Trent Lowder

Ways of Knowing
2/10/2015
Critical Analysis: HTTAWT: Ch. 5 Looking For Truth in Personal Experiences.
The Backside of Evidence
Premise: If a theory has confirming evidence, it has disconfirming evidence.
Premise: If most people are looking for confirming evidence, then they may be missing
disconfirming evidence.
Premise: If the disconfirming evidence is missed, the theory in question might not be able to
validated or discredited fully.
Main claim: Disconfirming evidence holds just as much value as confirming evidence.

This section of the fifth chapter of How To Think About Weird Things by Theodore
Schick and Lewis Vaughn is all about disconfirming evidence and confirmation bias. Although
the section briefly talks about confirmation bias, the strongest part of this excerpt has to do with
disconfirming evidence. Vaughn and Lewis make the argument that disconfirming evidence
holds just as much value as confirming evidence. The authors claim is supported by simple
and strong premises that hold enough truth that the main claim is a strong and valid one. The
chapter was scattered though, and did not stick to one topic long enough for it to retain much
substance, but the start to a main claim was evident at the beginning of the reading.
The first premise is that if a theory has confirming evidence, it also has disconfirming
evidence. This premise is strong, because if you can confirm a theory with evidence, you can
always disconfirm another theory.. For example, if you can confirm that a piece of paper is
white, you can disconfirm that it is black and there is evidence to support one theory and
evidence to deny the other theory. This premise is simple and solid, and doesnt get explicitly

stated in the reading, but is an obvious basis for the main claim. Without this premise, the claim
would not be possible because its the introduction of disconfirming evidence. The logic here is
strong, and clearly stated giving it good reason to be a good supporting premise.
The next premise given is: if most people are looking for confirming evidence then they
may be missing disconfirming evidence. This premise can be found right at the beginning of the
reading, when the authors use a card example on page 125. Vaughn and Lewis (2013) use a
situation where cards are places on a table with a letter on one side and a number on the other.
The letters and numbers are A, D, 4, and 7 and the subjects being observed were given the
hypothesis if a card has a vowel on one side, it has an even number on the other. The subjects
were then told to find the best way to prove this hypothesis. Most subjects went straight for the
cards with the A or the 4 on them. Going for the card with the A on it would be a good way of
going about it because if they flipped the card and found an even number, the hypothesis would
be proven and if they flipped it and found an odd number, it would refute the hypothesis. The
other, equally crucial way of going about proving or refuting the hypothesis would be by flipping
the 7 card though. The 4 card could lend support to the hypothesis, but could not refute it. If they
flipped the 7 card, however, and found a vowel, it would disprove the hypothesis. This example
clearly shows the second premise, because most people were looking for confirming evidence,
and completely missed the disconfirming evidence that was just as valid. The main claim the
author is trying to make is an inductive one, not holding absolute truth and not claiming to do so.
This premise is the slack that the claim needs to be inductive, because seeing the confirming
evidence does not always translate to ignoring or missing the disconfirming evidence.
Regardless, the authors did good work of using this premise as a glue for their main claim.

Likewise, the third premise draws equally well from this part of the chapter. This card
example shows that, when the subjects were flipping the A and 4 cards, the hypothesis could not
be completely refuted or confirmed. Flipping those two cards does not hold enough evidence to
confirm the hypothesis because if you were to flip a 7 card and find a vowel after flipping an A
card and finding a 4, the hypothesis would first have support but then be refuted. Another
example they used was a swan example (pg. 126). The authors urge the readers to consider the
hypothesis all swans are white. The authors then go on to state that each swan we observe
confirms that hypothesis, but until we have seen each and every single swan and see that they are
all white, we are not able to fully confirm or refute the hypothesis. Maybe one turns out to be
brown or black. No one can fully know until they have all been observed. The premise stated is,
in short, that if disconfirming evidence is missed, the theory in question can not be validated or
discredited in full. This premise shows no lack of valid reasoning. Unless both pieces of evidence
can be seen and dont contradict each other, a hypothesis or theory cant necessarily be proven.
The authors used simple and solid building blocks to complete their main claim. Without
the three premises stated above, the main claim would fall short and not hold as much value in
the reading. The examples provided and the explanation for those examples were key in
presenting the premises and, overall, creating a strong and well designed main claim.

Word Count: 916

Works Cited
Schick, T., & Lewis, V. (2013). Looking For Truth in Personal Experience. In How To
Think About Weird Things (Vol. 7, pp. 125-151). McGraw Hill Higher Education.