Groundwork Module:

An argument is a series of statements given to support another statement.

Statements Non-statements
The trains are always late. Welcome to the University of Auckland!
Tailgating is a major cause of
How can I stop tailgating?
car accidents.
When the car ahead reaches an object, make sure you
The reason that I like bananas
can count to four crocodiles before you reach the same
is that they have no bones.
object.

A statement is a self-contained sentence (or part of a sentence) that is either true or false.

proposition

noun
​ 1.
​ a statement or assertion that expresses a judgement or opinion.

Non-Statements

However, it doesn't make sense to say that the sentence "Welcome to the University of
Auckland!" is either true or false. Wouldn't you be puzzled if someone answered "true" in
response to such a greeting? It wouldn't be an appropriate answer. And "How can I stop
tailgating?" is a question; the sentence doesn't express something that is either true or false.

A non-statement is a sentence that is not a statement. This Includes questions, commands,

greetings, exclamations, arguments, and sentences that refer to other sentences.

So sentences that can be true or false are statements. Quite simple. But things can get more
complicated. Something can be a statement even if we don't know whether it's true or false.
All that matters about statements is that they are true or false, not whether we know they are
true or false. For instance:

Ivan Slotvsky, the famous Irish builder of Madrid, is eating ham steaks and chutney at this
very moment.

True or false? I don't know. But it is true or false. Here's another one:

Sometime in the next 39 years, I will have a creepy next door neighbour.

So far, so good. I've been lucky and I haven't had a creepy next door neighbour. But the
statement is true if it will be the case some day that I have a creepy next door neighbour in
the next 39 years. Otherwise, the statement is false. But I don't know whether the statement
is true or false.

Arguments:

An argument is a group of statements some of which, the premises, are offered in

support of another statement, the conclusion.

A premise is a statement that provides support for a conclusion (or

sub-conclusion) in an argument.

A conclusion is a statement that is the endpoint of an argument; what the arguer

wants others to believe.

Here's a very simple example of an argument:

Stan was driving his truck over the speed limit. He had no excuse for driving over the speed
limit. Also, he was intoxicated. Therefore, Stan was breaking the law.

We can easily isolate the conclusion:

Stan was breaking the law.

Notice that we do not include the word 'therefore' when we state the conclusion. The word
'therefore' is not part of the statement that forms the conclusion: it is just an indicator that the
statement that follows it is the conclusion.

All the other statements are premises. We have:

1. Stan was driving his truck over the speed limit.

2. Stan had no excuse for driving over the speed limit.
3. Stan was intoxicated.
A conclusion indicator is a word or phrase that is used to indicate that the following
statement is a conclusion.

A premise indicator is a word or phrase that is used to indicate that the following statement
is a premise.

Conclusion indicators Premise indicators

Therefore Because

Thus Since

Hence Supposing that

Consequently Assuming that

So Given that

Non Arguments:

There are many things that may look like arguments but are not, and are thus misconstrued
as arguments. These include advice, reports, instructions, explanations, and so on. Let's
look at some of those.

An explanation is a statement or collection of statements describing why something

happens.

How explanations are similar to arguments:

In 2014, we introduced a new textbook in the Critical Thinking course taught at The
University of Auckland, and we negotiated with the publishers to have a discount for
Auckland students. It was agreed with the publisher that the textbook would cost $95, but its
price turned out to be $130. When students complained about the price, we called the
publisher. Eventually, we understood what happened: the textbook was more expensive than
we expected because the person with whom we had made an agreement on a reduced price
for the University of Auckland had left the company, and the new employee wasn't aware of
the agreement. At some point, the agreement was lost, and that's why we didn't get the
discount.
We gave an explanation to our students to make them understand why the textbook was
sold at $130 instead of $95. We weren't arguing that the book should be sold at $130, or
giving reasons to believe that it was being sold at $130 (the students already knew that).
Notice that the explanation contained the premise indicator 'because', but it explains that A
happened because B, not that you should believe A because you believe B. This is the
difference between explanations and arguments – explanations seek to show why
something is true; arguments seek to show that something is true. This is a subtle but
important distinction.

Argument or Not?

Notice that "don't worry, be happy" is not a statement, so we need to rephrase it as a proper
statement, i.e., as something that is either true or false. However, it's not clear that this
passage in the song really is trying to establish a point. Compare it with another verse:

When you're worried, your face will frown,

and that will bring everybody down.
So don't worry. Be happy.
Don't worry. Be happy now.

There might be an argument here. An indication that we may be facing an argument is the
indicator word "so", a conclusion indicator. And this part of the song seems to be formulated
as reasons that you shouldn't worry and that you should be happy. So probably it contains
an argument:

If you worry, then you frown.

If you frown, then you bring everybody down.
So if you worry, then you bring everybody down.
So you shouldn't worry, and you should be happy.

The lesson to learn from this is that it is not always easy to identify arguments. Sometimes it
looks as though some information is presented as an argument when it is not. Sometimes
when people try to express themselves, they are trying to convince you of something, but
they may not succeed in presenting their view as an argument. They may express their
views without providing reasons for believing their views.

A vague sentence or word has a range of possible meanings that blur together.

1. One type of vagueness comes from not specifying relevant details. For example:

That ham sandwich poses a health threat.

Is the sandwich poisonous? Does it carry a disease? Is it a health threat to everyone, or just
to those with compromised immune systems? Is it making kosher or halal observers and
vegans sick? Is it radioactive? Is it overly hot? Or is it delicately balanced where it might fall
and unleash a devastating tide of razor-sharp glass shards?
2. Another type of vagueness comes from using very generic words when more specific or
precise terms would convey a lot more information. The first sentence in each of the
following examples is vague; we provide two more detailed variations:

1. Brenda came in and dropped her stuff on the table.

Brenda stomped in and dropped her backpack on the table.
Brenda tiptoed in and dropped her blood-covered hacksaw on the table.
2. Matilda looked pretty in her blue dress.
Matilda floated elegantly in her aquamarine formal gown.
Matilda rocked her wicked, electric blue dress.

This use of generic words usually won't damage simple arguments, but it supplies little
information, limiting the more subtle implications and nuances. It also may send your readers
to sleep. Vague sentences are difficult to evaluate, or draw informative conclusions from.

An ambiguous sentence or word has several distinct non-overlapping meanings.

1. Some words are ambiguous or polysemous – they have more than one meaning. This is
called lexical ambiguity. For example:

We saw her duck.

Did she duck? Or does she own a duck? Or are we currently cutting her duck in half with a
saw?

Pat went to the bank.

Is Pat at the edge of a river? or outside a financial institution? or did Pat perform a financial
transaction at the bank ('went' is also ambiguous – or is it vague)?

2. Another sort of ambiguity is prosodic ambiguity, where sentences change meaning when
we emphasise different words. We'll italicise the emphasised words in a sentence. For
example

She's not the main problem.

This could mean "she's not the main problem" – she's a minor problem; or "she's not the
main problem" – it's someone else; or even "she's not the main problem" – she's important,
but not because she's a problem.

Here is a famous example of both lexical and prosodic ambiguity, which also shows that this
problem isn't confined to English:

Syntactic Ambiguity: (within a sentence or sequence of words) This form of ambiguity is also
called structural or grammatical ambiguity. It occurs in the sentence because the sentence
structure leads to two or more possible meanings.

Here's an example that Tim loves and his wife Justine dislikes. Tim is a farmer and an early
riser. He gets up early every morning, and always before his wife. Now, suppose he tried to
express this by saying:
I beat my wife up every day.

That would most certainly be taken the wrong way. Justine takes it the wrong way every time
he says it!

A generalisation is a statement that applies to a class of objects or events of some kind,

rather than to an individual.

A Universal generalisation applies to all members of a class, without exception.

An Empirical generalisation applies to most members of a class, but can have

exceptions

A lot of generalisations are ambiguous between these types of generalisations. For example,
"Cats have four legs" could be treated as the Universal generalisation "All cats have four
legs"; or the Empirical generalisation "Most Cats have four legs".

Universal generalisations are usually linked to our definitions and concepts. For example,
"Cats are mammals" is a Universal generalisation, as part of our understanding of 'cat' is that
it's a mammal. If we met a cat that was a reptile, either it wouldn't be a cat, or we would have
to change our concept of a cat. Empirical generalisations are based on experience and
observation, rather than logic and definition. Our experience always allows for exceptions,
even if we haven't seen any yet. For example, "Cats have hair" is an Empirical
generalisation; exceptions are possible. If we met a hairless cat, we might think it weird, but
it would still be a cat.

We should rewrite EVERY generalisation we reason with as Universal by using "All/Every"

or Empirical by using "Most/Usually/Normally".

Whenever you see a generalisation, you need to decide whether it is a Universal or

Empirical generalisation, and then treat it the same way throughout your reasoning, just like
you would with any other ambiguous word or phrase. This is important, as Empirical
generalisations are much more likely to be true than Universal generisations, but Universal
generalisations are much easier to reason with. We often treat a generalisation as Empirical
when deciding if it is true, and then as Universal when using it to reason. This causes many
common reasoning mistakes. We use Deductive reasoning for Universal generalisations and
Non-deductive reasoning for Empirical generalisations. These two types of reasoning are the
primary focus of modules 3 and 4, so you can see we take this distinction very seriously.

Here's a thought for you to worry about. Scientific Laws are based on our observations, so
they should be Empirical generalisations, right? But some of them (e.g.
F = m.a
) are expressed in mathematics, which deals in Universals. So which is it? Do Scientific
Laws have exceptions? We'll get back to that puzzle in the Science module.

A Social generalisation applies to social beliefs about members of a class.

For example, a slightly outdated, but still prevalent Social generalisation is that "men protect
their womenfolk". This is false if we take it as a Universal generalization, and is false in New
Zealand as an Empirical generalisation even if we take it to mean "men usually protect their
womenfolk", as spousal abuse statistics will demonstrate. But it is (or was until recently)
socially assumed to be true, in that our collective attitudes and beliefs and many of our
societal norms are still predicated on its unquestioned truth, regardless of the actual facts, or
its desirability.

For example, suppose you want to use a harmful Stereotype like "All Maori are lazy" in an
argument. First, that's a Universal generalisation about the external world, so we should treat
it as Empirical and should change it to "Most Maori are lazy". Next, what's your evidence for
this Empirical generalisation? If it's based on a couple of people who you know, you can only
truthfully say "I know a couple of lazy people who happen to be Maori". If it's based on
employment statistics, you can truthfully say "Maori have higher unemployment rates than
Pakeha in New Zealand". But, this could be due to bigotry in some companies' hiring and
firing practices; or that proportionally more Maori are rural, and rural communities have
higher unemployment rates; or due to systematic inter-generational inequity; or Maori
valuing whanau more than individual success; or other cultural factors, either good or bad. If
it's based mainly on your belief that brown people innately don't work as hard as white
people, then the true generalisation might be "My beliefs about Maori are shaped by my
biases". Notice that in each case we've moved from a Stereotype into another sort of
statement to seek truth.

Defining Soup:

When we use words, we assume that others are using them in the same way as us. If they
don't, we might give, or ask for a definition, so we can agree on the meaning of the word. But
it turns out defining words is much harder than it looks, and the more basic the word, the
harder it gets.

Consider the word 'soup'. Surely we know what we mean by 'soup'. And we would expect a
great deal of agreement between people, at least those with a common cultural background.
But it turned out that we don't agree. (The philosopher Stefano Gualeni has written several
articles on the nature of soup, if you want to know more).

Definitions:

The simplest way to define something is to create a list of criteria. By examining whether the
object meets these criteria, we get a simple Yes/No answer to whether it meets the
definition.

Ideal Definitions: Ideal definitions set strict criteria. They require necessary conditions
and sufficient conditions.
A necessary condition is a feature something needs to meet the definition.
For example, being warm-blooded is a necessary condition to be a primate. Some
warm-blooded animals are not primates, but it is necessary because no primate is
cold-blooded.

A sufficient condition is a feature that guarantees something meets the definition.

For example, being enrolled in an Architecture course at University is sufficient to count as a
student, even though there are also non-Architecture students.

Ideal definitions are often found in maths and in some sciences. For instance, we can define
a square as a rectangle with equal length sides. This definition lists two features: being a
rectangle and having all sides the same length. Both are necessary for something to count
as a square: take away one of the two and it's not a square. The two features are also jointly
sufficient conditions for something to count as a square: once something has them, there's
nothing else it needs.

A Ideal definition of soup might list the required ingredients,

cooking methods, serving styles, or social roles that soup plays; each of these criteria would
be needed for a thing to be soup, and collectively they would suffice to guarantee that the
thing was indeed soup.

This is the approach most students take. I've yet to see a list of necessary and sufficient
conditions that comes close to including all soups and excluding porridge and stew. Soup
doesn't seem to be Ideal objects.

Cluster Definitions:

Cluster Definitions: Cluster definitions have sufficient conditions, and near-necessary

conditions that allow for exceptions.

Cluster definitions are common in Science. Consider the definition of Life. In high school you
may have learned "MRS GREN" (Movement, Respiration, Sensitivity, Growth, Reproduction,
Excretion, and Nutrition). But some borderline cases such as viruses, archaea, and algae
lack movement or respiration. A more considered list of cluster properties for Life might be:
Homeostasis, Organization, Metabolism, Growth, Adaptation, Response to stimuli,
Reproduction. Most viruses have 5 of these 7, while ant nests and hurricanes have 3 or 4 –
while they are dynamic systems, they aren't alive.

Institutional Definitions: Institutional definitions are explicit sociological constructs, based

on the evaluation of experts affirmed by relevant institutions.
How could such a seemingly empty yet technical definition be of any use? Well, a
community decides who its leaders are, and the rules for leadership are defined by the
community leaders, with community support, based on the decisions of previous leaders.
The institution in this case is the knowledge or tikanga passed down from previous
community elders to their successors. And the experts are the elders who have the tikanga.
When a community loses its leaders suddenly (through war, disease, natural disaster, etc.), it
needs to re-invent a lot of these traditions and institutions, and often is in for a rocky period
until some wise elders re-establish the institutions and create new (or revive old) traditions. A
new person usually can't just roll into town and become a community leader without proving
themselves capable, and aware of existing traditions.

Many find institutional definitions frustrating, in that they do not allow us to pin down the
features of the thing we are defining. But they do appear to be how we actually do decide
membership of a group like artworks, scientists, or kaumātua (respected Māori elder). Not so
much for soup, however. There is no local Soup Board that decides what counts as soup
and what doesn't (except in some legal frameworks, for tax and health laws).

Exemplar Definitions: Exemplar definitions are a series of examples, all objects falling
under the definition are closer to these examples than to rival exemplars for other terms.

Like Cluster definitions, Exemplar definitions can allow for odd cases (e.g., gaspacho is an
exemplar of cold soup). Like Institutional definitions, they can vary by culture or even
individual, and be opaque (even to that individual). And it suits complex categories, like fruit
(e.g., bananas are really not like apple/orange/mango). Unfortunately, the only reasoning
that we can do with Exemplar definitions is analogical - that is, by looking at similarities and
differences. We'll return to analogies in a later module.

Psych: Confirmation Bias:

A psychological bias is a tendency to think in certain ways that can lead to systematic
deviations from a standard of rationality or good judgement. Also known as a cognitive
bias.

These biases include Confirmation Bias (seeing the world so as to confirm what we already
believe), the Availability Heuristic (remembering information because it's easy, rather than
relevant or accurate), the Framing Effect (preferring information when it's presented in one
form or context over another), and Anchoring & Adjustment (fixating on an arbitrary value,
rather than looking at the true value of an action or good). We can never completely
overcome these biases, but we can learn to recognise them and reduce their effects.

Biases tend to be part of our heuristics (patterns of thought that can lead us to make good or
good-enough decisions without using good reasons). For example, most of us judge a
person when we first meet them by their clothing. This is obviously unreliable, but its quick,
and it's sometimes useful.
Confirmation Bias:

"The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the
received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree
with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the
other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside
and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its
former conclusions may remain inviolate." - F. Bacon (1620) (on Confirmation Bias).

A confirmation bias is a psychological bias towards only seeking supporting evidence,

interpreting all evidence as supporting your views when they don't, or ignoring evidence that
doesn't.

A Reasoning Hueristic is a mental shortcut we use to simplify decision making.

The Availability Hueristic is judging the probability of an event by how easily examples
come to mind.

Just to make confirmation bias even more powerful, there is related evidence that people (a)
have trouble remembering information that disagrees with them; (b) will interpret some
evidence opposing their position as actually supporting their position; and (b) will often hold
their belief more strongly after being presented with opposing evidence.

Assumptions: World Views:

A worldview is a personal set of assumptions, defaults, heuristics, priorities, and values that
constrains and constructs everyone's critical thinking.

The Veil Of Ignorance:

To evaluate an argument we often need to look at it impartially – with no preference for one
group of people over another. Humans aren't naturally impartial. We (almost) always prefer
our own group, our own interests, our own beliefs over those of others. Whenever we come
across an argument, we always have some kind of pre-conceptions that influence us. We all
have a lot of ideas about how the world works and what is good or bad – even if we aren't
aware of it.

To become better Critical Thinkers we need to train ourselves to evaluate arguments in an

impartial manner. A classic way to do this is to try to imagine how a neutral third party would
evaluate the argument – someone who is a good critical thinker, but that has no particular
prejudices or preferences about the subject matter of the argument they are evaluating.

Imagine a person who is extremely good at critical thinking and also smart and kind, but has
amnesia, making them forget everything about who they are. They don't know their gender,
ethnicity or nationality; their political opinions, religious beliefs, or affiliations; their wealth,
skills, or friends; what kind of things they like or don't like; and their interests and hobbies.
They know nothing about themselves, which makes them impartial. Now imagine how this
person would evaluate the argument you are trying to evaluate.

The Veil of Ignorance originally came from an American philosopher named John Rawls,
who ironically used it to push his particular political worldview.

The Veil of Ignorance is a useful tool for evaluating arguments where you have some
preference for one conclusion over another, such as whether you should be allowed to
borrow your parents' car. But it's hard to learn, and to apply consistently, so the Veil of
Ignorance must be used together with the other tools for good critical thinking we teach in
this course – it is not a panacea.

Assumptions:

Do you assume that fairness is about having equal opportunity, or equal resources, or equal
outcomes, or equal assistance? Do you think that modern cultural institutions are tilted
heavily in favour of men? or women? the wealthy? or the lazy and malingering? Is racism
rare, or common but manageable, or ubiquitous and institutionalised? Which is more
important: happiness or efficiency; money or time; love or power? Are these even
comparable? Is God (or the gods) central to a fulfilling life, important in some areas, or a joke
imposed by the deluded? Does hard work matter for judging someone's success, or just the
end results? Are there many incompatible but important ways of understanding an issue, or
only one (yours)? Is expertise or experience more important? Which carries more weight:
your own perceptions, the latest theory, or historical precedents? Who should you trust:
almost everyone, most of your local community, your own family, or only those you can
control? Is prison primarily for justice, retribution, rehabilitation, isolation from society, or
some other purpose? Is the environment ours to plunder as we wish, something we hold in
stewardship, or something we share equally with all other life?

These are primarily questions of values, many of which you may not have thought a lot
about. Some have political connections; others moral or spiritual. They are part of your
worldview, and mean you will evaluate arguments differently from other people. If you don't
identify your assumptions, you'll be trapped inside your worldview, wondering why everyone
else is always "wrong".

Dispositions: Open Mindedness:

He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of
any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself,
employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgement to
foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has
decided, firmness and self-control to hold onto his deliberate decision. ... It is possible that
he might be guided in some good path, and kept out of harm's way, without any of these
things. But what will be his comparative worth as a human being? (John Stuart Mill)
A disposition is an underlying tendency to have an attitude; a part of your character or
personality.

Tim suggests that there are two types of reasons about dispositions that help you with
critical thinking – the instrumental, and the moral. But in this course, we will only consider
how they make you a better critical thinker. You might want to become a better critical thinker
as a step on the way to being a better person; but equally well, it is an essential step to
becoming a more effective supervillain.

Dispositions aren’t capacities:

To take another example, an irascible and impulsive person may have the capacity to control
their fits of anger, even though she may typically fail to do so. Contrast this with qualities
such as generosity, kindness, or patience. When we attribute these characteristics to people,
we do not merely mean that they could possibly act kindly, generously, or patiently. Rather,
we mean that, under the appropriate circumstances, the generous person will show
generosity, the patient person patience, and the kind person kindness.

These qualities are not mere capacities, but rather dispositions. Both the impulsive person
and the patient one have the capacity to keep calm. What the impulsive person lacks is the
disposition to do so when appropriate. Dispositions are things you do automatically when
appropriate, even in difficult circumstances.

We all have the potential to develop the dispositions we want. However, it takes practice and
a little self-awareness. The best approach is to decide on a couple of dispositions that you
want to develop, and work on them steadily for some times. After a couple of months or even
years, you might be happy with one disposition, and ready to improve another.

Open-mindedness is the disposition to consider different ideas, beliefs, points of view,

approaches, and assumptions.

Be open-minded, but not so much that your brains fall out.

However, it is possible to have a mind that is open in the wrong way. For instance, you might
be overly attracted to novelty, accepting new ideas simply because they are new. Or you
might be prepared to contemplate anything, no matter how incoherent it is. Or perhaps you
are prepared to consider only ideas that share some common assumption, such as being
open to all kinds of psychic phenomena, but not to psychological explanations of these
events. Or only open to ideas from science (we'll look at that one much later), or any idea
involving conspiracies (another topic we'll return to). Like all dispositions, there are several
ways you can have too much or too little Open-mindedness, or use it in the wrong way, at
the wrong time, or on the wrong areas.

(Do exercise: statements and arguments)

2. Old friends and relatives remembered Pat's last time in Quebec.

(This sentence has at least 48 different interpretations. How many can you find?)

3. Tim ate a salad with spinach from his garden for lunch on Tuesday.

(This sentence has at least 84 different interpretations. That's waay too many!)

4. Provide your own example of ambiguity or vagueness. Try to identify whether your
sentence is vague, lexically ambiguous, prosodically ambiguous, or syntactically ambiguous.
Please don't just copy examples from the internet. We can google too.

5. Why do you think all natural languages seem to have ambiguity and vagueness? Even
languages than have been constructed to be precise and unambiguous rapidly develop
ambiguity and vagueness. What does it say about human communication? Is this a feature
or a bug?

Learning Outcomes:

You need to be able to:

● Identify arguments and non-arguments, particularly explanations.

● Identify statements and non-statements
● Identify and resolve vagueness and ambiguity
● Identify different types of generalisations
● Identify confirmation bias
● Identify effects of your own worldview
● Reflect on your degree of open mindedness

Lecture 1 Groundwork:
Statement: True or False.
Tutorial Week 2:

Parts of an argument:

Premises, Conclusion indicator, Conclusion

You should take care of your health, eating vegetables is good for your health, so therefore
you should eat vegetables to take care of your health.

I saw a duck (ambiguous), I ran a long way (vagueness).

Game, governed by rules.