What I enjoyed most about the Mission Critical article was that it used an everyday scenario as an counter example of inductive reasoning. Unfortunately, the further I read in to the article, the more confused and less sure about this topic I became. One thing I can say that helped me out a little bit was the fact that I read over it again and again until it finally clicked. I feel like I can almost compare this to the Domino Effect: one thing causes another thing to happen, that causes another thing to happen and so on. However, the only exception is that the inductive reasoning had to be based on an observation or experience. The website provides two rules of thumb in dealing with causation that can be used as a guide to help analyze and evaluate causal arguments. The rules are listed below:
1. The cause must precede the event in time. On one hand, arguments that have the effect before the cause are examples of the relatively rare fallacy of reverse causation. One the other, arguments whose only proof of causation is that the effect followed the cause are examples of fallacious post hoc reasoning.
2. Even a strong correlation is insufficient to prove causation. Other possible explanations for such a strong correlation include coincidence, reversed causation, and missing something that is the cause of both the original "cause" and its purported "effect."
http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/itl/graphics/induc/causal.html
Yeah totally. That mission critical website was awesome. I had a few concepts that I could not understand. I read through a few of those articles on that site and it helped me understand them better. The Domino Effect is interesting and true. Everything results as a consequence for an action. Like you stated, "The cause must precede the event in time." Something that helped me on that website was the article for the causal claims. I had a really hard time understanding causal claims after reading from the book. But the Mission Critical site helped define causal claims better.
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