| A | B |
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| Post Hoc Reasoning | the fallacy of inferring that c caused e simply from the fact that c preceded or accompanied e (the premise of a post hoc argument does not provide anything near sufficient reason to believe the conclusion) |
| Mill's method of agreement | looking for causes by examining occurrences of a phenomenon for common antecedents; an antecedent absent in any case is eliminated; if all but one antecedent is eliminated, it is identified as the cause. |
| Mill's method of difference | looking for causes by examining OCCURRENCES and NONOCCURRENCES of a phenomenon for different antecedents; an antecedent present when the phenomenon did not occur is eliminated; if all antecedents but one are eliminated, that one is identified as the cause. |
| Mill's methods | method of agreement, difference and concomitant variation |
| Causal induction (definition) | the argument in which, from the premise that c occurs when and only when e does in certain circumstances, the conclusion is drawn that c causes e in those circumstances; to be valid, c must be a possible cause of e, e must not be a possible cause of c, and there must me no confounding factors. |
| Causal induction (conditions of validity) | to be valid, c must be a possible cause of e, e must not be a possible cause of c, and there must me no confounding factors, and no undermining evidence. |
| Causal Induction (form) | c occurred when and only when e occurred (in b), therefore c caused e (in b) |
| Background conditions or circumstances | specific conditions in which events may or may not be correlated or causally related |
| Possible causes | a condition which, in light of previously obtained information, might have caused a given phenomenon |
| confounding factor | when c is inferred to cause e by causal induction, a confounding factor is another possible cause perfectly correlated with e that was not previously know to have caused e |
| Causal elimination (definition) | the argument in which, from the premise that c occurred without e, or e without c, the conclusion is drawn that c did not cause e |
| Causal Induction (form) | c occurred without e, or e occurred without c, therefore c did not cause e |
| Necessary conditions | conditions that a given phenomenon occurs only if they do |
| Sufficient conditions | conditions such that a given phenomenon occurs if they do |
| Correlational study | the use of Mill's methods with NATURALLY OCCURRING CASES |
| Experimental study | the use of mill's methods with ARTIFICIALLY CREATED CASES |
| Test group | the group in experimental studies in which the suspected cause is introduced |
| control group | the group in experimental studies in which the suspected cause is withheld |
| method of concomitant variation | looking for causes by examining occurrences of a phenomenon for antecedent conditions that vary with it; any antecedent not varying with the phenomenon is eliminated; if all antecedents but one are eliminated, that one is identified as the cause |
| Hypothetical Induction (definition) | the argument in which the conclusion is drawn that a hypothesis or theory is true from the premise that it would explain the data; to be valid, the hypothesis must provide the best explanation |
| Hypothetical Induction (form) | d is true, h would explain d, therefore h is true |
| Condition of validity | no competing hypothesis explains d as well as h |
| Affirming the consequent (form) | d is true, if h is true then d is true, therefore h is true (fallacy) |
| Hypothesis | any statement or set of statements considered as an explanation of a body of data |
| data | the given facts, represented by propositions accepted as having already been established |
| best explanation | an explanation that is better than all competing explanations; the quality of the explanation is determined by its consistency, completeness, direct support, comfirmability and simplicity |
| competing hypotheses | hypotheses that are incompatible with each other (or with the given hypothesis), so that at most one can be true |
| hypothetic-deductive method | testing hypotheses by deducing something new and then determining whether the prediction is correct; if the prediction is verified, the hypothesis is confirmed; otherwise, the hypothesis or auxiliary assumptions must be rejected or modified |
| auxiliary assumptions | previously established principles, subsidiary hypotheses, or other statements assumed to be true when deriving predictions from the hypothesis being tested |
| indirect reasoning | reasoning based on the consequences of assuming the conclusion to be true or false |
| Affirming the consequent (definition) | the fallacy of concluding that a statement is true merely from the premise that it implies something true |
| 5 criteria for evaluating explanations | simplicity, direct support, confimability, completeness and consistency |
| breadth of scope | how much of the data a theory explains |
| completeness | explaining all the data and stating all the explanatory factors |
| depth | how many of the explanatory factors a theory specifies |
| simplicity | how economical and uniform and explanation is |
| economy | postulating a small number of things and principes |
| uniformity | postulating a small amount of difference and variation |
| ockham's razor | a methodological principle stating that, other things equal, the simplest theory is better than more complex ones |
| direct support | support provided by direct reasoning |
| confirmability | the ability of a theory to explain know facts other than those the theory was designed to explain, or to predict the results of future investigations |
| ad hoc hypothesis | a hypothesis that is neither directly supported nor confirmable, and is therefore suspect |
