Assessment Task 3: Make-up test

Assessment Task 3: Make-up test

HAA002 Foundations of Critical Thinking

The test below can be used if you didn’t pass AT3, or if you have been granted a very late extension. It is to be submitted through the ‘AT3 Make-up test’ folder within Assignments by 4.30pm Friday 18 October 2019.

For each of the four arguments below, do the following:

Set them out in standard form;
When you do that make any hidden premises clear;
Identify the kind of argument;
(1) If it is a deductive argument, assess whether or not it is valid.
(2) If it is an inductive argument, say whether the premises support the conclusion strongly or only weakly and why.

(3) If it is another kind of argument, identify the kind and evaluate the argument by the standards for that kind of argument.

Below are two examples of what we are looking for.

[place-order]

Example 1

Now if Christ is preached as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised. … But in fact Christ has been raised, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. (I Corinthians 15: 12, 13 and 20)

Sample answer

If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised from the dead.
But Christ has been raised from the dead.

Therefore, there is resurrection from the dead.

There are no important unstated premises. This is a deductive argument. It is valid.

Example 2

Just as the Bush administration launched the invasion of Iraq without making sure that they had enough troops to deal with the next stage of the operation (the occupation and reconstruction), Obama is withdrawing without thinking about the numbers of troops required to protect State Department employees and others tasked with continuing the reconstruction of Iraq beyond 2011. Assessment Task 3: Make-up test

Sample answer

The decision by Bush to invade Iraq resembles Obama’s decision about withdrawing from Iraq with respect to not thinking about whether there will be enough troops for the next stage of the mission.
Bush’s decision was a bad decision. [Unstated premise]

So, probably, Obama’s decision is a bad decision too.

Premise 2 is an important, unstated premise. This is an analogical argument, but the premise doesn’t support the conclusion very strongly since it pays attention to only one similarity between the two decisions and, in addition, it ignores a relevant difference: invading is very different from withdrawing.

For each of the four arguments below, do the following:

Set them out in standard form;
When you do that make any hidden premises clear;
Identify the kind of argument;
(1) If it is a deductive argument, assess whether or not it is valid.
(2) If it is an inductive argument, say whether the premises support the conclusion strongly or only weakly and why.

(3) If it is another kind of argument, identify the kind and evaluate the argument by the standards for that kind of argument.

Below are two examples of what we are looking for.

Example 1

Sample answer

If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised from the dead.
But Christ has been raised from the dead.

Therefore, there is resurrection from the dead.

There are no important unstated premises. This is a deductive argument. It is valid.

Example 2

Sample answer

The decision by Bush to invade Iraq resembles Obama’s decision about withdrawing from Iraq with respect to not thinking about whether there will be enough troops for the next stage of the mission.
Bush’s decision was a bad decision. [Unstated premise]

So, probably, Obama’s decision is a bad decision too.

The Arguments

Question 1

…the evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.

(John Stuart Mill, On Liberty)

Your Answer:

Question 2

About a century ago, we discovered that planetary orbits are not stable in four or more dimensions, so if there were more than three space dimensions, planets would not orbit a sun long enough for life to originate. And in one or two space dimensions, neither blood flow nor large numbers of neuron connections can exist. Thus, interesting life can exist only in three dimensions.

(Gordon Kane, “Anthropic Questions,” Phi Kappa Phi Journal, Fall 2002)

Your Answer:

Question 3

[Sherlock Holmes is speaking to Dr Watson] “I knew you came from Afghanistan. … The train of reasoning ran, ‘Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and that is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.’ The whole train of thought did not occupy a second. I then remarked that you came from Afghanistan, and you were astonished.” Assessment Task 3: Make-up test

(Arthur Conan Doyle, A Study in Scarlet)

Your Answer:

[place-order-2]

Question 4

Is a good entrepreneur a risk taker? The economist Scott Shane, in his book “The Illusions of Entrepreneurship,” agrees that many entrepreneurs take plenty of risks—but those are generally the failed entrepreneurs, not the success stories. … New-business success is clearly correlated with the size of initial capitalization. But failed entrepreneurs tend to be wildly undercapitalized. The data show that organizing as a corporation is best. But failed entrepreneurs tend to organize as sole proprietorships. Writing a business plan is a must; failed entrepreneurs rarely take that step. Taking over an existing business is always the best bet; failed entrepreneurs prefer to start from scratch. Ninety per cent of the fastest-growing companies in the country sell to other businesses; failed entrepreneurs usually try selling to consumers, and, rather than serving customers that other businesses have missed, they chase the same people as their competitors do.

(Malcolm Gladwell, ‘The Sure Thing’, New Yorker, January 18 2010)