Outline

1. Determining What’s Case
   1. Articulate the Question
   2. Frame Competing Positions
   3. Formulate the Arguments and State the Evidence
      1. Evidence
      2. Arguments
   4. Evaluate the Arguments and Evidence
   5. Judge Epistemic Probabilities
2. Addenda
   1. Fact-Checking
   2. Alternative Ways of Knowing
   3. Epistemic Pitfalls
   4. Why People Have Irrational Beliefs
   5. Rationalization
   6. Argument Diagrams
      1. Capital Punishment
      2. News Media Bias

Determining What’s Case

1. Articulate the question
2. Frame competing positions on the question
3. Formulate the arguments and cite the evidence for and against the positions
4. Evaluate the arguments and evidential claims
5. Judge the epistemic probabilities of the positions
   • e.g. certain, beyond a reasonable doubt, likely, open question, doubtful, impossible

Articulate the Question

Articulate the question at issue

• For example
  • How should the worst crimes be punished?
  • Was Biden legitimately elected?
  • Has there been a rapid increase in Earth’s average surface temperature since the mid-20th century, due primarily to greenhouse gases injected into the atmosphere by human activity?
  • Should women in the US have a legal right to abortion?
  • What happens to you when you die?
  • What is best form of government?
  • What caused the Tunguska Event?
  • Is the United States systemically racist?
  • Was the US invasion of Iraq morally justified?

• Questions should be expressed rather than merely referred to
  • For example, “has there been a rapid increase in Earth’s average surface temperature since the mid-20th century, due primarily to greenhouse gases injected into the atmosphere by human activity” versus “the question of global warming.”

• It’s better to express a question in open-ended form, other things being equal.
  • Closed-ended Questions
    • Is, Will, Was, Does, Did, Do, ……
  • Open-ended Questions
    • Why, How, What, When, Where……
• The drawback of closed-ended questions is the risk of lumping different hypotheses together and conflating arguments.
• Examples
  • Beginning of Human Life
    • Does human life begin at conception?
    • When does human life begin?
  • Existence of God
    • Does God exist?
    • What supernatural beings exist?
  • Afterlife
    • Is there an afterlife?
    • What happens to you when you die?

Frame Competing Positions

Frame competing positions on the question

• For example
  • How should the worst crimes be punished?
    • Capital punishment
    • Life imprisonment with no possibility of parole
  • What happens to you when you die?
    • You cease to exist, never to be conscious again
    • You are reincarnated as a human, animal, or spirit
    • You assume a different mode existence while retaining your sense of self,
    • You merge with the Divine
  • Was the US invasion of Iraq morally justified?
    • Yes
    • No

Formulate the Arguments and State the Evidence

Formulate the arguments and state the evidence for and against the positions

Evidence

• Evidence for (or against) an hypothesis is an established fact that makes the hypothesis more (or less) probable than it would have been otherwise.

• For example,
  • That his family members testified he was at home when the robbery occurred is evidence that he Tom did not rob the bank.
  • The Cosmic  Microwave Background Radiation is strong evidence for the Big Bang Theory.

Arguments

• An argument is a piece of reasoning, from premises to a conclusion.

• Examples
  • Afterlife
    • Human beings lose consciousness when their brains are deprived of oxygen.
    • When human beings die their brains are permanently deprived of oxygen, since blood no longer flows to the brain.
    • Therefore, human beings permanently lose consciousness when they die.
  • Capital Punishment
    • Fallible governments should refrain from inflicting irreversible punishments
    • Capital punishment is irreversible.
    • Governments are fallible.
    • Therefore, governments should refrain from inflicting capital punishment.
  • Global Warming
    • Earth is warming.
    • The only plausible explanation of Earth’s warming is the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases.
    • The only plausible explanation of the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases is human activity.
    • Therefore, the only plausible explanation for the Earth’s warming is the increase in atmospheric greenhouse gases due to human activity.

View Argument Diagram for Capital Punishment

View Arguments

Evaluate the Arguments and Evidence

Evaluate the arguments and evidence for and against the positions

• Argument Evaluation Example
  • Argument
    • If Biden had won the 2020 presidential election, it’s unlikely that Trump would have won 5 times the number of counties.
    • But Trump won 2588 counties to Biden’s 511.
    • Therefore it’s unlikely Biden won the election.
  • First Flaw: The argument is deductively invalid
    • Refutation by Logical Analogy
      • If a bingo ball were randomly selected from a cage of 75 balls, it’s unlikely the ball would be number 25.
      • The ball selected was number 25.
      • Therefore it’s unlikely the ball was randomly selected from a cage of 75 balls.
  • Second Flaw: First premise is false.
    • It’s not unlikely that Trump would have won 5 times the number of counties since “Democrats tend to win in densely populated counties, while Republicans win more sparse, rural counties.”
      • Number of Counties Won in Presidential Election Doesn’t Determine Outcome factcheck.org

Judge Epistemic Probabilities

Judge the epistemic probabilities of the positions

• The epistemic probability of a position is the degree to which it’s supported by the arguments and evidence.
• David Hume, 1758
  • “In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of [probable] evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.”

Basic Epistemic Probabilities:

• Examples:
  • It’s certain that 2+2=4.
  • It’s beyond a reasonable doubt that Biden was legitimately elected president.
    • View Legitimacy of Biden’s Win
  • In all likelihood Oswald acted alone in assassinating President Kennedy.
  • Echinacea probably does not prevent colds.
  • It’s reasonable to believe that Jefferson fathered at least some of Sally Hemings’ children.
  • The Tunguska Event of 1908 was most likely caused by a meteor.
  • The idea that the CIA assassinated Kennedy is farfetched.
  • The nature of dark matter is an open question.
  • It’s impossible that Frederick Douglass founded the NAACP.  

View Epistemic Probability

Addenda

Fact-Checking

• Fact-checkers rate claims true, false, misleading, and unsupported by evaluating the arguments pro and con.

View Fact-Checking

Alternative Ways of Knowing

• The Claim
  • Some people know things other than by rational argument, e.g. through faith, intuition, divine revelation, or mystical experience.
• The Problem
  • Knowing something through faith, intuition, divine revelation, or mystical experience requires that such ways of knowing are reliable sources of truth.  But establishing reliability requires a rational argument.

Epistemic Pitfalls

Reasoning can go awry in many ways.

View Epistemic Pitfalls

Why People Have Irrational Beliefs

• They believe what they want or need to be true
• They jump to conclusions, knowing only part of the story.
• They live inside epistemic bubbles to protect deeply-held beliefs.
• They come under the sway of a “charismatic authority.”
• They are delusional.

View Why People Have Irrational Beliefs

Rationalization

A rationalization is an argument, developed after the fact, supporting an opinion a person already holds or an action they’ve already taken.

• Merriam-Webster
  • Rationalize means to bring into accord with reason or cause something to seem reasonable.

Argument Diagrams

Capital Punishment

View Capital Punishment

News Media Bias

View Bias