The Raven paradox includes three plausible premises, and derives from them a fairly implausible-looking conclusion about the confirmation of generalizations. The first premise is: “All ravens are black.” This premise is a hypothesis that takes a general form -- “all Fs are G”. The hypothesis “All ravens are black” is logically equivalent to the hypothesis “All non-black things are non-ravens.” Logical equivalence can be defined as: “P being logically equivalent to Q,” which means that P and Q are true or false in all the same situations and that each one is a valid argument for the other. In any instance, anything that confirms one confirms the other. Confirmation Theory of Instance says if while testing a hypothesis in the form “All Fs are G”, a particular F (for some instance) is discovered to also be G, then this evidence is enough (at least to some degree) to favor the hypothesis.
So, the hypothesis that “All non-black things are non-ravens” applies because it amounts to a hypothesis which also rules out one possibility: a non-black thing that is a raven. The hypotheses are equivalent to the same hypothesis of there being no non-black ravens (which verifies they must also therefore be equivalent to each other). Their equivalence only provides an incremental confirmation because E can only increase evidential support for H, but cannot provide absolute confirmation, and can only confirm H when E is a black
There are both similarities and differences between the Raven of Edger Allen Poe’s “The Raven” and the Raven from Native American mythology.
In Stephen Jay Gould’s essay, “Some close encounters of a mental kind,” Gould discussed about how certainty can be both blessing and dangerous. According to Gould, certainty can be blessing because it can provide warmth, comfort and secure. However, it can also be a danger because it can trick our mind with false information of what we see and remember in our mind. Gould also talked about the three levels of possible error in direct visual observation: misperception, retention and retrieval. According to Gould, our human mind is the greatest miracle of nature and the wicked of all frauds and tricksters mixed. To support his argument and statements, he used an example of an experiment that Elizabeth Loftus, a professor from University of California Irvine, did to her students and a personal experience of his childhood trip to the Devils Tower. I agree with Gould that sight and memory do not provide certainty because what we remember is not always true, our mind can be tricky and trick us into believing what we see/hear is real due to the three potential error of visual observation. Certainty is unreliable and tricky.
1) In this paper I argue that Corliss Lamont’s argument for freedom of choice is false because three of his eight arguments against the Determinist illusion argument are the same. These three arguments creates one actual argument, I will call them the master argument. Lamont also never provides the full Determinist explanation on the idea that the perception to choose is an illusion. This falsifies his argument and makes it fail as a whole because he is not giving the Determinist illusion argument proper justice.
so that it is possible to compare the style of each with but a little
The argument posited by Sider (S1) can be seen as an argument by elimination, where the premises if accepted, reject the possibility of S2 and S3. As such, the argument suffers from whether the re...
Premise one is a generalized argument, premise two is a specific argument, and the conclusion is the result of both premises. An explanation is due to be provided for how the argument posed obeys the two rules for a good argument. There are two rules for a good argument:
This structure shows the two initial premises which he argues, in detail, to be correct and in the case that they are correct a logically valid conclusion.
This instance then leads him to form the presupposed belief that what he sees is indeed a barn. Henry is correct in that his belief is true. Because he happens to be driving through the country, and an individual would not normally expect that some object in the distance that seems to be a barn while cruising through the country would be anything other than exactly what it appears to be. Most would agree that Henry is justified in his belief. Therefore, Henry has a justified true belief that what he sees is a barn. However, it is then revealed that the countryside in which Henry found the barn is scattered with façades of barns, which in simple terms are constructions that are meant to look like barns from a certain perspective (i.e., Henry’s), but are not genuinely barns. In actuality, the barn that Henry did happen to see was the only actual barn in the area, and it is by sheer coincidental luck that Henry happened to form his belief about that particular figure he perceived in the distance. The point of this example is to show the instance I previously stated above of the concept where some information is intended to mislead but just so happened to reveal its true
For the purposes of this debate, I take the sign of a poor argument to be that the negation of the premises are more plausible than their affirmations. With that in mind, kohai must demonstrate that the following premises are probably false:
The entire poem including the first stanza, as scanned here, is octametre with mostly trochaic feet and some iams. The use of a longer line enables the poem to be more of a narration of the evening's events. Also, it enables Poe to use internal rhymes as shown in bold. The internal rhyme occurs in the first and third lines of each stanza. As one reads the poem you begin to expect the next rhyme pushing you along. The external rhyme of the "or" sound in Lenore and nevermore at then end of each stanza imitates the haunting nature of the narrator's thoughts. The internal rhyme along with the same external rhyme repeated at the end of each stanza and other literary devices such as alliteration and assonance and give the poem a driving chant-like sound. The musicality of the rhyme also helps one to memorize the poem. This helps keep the poem in your head after you've finished reading it, lingering in your thoughts just as the narrator's thoughts are haunting him. The rhyme also helps to produce a humming beat in the readers mind driving him on steadily..
The structure of Gould’s argument is significant because he introduces the issue then supplies examples that he evaluates in great detail. After evaluating the three examples, he goes into disproving two of the examples and glorifying the other. By not simply going straight into arguing his point, Gould gives the audience a feeling of uncertainty. This uncertainty leads to asking questions and deep thinking as to where he was going with his argument, which is the main point of his argument to begin with. If he had given the audience his evaluation of the three examples at the beginning of the article it would have been less impactful due to the fact that the audience would have already
The problem facing induction has been a great challenge presented by epistemology to various philosophers, among them David Hume. Since the 18th century, he has raised the induction concern to various philosophers with the aim of finding a solution to the dilemma. Karl Popper, Chalmers among others philosophers played an imperative role in identifying a considerable solution to the induction problem. In philosophy, induction is defined as a form of reasoning that is derived from a particular observation of a phenomenon and draws conclusions from the phenomenon. For instance, it is certain that the sun will rise tomorrow in the morning simply because it has been observed that it rises every morning. This is an example of inductive reasoning among individuals. On the contrary, philosophers stipulate that inductive reasoning has its challenges that are based on the aspect of justification (Sellars, 2000, p. 64). This essay will aim at evaluating the problems of induction and establishing some possible solutions to the dilemma.
5. The coherence of a system of beliefs is decreased in proportion to the presence of unexplained anomalies in the believed content of the system.
Some of the objections, such as the ones made by Edmund Gettier, claim that three conditions are not nearly enough to justify a true belief, and that at the very least a fourth must be added. Gettier presents a very valid criticism of the JTB theory of knowledge, and his counter examples highlight flaws in the JTB theory that make it an inadequate theory of knowledge. Gettier claims takes an issue with the third part of the JTB theory, which states that proposition P must be true. Gettier makes the interesting observation that person S may very well be justified in believing in proposition P even if P is false
Moreover, as mentioned before, in my opinion, Strawson’s objection is not convincing enough to reduce the strength of Russell’s Theory of Definite Description.