Chapter 15 of our critical thinking book covers the topic of Cause and Effect. The concept of Cause and Effect is described very throughly by Epstein but it also talks a lot about topics that are related. This was a very long chapter, but it is not only makes clear what cause and effect is, but it also presents other concepts such as overlooking a common cause. This concept was a little confusing to understand, the concept was presented with "night causes day" the common cause is said to be "it was night" and "it is now day" it took me a while to grasp the idea of what this could mean or what example to present with something i have heard recently or apply this idea to a general statement but i was able to come up with the following:
person 1: She didn't eat because she was not hungry.
person 2: She didn't eat because she does not eat pork.
this puts person 1 in doubt of the claim they state without making the claim false.
I liked your example of how two people could claim things that put the other person’s claim in doubt, but neither really have to be false based on the other person. The example that the book gives us is very broad and in my opinion not a good example because night does not actually cause day. However, your example confused me a little too because I couldn’t tell which person was stating the commonly known cause. I suppose it could go either way. Anyways, I agree with you in that this was a difficult part of the chapter to understand and your post helped clear it up for me.
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