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Critical Thinking 11th Edition: Premises and Conclusions

Essay Instructions:

Let's spend some time sorting out the premises and conclusions in some examples.
Choose one of the statements below. Your task is to identify the premise(s) and conclusion(s) of your example and to negotiate among yourselves if you disagree. Additionally, discuss whether the argument is valid. This exercise works best if students do not all choose the first example. If one example has been well discussed, choose a different example to discuss
Here are the examples: 
1.Chances are I'll be carded at JJ's, because Kera, Sherry, and Bobby were all carded there, and they all look as though they're about 30. 
2.Seventy percent of all freshmen at State College come from wealthy families; therefore, probably about the same percentage of all students at State College come from wealthy families. 
3.I am sure Marietta comes from a wealthy family. She told me her parents benefited from the cut in the capital gains tax. 
4.According to Nature magazine, today's thoroughbred racehorses do not run any faster than their grandparents did. But human Olympic runners are at least 20% faster than their counterparts of 50 years ago. Most likely, racehorses have reached their physical limits but humans have not. 
5."Let me demonstrate the principle by means of logic," the teacher said, holding up a bucket. "If this bucket has a hole in it, then it will leak. But it doesn't leak. Therefore, obviously, it doesn't have a hole in it." 
6.We shouldn't take a chance on this new candidate. She's from Alamo Polytech, and the last person we hired from there was rotten. 
What are the techniques for telling a good premise from a false one?
How can we be sure that our conclusions are sound? 
Reference should be: Critical Thinking 11th Edition by Brooke Noel Moore and Richard Parker2015 McGraw-Hill Higher Education chapter 2 

Essay Sample Content Preview:

Premises and Conclusions
Name
Course
Instructor
Date
“Seventy percent of all freshmen at State College come from wealthy families; therefore, probably about the same percentage of all students at State College come from wealthy families.”
A premise is an assertion that supports and leads to the conclusion in an argument (Moore & Parker, 2015). In this case, the premise is that “seventy percent of freshmen come from wealthy families at the State College,” while mostly probably a similar percentage of students from the institution are from wealthy families. Therefore, the conclusion is that a majority of the students are from wealthy families. However, this argument is not valid since it depends on the probability that the enrolment and choice of the other students was based on similar student profiles. The strength or weakness of an argument means that the link between the premise and the conclusion is based on a probability and there is no absolute certainty that wealthy students account for 70% of all students.
To differentiate the good and false premises then one needs to focus on the validity of the argument. Looking at the conclusion and then evaluating whether it follows from the premise makes it easier to understand where the premise and conclusions are either true or false. One can also determine whether the premise i...
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