Simple non-inferential passage

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A simple non-inferential passage is a type of nonargument characterized by the lack of a claim that anything is being proved. [1] Simple non-inferential passages include warnings, pieces of advice, statements of belief or opinion, loosely associated statements, and reports. Simple non-inferential passages are nonarguments because while the statements involved may be premises, conclusions or both, the statements do not serve to infer a conclusion or support one another. This is distinct from a logical fallacy, which indicates an error in reasoning.

Contents

Types

Warnings

A warning is a type of simple non-inferential passage that serves to alert a person to any sort of potential danger. This can be as simple as a road sign indicating falling rock or a janitorial sign indicating a wet, slippery floor.

Piece of advice

A piece of advice is a type of simple non-inferential passage that recommends some future action or course of conduct. A mechanic recommending regular oil changes or a doctor recommending that a patient refrain from smoking are examples of pieces of advice.

Statements of belief or opinion

A statement of belief or opinion is a type of simple non-inferential passage containing an expression of belief or opinion lacking an inferential claim. In A concise introduction to logic, Hurley uses the following example to illustrate:

We believe that our company must develop and produce outstanding products that will perform a great service or fulfill a need for our customers. We believe that our business must be run at an adequate profit and that the services and products we offer must be better than those offered by competitors

A concise introduction to logic, 10th edition

Loosely associated statements

A loosely associated statement is a type of simple non-inferential passage wherein statements about a general subject are juxtaposed but make no inferential claim. [2] As a rhetorical device, loosely associated statements may be intended by the speaker to infer a claim or conclusion, but because they lack a coherent logical structure any such interpretation is subjective as loosely associated statements prove nothing and attempt no obvious conclusion. [3] Loosely associated statements can be said to serve no obvious purpose, such as illustration or explanation. [4]

Reports

A report is a type of simple non-inferential passage wherein the statements serve to convey knowledge.

Even though more of the world is immunized than ever before, many old diseases have proven quote resilient in the face of changing population and environmental conditions, especially in the developing world. New diseases, such as AIDS, have taken their toll in both the North and the South

Steven L. Spiedel, World politics in a new era

The above is considered a report because it informs the reader without making any sort of claim, ethical or otherwise. However, the statements being made could be seen as a set of premises, and with the addition of a conclusion it would be considered an argument.

Related Research Articles

In classical logic, disjunctive syllogism is a valid argument form which is a syllogism having a disjunctive statement for one of its premises.

In propositional logic, modus ponens, also known as modus ponendo ponens or implication elimination or affirming the antecedent, is a deductive argument form and rule of inference. It can be summarized as "P implies Q.P is true. Therefore Q must also be true."

Syllogism Type of logical argument that applies deductive reasoning

A syllogism is a kind of logical argument that applies deductive reasoning to arrive at a conclusion based on two propositions that are asserted or assumed to be true.

Deductive reasoning is the mental process of drawing deductive inferences. An inference is deductively valid if its conclusion follows logically from its premises, i.e. if it is impossible for the premises to be true and the conclusion to be false. For example, the inference from the premises "all men are mortal" and "Socrates is a man" to the conclusion "Socrates is mortal" is deductively valid. An argument is sound if it is valid and all its premises are true. Some theorists define deduction in terms of the intentions of the author: they have to intend for the premises to offer deductive support to the conclusion. With the help of this modification, it is possible to distinguish valid from invalid deductive reasoning: it is invalid if the author's belief about the deductive support is false, but even invalid deductive reasoning is a form of deductive reasoning.

A faulty generalization is an informal fallacy wherein a conclusion is drawn about all or many instances of a phenomenon on the basis of one or a few instances of that phenomenon. It is similar to a proof by example in mathematics. It is an example of jumping to conclusions. For example, one may generalize about all people or all members of a group, based on what one knows about just one or a few people:

Inductive reasoning is a method of reasoning in which a body of observations is synthesized to come up with a general principle. It consists of making broad generalizations based on specific observations. Inductive reasoning is distinct from deductive reasoning. If the premises are correct, the conclusion of a deductive argument is certain; in contrast, the truth of the conclusion of an inductive argument is probable, based upon the evidence given.

Informal fallacies are a type of incorrect argument in natural language. The source of the error is not just due to the form of the argument, as is the case for formal fallacies, but can also be due to their content and context. Fallacies, despite being incorrect, usually appear to be correct and thereby can seduce people into accepting and using them. These misleading appearances are often connected to various aspects of natural language, such as ambiguous or vague expressions, or the assumption of implicit premises instead of making them explicit.

In propositional logic, transposition is a valid rule of replacement that permits one to switch the antecedent with the consequent of a conditional statement in a logical proof if they are also both negated. It is the inference from the truth of "A implies B" to the truth of "Not-B implies not-A", and conversely. It is very closely related to the rule of inference modus tollens. It is the rule that

Logical form Form for logical arguments, obtained by abstracting from the subject matter of its content terms

In logic, logical form of a statement is a precisely-specified semantic version of that statement in a formal system. Informally, the logical form attempts to formalize a possibly ambiguous statement into a statement with a precise, unambiguous logical interpretation with respect to a formal system. In an ideal formal language, the meaning of a logical form can be determined unambiguously from syntax alone. Logical forms are semantic, not syntactic constructs; therefore, there may be more than one string that represents the same logical form in a given language.

Verbal reasoning is understanding and reasoning using concepts framed in words. It aims at evaluating ability to think constructively, rather than at simple fluency or vocabulary recognition.

In many philosophies of logic, statements are categorized into different logical qualities based on how they go about saying what they say. Doctrines of logical quality are an attempt to answer the question: "How many qualitatively different ways are there of saying something?" Aristotle answers, two: you can affirm something of something or deny something of something. Since Frege, the normal answer in the West, is only one, assertion, but what is said, the content of the claim, can vary. For Frege asserting the negation of a claim serves roughly the same role as denying a claim does in Aristotle. Other Western logicians such as Kant and Hegel answer, ultimately three; you can affirm, deny or make merely limiting affirmations, which transcend both affirmation and denial. In Indian logic, four logical qualities have been the norm, and Nagarjuna is sometimes interpreted as arguing for five.

Argument Attempt to persuade or to determine the truth of a conclusion

In logic and philosophy, an argument is a series of statements, called the premises, intended to determine the degree of truth of another statement, the conclusion. The logical form of an argument in a natural language can be represented in a symbolic formal language, and independently of natural language formally defined "arguments" can be made in math and computer science.

Informal logic

Informal logic encompasses the principles of logic and logical thought outside of a formal setting. However, perhaps because of the "informal" in the title, the precise definition of "informal logic" is a matter of some dispute. Ralph H. Johnson and J. Anthony Blair define informal logic as "a branch of logic whose task is to develop non-formal standards, criteria, procedures for the analysis, interpretation, evaluation, criticism and construction of argumentation." This definition reflects what had been implicit in their practice and what others were doing in their informal logic texts.

Philosophy of logic is the area of philosophy that studies the scope and nature of logic. It investigates the philosophical problems raised by logic, such as the presuppositions often implicitly at work in theories of logic and in their application. This involves questions about how logic is to be defined and how different logical systems relate to each other. It includes the study of the nature of the fundamental concepts used by logic and the relation of logic to other disciplines. According to a common characterization, philosophical logic is the part of the philosophy of logic that studies the application of logical methods to philosophical problems, often in the form of extended logical systems like modal logic. But other theorists draw the distinction between the philosophy of logic and philosophical logic differently or not at all. Metalogic is closely related to the philosophy of logic as the discipline investigating the properties of formal logical systems, like consistency and completeness.

In predicate logic, existential instantiation is a rule of inference which says that, given a formula of the form , one may infer for a new constant symbol c. The rule has the restrictions that the constant c introduced by the rule must be a new term that has not occurred earlier in the proof, and it also must not occur in the conclusion of the proof. It is also necessary that every instance of which is bound to must be uniformly replaced by c. This is implied by the notation , but its explicit statement is often left out of explanations.

In propositional logic, tautology is either of two commonly used rules of replacement. The rules are used to eliminate redundancy in disjunctions and conjunctions when they occur in logical proofs. They are:

A loosely associated statement is a type of simple non-inferential passage wherein statements about a general subject are juxtaposed but make no inferential claim. As a rhetorical device, loosely associated statements may be intended by the speaker to infer a claim or conclusion, but because they lack a coherent logical structure any such interpretation is subjective as loosely associated statements prove nothing and attempt no obvious conclusion. Loosely associated statements can be said to serve no obvious purpose, such as illustration or explanation.

Logic Study of correct reasoning

Logic is the study of correct reasoning or good arguments. It is often defined in a more narrow sense as the science of deductively valid inferences or of logical truths. In this sense, it is equivalent to formal logic and constitutes a formal science investigating how conclusions follow from premises in a topic-neutral way or which propositions are true only in virtue of the logical vocabulary they contain. When used as a countable noun, the term "a logic" refers to a logical formal system. Formal logic contrasts with informal logic, which is also part of logic when understood in the widest sense. There is no general agreement on how the two are to be distinguished. One prominent approach associates their difference with the study of arguments expressed in formal or informal languages. Another characterizes informal logic as the study of ampliative inferences, in contrast to the deductive inferences studied by formal logic. But it is also common to link their difference to the distinction between formal and informal fallacies.

References

  1. Hurley, Patrick J. (2008). A Concise Introduction to Logic 10th ed. Thompson Wadsworth. p. 16. ISBN   0-495-50383-5.
  2. Hurley, Patrick J. (2008). A Concise Introduction to Logic 10th ed. Thompson Wadsworth. p. 17. ISBN   0-495-50383-5.
  3. "The logic of arguments" . Retrieved April 28, 2012.
  4. "NONargument - Loosely associated statements" . Retrieved April 28, 2012.