Free The Ultimate South Park and Philosophy by Kevin S. Decker Robert Arp William Irwin Page A

people for even minor offenses (like being cheated out of $16.12)
   
Premise 2
:
And since we (the boys) commit offenses against Cartman, and he may retaliate like he did with Scott
   
Conclusion
:
Therefore, we’d better not piss Cartman off in the future, for fear of retaliation.
    Again, even if both of the premises are true, it doesn’t follow with absolute certainty that the boys had better not anger Cartman in the future; they may be willing to take the risk. As it turns out, the boys piss off Cartman many times without the kind of retaliation inflicted on poor Scott Tenorman. So, the conclusion is at worst false, and at best, not well supported.
The Good, the Bad, and … Well, That’s It Really
    But our goal isn’t just to slap together arguments. We need to form
good arguments
, and we need to evaluate the arguments of others. There are good arguments and there are bad arguments in both the deductive and inductive realms. A good argument, in either realm, is one in which the conclusion logically follows from the premises and the premises of which are all true. If either one of these conditions is absent, then the argument “sucks” and should be rejected.
    When the conclusion of a deductive argument follows from premises, we call this argument
valid
(it’s
invalid
if the conclusion doesn’t follow with certainty). When an argument is
valid
and
all
the premises are true, such a good argument is said to be
sound
. The conclusion absolutely, positively, without a doubt, is true, and this is a good thing! In the case of an inductive argument, if its conclusion is
very likely
to follow from its premises, this means that the argument is
strong
(or
weak
if the conclusion very likely doesn’t follow). When an inductive argument is
strong
and
all
the premises are true, such a good argument is said to be
cogent
. The conclusion most likely or probably is true, and this is a good thing too!
    So, as rational critical thinkers, we always have to go through this two-step procedure of checking our own arguments and the arguments of others to see if (1) the conclusion follows from the premises (is the argument deductively valid or inductively strong?) and (2) all of the premises are true. If the argument fails the (1) or (2) test (or both), then we should reject it. This also means we’re rejecting the argument’s conclusion as either absolutely false or probably false. For example, Cartman’s argument for pooling together the boys’ teeth probably is a bad one because Premise 2 (“If they get money from the Tooth Fairy, then they can buy a Sega Dreamcast”) seems false. Even if they get money from the Tooth Fairy, they won’t be able to buy a Sega Dreamcast, because the Tooth Fairy only gave Cartman two dollars. Two dollars times four boys is only eight dollars and, even if we’re talking about a used Dreamcast, that’s not enough. So, in the case of this particular deductive argument, the conclusion “If the boys combine their teeth, then they can get a Sega Dreamcast” is false. On the other hand, the Towelie argument was a good one. It was true that the few times they mentioned towel-related things, Towelie showed up. Given this, they had a strong case for the conclusion that he’d show up again, asking, of course, “Wanna get high?”
“If Chewbacca Lives on Endor, You Must Acquit”
    At times, checking to see if conclusions follow from premises and if premises are true can be difficult. Some words are ambiguous, having multiple meanings. And some people try to get us to believe the truth of claims in order to deceive us, sell us something, get us to vote for them, or share their ideology. People will even try to convince us a conclusion follows from a premise or premises when it really doesn’t. Just think about what the cartoon Johnny Cochran does with the Chewbacca Defense (a satire of the real-life Cochran’s closing arguments in the O.J. Simpson case) in the episode “Chef Aid.”
    In the