Deductive Arguments,

Inductive Arguments,
and Fallacies
 Introduction

• The premisses of any argument are put forth as reasons for accepting its conclusion.
Two questions thus arise:
1. Are the premisses true? We should doubt a conclusion based on premisses known to be false.
2. Is the argument logical? That is to say, would the premisses, if true, provide strong support for
the conclusion?
 Introduction

• To decide whether premisses are true, we need information about the world, about the meanings of words, or both. For
example, suppose a financial analyst argues that the stock market will go up because the Federal Reserve Bank is going
to reduce interest rates. To know whether the Fed intends to reduce rates, we need to know whether there has been an
official announcement by the Fed or whether the analyst is depending on an insider’s tip or hunch.
• The analyst’s argument relies also on an unstated premiss about the connection between falling interest rates and a rising
market. This correlation often holds, but there are important exceptions. In some circumstances, reducing rates will not
stir a sluggish market.
• Example
In standard form the analyst’s argument is:
• The Fed will reduce interest rates.
• Very often, when interest rates fall, the market rises.
• The market will rise.
 Introduction

• Our study of arguments focuses on the question of whether the premisses would, if true,
support the conclusion. We can do this without knowing whether the premisses are actually
true. The analyst’s argument is logical, which is to say that if the analyst has the facts straight
(if both premisses are true) and if other relevant information is not being ignored, then
probably the market will rise.

• To investigate the logical strength of ordinary-language arguments, we look at the contexts in

which they occur, the meanings of the terms in the argument, and certain structural features
of the arguments.
 Introduction

• An argument in the first category is deductive. An argument is deductive when its premisses
and conclusion are related in such a way that the truth of the premisses guarantees the truth
of the conclusion. Such an argument is sometimes called a valid, or deductively valid,
argument to distinguish it from the fallacies that superficially resemble deductive arguments
but lack the essential characteristic of preserving truth.

• A relationship of deductive support holds between the premisses and conclusion of a

deductive argument. In a deductive argument, if the premisses are all true, then the
conclusion must be true.
 Introduction

• The second type of argument is inductive. In such an argument, the premisses provide a
different kind of support for the conclusion. In an inductive argument, if the premisses are all
true, then probably the conclusion is true, but it might be false. Inductive support provides
good reasons but not conclusive reasons to accept the conclusion.
 Introduction
• Into the third category fall the fallacies. In a fallacy, or fallacious argument, the alleged evidence offers only very
weak support or is irrelevant to the conclusion. We have already seen that in the fallacy of equivocation, the
premisses are irrelevant to the conclusion because of a shift in meaning of some crucial term.
• Fallacies also occur when the premisses make some irrelevant appeal to our emotions instead of providing
evidence for the truth of the conclusion.
• Still other fallacies have structures that resemble those of deductive or inductive arguments while violating some
standard of deductive or inductive reasoning. These pretenders can be called deductive fallacies, or invalid
arguments, when they resemble deductive arguments or inductive fallacies when they resemble inductive
arguments. The premisses of fallacious arguments, even if true, do not guarantee or even make it probable that
the conclusion is true. The conclusion of a fallacious argument might be true, but its premisses are not good
reasons to believe it.
• Arguments (either deductive or inductive) that provide the proper kind of support
for their conclusions and also have all true premisses are called sound arguments.
 Deductive Arguments

• In a deductive argument, if all the premisses are true, the conclusion cannot be false. This
guarantee—that true premisses will yield true conclusions—is the outstanding characteristic
of deductive arguments, and it is obviously a valuable feature. How is the truth of the
premisses preserved? The conclusion of a deductive argument puts together or restates
information that is contained in the premisses without adding new information about the
world. For example, the conclusion of the argument might depend on the definition of some
expression in the premisses:
Jack is a bachelor.
He has no wife.
 Deductive Arguments
• Again, to see that the conclusion cannot be false if the premiss is true, we need only to understand the meaning of the premiss (that is,
reordering the terms to be added does not change the value of the sum) and to understand that the conclusion says the sum of 3 and 4 is the
same as the sum of 4 and 3.
• Alternately, the conclusions of some deductive arguments follow as a result of connections drawn among the premisses by important logical
terms, such as and, or, not, all, and some:
• Examples
1. Either Jeb is not graduating, or he has paid his tuition bill.
But he is graduating.
He has paid his tuition bill
2. All whales are mammals.
All mammals are warm-blooded.
All whales are warm-blooded.
 Deductive Arguments

• All men are mortal.

• Socrates is a man.
• Socrates is mortal.

• The first premiss is a universal generalization. It contains the information that all members of one class, or type of
thing (the class of men), are also members of another class (the class of mortals). The second premiss provides the
information that the individual whose name is Socrates is a member of the class of men. The conclusion of the
argument combines the information contained separately in the two premises. Strictly speaking, the conclusion
contains no new information not already present in the premisses. Neither premiss says explicitly (in just those
words) what is said in the conclusion, but the information in the conclusion is implicit in the premisses.
Moreover, this is true not only for the simple arguments in the three examples above but also for every argument
in which the conclusion follows deductively from its premisses.
 Deductive Arguments

• Deductive arguments preserve truth because they recombine and restate information that is
contained at least implicitly in the premisses. Whereas the conclusion of a deductive argument
can restate or recombine information, put it together in novel ways, and thus make explicit
what was formerly only implicit, such a conclusion cannot go beyond what was already
present, at least implicitly, in the premisses to advance our knowledge of what the world is
like. Deductive arguments preserve truth, but they cannot extend factual knowledge.
 Deductive Arguments

• Not all deductive arguments are simple, however. Sometimes the chain of reasoning that connects
the premisses to the conclusion is long and complex. When this is so, even though the conclusion
contains no new information (in the sense that it only selectively recombines information stated in
the premisses), the conclusion will seem new because we had not put together the information in
the premisses in just that way.
• Even the person constructing the argument might be surprised to see where the premisses lead,
because although the premisses jointly imply the conclusion, the conclusion is not merely a
restatement or specific instance of one of the premisses. Thus, although the conclusion of a correct
deductive argument cannot yield new information, it can put information together in ways that
might not have occurred to anyone before.
• We can and do deduce conclusions that are new from a psychological standpoint. Even when the
conclusions of deductive arguments are novel, surprising, or startling in this sense, however, they
can only draw out what was already there in the premisses.
 Deductive Arguments

• Example
• In the following example, Smith’s deductive argument reaches a conclusion that is psychologically
new and surprising to Jones, even though its conclusion contains no new information. Jones
commutes from his suburban home to a job in the city. Smith wants to demonstrate to Jones that he
is spending three weeks of every year riding a commuter train.
• Jones: Three weeks a year—that’s ridiculous!
• Smith: No, it’s a simple matter of logic. You ride the train to and from work, one hour each way, five
days a week, for a total of forty-nine weeks a year, allowing for your vacation and holidays. Using
simple arithmetic, that comes to a total of 490 hours per year on the train. There are twenty-four
hours in a day, and if you divide 490 by 24, you get 20 and 10/24 days. That’s almost twenty-one
days, or three weeks a year you spend on the train.
• Jones: Ouch.
 Deductive Arguments

• The reasoning in this argument is mathematical, and its deductive character depends on the
calculations by which the conclusion is reached. Mathematical proofs are primary examples of
deductive reasoning. Although mathematicians may believe on inductive grounds that a
particular theorem holds in every case because it holds in every case tested so far, they do not
regard the theorem as proven until it has been established as the conclusion of a deductive
argument.
 Deductive Arguments

• Many arguments concerning ethics, in which a proponent attempts to show that an action is
right or wrong or that a moral principle is acceptable or unacceptable, are deductive. A
standard way to establish that some kind of action is right (or wrong) is to show that all
actions of that type are right (or wrong) because they fall into a broader class of right (or
wrong) actions.
• Example
• All deliberate killing of helpless persons is wrong.
• Euthanasia (mercy killing) is a deliberate killing of a helpless person.
• Euthanasia is wrong.
 Deductive Arguments

• Other arguments in ethics attempt to show that some moral principle is not acceptable because it would condone or permit actions that we consider immoral. This
pattern of argument is more complicated than the last one, for it contains subarguments within a larger argument. The following example is an argument of this type.
• Example First subargument: Whatever is done as an expression of love is morally acceptable.
Mrs. X, who believed her child's soul was possessed by demons that could be driven out only by beating the child, beat her child severely because she loved him.
Mrs. X did something morally acceptable when she beat the child.
• Second subargument:
The conclusion of the argument in the first part is obviously false.
But that argument is deductive. (If all its premisses are true, then its conclusion as well is true.)
At least one of the premisses of the first argument is false.
• Third subargument:
At least one of the premisses of the first argument is false.
The second premiss states a fact about Mrs. X's behavior, and its truth is not in question.
The first premiss is false. (It is not true that whatever is done as an expression of love is morally acceptable.)
• In addition to recognizing that some types of arguments, such as those in ethics, depend
heavily on deductive reasoning, we can look for other clues to alert us to the presence of
deductive arguments. Because in a deductive argument if the premisses are true the
conclusion cannot be false, certain words and phrases mark the strong support provided in
these arguments. Expressions such as must, it must be the case that, necessarily, inevitably,
certainly, and it can be deduced that frequently indicate that an argument is deductive. The
terms entail and imply also signify a deductive connection between premisses and conclusion.
 III. Inductive Arguments

• Inductive arguments can have false conclusions even when all the premisses are true and
support the conclusion in the sense of contributing to or upholding its probability.
• Inductive arguments lack the definitive and valuable truth-preserving feature of deductive
arguments. This apparent shortcoming, however, is more than offset by a feature of inductive
arguments that is lacking in deductive arguments. Inductive arguments can extend or amplify
our factual knowledge. For this reason, we call inductive arguments ampliative.
 Inductive Arguments

• Conclusions of inductive arguments amplify or go beyond the information found in their

premisses. Conclusions of ampliative arguments contain new information that is not present,
even implicitly, in their premisses. Although the field of mathematics is well suited to the
almost exclusive use of deductive reasoning, in all other fields of human endeavor—natural
science, the social sciences, history, literary criticism, the practical knowledge of everyday
affairs, and even ethics—inductive inferences and arguments are indispensable.
 Inductive Arguments

• Causal arguments are among the most common inductive arguments. Other familiar types of
inductive arguments include the following:
• 1. Arguments that conclude something about the future on the basis of what has happened in the
past.
• That a stone will fall, that fire will burn, that the earth has solidity, we have observed a thousand
and a thousand times; and when any new instance of this nature is presented, we draw without
hesitation the accustomed inference.
• —D. Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
• Philo, the speaker in this passage of the dialogue, does not actually state the obvious conclusion—
that in the future, stones will continue to fall, fireto burn, and the earth to be solid—but his meaning
is clear.
 Inductive Arguments

2. Arguments that conclude something about the past on the basis of present evidence.
• Pollen grains, though microscopic, are preserved in peat bogs in a remarkable manner for
hundreds and even thousands of years. Since the pollen of every plant has its own special
form, it is possible with the microscope to establish what plants were growing at different
points in time. The distinct layers in peatbogs thus become, as it were, the pages of a great
picture book illustrating the changing flora of the land through the ages.
• —P. V. Glob, The Bog People, 1971
• Here the pollen, which is observed in the present, provides the basis for reconstructing the
types of vegetation that grew in prehistoric times. Historians, geologists, archaeologists—all
who are concerned with knowledgeof the past—use inductive reasoning in this way.
 Inductive Arguments

3. Arguments that generalize on the basis of a sample of observations or experiments.

• This is the type of inductive reasoning that is used in public opinion polls to determine the
popularity of a political candidate or to learn about the
• public’s attitude toward a particular piece of legislation. You have seen or heard such arguments,
particularly in election years. Here is another example of this form of reasoning:
• Various researchers have studied the different effect of divorce on men and women. One study of
3,000 divorces, based on Los Angeles county records from 1977–78, showed that when marital
property was divided equally in a divorce, men’s standard of living improved by 42% on average
during the first year following the divorce, while women’s dropped by 73%. Later analysis of the
same data by Richard Peterson showed that because of mistakes in recording information, the true
figure was closer to a 10% increase for men and a 27% decline for women.
 Inductive Arguments

• 4. Arguments that conclude something about a particular case on the basis of what happens
usually or frequently, but not always.
• The following passage, taken from Mark Twain’s Notebook, is an amusing example of this
common form of inductive argument.
At bottom I did not believe I had touched that man. The law of probabilities decreed me guiltless
of his blood, for in all my small experience with guns I had never hit anything I had tried to hit.
And I knew I had done my best to hit him.
• —Mark Twain, Notebook
 Inductive Arguments

5. Arguments that conclude that a further similarity holds on the basis of known similarities
between two types of things. This form of reasoning is often used in making a decision to buy a
particular brand of merchandise on the basis of good performance by other items of the same
brand. Similarities in materials, methods of manufacturing, and other product qualities provide
evidence to support some further, as yet unobserved similarity, such as durability, in a new
product. This kind of reasoning also provides the focus for much of our medical research.
Investigators observe the effects of various substances on experimental animals, which are
similar to humans in certain respects, and conclude that those substances will affect humans in
similar ways. Here is an example:
 Inductive Arguments

• A further difference between inductive and deductive arguments concerns how additional
information can affect the strength of the argument. Suppose you have received $1,000 from the
estate of a distant relative. You want to invest it in a mutual fund, and your main objective is
preservation of capital with reasonable income from your investment.
You select a fund that has paid a dividend every quarter for forty years and that has shown moderate
growth. Your decision was based on the following argument:
• Fund X has a 40-year record of paying regular dividends while maintaining a slow growth of
capital.
• My investment objectives are regular income and preservation of capital.
• Fund X is a suitable investment for me.
 Fallacies

• Fallacies, or fallacious arguments, appear to support their conclusions, but appearances can
deceive.
• Committing a fallacy is different from making a factual error. Although in ordinary language,
the term fallacy can refer to false beliefs (particularly those that we believe because they are
attractive to us), studies of logic reserve the term for mistakes in reasoning.
• From this standpoint, we can be mistaken about something without committing a fallacy. To
believe, for example, that Thomas Jefferson did not own slaves is erroneous but not fallacious.
The person who does not believe that Jefferson owned slaves is ignorant of certain facts, but
that person’s logical ability to draw conclusions on the basis of evidence may not be at fault.
To commit a fallacy, we must offer or accept nonevidence as evidence for a claim.
 Fallacies

• Two familiar fallacies are the fallacy of black-and-white thinking and the fallacy of
equivocation. The first occurs in arguments that base a conclusion on a limited set of
alternatives—such as a choice between loving and hating someone—when a broader range of
possibilities is available.
• The fallacy of equivocation involves using an expression, such as “mad,” in one sense in one
of the premisses and a different sense in another premiss or in the conclusion of an argument.
If the premisses state that someone is “mad” in the sense of “angry” and the conclusion uses
the term in the sense of “crazy,” we cannot use the term to connect premisses and conclusion.
Many other fallacies arise as a result of violating logical standards for valid deductive
arguments and strong inductive arguments.
 Fallacies

• When someone presents a claim in the context of a threat or an enticement, we may fail to
notice the lack of evidence. An “argument” that substitutes a threat of force for evidence has,
like many fallacies, a special name. It is called “appeal to force,” or (in Latin) ad baculum. This
fallacy appeals to an emotion (fear) rather than to our reasoning ability.
• Although a threat may be a good reason (in the sense of serving your best interests) to do
something, it should not be confused with evidence for the truth of a statement. In a
totalitarian regime, for example, threats against one’s life are good reasons not to openly
disagree with the party line but are not evidence for its truth. Totalitarian societies are not
alone in employing fear to achieve their ends. Leaders of democratic societies have sometimes
used fear to win citizen support for unjust or unnecessary wars.
 Fallacies

• Another fallacy that plays on emotions is called “appeal to pity,” or ad misericordium.

• This occurs when we confuse feeling sorry for someone with evidence for the truth of an
assertion that is made by or about the person who is to be pitied. A wellknown scientist, a
victim of terminal cancer, made an appeal to pity when he said in response to challenges to a
theory he was trying to defend: “I can say these things . . . because this is my last hurrah, and I
have to tell the truth.” Although the scientist’s illness certainly deserves our sympathy, it is not
a reason to believe his theory.