I was listening to my sister the other day talking to my nephew about drinking and driving. He wanted to attend a party with some friends, but my sister was concerned there would be drinking. She let him go to the party (with some restrictions and conditions). After he left I asked her about her obvious concerns.
Her response was something similar to “reasoning in a chain with a slippery slope”. She said that she suspected that my nephew’s friends might drink, if they drank then my nephew may be tempted to drink, if my nephew drinks he might not think clearly, if he is not thinking clearly then he will not make good decisions.
While her form of reasoning seems valid for any parent who is concerned about their child, the conditionals used on their own were weak and there was no conclusion. Or if A is true, then C is not true, because if my nephew’s friends drink then my nephew will not make good decisions. If she had started the argument with just “my nephew drinking”, and excluded "might" in the conditionals, the argument would be stronger and the conclusion of “his decisions” would be true.
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