Tuesday, October 5, 2010
Compound Claims
One of the concepts I didn't know about but see all the time are compound claims. According to Epstein, a compound claim is claim made up of multiple claims but can be viewed as only one. A good example of a compound claim is "The Lakers are going to win the championship or the Heat the will win." This is a simple example because there are two claims, one claim is the "Lakers are going to win the championship" and the other claim is "the Heat will win". This claim is also an Alternative claim because they are separated by "or". Another claim I learned about is a contradictory claim. A contradictory claim is a claim that has an opposite truth value in any way. An example of a contradictory claim is if one claims "The Lakers are the best NBA team" and the contradictory is "The Lakers are the worst NBA Team". These two claims contradict each other because one claim says "best" and the other says "worst".
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I liked your examples for explaining compound claims. The chapter can be a bit overwhelming if you do not have good models to apply the concepts. Your example is especially clear for contradictory claims. By saying that an NBA team is the best and then saying it is the worst, you are negating the original claim. There doesn’t necessarily need to be a “not” in the statement for it to contradict the first statement. On the other hand, compound claims like those you discussed in the beginning of your post need a word like “or” to stress that either one or the other is going to happen, not both. Your explanation was very clear and helpful.
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