So, let's talk about this. Whistleblower or traitor?
Proof is a preponderance of evidence connected through reasoning to lead one to take a persuader's advice.
Direct Experience - the most relative and yet when it's need is dire, the most difficult to come by.
Dramatic or Vicarious Experience (Second -hand testimony, witness) - the power of the narrative.
- Narratives
- Testimony
- Anecdotal
“There’s abundant proof that God exists and is still performing miracles today. Just last week I read about a girl who was dying of cancer. Her whole family went to church and prayed for her, and she was cured."
- Participation and Demonstration
Types of Reasoning
Reasoning within an argument gives the rationale behind why one choice should be selected over another. Types of reasoning include:
- Abduction: the process of creating explanatory hypotheses.
- Analogical reasoning: relating things to novel other situations.
- Cause-and-effect reasoning: showing causes and resulting effect.
- Cause-to-effects reasoning: starting from the cause and going forward.
- Effects-to-cause reasoning: starting from the effect and working backward.
- Comparative reasoning: comparing one thing against another.
- Conditional reasoning: using if...then...
- Criteria reasoning: comparing against established criteria.
- Decompositional reasoning: understand the parts to understand the whole.
- Deductive reasoning: starting from the general rule and moving to specifics.
- Inductive reasoning: starting from specifics and deriving a general rule.
- Modal logic: arguing about necessity and possibility.
- Traditional logic: assuming premises are correct.
- Pros-vs-cons reasoning: using arguments both for and against a case.
- Set-based reasoning: based on categories and membership relationships.
- Systemic reasoning: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.
- Syllogistic reasoning: drawing conclusions from premises.
Abuses of Reasoning
Statistics
Testimony
