Question

A) “Woven baskets characterized by a particular distinctive pattern have previously been found only in the immediate vicinity of the prehistoric village of Palea. However, archaeologists discovered such a "Palean" basket in Lithos, an ancient village across the Brim River from Palea. The Brim River is very deep and broad, and so the ancient Paleans could have crossed it only by boat, and no Palean boats have been found. Thus it follows that the so-called Palean baskets were not uniquely Palean.” I will give you a hint – this argument contains a sub-argument.

B) "We recommend that Monarch Books open a café in its store. Clearly, opening the café would attract more customers. Space could be made for the café by discontinuing the children's book section, which will probably become less popular given that the most recent national census indicated a significant decline in the percentage of the population under age ten. Opening a café will allow Monarch to attract more customers and better compete with Regal Books, which recently opened its own café."

Instructions;

1) Read them both, then explain, in your own words the process you used to distinguish them. which one is inductive and which one is deductive argument explain by differentiating each of them.

2) you must then discuss inductive generalizations and how you recognize an argument as inductive and then how you recognize the argument as a generalization.

3) To demonstrate that you know the importance of not making hasty generalizations and other critical thinking errors related to generalizing, you can then answer the prompt about times in your life when generalizing had an impact.

Answer 1

1) The first case, is the case of a deductive argument. In deductive reasoning, a conclusion is made deductively by applying general rules which hold over the entirety of a closed domain of discourse. The argument then narrows down until only the conclusion is left. The argument that, "Palean baskets are not uniquely Palean", was drawn after considering all other related points and then finally narrowing down to the said argument.

The second case is the case of an inductive argument. The premises of an inductive argument suggest the truth but do not ensure it. The argument that Monarch Books can open a cafe in its store has been given in the beginning itself. It is then backed by a number of supporting arguments which forms the premises of the conclusion.

2) An inductive generalization is an argument, that uses evidence about a limited number of things of a particular type to claim about all or most of the things of that particular type. It is basically regarding something to be universally true of a class on the basis of evidence regarding a sample.

3) In our day to day life we generally tend to make causal generalisations when we come to conclusions about people on the basis of certain factors. In order to not make hasty generalisations, we can use Mill's four methods argument which are : agreement, difference, concomitant variations and residues.