Chapter 8

One major concept that I found interesting in Chapter 8 was generalities. According to Epstein, there are two types of generalities: precise and vague generalities. Precise generalities are exact and to the point; there is no guessing made in the statement. However, in order to be a precise generality, not one part of the statement can be false; the entire thing has to be true. Vague generalities are generalizations that do not indicate the number; instead they use words such as all, almost, many, most, and much more. Generalizations using these particular words would be considered vague generalities because they do not specifically state exactly how many and it also leaves individuals to analyze whether the statement is true or false. Although the statement may be vague, it gives individuals a good reason to believe whether or not each statement is true or false. I thought these two concepts were interesting because I personally use a lot of precise generalizations, however, I never thought that they could have the possibility of being false. After reading this, can now see my mistakes and can communicate more clearly than before.