课堂笔记 《Think Again:How to Reason and Argue》

本次课程目标，听课不用字幕，记录不用中文。

Week1 How to Spot an Argument

• L1-1 Why Arguments Matter?
  • This video clips mainly contains the course’s syllabus.
  • Why arguments Matter? for …
    • We need to distinguish which part is arguments and decide to trust it or not in our daily life.
• L1-2 What is a argument?
  • An argument is not …
    • interrupt other: never can learn the good ideas by our opposite
    • abuse: lose friendship
    • complaining: only give the emotion and situation
    • contradiction: where is the reason
  • An argument is …
    • a series of sentenses, statements, or propositions
    • where some are the premises
    • and one is the conclusion
    • where the promises are intended to give the reason for the conclusion.
  • An argument can be
    • establish a proposition
    • or just explain a existed propostion to know the WHYs
• L1-3 Completed Lecture 1-3 - What are Arguments Used For? Justification
  • persuading vs justifying
    • persuading: make people believe or not believe sth
    • justifying: show a (good) reason
  • persuading doesn’t need good reasons——treat other
• L1-4 Strong Arguments Don’t Always Persuade Everyone
  • justify an argument is not convince other, but to make people understand.
  • Thus, we must show good reasons.
• L1-5 What Else are Arguments Used For? Explanation
  • explanation
    • both assume the reason is true
    • just help to understand WHY
  • type of explanation
    • causual
    • teleological
    • formal
    • material
  • explanation: a attempt to fit a particular phenonmenon into a general pattern in order to increase understanding and remove surprise.
  • but explanation is not generalization or prediction.
• L1-6 What are Arguments Made Of? Language
  • language is
    • important
    • conventional
    • representational
    • social
  • “call a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.” by Lincoln
• L1-7 Meaning
  • referntial or descriptive view of language
  • “Meaning is use” by Ludwig Wittgenstein
  • three level of meaning
    • Linguisitc
    • Speech
    • Conversational
• L1-8 Linguistic Acts
  • “My dog has fleas” vs “Dog fleas my has”
  • “Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo Buffalo”
• L1-9 Speech Acts
  • The Thereby Test: If I say “I ____“ in the appropriate cirumstances, then I thereby _____.
  • “annouce you husband and wife”, pass the test
  • Justifying and explaining are speech acts.
• L1-10 Conversational Acts
  • Speech vs Conversational
    • question vs answer
    • apology vs forgiveness
    • promise vs reliance

Week2 How to Untangle an Argument

• argument maker
  • conclusion maker: so, therefor, thus …
  • reason maker: because, for, as …
• standard form
  • 
• a problem for arguments——sketical regress
  • 
  • three type of (bad) solutions to the sketical regress problem
    • start with a premise that is unjustified
    • use an argument with a circular structure
    • use a infinite chain of arguments
  • three type of (good) tricks with the sketical regress——to find shared assumptions
    • assure the audience
    • discount objections
    • guard your claim
• assuring
  • three kinds
    • authoritative: the surgeon general has shown …
    • reflextive: I believe that …
    • abusive: Nobody but a fool would think that …
  • (bad) tricks
    • citations of untrustworthy authorities
    • distraction
• guarding
  • making your premises weaker so that it is harder to object to them
  • three kinds
    • extent: all, most, many, some
    • probability: certain, probable, might
    • mental: know, believe, tend to believe
• discounting
  • but, however, still …
  • functions
    • They assert two claims
    • They constrast the two claims
    • They emphasize one of the claims
  • (bad) tricks
    • The arguer discounts easy objections to make people overlook the more difficult objections. (联系点：锚定效应)
    • Arguer can combine the trick of discounting straw people with misuses of guarding and assuring.
• evaluation
  • what makes the words evalutive is their connection to what is good or bad
  • expressing preferences ≠ make an evaluation
  • general vs specific
    • general: good or bad, ought or ought not …
    • specific: beatiful or ugly, curel or kind …
• close analysis
  • 

由于发现了更好的英文课堂笔记，这里开始不做逐字稿了（也算一种偷懒，最近跟课太多了，忙不过来了）
英文课堂笔记见这里：https://share.coursera.org/wiki/index.php/ThinkAgain-002:Main
上述需要登录，笔者转存为了pdf，见这里：http://pan.baidu.com/s/1eQcQtQM