Lecture: 04

Outlines of the Lecture:

 Types of Arguments,
 Deductive and Inductive
 Different Logic and norms to access
Different Types of Arguments
 Different Types of Arguments
• 1. Deductive
• 2. Inductive and 3.Abductive
• Deductive Arguments: By nature their premises are suppose to
provide conclusive support to the conclusion.
• The truth of the conclusion is suppose to be guaranteed by the
truth of the premises.
• When the premises of the deductive argument fail to do that, it
makes the deductive argument ‘bad’.
• Example: 1. All men are mortal
2. Socrates is a man
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Therefore, Socrates is mortal.
 It is a good deductive arguments.
 Cont..

• Inductive Arguments: By nature, inductive arguments are such that their

premises can only provide partial, probabilistic support to the conclusion.
• The conclusion is not contained within the premises. It is always outside the
premises base.
• From premises to the conclusion. There is always jump from the known to the
unknown: Inductive Leap.
• Example:
Crow is black
Crow is black
Crow is black
______________________________________
Therefore, All crows are black
Or Therefore Crown+1 will be black
• NOTE: it is not that bad deductive arguments are inductive arguments. These
two types of arguments different and they treat different sets of criteria…i.e.,
Apple <> Orange
 Cont..
• But, sometimes, same conclusion may be established by a
deductive and an inductive argument.
• Example: the sun will rise tomorrow.
• Deductive argument:
1. the Earth’s orbital motion
2. the Earth rotation on its own axis
3. sun’s position
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4. Therefore, after 24 hours from a position of Earth, the sun will appear to rise.
Inductive arguments:
Example : 1. For years sun has been seen to rise in the morning (inductive based).
_____________________________________
Therefore, the sun will rise tomorrow.

Note : Even the best of the inductive argument can only provide partial, probabilistic support to the
conclusion.
 Cont..
• Different norms for different types of
arguments:
• For determining whether deductive arguments
are good or bad, the major criteria are:
1. Validity/ Invalidity
2. Soundness/ Unsoundness
• For Inductive argument:
• 1.Probablistically Strong/ Probabilistically Weak
 Cont..
• Inductive arguments are probabilistic logic.
• For inductive, probabilistic arguments:
Bayes Networks
 Bayes Networks are direct acyclic graphs (DAGs) where each node
represents random variable.
 The intuitive meaning of an arrow from a parent to a child is that the
parent directly influences the child.
 These influences are qualified by conditional probabilities.
Visit to Asia (A) History of Smoking (S)

Lung Cancer
Tuberculosis
(L)?
(T) ?
TB or Cancer (O)?
Bronchitis?
X –ray Positive?
 Abductive Argument
• Abductive arguments/reasoning typically begins with an incomplete
set of observations and process to the likeliest possible explanation
for the set.

• Or, it yields the kind of daily decision-making that does it best with
the information at hand, which often is incomplete. i.e., A medical
diagnosis is an application of abductive reasoning: given this set of
symptoms, what is the diagnosis that would be best explain most of
them. (hypothesis based reasoning)

• Example: You wake up in the morning, and you head downstairs. In

the kitchen there is a plate on the table, and a bowl with a little milk
left in it. Therefore, you abduce that your housemate awoke before
you, had breakfast, and left.