Question

Discuss some of the differences between causal arguments and both inductive generalizations and analogous arguments. Also discuss the difference between making a causal argument and establishing true causation, if there is any. Can you provide an example?

Answer 1

Inductive argument is one where the premises of the argument may provide evidence for its conclusion, however, cannot guarantee it. It tries to validate the conclusions made through the use of probability. A statement is likely to be true if there more than 50% probability of the statement being true. Thus they are more likely than unlikely to be true. There are 4 kinds of inductive arguments namely; inductive generalizations, analogical arguments, causal arguments and abductions.

Causal arguments are used to determine the causes that lead to an effect, thus aims at determining the causal relationship between variables. The causes can be divided into categories and they are based on the type of relationship it has with the effect. One is the necessary condition where the cause is needed to bring an effect and the other one is sufficient condition where a cause brings an effect on its own and brings this effect when every time the cause occurs. The goal of causal argument is to identify causes that are most likely to bring about an effect. One way to determine the causal relationship is to find the correlation between the cause and effect. Thus the cause should occur when the effect occurs and the cause should be absent when the effect does not occur. However, it is important to note that a high correlation does not guarantee causation.

In inductive generalizations, a claim is made about the entire population or group based on observations made only on few members of the group. Thus it makes empirical evidence based on a subset of the population. In order to make accurate inductive generalizations, one needs to keep in mind the following; must ensure that the premise is true, must identify and make proper connections between the premise and the conclusion and lastly, must determine the probability of the conclusion being true. Thus the sample size must be adequate whilst making a conclusion and one has to make sure that the sample is a true representative of the population. Example of inductive generalizations; all women are bad drivers.

Analogical arguments are used to make analogies between one object/idea with another object/idea. Tries to identify whether an object shares a feature with another object. One has to keep in mind that it is not similar to causal relationships. Here, it is not clear as to why the similarity with one object has a relationship with another, even though it is claimed that the relationship exists. For example; premise 1- killing neighbors and destroying property is immoral, premise 2- war means killing your neighbors and destroying their land which is immoral, thus one can conclude that war is immoral. Example; doctors diagnosing various illnesses is like how crime scenes are investigated.

Causation means that one event is 100% guaranteed to cause an effect to the other event. Thus one particular variable will cause an effect on the other variable and thus there will not be any third party variable that may have caused the effect. However, causal arguments do not guarantee a cause and effect relationship. It only claims that there is a high probability that a cause will most likely lead to an effect. A causal argument gives the premises in order to support the conclusion about the cause-effect relationship. Example, there is a relationship smoking cigarettes frequently and lung cancer