Chapter 8 discusses the topic of General Claims, in which Epstein explains the importance of “knowing how to reason using general claims that assert something in a general way” (p 159). What I am finding is that I have read examples of these claims in various literature, but was never able to correlate the appropriate critical thinking concept, until now.
The first concept I found interesting was the use of All and Some. All, as defined by Epstein, “means ‘Every single one, no exceptions’. Sometimes all meant as ‘Every single one, and there is at least one”(p 160). While Some, again defined by Epstein, “means ‘ At least one’. Sometimes some is meant as ‘At least one, but not all”. Epstein better defines some as “purposely vague” and used “when we can’t or don’t want to be precise” (p 160).
When writing any essay for school I tend to use my thesaurus when I get stuck for a substitute word or a more appropriate word for the situation. Epstein states “There are lots of different ways to say “all” in English”, and listed an example of ‘Every’. Here are a few more I found using my thesaurus: every one, each and every one, every one of, and every single one. Additional alternatives for ‘Some’ are: a number of, a quantity of, a few, a little, several and various.
The second concept I found interesting was the use of No and Only. No, as defined by Epstein, “means ‘not even one’ ‘every single one is not’. Only is defined using characters to describe the sentence structure as “Only S as P” means “All P are S”.
Example for No: No children are allowed in the bar. = Not even one child is allowed in the bar. However in the example that Epstein provided, shows us the Only does not mean All. Here is my example using a substitute word. Only 40 of the 50 people invited to the party responded. Ryland was invited to the party. So Ryland responded. This is not a valid argument, because assumes that Ryland was part of the ‘only 40’ group and not the 10 who didn’t respond.
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