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Answer the question accompanying the following passages in light of the appropriate criteria for the kind of argument found in each passage

Philosophy

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Answer the question accompanying the following passages in light of the appropriate criteria for the kind of argument found in each passage.

1      Ann lander once asked the woman reader of her newspaper column to send her a card stating which they would prefer 'to be held close and treated tenderly, "or to have sex. Of the 90,000 people who replied, 72 per cent said they would prefer the former. She concluded that most women preferred being held close and treated tenderly to having sex. How strong is this inductive generalization?

 

2.      Fifty one per cent of the popular vote in the 2012 presidential election went to the Democratic candidate, presumably because voters wanted a Democratic government. Many people concluded from this that 51 per cent of all Americans wanted a Democratic government. Is this a reasonable conclusion?

 

5.      The following passage comes from a seventeenth- century author whose information about other planets in the solar system was much more limited than ours. Even so, what problem might one of his contemporaries have spotted in the argument? We may observe a very great similitude between this earth which we inhabit, and other planets, Saturn, Jupiter, mars, Venus, and mercury. They all revolve round the sun, as the earth does, although at different distance and in different periods. They borrow all their light from the sun as the earth does, several of them are known to revolve around their axis like the earth and, by that means, must have like succession of the day and night. Some of them have moons that serve to give them light in the absence of the sun, as our moon does to us. They are all, in their motions subject to the same law of gravitation, as the earth is. From all this similitude, it is not unreasonable to think that those planets may, like our earth. Be the habitation of various orders of living creatures. There is some probability in this conclusion from analogy.

 

6.      When medical treatment is unsuccessful and the patients dies or is permanently incapacitated, many people feel that the doctor must be guilty of negligence, and the patients or the family often launches a suit for medical malpractice. Is this reasonable, given that the reasoning that lies behind all treatment decisions must be inductive in nature?