Logical Fallacies Slide 1 Thank You for Being Here. How This Talk Came About
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Logical Fallacies Slide 1 Thank you for being here. How this talk came about. As apologists we champion the role of critical thinking and logic, we encourage people to become familiar with it but rarely do we help them to do so. There was a time when the study of logic was an integral part of one’s schooling. Those days are long gone. Most people would not know where to start such an endeavour. Today’s talk is an attempt to convince you that the study of logic is worth your while and that it is do-able. I will recommend some texts for further study at the end. Please raise your hand if you can read. Very well. Please raise your hand if at any point in your education you were required to take a class in formal logic. In 1947, Dorothy Sayers, author, playwright and scholar of classical and modern languages delivered an essay at Oxford university titled “The Lost Tools of Learning.” In it she made the following statement: Slide 2 “For we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armor was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects. Slide 3 We who were scandalized in 1940 when men were sent to fight armored tanks with rifles, are not scandalized when young men and women are sent into the world to fight massed propaganda with a smattering of "subjects"; and when whole classes and whole nations become hypnotized by the arts of the spell binder, we have the impudence to be astonished. We dole out lip-service to the importance of education--lip- service and, just occasionally, a little grant of money; we postpone the school-leaving age, and plan to build bigger and better schools; the teachers slave conscientiously in and out of school hours; and yet, as I believe, all this devoted effort is largely frustrated, because we have lost the tools of learning, and in their absence can only make a botched and piecemeal job of it.” One of these lost tools Sayers mentions is the study of Formal Logic. She suggests a necessary return to this study and comments: Slide 4 “ It is here that our curriculum shows its first sharp divergence from modern standards. The disrepute into which Formal Logic has fallen is entirely unjustified; and its neglect is the root cause of nearly all those disquieting symptoms which we have noted in the modern intellectual constitution. Logic has been discredited, partly because we have come to suppose that we are conditioned almost entirely by the intuitive and the unconscious. There is no time to argue whether this is true; I will simply observe that to neglect the proper training of the reason is the best possible way to make [this] true.” Sayers is saying that without an understanding of and ability to apply formal logic, we become people who are helpless against the onslaught of ideas. We live according to what we feel and not according to what we know. Why is this dangerous? Emotions have never been a good barometer of truth, unthinking men and women are most easily led astray by the ideas of the day. Sayers’ essay is accessible on the web. I encourage you to find it and read it. It is almost prophetic in its predictions concerning the results of modern education. We are the generation that suffers from the intellectual shortcomings which she predicted. Slide 5 Have you ever listened to a conversation in which two individuals support opposing ideas and felt, with much frustration, that the conversation was going nowhere. You’re not quite able to put your finger on it but something is missing, something is out of sync and somehow the whole thing is a futile exercise. I felt some of this frustration whilst watching the last presidential debate between Barak Obama and Mitt Romney in 2011. Granted, I do not have a very firm grasp on all of the nuances of American politics, but despite this, I was aware that nothing much was being achieved in this discussion. Questions were asked that were not answered, statements with seemingly no relevance were made continuously and more attention was paid to the colour of spousal outfits than clear definitions of terms and the soundness of arguments. I found it to be a thoroughly frustrating and dissatisfying. This feeling of frustration at a barrage of words is, I think what Sayers is pointing at with her military metaphor. It seems to me that both candidates were victims of an inability to track with arguments and express their own thoughts clearly. And the audience which did not possess the critical skills to assess the conversation, did not really know what to make of it all. One’s choice as to the winner of the debate ended up being based on facial expressions and smoothness or slickness of presentation, rather than the verbal content. Sayers thought that she lived in a time of bombardment with words; books, films, newspapers and radio. Little did she know of the exponential escalation that would come with the invasion of television and the internet into every aspect of our lives. We are piled under with information, daily, we are at the mercy of thousands of words. If we don’t have the tools of logic and critical thinking we have no shovel and we have no resistance. Slide 6 We are fortunate not live in a place where physical martyrdom is a reality for Christians. We are not subject to physical violence because of what we believe. But, we are bombarded with verbal attacks on our beliefs within an increasingly sceptical culture. As apologists we would like to be able to defend our beliefs against these attacks and perhaps even tear down some of the sceptical strongholds, but this is simply not possible if we cannot find our way through the rhetoric and propaganda that is out there. If we do not have the tools to make sense of the tens of thousands of words that are flung at us we can offer no defence. Slide 7 (animated) So, what is logic and why is it important? There are various definitions of logic. The Oxford English dictionary defines logic as “Reasoning conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity.” Logic studies reason itself as a tool of knowledge. Sullivan (Logic is not thinking, it is the means by which we think) Logic is the study of right reason or valid inferences, and the attending fallacies, formal and informal. Logic means putting your thoughts in order. Slide 8 Logic is an instrument (tool) of human knowledge, as a discipline (area of study) it involves the study of the science and art of right (correct) reasoning that directs (guides) the faculty of reason so as to enable one to advance (move forward)with order, ease and correctness in the act of reason (understanding) -Science: Principles -Art: Skilful application, practice, getting better at it. It was this order and ease of reasoning that I was missing, both on the part of the candidates and of myself during the presidential debates I was not able to advance in the act of reason. I was unable to apply the tools of human knowledge to direct my thinking and so I got stuck. Now it has to be said that these are fairly simplistic definitions of logic. As a field of study logic has undergone many, very technical developments in the last 100 years. A quick Wikipedia search on the topic of logic will reveal many branches of the discipline such as syllogistic logic, propositional logic, predicate logic, modal logic, mathematical logic, philosophical logic and computational logic. Logic, as an academic discipline has become the expertise of a few scholars who are capable of some very abstract reasoning. Be that as it may, logic is first and foremost a tool of human reason and its skilful application is within the grasp of the man on the street simply because of the type of being he is. To this end, our admittedly short discussion here this morning will centre on what is known as classical or Aristotelian logic, which I would contend has as its goal the actual improvement of human thinking. Slide 9 (Animated) Why should we be study logic and by implication get better at thinking? (Indebted to Tom Howe) 1. Logic is unavoidable We are directed in our acts by the judgment of reason (or at least we should be) as opposed to animals who are directed by instinct. This is just due to our nature, the kind being we are. We cannot escape reason even if we can choose to ignore it. We’re already using our reason, intuatively, the way the mind works. Building a building by trial and error vs. by principles of engineering(that are already there but that you are not aware of). Likewise learn principles in order to do right reasoning. Any claim employs logic Analogous to using language without knowing grammar 2. Logical principles are undeniable You can’t deny them without using them.