what are the differnt forms of reasoning? Give some samples and explanation of each.

-- Michael F. Caluba (mike_fcaluba83@yahoo.com), August 06, 2003

Answers

Sounds like a question straight from an examination. Best to read your textbook.

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), August 06, 2003.

Reasoning has traditionally been divided into deduction and induction. In deduction the sturcture of the arguments is such that the truth of the conclusion is guaranteed by the truth of the premises: e.g., All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is mortal. In induction the truth of the premises is said to increase the probability of the truth of the conclusion: e.g., There is one black raven. There is a second black raven.... There is a ninety-third black raven. Therefore all ravens are black. (David Hume and Karl Popper notoriously rejected this sort of argument entirely.) In the 19th century Charles Sanders Peirce added "abduction," the coming up with a hypothesis to cover a given set of data. Psychologists have also studied things like "practical reason," "analogical reason," "naive scientific reason"... these are really the names of particular research programs rather than well-defined "kinds" of reasoning though.

-- Christopher Green (cgreen@chass.utoronto.ca), August 06, 2003.