Identify the purported cause the purported effect as well as

Identify the purported cause, the purported effect, as well as the method used to support the conclusion: agreement, difference, joint method, method of concomitant variations, or residues.

(a) After reading his March 23 diatribe, it is clear to me that Review-Journal columnist Vin Suprynowicz has not yet learned the obvious: the more handguns a country has in circulation, the more handgun deaths that country is going to get -- not less.

The United States has some 200 million handguns in circulation, and the highest handgun death rate (per 100,000 population) of any industrialized nation, with the possible exception of Brazil. Japan has the fewest number of handguns in circulation and the lowest handgun death rate per 100,000.

If all these guns make us safer, we should be the safest nation on earth. (LVRJ, 30 April, 2008)

Solution

Mills Canons is a set of five seperate theories which govern experimental science with respect to auditory stimuli which was first proposed by John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873), a British philosopher. The principles or theories aimed to establish the necessary and sufficient logical conditions under which causal relationships can be established between two events. In the case of condition 1, EVENT 1 will happen because of condition 1. Mill maintained that these are the methods by which we both discover and demonstrate causal relationships, and that they are of fundamental importance in scientific investigation. His five methods of experimental inquiry are method of agreement, the method of difference, the joint method of agreement and difference, the method of residues, and the method of concomitant variation. Mill called these methods \"eliminative methods of induction\".

The joint method of agreement and difference where both the methods of agreement and difference are combined is used in everyday reasoning and in science. In the above situation, the purported cause is more handgun circulation and the purported effect is more handgun deaths in the United States. The method of agreement, by itself, provides evidence that more circulation of handguns is sufficient for more handgun deaths. Since the effect can occur in the absence of any other factor, none of the other factors is necessary, so we have reason to think that more circulation of handguns is sufficient. Now, to tell whether more circulation of handguns is necessary, we need to see whether the effect that is more handgun deaths can occur in its absence-and that is what the method of difference tells us. Thus here, the methods of agreement and difference have complementary strengths. If we are trying to prove that more circulation of handguns is necessary and sufficient for more handgun deaths, we need to use the methods in combination.

Although Mill\'s Methods are important component of serious investigation of natural phenomena, they have significant limitations. Careful application of these methods succeeds only when relevant antecedent circumstance is taken into account, and that is impossible to guarantee in advance. Mills methods can only help us to establish the presence of a correlation between the occurrences of distinct events, leaving any question about the reality of a causal connection unanswered. Used as proof, inductive reasoning generally cannot offer the same certainty that valid deductive reasoning provides.