PP201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Ad Hominem, Karl Benz, Tucker Carlson
Document Summary
L6: working on relevance: govier chapter 6. There are 3 kinds of relationships that a premise can have to a conclusion: a premise can be positively relevant to the conclusion. In this case the premise supports the conclusion. This is what we want from a good argument: a premise can be negatively relevant to the conclusion. In this case the premise disproves the conclusion. Recall that in a counterargument the aim is to formulate an argument that undermines the conclusion of the original argument: finally, a premise can be irrelevant to the conclusion. An irrelevant premise neither proves nor disproves the conclusion. It bears no interesting logical relationship to the conclusion. An irrelevant premise is often called a non sequitur, which is latin for does not follow because conclusions do not follow from irrelevant premises. Premises that are irrelevant to a conclusion may be obviously so or they may be much more subtle.
