35. Logic: Common Fallacies Steve Miller Kennesaw State University, [email protected]
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Logical Reasoning
Chapter 2 Logical Reasoning All human activities are conducted following logical reasoning. Most of the time we apply logic unconsciously, but there is always some logic ingrained in the decisions we make in order to con- duct day-to-day life. Unfortunately we also do sometimes think illogically or engage in bad reasoning. Since science is based on logical thinking, one has to learn how to reason logically. The discipline of logic is the systematization of reasoning. It explicitly articulates principles of good reasoning, and system- atizes them. Equipped with this knowledge, we can distinguish between good reasoning and bad reasoning, and can develop our own reasoning capacity. Philosophers have shown that logical reasoning can be broadly divided into two categories—inductive, and deductive. Suppose you are going out of your home, and upon seeing a cloudy sky, you take an umbrella along. What was the logic behind this commonplace action? It is that, you have seen from your childhood that the sky becomes cloudy before it rains. You have seen it once, twice, thrice, and then your mind has con- structed the link “If there is dark cloud in the sky, it may rain”. This is an example of inductive logic, where we reach a general conclusion by repeated observation of particular events. The repeated occurrence of a particular truth leads you to reach a general truth. 2 Chapter 2. Logical Reasoning What do you do next? On a particular day, if you see dark cloud in the sky, you think ‘today it may rain’. You take an um- brella along. -
Logical Fallacies Moorpark College Writing Center
Logical Fallacies Moorpark College Writing Center Ad hominem (Argument to the person): Attacking the person making the argument rather than the argument itself. We would take her position on child abuse more seriously if she weren’t so rude to the press. Ad populum appeal (appeal to the public): Draws on whatever people value such as nationality, religion, family. A vote for Joe Smith is a vote for the flag. Alleged certainty: Presents something as certain that is open to debate. Everyone knows that… Obviously, It is obvious that… Clearly, It is common knowledge that… Certainly, Ambiguity and equivocation: Statements that can be interpreted in more than one way. Q: Is she doing a good job? A: She is performing as expected. Appeal to fear: Uses scare tactics instead of legitimate evidence. Anyone who stages a protest against the government must be a terrorist; therefore, we must outlaw protests. Appeal to ignorance: Tries to make an incorrect argument based on the claim never having been proven false. Because no one has proven that food X does not cause cancer, we can assume that it is safe. Appeal to pity: Attempts to arouse sympathy rather than persuade with substantial evidence. He embezzled a million dollars, but his wife had just died and his child needed surgery. Begging the question/Circular Logic: Proof simply offers another version of the question itself. Wrestling is dangerous because it is unsafe. Card stacking: Ignores evidence from the one side while mounting evidence in favor of the other side. Users of hearty glue say that it works great! (What is missing: How many users? Great compared to what?) I should be allowed to go to the party because I did my math homework, I have a ride there and back, and it’s at my friend Jim’s house. -
Shaping News -- 1 --Media Power
Shaping News – 1 Theories of Media Power and Environment Course Description: The focus in these six lectures is on how some facts are selected, shaped, and by whom, for daily internet, television, and print media global, national, regional, and local dissemination to world audiences. Agenda-setting, priming, framing, propaganda and persuasion are major tools to supplement basic news factors in various media environments. Course Goals and Student Learning Objectives: The overall goal is to increase student awareness that media filter reality rather than reflect it, and those selected bits of reality are shaped to be understood. Student learning objectives are: 1. Demonstrate how media environments and media structures determine what information is selected for dissemination; 2. Demonstrate how and why different media disseminate different information on the same situation or event; 3. Demonstrate how information is framed, and by whom, to access the media agenda. Required Texts/Readings: Read random essays and research online that focus on media news factors, agenda-setting and framing Assignments and Grading Policy: Two quizzes on course content plus a 20-page paper on a related, student- selected and faculty-approved research paper. Shaping News – 1 Media Environments and Media Power This is the first of six lectures on the shaping on news. It will focus on the theories of media environments based on the assumption that media are chameleon and reflect the governmental/societal system in which they exist. The remaining five lectures are on: (2) elements of news; (3) agenda-setting and framing; (4) propaganda; (5) attitude formation; and (6) cognitive dissonance. Two philosophical assumptions underlying the scholarly examination of mass media are that (1) the media are chameleons, reflecting their environment, and (2) their power is filtered and uneven. -
Constantinos Georgiou Athanasopoulos
Constantinos Athanasopoulos, 1 Constantinos Georgiou Athanasopoulos Supervisor Mary Haight Title The Metaphysics of Intentionality: A Study of Intentionality focused on Sartre's and Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Mind and Language. Submission for PhD Department of Philosophy University of Glasgow JULY 1995 ProQuest Number: 13818785 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 13818785 Published by ProQuest LLC(2018). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 GLASGOW UKVERSITT LIBRARY Constantinos Athanasopoulos, 2 ABSTRACT With this Thesis an attempt is made at charting the area of the Metaphysics of Intentionality, based mainly on the Philosophy of Jean-Paul Sartre. A Philosophical Analysis and an Evaluation o f Sartre’s Arguments are provided, and Sartre’s Theory of Intentionality is supported by recent commentaries on the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein. Sartre’s Theory of Intentionality is proposed, with few improvements by the author, as the only modem theory of the mind that can oppose effectively the advance of AI and physicalist reductivist attempts in Philosophy of Mind and Language. Discussion includes Sartre’s critique of Husserl, the relation of Sartre’s Theory of Intentionality to Realism, its applicability in the Theory of the Emotions, and recent theories of Intentionality such as Mohanty’s, Aquilla’s, Searle’s, and Harney’s. -
CHAPTER XXX. of Fallacies. Section 827. After Examining the Conditions on Which Correct Thoughts Depend, It Is Expedient to Clas
CHAPTER XXX. Of Fallacies. Section 827. After examining the conditions on which correct thoughts depend, it is expedient to classify some of the most familiar forms of error. It is by the treatment of the Fallacies that logic chiefly vindicates its claim to be considered a practical rather than a speculative science. To explain and give a name to fallacies is like setting up so many sign-posts on the various turns which it is possible to take off the road of truth. Section 828. By a fallacy is meant a piece of reasoning which appears to establish a conclusion without really doing so. The term applies both to the legitimate deduction of a conclusion from false premisses and to the illegitimate deduction of a conclusion from any premisses. There are errors incidental to conception and judgement, which might well be brought under the name; but the fallacies with which we shall concern ourselves are confined to errors connected with inference. Section 829. When any inference leads to a false conclusion, the error may have arisen either in the thought itself or in the signs by which the thought is conveyed. The main sources of fallacy then are confined to two-- (1) thought, (2) language. Section 830. This is the basis of Aristotle's division of fallacies, which has not yet been superseded. Fallacies, according to him, are either in the language or outside of it. Outside of language there is no source of error but thought. For things themselves do not deceive us, but error arises owing to a misinterpretation of things by the mind. -
Proving Propositional Tautologies in a Natural Dialogue
Fundamenta Informaticae xxx (2013) 1–16 1 DOI 10.3233/FI-2013-xx IOS Press Proving Propositional Tautologies in a Natural Dialogue Olena Yaskorska Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland Katarzyna Budzynska Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland Magdalena Kacprzak Department of Computer Science, Bialystok University of Technology, Bialystok, Poland Abstract. The paper proposes a dialogue system LND which brings together and unifies two tradi- tions in studying dialogue as a game: the dialogical logic introduced by Lorenzen; and persuasion dialogue games as specified by Prakken. The first approach allows the representation of formal di- alogues in which the validity of argument is the topic discussed. The second tradition has focused on natural dialogues examining, e.g., informal fallacies typical in real-life communication. Our goal is to unite these two approaches in order to allow communicating agents to benefit from the advan- tages of both, i.e., to equip them with the ability not only to persuade each other about facts, but also to prove that a formula used in an argument is a classical propositional tautology. To this end, we propose a new description of the dialogical logic which meets the requirements of Prakken’s generic specification for natural dialogues, and we introduce rules allowing to embed a formal dialogue in a natural one. We also show the correspondence result between the original and the new version of the dialogical logic, i.e., we show that a winning strategy for a proponent in the original version of the dialogical logic means a winning strategy for a proponent in the new version, and conversely. -
35 Fallacies
THIRTY-TWO COMMON FALLACIES EXPLAINED L. VAN WARREN Introduction If you watch TV, engage in debate, logic, or politics you have encountered the fallacies of: Bandwagon – "Everybody is doing it". Ad Hominum – "Attack the person instead of the argument". Celebrity – "The person is famous, it must be true". If you have studied how magicians ply their trade, you may be familiar with: Sleight - The use of dexterity or cunning, esp. to deceive. Feint - Make a deceptive or distracting movement. Misdirection - To direct wrongly. Deception - To cause to believe what is not true; mislead. Fallacious systems of reasoning pervade marketing, advertising and sales. "Get Rich Quick", phone card & real estate scams, pyramid schemes, chain letters, the list goes on. Because fallacy is common, you might want to recognize them. There is no world as vulnerable to fallacy as the religious world. Because there is no direct measure of whether a statement is factual, best practices of reasoning are replaced be replaced by "logical drift". Those who are political or religious should be aware of their vulnerability to, and exportation of, fallacy. The film, "Roshomon", by the Japanese director Akira Kurisawa, is an excellent study in fallacy. List of Fallacies BLACK-AND-WHITE Classifying a middle point between extremes as one of the extremes. Example: "You are either a conservative or a liberal" AD BACULUM Using force to gain acceptance of the argument. Example: "Convert or Perish" AD HOMINEM Attacking the person instead of their argument. Example: "John is inferior, he has blue eyes" AD IGNORANTIAM Arguing something is true because it hasn't been proven false. -
89% of Introduction-To-Psychology Textbooks That Define Or Explain
AMPXXX10.1177/2515245919858072Cassidy et al.Failing Grade 858072research-article2019 ASSOCIATION FOR General Article PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological Science Failing Grade: 89% of Introduction-to- 2019, Vol. 2(3) 233 –239 © The Author(s) 2019 Article reuse guidelines: Psychology Textbooks That Define sagepub.com/journals-permissions DOI:https://doi.org/10.1177/2515245919858072 10.1177/2515245919858072 or Explain Statistical Significance www.psychologicalscience.org/AMPPS Do So Incorrectly Scott A. Cassidy, Ralitza Dimova, Benjamin Giguère, Jeffrey R. Spence , and David J. Stanley Department of Psychology, University of Guelph Abstract Null-hypothesis significance testing (NHST) is commonly used in psychology; however, it is widely acknowledged that NHST is not well understood by either psychology professors or psychology students. In the current study, we investigated whether introduction-to-psychology textbooks accurately define and explain statistical significance. We examined 30 introductory-psychology textbooks, including the best-selling books from the United States and Canada, and found that 89% incorrectly defined or explained statistical significance. Incorrect definitions and explanations were most often consistent with the odds-against-chance fallacy. These results suggest that it is common for introduction- to-psychology students to be taught incorrect interpretations of statistical significance. We hope that our results will create awareness among authors of introductory-psychology books -
There Is No Fallacy of Arguing from Authority
There is no Fallacy ofArguing from Authority EDWIN COLEMAN University ofMelbourne Keywords: fallacy, argument, authority, speech act. Abstract: I argue that there is no fallacy of argument from authority. I first show the weakness of the case for there being such a fallacy: text-book presentations are confused, alleged examples are not genuinely exemplary, reasons given for its alleged fallaciousness are not convincing. Then I analyse arguing from authority as a complex speech act. R~iecting the popular but unjustified category of the "part-time fallacy", I show that bad arguments which appeal to authority are defective through breach of some felicity condition on argument as a speech act, not through employing a bad principle of inference. 1. Introduction/Summary There's never been a satisfactory theory of fallacy, as Hamblin pointed out in his book of 1970, in what is still the least unsatisfactory discussion. Things have not much improved in the last 25 years, despite fallacies getting more attention as interest in informal logic has grown. We still lack good answers to simple questions like what is a fallacy?, what fallacies are there? and how should we classifY fallacies? The idea that argument from authority (argumentum ad verecundiam) is a fallacy, is well-established in logical tradition. I argue that it is no such thing. The second main part of the paper is negative: I show the weakness of the case made in the literature for there being such a fallacy as argument from authority. First, text-book presentation of the fallacy is confused, second, the examples given are not genuinely exemplary and third, reasons given for its alleged fallaciousness are not convincing. -
From Logic to Rhetoric: a Contextualized Pedagogy for Fallacies
Current Issue From the Editors Weblog Editorial Board Editorial Policy Submissions Archives Accessibility Search Composition Forum 32, Fall 2015 From Logic to Rhetoric: A Contextualized Pedagogy for Fallacies Anne-Marie Womack Abstract: This article reenvisions fallacies for composition classrooms by situating them within rhetorical practices. Fallacies are not formal errors in logic but rather persuasive failures in rhetoric. I argue fallacies are directly linked to successful rhetorical strategies and pose the visual organizer of the Venn diagram to demonstrate that claims can achieve both success and failure based on audience and context. For example, strong analogy overlaps false analogy and useful appeal to pathos overlaps manipulative emotional appeal. To advance this argument, I examine recent changes in fallacies theory, critique a-rhetorical textbook approaches, contextualize fallacies within the history and theory of rhetoric, and describe a methodology for rhetorically reclaiming these terms. Today, fallacy instruction in the teaching of written argument largely follows two paths: teachers elevate fallacies as almost mathematical formulas for errors or exclude them because they don’t fit into rhetorical curriculum. Both responses place fallacies outside the realm of rhetorical inquiry. Fallacies, though, are not as clear-cut as the current practice of spotting them might suggest. Instead, they rely on the rhetorical situation. Just as it is an argument to create a fallacy, it is an argument to name a fallacy. This article describes an approach in which students must justify naming claims as successful strategies and/or fallacies, a process that demands writing about contexts and audiences rather than simply linking terms to obviously weak statements. -
Physics 496 Introduction to Research Lecture 2.0: Tools for the Scientific Skeptic (Lance Cooper, Laura Greene, Tony Liss, Doug Beck)
PHYS 496, Spring 2014 02/14/2014 D.H. Beck Physics 496 Introduction to Research Lecture 2.0: Tools for the Scientific Skeptic (Lance Cooper, Laura Greene, Tony Liss, Doug Beck) Critical Evaluation Scientific papers and research presentations, when well done, are very convincing. How do you know if they are correct? How do you know if your own research is correct? Answer: Apply logic. Critique the arguments made to arrive at the conclusions. “Science is simply common-sense at its best; that is, rigidly accurate in observation and merciless to fallacy in logic.“ (The Crayfish, 1880). “Darwin’s Bulldog” Thomas Henry Huxley, biologist 1825-1895 Copyright © 2014 Board of Directors of the University of Illinois 1 PHYS 496, Spring 2014 02/14/2014 D.H. Beck Aside: Oxford Evolution Debate Held at the Oxford University Museum seven months after the 1859 publication of The Origin of Species. Bishop Samuel Wilberforce to Huxley: “On which side do you claim your descent from a monkey, your grandmother or your grandfather?” Huxley: “I would not be ashamed to be descended from a monkey. But I would be ashamed to be descended from a man who uses his great gifts to obscure the truth!” The Scientific Method 1. Observe and describe a phenomenon or group of phenomena. 2. Formulate an hypothesis to explain the phenomena. In physics, the hypothesis often takes the form of a causal mechanism or a mathematical relation. 3. Use the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict quantitatively the results of new observations. 4. Perform experimental tests of the predictions. -
False Dilemma Wikipedia Contents
False dilemma Wikipedia Contents 1 False dilemma 1 1.1 Examples ............................................... 1 1.1.1 Morton's fork ......................................... 1 1.1.2 False choice .......................................... 2 1.1.3 Black-and-white thinking ................................... 2 1.2 See also ................................................ 2 1.3 References ............................................... 3 1.4 External links ............................................. 3 2 Affirmative action 4 2.1 Origins ................................................. 4 2.2 Women ................................................ 4 2.3 Quotas ................................................. 5 2.4 National approaches .......................................... 5 2.4.1 Africa ............................................ 5 2.4.2 Asia .............................................. 7 2.4.3 Europe ............................................ 8 2.4.4 North America ........................................ 10 2.4.5 Oceania ............................................ 11 2.4.6 South America ........................................ 11 2.5 International organizations ...................................... 11 2.5.1 United Nations ........................................ 12 2.6 Support ................................................ 12 2.6.1 Polls .............................................. 12 2.7 Criticism ............................................... 12 2.7.1 Mismatching ......................................... 13 2.8 See also