General Claims and Valid / Invalid Form of General Claim

One thing I found important in chapter 8 was that when using general claims is any argument sometimes people will use contradictory words such as “all” and “some.” These words can be used to generalize or specify an argument. An example of these contradictory words is “All students in college do their homework.” This is a weak argument because “all” means everyone without any exceptions. Not everyone in college does their homework, there must be at least one student who doesn’t do their homework. “Some students in college do their homework,” is a better argument because that would mean at least one student in college does their homework.

Another thing that I found useful in chapter 8 was the diagrams used to help explain valid and invalid forms of general claim. When creating these diagrams there are only subcategories of larger topics which can be placed in a smaller circle within the bigger circle. An example that I found helpful that was given in the book was that “all dogs are mammals.” This was shown by “dogs” was placed into a circle and around that circle was another circle which was titled “things that bark.” The “things that bark” circle was placed into an even bigger circle titled “mammals.” The “dog” circle ends up within the “mammal” circles proving that dogs are mammals.