7.5: The Focus of this Chapter

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Jim Marteney
Los Angeles Valley College via ASCCC Open Educational Resources Initiative (OERI)

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Reasoning is what links your evidence to your contentions. Reasoning is the process of creating or generating conclusions from evidence or premises. This is the “logical” part of your argument. In this chapter, we looked at logic and found that:

There are two general categories of reasoning, Deductive and Inductive.
Deductive reasoning argues from the general rule to a specific conclusion and follows the rules of syllogisms.
Inductive reasoning moves from specifics to create a general rule.
We examined five types of Inductive reasoning. Each type has tests that we can make to insure the reasoning is sound.
Unsound reasoning is known as fallacies. Recognizing fallacies in an argument allows us to reject an appeal that is illogical.