Critical Thinking And Application In Management: A reflective journal.

In critical thinking, ARGUMENTS can divided into TWO types:

• Deductive arguments
• Inductive arguments

Okay, now we recap key definations
(1) Argument : Statement a claim (called the conclusion) is defended with reasons (premises).
(2) Deductive Argument : Conclusion is claimed to follow necessarily from the premises.
(3) Inductive Argument : Conclusion is claimed to follow probably from the premises.

The premise provides logically conclusive grounds for the truth of the conclusion.
The truth of the premises guarantees the truth of the conclusion.
It is impossible for the conclusion to be false if the premises are true!

Valid deductive, good argument
If a deductively valid argument has all true premises, we say that it is deductively sound
(good).

Example:
(1) All women who are alive breathe
Aznur is a woman and she is alive
Therefore, Aznur breathes
(2) All humans are mortal.
Aznur is a human.
Therefore, Aznur is mortal.

1. Jack is a boy.
2. All boy have a "y" chromosome.
   Hence, Jack have "y" chromosome.

There is NO way for you to say the conclusion is false given the premises are all plausible (believable).
* Remember : Good arguments must be valid and have all true premises .

Valid deductive, bad argument
If a deductively valid argument has one or more false premises, or both, we say that it is deductively unsound (bad).

Example:
All dogs bark
Ralph barks
Therefore, Ralph is a dog



Invalid deductive argument
Any deductive argument in which the conclusion does not follow necessarily from the premises is called invalid. It is logically possible for the premises to be true and the conclusion is false, then the argument is invalid.


Inductive argument
In inductive argument, we can measure the strength / degree of the argument. The inductive strength of the argument is a measure of the degree of support that is provided.
A strong inductive argument is one in which the conclusion follows probably from the premises;

If it is easy for the conclusion to be false when the premises are true, then we say that it is “very weak”. Arguments that are not valid can range from being “very strong” to being “very weak”.


THINGS TO REMEMBER ABOUT VALIDITY
Valid does not mean true. Valid means what the argument is well reasoned, that the pattern of reasoning is a logically reliable patterns reasoning, that the conclusion follow necessarily from the premises.

Thus, the basic deductive validity is not whether the premises are actually true, instead the question is this: If the argument's premises were true, would conclusion also have to be true?
 IF YES VALID
IF NO INVALID