Mill's Inductive reasoning
Method of Agreement
Mill's method of agreement identifies a cause of an event in terms of its sufficient condition. When using this method, one searches for a single factor that is common to multiple situations in which the same event occurred.
Mill says that, when two or more occurrences of the event under investigation have only one condition in common, then that condition is the cause of the event. (Mill, 2002)
More simply stated, Mill's method of agreement eliminates all but one common precursor. Mill's method of agreement requires that in all cases where a consequence has occurred, the antecedent condition must be present. This method isolates the supposed origin by listing all of the possible factors that can be considered possible causes, then discovering the one factor common to all cases, (Mill, 2002). For example: Suppose that after work four people go to the local deli. After eating lunch, everyone becomes very sick. As they return to......
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