further potential source of
confusion about truth that might be worth addressing at this point. Words and sentences can be used in
lots of different ways. Even if we are not being inventive with language, there is lots of vagueness and
ambiguity built into natural language. A tempting pitfall in thinking about truth is to think that truth is
somehow relative to meaning or open to interpretation. We’d all agree that it’s true that dogs are
canines. But suppose we used the word “dog” to refer to housecats instead. A word is just a sound or a
string of letters. We can, in principle, attach any meaning we like to the word “dog”. If we used the word
“dog” to refer to housecats, then the sentence “Dogs are canines” would be false. Doesn’t this make
truth relative to meaning or interpretation? Well, in a way yes, but not really. The truth of sentences, bits
of language, is relative to meaning. But the relativity at issue here is entirely linguistic. It’s simply the
result of the meaning of words and sentences being relative to 13 linguistic convention. But our everyday
notion of truth is not about linguistic convention any more than it is about knowledge or belief. Our
notion of truth is fundamentally about the correspondence between what is meant by a sentence and
the way the world is. Philosophers often refer to what is meant or expressed by a sentence as a
proposition. While a sentence is a piece of language that has a meaning, the proposition it expresses is
not itself a piece of language. Consider “Schnei ist wies” and “Snow is white”. The first sentence is
German for snow is white. These are distinct sentences and this is clear because they belong to different
languages. But they say the same thing. They both express the proposition that snow is white (we are
stuck with using English to refer to the proposition. But that doesn’t mean the proposition is linguistic.
We use English to refer to lots of things that aren’t themselves part of language; dogs and cats for
instance). So the proposition expressed by a sentence is not itself a linguistic thing. Being a non-linguistic
thing, the proposition does not have a meaning. Rather the proposition is what is meant. For a bit of
language to be open to interpretation is for us to be able to attach different meanings to it. But the
meanings themselves are not open to further interpretation. And it is the proposition, what is meant by
the sentence, that is the fundamental bearer of truth or falsity. A proposition is true when it represents
things the way they are. So when I speak of arguments consisting of claims you might bear in mind that
its propositions, not sentences I’m talking about. If we misinterpret the sentence, then we haven’t yet
gotten on to the claim being made and hence probably don’t fully understand the argument. Getting
clear on just what an argument says is critical to the dialectical process. Even if you are exceptionally
bright, you probably found the last couple paragraphs rather challenging. That’s OK. You might work
through them again more carefully and come back to it in a day or two if it’s still a struggle. The path to
becoming a better critical thinker is more like mountain climbing than a walk in the park, but with this
crucial difference: no bones get broken when you fall off an intellectual cliff. So you are always free to try
to scale it again. We can sum up the key points of the last few paragraphs as follows:  We use
sentences, bits of language, to express propositions.  The proposition, what is meant by the sentence,
represents the world as being some way.  The proposition is true when it represents the world in a way
that corresponds to how the world is.  Truth, understood as correspondence between a claim (a
proposition) and the way the world is, is not relative to meaning, knowledge, belief, or opinion.
Hopefully we now have a better grip on what it is for a claim to be true. A claim is true just when it
represents things as they are. As is frequently the case in philosophy, the real work here was just getting
clear on the issue. Once we clearly appreciate the question at hand, the answer seems pretty obvious. So
now we can set aside the issue of what truth is and turn to the rather different issue of how to
determine what’s true. 14 Arguments The common sense everyday way to assess a claim for truth or
falsity is to consider the reasons for holding it or rejecting it. Sometimes good reasons take the form of
simple observations. I have a good reason for thinking my bicycle has a flat tire when I see the tire
sagging on the rim or hear air hissing out of the tube. But often the business of identifying and
evaluating reasons is a bit more involved. Since philosophy proceeds by formulating and evaluating the
reasons for and against holding various positions, we will want to take a closer look at just how this goes.
We will do so in the remainder of this chapter with the informal introduction to logic and critical
thinking. An argument is a reason for taking something to be true. Arguments consist of two or more
claims, one of which is a conclusion. The conclusion is the claim the argument purports to give a reason
for believing. The other claims are the premises. The premises of an argument taken together are
offered as a reason for believing its conclusion. Some arguments provide better reasons for believing
their conclusions than others. In case you have any doubt about that, consider the following examples: 1.
Sam is a line cook. 2. Line cooks generally have good of kitchen skills. 3. So, Sam can probably cook well.
1. Sam is a line cook. 2. Line cooks generally aren’t paid very well. 3. So, Sam is probably a millionaire.
The premises in the first argument provide pretty good support for thinking Sam can cook well. That is,
assuming the premises in the first argument are true, we have a good reason to think that its conclusion
is true. The premises in the second argument give us no reason to think Sam is a millionaire. So whether
or not the premises of an argument support its conclusion is a key issue. Now consider these examples:
1. Boston is in Massachusetts. 2. Massachusetts is east of the Rockies. 3. So Boston is east of the Rockies.
1. Boston is in California. 2. California is west of the Rockies. 3. So Boston is west of the Rockies. 15
Again, the first of these two arguments looks pretty good, the second not so much. But the problem with
the second argument here is different. If its premises were true, then we would have a good reason to
think the conclusion is true. That is, the premises do support the conclusion. But the first premise of the
second argument just isn’t true. Boston is not in California. So the latter pair of arguments suggests
another key issue for evaluating arguments. Good arguments have true premises. That is pretty much it.
A good argument is an argument that has true premises that, when taken together, support its
conclusion. So, evaluating an argument involves just these two essential steps:  Determine whether or
not the premises are true.  Determine whether or not the premises support the conclusion (that is,
whether we have grounds to think the conclusion is true if all of the premises are true). Determining
whether an argument’s premises are true often involves evaluating further arguments in support of
those premises. An argument might be the last link in a long chain of reasoning. In this case, the quality
of the argument depends on the whole chain. And since arguments can have multiple premises, each of
which might be supported by further arguments, evaluating one argument might be more involved yet,
since its conclusion is really supported by a rich network of reasoning, not just one link and then another.
While the potential for complication should be clear, the basic idea should be pretty familiar. Think of the
regress of “why” questions many of us tormented our parents with as children. Even at a young age we
understood that the reasons for believing one thing can depend on the reasons for believing a great
many other things. However involved the network of reasons supporting a given conclusion might be, it
seems that there must be some starting points. That is, it seems there must be some reasons for
believing things that don’t themselves need to be justified in terms of further reasons. Otherwise the
network of supporting reasons would go on without end. The issue we are facing here is one of
identifying the ultimate foundations of knowledge and justified belief. This is a big epistemological issue
and we will return to it later in the course. For now, let’s consider one potential answer we are already
familiar with. In the sciences our complex chains of reasoning seem to proceed from the evidence of the
senses. We think that evidence provides the foundation for our edifice of scientific knowledge. Sounds
great for science, but where does this leave philosophy? Does philosophy entirely lack evidence on
which its reasoning can be based? Philosophy does have a kind of evidence to work from and that
evidence is provided by philosophical problems. When we encounter a problem in philosophy this often
tells us that the principles and assumptions that generate that problem can’t all be correct. This might
seem like just a subtle clue that leaves us far from solving the big mysteries. But clues are evidence just
the same. As we will discuss in our chapter on the philosophy of science, science doesn’t really have it
much easier. Sensory evidence by itself doesn’t tell us as much about the nature of the world as 16 we’d
like to suppose. Scientific evidence provides clues, but there remains a good deal of problem solving to
do in science as well as in philosophy. So we can assess the truth or falsity of the premises of an
argument by examining evidence or by evaluating further argument in support of the premises. Now we
will turn to the other step in evaluating arguments and consider the ways in which premises can support
or fail to support their conclusions. The question of support is distinct from the question of whether the
premises are true. When we ask whether the premises support the conclusions we are asking whether
we’d have grounds for accepting the conclusion assuming the premises are true. In answering this
question we will want to apply one of two standards of support: deductive validity or inductive strength.
Deductive Validity The deductive standard of support is validity. An argument counts as deductive
whenever it is aiming at this standard of support. Deductive validity is the strictest standard of support
we can uphold. In a deductively valid argument, the truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the
conclusion. Here are two equivalent definitions of deductive validity: (D) A valid argument is an
argument where if its premises are true, then its conclusion must be true. (D’) A valid argument is an
argument where it is not possible for all of its premises to be true and its conclusion false. Here are a few
examples of deductively valid arguments 1. If Socrates is human, then Socrates is mortal 2. Socrates is a
human. 3. Therefore, Socrates is mortal 1. All monkeys are primates 2. All primates are mammals 3. So,
all monkeys are mammals If you think about these two examples for a moment, it should be clear that
there is no possible way for the premises to all be true and the conclusion false. The truth of the
conclusion is gauranteed by the truth of the premises. In contrast, the following argument is not valid: 1.
If Sue misses her plane, she will be late for the conference. 2. Sue is late for the conference. 3. Therefore,
she missed her plane. 17 Again, to say that an argument is deductively valid is to say that it is impossible
for all of its premises to be true and its conclusion to be false. To see why the last argument is not valid,
try to think of a possible scenario that makes both of the premises true and the conclusion false. One
scenario is where Sue catches her plane, but her cab from the airport gets stuck in traffic. If we can think
of any possible way for the premises of an argument to be true and its conclusion false, then we have
show that the conclusion does not deductively follow from the premises. That is, we’ve shown that the
argument is not valid. Our intuitive test for validity is to think about whether it is possible for the
argument’s premises to be true and its conclusion to be false. A key point to notice here is that validity is
not directly about the truth or falsity of the premises or the conclusion. The concept of validity is really a
concept about what is and isn’t logically possible. A deductively valid argument may or may not have
true premises. Consider this argument: 1. All stars are bodies that shine steadily. 2. All planets are stars.
3. All planets are bodies that shine steadily. Both of the premises in this argument are false, but the
argument is still valid. Suppose, contrary to fact, that the premises were true. It should be easy to see
that the conclusion would have to be true if this were the case. Validity isn’t about whether the premises
or the conclusion are in fact true. It is only about whether the conclusion logically follows from the
premises. A deductively valid argument only provides one with a good reason for believing its conclusion
if its premises are true. If a deductively valid argument has all true premises, we say that it is deductively
sound. For an argument to be deductively sound is one way for it to pass both steps (1) and (2) above for
evaluating arguments. The deductive arguments we’ve looked at here are pretty intuitive. We only need
to think about whether the conclusion could be false even if the premises were true. But most deductive
arguments are not so obvious. Logic is the science of deductive validity. Philosophy has made some
historic advances in logic over the past century. Bertrand Russell, who we got acquainted with in the last
chapter, was among the key contributors to early developments in logic over the 20th century. In the
next chapter we will get acquainted with the first logician, Aristotle. Inductive Strength Consider this
argument again: 1. Sam is a line cook. 2. Line cooks generally have good of kitchen skills. 3. So, Sam can
probably cook well. 18 This is a decent argument. The premises do support the conclusion. And yet it
might be that both premises are true and the conclusion is false. Sam could be a brand new cook hired
because he’s the manager’s son who has never cooked in his life. Many arguments give us good reasons
for accepting their conclusions even if their premises being true fails to completely guarantee the truth
of the conclusion. This suggests that we need another standard of support for arguments that aim at
giving us pretty good but not absolutely compelling grounds for accepting their conclusions. And this
standard of support is called inductive strength. Here are two equivalent ways of defining inductive
strength: (I) An inductively strong argument is an argument in which if its premises are true, its
conclusion is probably to be true. (I’) An inductively strong argument is an argument in which it is
improbable that its conclusion is false given that its premises are true. If you look again at the earlier
definitions for deductive validity you will find a good deal of similarity. The only difference is in the use of
the words "probably" rather than “must be” in the first definition, and “improbable” rather than
"impossible" in the second. This is a big difference. As in the case of validity, when we say that an
argument is strong, we are not assuming that it’s premises are true. We are only claiming that if the
premises are true then the conclusion is likely to be true. Corresponding to the notion of deductive
soundness, an inductive argument that is both strong and has true premises is called a cogent inductive
argument. Unlike the case if deductively sound arguments, it is possible for an inductively cogent
argument to have true premises and a false conclusion. Lots of good reasons for holding a belief fall
short of the standard of deductive validity. The sort of reasoning you were taught as “the scientific
method” in secondary school is inductive reasoning. As it is taught in high school, the scientific method
consists of formulating a general hypothesis and testing it against a large sampling of data. If the data is
consistent with the hypothesis, then the hypothesis is considered confirmed by the data. Here a limited
amount of evidence is taken to support a broader more general hypothesis. In the simplest case,
inductive reasoning involves inferring that something is generally the case from a pattern observed in a
limited number of cases. For instance, if we were to conduct a poll of 1000 Seattle voters and 600 of
them claimed to be Democrats, then we could inductively infer that 60% of the voters in Seattle are
Democrats. The results of the poll give a pretty good reason to think that around 60% of the voters in
Seattle are Democrats. But the results of the poll don’t guarantee this conclusion. It is possible that only
50% of the voters in Seattle are Democrats and Democrats were, just by luck, over represented in
the1000 cases we considered. When evaluating deductive arguments for validity we ask if it is possible
for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false. This is either possible or it isn’t. Possibility
does not admit of degrees. But probability does. The truth of the conclusion of an inductive argument
can be 19 probable to a greater or lesser degree. An argument either is or isn’t valid. But inductive
arguments can be more or less strong. We can identify a few factors that bear on the degree of strength
an inductive argument has. One is how much evidence we have looked at before inductively
generalizing. Our inductive argument above would be stronger is we drew our conclusion from a poll of
100,000 Seattle voters, for instance. And it would be much weaker if we had only polled 100. Also, the
strength of an inductive argument depends on the degree to which the observed cases represent the
makeup of the broader class of cases. So our inductive argument will be stronger if we randomly select
our 1000 voters from the Seattle phone book than if they are selected from the Ballard phone book
(Ballard being a notably liberal neighborhood within Seattle). So far, we’ve only discussed inductive
generalization, where we identify a pattern in a limited number of cases and draw a more general
conclusion about a broader class of cases. Inductive argument comes in other varieties as well. In the
example we started with about Sam the line cook, we inductively inferred a prediction about Sam based
on a known pattern in a broader class of cases. Argument from analogy is another variety of inductive
reasoning that can be quite strong. For instance, I know that my housecat is very similar to cougars in the
wild. Knowing that my cat can jump great heights, it would be reasonable to expect that by analogy, or
based on this similarity, cougars can jump well too. There are further varieties of argument that aim at
the standard of inductive strength, but we will discuss just one more in detail now. Abduction is
inference to the best explanation. Detective work provides a good example of abductive argument.
When Holmes discovers Moriarty’s favorite brand of cigar and a bullet of the sort fired by Moriarty’s gun
at a murder scene, inference to the best explanation suggests that Moriarty was the killer. That Moriarty
committed the murder provides the overall best explanation of the various facts of the case. The 19th
century American pragmatist and logician, Charles Sanders Peirce offers the Surprise Principle as a
method for evaluating abductive arguments. According to the surprise principle, we should count one
explanation as better than competing explanations if it would render the facts we are trying to explain
less surprising than competing explanations. The various clues in the murder case are among the facts
we want explained. The presence of the cigar and the bullet casing at the murder scene is much less
surprising if Moriarty committed the murder than if the maid did it. Inference to the best explanation
aims at strength. So a strong abductive argument in this case needn’t rule out the possibility that the
murder was committed by Moriarty’s evil twin who convincingly frames his brother. There might an
argument against the death penalty lurking nearby. Inference to the best explanation is worth more
attention than if often receives. This kind of reasoning is pervasive in philosophy and science, but seldom
gets much notice as an integral part of the methods of rational inquiry. 20 Fallacies A fallacy is just a
mistake in reasoning. Humans are not nearly as rational as we’d like to suppose. In fact we are so prone
to certain sorts of mistakes in reasoning that philosophers and logicians refer those mistakes by name.
For now I will discuss just one by name but in a little detail. Watch for explanations of other fallacies over
the course of the class. For pretty thorough catalogue of logical fallacies, I’ll refer to you The Fallacy Files
(http://www.fallacyfiles.org/taxonomy.html). “Ad hominem” is Latin for “against the man.” It is the name
for the fallacy of attacking the proponent of a position rather than critically evaluating the reasons
offered for the proponent’s position. The reason ad hominem is a fallacy is just that the attack on an
individual is simply not relevant to the quality of the reasoning offered by that person. Attacking the
person who offers an argument has nothing to do whether or not the premises of the argument are true
or support the conclusion. Ad hominem is a particularly rampant and destructive fallacy in our society.
What makes it so destructive is that it turns the cooperative social project of inquiry through
conversation into polarized verbal combat. This fallacy makes rational communication impossible while it
diverts attention from interesting issues that often could be fruitfully investigated. Here is a classic
example of ad hominem: A car salesman argues for the quality of an automobile and the potential buyer
discounts the argument with the thought that the person is just trying to earn a commission. There may
be good reason to think the salesman is just trying to earn a commission. But even if there is, this is
irrelevant to the evaluation of the reasons the salesman is offering. The reasons should be evaluated on
their own merits. Notice, it is easy to describe a situation where it is both true that the salesman is just
trying to earn a commission and true that he is making good arguments. Consider a salesman who is not
too fond of people and cares little for them except that they earn a commission for him. Otherwise he is
scrupulously honest and a person of moral integrity. In order to reconcile himself with the duties of a
sales job, he carefully researches his product and only accepts a sales position with the business that
sells the very best. He then sincerely delivers good arguments for the quality of his product, makes lots
of money, and dresses well. This salesman must have been a philosophy major. The customer who
rejects his argument on the ad hominim grounds that he is just trying to earn a commission misses an
opportunity to buy the best. The moral of the story is just that the salesperson’s motive is logically
independent of the quality of his argument. Review and Discussion Questions 1. How does dialectic
differ from debate? 2. What is it for a claim to be true? How does this issue differ from that of
determining whether a claim is true? 3. Explain our everyday concept of truth in terms of
correspondence. 21 4. What is an argument? How do we evaluate arguments? 5. What does it mean for
the premises of an argument to support its conclusion, and what are the two standards of support? 6.
Explain the surprise principle and illustrate its use in evaluating an inference to the best explanation. 7.
What is a fallacy? Learn about a fallacy or two on The Fallacy Files and report back. Exercises Which of
the following arguments are valid? Which are invalid? A 1. Donna will get an A in philosophy if and only if
she writes a good paper. 2. Donna got an A in philosophy 3. Therefore, she wrote a good paper. B 1. If
Donna writes a good paper, she will get an A in philosophy. 2. Donna got an A in philosophy 3. Therefore,
she wrote a good paper. C 1. If whales are mammals, then they are not fish. 2. Whales are fish 3. Whales
are not mammals. D 1. If the rapture has occurred, then either some of the cars on the highway will be
unoccupied or all drivers are damned. 2. Some drivers are not damned. 3. None of the cars on the
highway are unoccupied. 4. Therefore, the rapture has not occurred. E 1. Some snarks are
bandersnatches. 2. All bandersnatches are igglypoofs. 3. So, some snarks are igglypoofs 22 Answer the
following questions. Give short explanations that reason from the definitions of the relevant logical
concepts. 1. Does an argument provide a good reason for believing its conclusion if it is valid?