I want to talk about a generalization inductive argument, which I made this week. As you have read people fall into generalization easily due to a sample that they are familiar to.
Premise: All Mexicans I know can cook authentic dishes.
Premise: I was invited to my friends house for dinner and his mom is 100 percent Mexican.
Conclusion: Since my friends mom is Mexican she therefore knew how to make authentic meals.
I simply took a preexisting stereotype and made a generalization about my friends mother. I felt really bad after I read this chapter because I feel into an argument that was not truly representative of a population, rather I generalized the people I knew (my sample) and thought that represented all Mexican people. I was wrong to think that because when dinner came out she had prepared food from the east coast like crab-cakes, New England chowder, and much more. I was surprised and asked how she knew how to make this food being that she lived here in California. As it turns out she grew up in the east coast and she grew up with this type of food. I would have generalized that she grew up eating typical Mexican foods but it turned out that my assumption was wrong. I enjoyed the food and I felt bad that I had generalized her. This is the generalization inductive argument I gave this week.
Heisenberg.
I think you bring up a good point in explaining how inductive arguments that are based on false premises can be troublesome. Although inductive arguments deal primarily in possibility, a false premise can still warp the conclusion into something untrue and ineffective. I too have faced times in my life in which my inductive reasoning was only based on generalizations of others and their habits. Therefore, I can see how you would have come to the conclusion that you did with your friend’s mom. If I had been in your place, I probably would have done the same. That’s the problem with making assumption, there’s always the chance that you could be wrong.
ReplyDeleteI would have thought that same thing. I personally think that everyone perceives others in a stereotypical way through our own experiences and in result we end up making assumptions and conclusions about others. This is a good example of inductive argument because it shows that you had an assumption about a person, therefore it must be true about that person. The assumption you made changed view of your friend’s mom, surprisingly serving you east coast food instead of what you thought Mexican food. In the end this is a good example of inductive argument, but you also learned that your friend can make east coast dishes.
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