WGU D265 QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS 2023

Principle of Charity we should choose the reconstructed argument that gives the benefit of the doubt to the person presenting the argument confirmation bias a tendency to search for information that supports our preconceptions and to ignore or distort contradictory evidence Alief An automatic or habitual belief-like attitude which may or may not be in tension with the subject's explicit beliefs Heuristic a simple thinking strategy that often allows us to make judgments and solve problems efficiently; usually speedier but also more error-prone than algorithms anchoring bias a tendency to fixate on initial information, from which one then fails to adequately adjust for subsequent information availability bias items that are more readily available in memory are judged as having occurred more frequently ad hominem a fallacy that attacks the person rather than dealing with the real issue in dispute Genetic Fallacy Condemning an argument because of where it began, how it began, or who began it. straw man fallacy instead of dealing with the actual issue, it attacks a weaker version of argument red herring fallacy when a speaker introduces an irrelevant issue or piece of evidence to divert attention from the subject of the speech appeal to authority fallacy error of accepting a claim merely because an authority figure endorses it Appeal to Force Arguer threatens reader/listener ad populum This fallacy occurs when evidence boils down to "everybody's doing it, so it must be a good thing to do." Appeal to Consequences attempt to motivate belief with either the good consequences of believing or the bad consequences of disbelieving Equivocation Fallacy when a key word or phrase in an argument is used with more than one meaning. It is an illegitimate switching of the meaning of a term during the reasoning. Appeal to Ignorance A fallacy that uses an opponent's inability to disprove a conclusion as proof of the conclusion's correctness. slippery slope fallacy a logical fallacy that assumes once an action begins it will lead, undeterred, to an eventual and inevitable conclusion Texas Sharpshooter Fallacy Cherry-picking data clusters to suit an argument, or finding a pattern to fit a presumption. post hoc ergo propter hoc This fallacy is Latin for "after which therefore because of which," meaning that it is incorrect to always claim that something is a cause just because it happened earlier. One may loosely summarize this fallacy by saying that correlation does not imply causation. Hasty Generalization A fallacy in which a faulty conclusion is reached because of inadequate evidence. Black and White Fallacy A fallacy that occurs when the audience is only given two choices. Burden of Proof Fallacy Saying that the burden of proof lies not with the person making the claim, but with someone else to disprove. Inference A conclusion reached on the basis of evidence and reasoning deductive reasoning the process of applying a general statement to specific facts or situations inductive reasoning A type of logic in which generalizations are based on a large number of specific observations. valid argument a deductive argument that does in fact provide logically conclusive support for its conclusion sound argument a valid argument with true premises cogent argument an inductive argument that is strong and has all true premises