A few years ago near my birthday, my boyfriend suggested “Either I will buy you a gift card to your favorite store or I will take you shopping for something you want”. Either sounded great and I figured that I would end up with birthday present purchased by him. This is an example of a compound claim. As Esptein suggests a compound claim is two or more claims that have been linked together to make one and the claim’s truth-value is dependent on the claims. However, the contradictory of this claim is “Neither I will neither buy you a gift card nor will I take you shopping for something you want”. I wasn’t aware at the time that my boyfriend HATES to shop and shopping for something I want with him wasn’t fun. We’ve learned to comprise and I just go shopping with my mom and/or friends and he pays the bill. It’s really much more fun this way.
I have some friends who have been dating for quite some time. My friend’s girlfriend wants to get married and recently issued him an ultimatum. She said, “Either we get engaged in the next 6 months or I’m breaking up with you”. I didn’t realize at the time that this was considered a false dilemma, because as Epstein explains in Critical Thinking Chapter 6, “a false dilemma is a bad use of excluding possibilities where the “or” claim is false or implausible. Espstein suggests that we should consider other possibilities besides the ones offered.
I was aware that my friend had previously indicated that he is not ready to be married and his girlfriend had made previous threats to leave. In the example above, the other possibilities would be that; my friend might leave the relationship first or his girlfriend decides to stay in the relationship unengaged.
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