DOCSLIB.ORG

Fallacies Applications Document 2: Solutions

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Fallacies Applications Document 2: Solutions Academics MINERVA® ​ CS50 Formal Analyses SCHOOLS AT KGI Fallacies Applications Document 2: Solutions Flora, T. (M22), Koloskov, N. (M23), Terrana, A. Last Modified: July 2020 Introduction 1 Ex 1. Euthanasia and assisted death 1 Ex 2. Recreational cannabis legalization 5 Ex 3. Food aid to developing countries 8 Ex 4. Dress codes, uniforms, and protests 10 Introduction The examples and solutions below exemplify rigorous and thorough applications of #fallacies. These should assist you in structuring and deepening your applications. When reading them, however, keep in mind that some arguments can be interpreted differently and that not all fallacies in the excerpt were fully analyzed and corrected within this document. Only the underlined fallacies are focussed on here. Compare these solutions to your own, spot ​ differences and similarities between them, and remember that, especially when it comes to correcting a fallacy, there are multiple ways to go about it. Ex 1. Euthanasia and assisted death "The case for assisted suicide seems to depend on human sympathy — on the impulse toward mercy, the desire to ease what seems like pointless pain and suffering. Why shouldn’t the terminally ill meet death on their own terms, rather than at the end of prolonged agonies? Why shouldn’t the dying depart this earth with dignity, instead of enduring the inexorable stripping away of their physical and mental faculties? Such are the sentiments that made Jack Kevorkian, who died last week of natural causes, a hero to many millions of Americans. Though he was tried repeatedly and finally convicted of second-degree murder, the former pathologist’s career as “Dr. Death” (he said he assisted at 1 more than 130 suicides) was widely regarded as a form of humanitarianism rather than a criminal enterprise. (...) [Kevorkian] didn’t just provide death to the dying; he helped anyone whose suffering seemed sufficient to warrant his deadly assistance. When The Detroit Free Press investigated his “practice” in 1997, it found that 60 percent of those he assisted weren’t actually terminally ill. In several cases, autopsies revealed 'no anatomical evidence of disease.' This record was ignored or glossed over by his admirers. (So were the roots of his interest in euthanasia: Kevorkian was obsessed with human experimentation, and pined for a day when both assisted suicides and executions could be accompanied by vivisection.) After his release from prison in 2007, he was treated like a civil rights revolutionary rather than a killer — with fawning interviews on “60 Minutes,” $50,000 speaking engagements, and a hagiographic HBO biopic starring Al Pacino. Fortunately, the revolution Kevorkian envisioned hasn’t yet succeeded. (...) There is no American equivalent of the kind of suicide clinics that have sprung up in Switzerland, providing painless poisons to a steady flow of people from around the globe. (...) Were [Swiss suicide clinicists] operating in the United States, [they] might well have as many apologists and admirers as the late Dr. Death. But it should make us proud of our country that [they] would likely find [themselves] in prison, where murderers belong.” Source: Douthat, R. (2011). Dr. Kevorkian’s victims. The New York Times. Retrieved from ​ ​ https://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/06/opinion/06douthat.html?_r=2&hp Ex 1. Solution Fallacies: red herring, straw man, ad hominem ​ ​ One possible interpretation of the argument the author is trying to make is: 1. Proponents for assisted suicide claim dying patients should have the freedom to end their lives on their own terms through the practice. 2. Many of those who seek assisted suicide are physically healthy. 3. A prominent assisted suicide administrator was a controversial figure, obsessed with human experimentation, and earned a lot of money from speaking engagements after he left prison. 4. (Implied) Therefore, dying patients should not have assisted suicide as an option. In this case, we can see that the conclusion is not reached through the premises. In the third paragraph, the author invokes many facts about Dr. Kevorkian that are not related to assisted dying or euthanasia. They apply a red herring fallacy by distracting the reader from the issue at ​ ​ hand, using controversial aspects of a doctor who assisted in voluntary deaths to attack the practice itself. This is characterized as an informal fallacy and a non-sequitur of relevance since 2 the information about Dr. Kevorkian does not allow us to conclude anything about the morality of assisted dying. The argument is missing a premise that connects Dr. Kevorkian's practice of assisted dying to the moral validity of assisted dying. Because the conclusion cannot be derived with certainty from the premises, the argument is unsound. We are thus interpreting the argument as a strictly ​ ​ deductive one (do you think this is fair?). The conclusion seems rather extreme for the premises established. There is also some evidence in the passage that goes unused in the argument as we interpreted it. One way to “correct” the argument, then, is to make use of this evidence in an inductive argument that has a ​ ​ more reasonable and likely conclusion.To make the argument reliable, we want to establish a stronger connection between Dr. Death's story and the wider point against assisted dying. This is done in the proposed “correction” below by: ● Removing the red herring (distracting) content of the article, along with premises specifically about Dr. Kevorkian’s controversial behavior. ● Incorporating more appropriate and relevant evidence by adding a premise (about Switzerland) and making the analogy with murder more explicit. ● Narrowing the conclusion to be less extreme (only illegal about “healthy” patients), meaning that it follows more directly from the premises, thus producing a stronger argument. 1. Dr. Kevorkian's case shows that most “patients” who opt for assisted death will have been preventable deaths. 2. Switzerland takes in many patients seeking euthanasia administrations from all around the world, many of whom are not ill. 3. Assisting preventable deaths is equivalent to murder, which is illegal. 4. Therefore, assisted death should be strictly illegal for healthy patients. This argument could further be strengthened with more lines of quality evidence (premises) to add support to the extent of the issue, in addition to the anecdotes presented here about Dr. Kevorkian and Switzerland. Additional considerations At the very beginning of the excerpt, the author frames the argument for assisted dying using a straw man fallacy, narrowing it to an argument for respect for those suffering from disease and ​ pain. This fallacy matters as it misguides readers inexperienced with this debate but it is not the main argument of the passage. It is also arguable that there is an ad hominem fallacy (personal ​ ​ attack), as the controversial facts about Dr. Kevorkian are being used to argue against his practice. 3 Ex 2. Recreational cannabis legalization “A study conducted by a team of drug experts in the UK found that marijuana has lesser side effects than many other popular drugs. Researchers found that the combined health risks posed by marijuana are much lower than that (sic) associated with alcohol and tobacco consumption. While alcohol is the direct or indirect cause of thousands of deaths around the country every year, there are no recorded cases of death from marijuana. Proponents of marijuana believe that legalizing other, more harmful, drugs but keeping marijuana criminalized destroys the credibility of valid warnings regarding the risks of substance abuse.” Source: Why marijuana should be legal everywhere. (n.d.). Mercy Wellness of Cotati. Retrieved from https://mercywellness.com/why-marijuana-should-be-legal-everywhere/ ​ Ex 2. Solution Fallacy: tu quoque/two wrongs make a right (implied) ​ ​ The excerpt contains an argument of the form: 1. Cannabis poses health risks, but other drugs that pose more serious health risks are legalized. 2. Therefore, cannabis should be legalized. The argument does not strengthen the claim that legalizing cannabis would generate more benefit than harm, instead appealing to the status of other harmful drugs. While the reasons for a drug to be legalized or not could be used in a strong argument for legalization, they are not present anywhere in the excerpt. Appealing to other drugs, then, can be interpreted as a tu ​ quoque fallacy, in which the speaker shows an error or the hypocrisy of an entity (e.g. a drug ​ enforcement regulator) and uses it as justification for something their premises don't justify. The tu quoque fallacy is an informal fallacy and is a specific kind of two wrongs make a right. In ​ ​ this case, it could be interpreted that the health risks associated with cannabis are permissible in light of the health risks legal drugs pose, which is not grounds for legalization. The argument is invalid, as the conclusion is not related to the premises. To make the argument valid, we could add more explicit premises related to the reasons drugs should be legalized or not, and use valid rules of deduction to reach the conclusion. In this case, we use modus tollens (denying the consequent to conclude the opposite of the antecedent): 1. A→B: If a drug is illegal, it must be more harmful than legal drugs. 2. ￢B: Marijuana is not more harmful than legal drugs (such as alcohol). 4 3. Therefore, ￢A: Therefore, marijuana should be legal. With this revision, we have made the argument valid. Success!...? Not really. The soundness of the argument can be put into question: the first premise is dubious. To make this argument sound, we need more robust criteria for determining what drugs should be legal or not. To address this, we could establish an additional premise that drugs can be ranked by harm, and that the legality of drugs should primarily be based on this ranking.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The Acquisition of Scientific Knowledge Via Critical Thinking: a Philosophical Approach to Science Education
    Forum on Public Policy The Acquisition of Scientific Knowledge via Critical Thinking: A Philosophical Approach to Science Education Dr. Isidoro Talavera, Philosophy Professor and Lead Faculty, Department of Humanities & Communication Arts, Franklin University, Ohio, USA. Abstract There is a gap between the facts learned in a science course and the higher-cognitive skills of analysis and evaluation necessary for students to secure scientific knowledge and scientific habits of mind. Teaching science is not just about how we do science (i.e., focusing on just accumulating undigested facts and scientific definitions and procedures), but why (i.e., focusing on helping students learn to think scientifically). So although select subject matter is important, the largest single contributor to understanding the nature and practice of science is not the factual content of the scientific discipline, but rather the ability of students to think, reason, and communicate critically about that content. This is achieved by a science education that helps students directly by encouraging them to analyze and evaluate all kinds of phenomena, scientific, pseudoscientific, and other. Accordingly, the focus of this treatise is on critical thinking as it may be applied to scientific claims to introduce the major themes, processes, and methods common to all scientific disciplines so that the student may develop an understanding about the nature and practice of science and develop an appreciation for the process by which we gain scientific knowledge. Furthermore, this philosophical approach to science education highlights the acquisition of scientific knowledge via critical thinking to foment a skeptical attitude in our students so that they do not relinquish their mental capacity to engage the world critically and ethically as informed and responsibly involved citizens.1 I.
    [Show full text]
  • Informal Logic Examples and Exercises
    Contents Section 1 Quotation Marks: Direct Quotes, Scare Quotes, Use/Mention Quotes 1 Introduction 1 Instructions 5 Exercises 7 Section 2 Meaning and Definition 13 Introduction 13 Instructions 17 Exercises 19 Section 3 Ambiguity, Homophony, Vagueness, Generality 23 Introduction 23 Instructions 27 Exercises 29 Section 4 Connotation and Assertive Content 35 Introduction 35 Instructions 37 Exercises 39 Section 5 Simple and Compound Sentences 45 Introduction 45 Instructions 49 Exercises 51 vi Contents Section 6 Arguments; Simple and Serial Argument Forms 61 Introduction 61 Instructions 65 Exercises 67 Section 7 Convergent, Divergent, and Linked Argument Forms 81 Introduction 81 Instructions 85 Exercises 87 Section 8 Unstated Premises and Conclusions; Extraneous Material 95 Introduction 95 Instructions 99 Exercises 10 1 Section 9 Complex Arguments 115 Introduction 115 Instructions 121 Exercises 123 Section 10 Argument Strengths 145 Introduction 145 Instructions 149 Exercises 151 Section 11 Valid Deductive Arguments: Propositional Logic 159 Introduction 159 Instructions 165 Exercises 167 Section 12 Valid Deductive Arguments: Quantificational Logic 179 Introduction 179 Instructions 187 Exercises 189 Contents vii Section 13 Fallacies One 199 Argument from Authority Two Wrongs Make a Right Irrelevant Reason Argument from Ignorance Ambiguous Argument Slippery Slope Argument from Force Introduction 199 Instructions for Sections 13-16 203 Exercises 205 Section 14 Fallacies Two 213 Ad Hominem Argument Provincialism Tokenism Hasty Conclusion Questionable
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter 4: INFORMAL FALLACIES I
    Essential Logic Ronald C. Pine Chapter 4: INFORMAL FALLACIES I All effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare necessities and then must be expressed in a few stereotyped formulas. Adolf Hitler Until the habit of thinking is well formed, facing the situation to discover the facts requires an effort. For the mind tends to dislike what is unpleasant and so to sheer off from an adequate notice of that which is especially annoying. John Dewey, How We Think Introduction In everyday speech you may have heard someone refer to a commonly accepted belief as a fallacy. What is usually meant is that the belief is false, although widely accepted. In logic, a fallacy refers to logically weak argument appeal (not a belief or statement) that is widely used and successful. Here is our definition: A logical fallacy is an argument that is usually psychologically persuasive but logically weak. By this definition we mean that fallacious arguments work in getting many people to accept conclusions, that they make bad arguments appear good even though a little commonsense reflection will reveal that people ought not to accept the conclusions of these arguments as strongly supported. Although logicians distinguish between formal and informal fallacies, our focus in this chapter and the next one will be on traditional informal fallacies.1 For our purposes, we can think of these fallacies as "informal" because they are most often found in the everyday exchanges of ideas, such as newspaper editorials, letters to the editor, political speeches, advertisements, conversational disagreements between people in social networking sites and Internet discussion boards, and so on.
    [Show full text]
  • Chapter 5: Informal Fallacies II
    Essential Logic Ronald C. Pine Chapter 5: Informal Fallacies II Reasoning is the best guide we have to the truth....Those who offer alternatives to reason are either mere hucksters, mere claimants to the throne, or there's a case to be made for them; and of course, that is an appeal to reason. Michael Scriven, Reasoning Why don’t you ever see a headline, “Psychic wins lottery”? Internet Joke News Item, June 16, 2010: A six story statue of Jesus in Monroe city, Ohio was struck by lightning and destroyed. An adult book store across the street was untouched. Introduction In the last chapter we examined one of the major causes of poor reasoning, getting off track and not focusing on the issues related to a conclusion. In our general discussion of arguments (Chapters 1-3), however, we saw that arguments can be weak in two other ways: 1. In deductive reasoning, arguments can be valid, but have false or questionable premises, or in both deductive and inductive reasoning, arguments may involve language tricks that mislead us into presuming evidence is being offered in the premises when it is not. 2. In weak inductive arguments, arguments can have true and relevant premises but those premises can be insufficient to justify a conclusion as a reliable guide to the future. Fallacies that use deductive valid reasoning, but have premises that are questionable or are unfair in some sense in the truth claims they make, we will call fallacies of questionable premise. As a subset of fallacies of questionable premise, fallacies that use tricks in the way the premises are presented, such that there is a danger of presuming evidence has been offered when it has not, we will call fallacies of presumption.
    [Show full text]
  • PHI 106 Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Literacy/Critical Inquiry (L)
    .'ARIZONA STATE IIrt GENERAL STUDIES COURSE PROPOSAL COVER FORM ~ UNIVERSITY (ONE COURSE PER FORM) 1.) DATE: 02101/10 I 2.) COMMUNITY COLLEGE: Maricopa Co. Comm. College District 3.) COURSE PROPOSED: Prefix: PHI Number: 106 Title: Critial Thinking and Problem Solving Credits: 3 CROSS LISTED WITH: Prefix: Number: ; Prefix: Number: ; Prefix: Number: , Prefix: Number: ; Prefix: Number: ; Prefix: Number: 4.) COMMUNITY COLLEGE INITIATOR: PATRICE NANGO PHONE: 480-461-7621 FAX: 480844-3214 ELIGIBILITY: Courses must have a current Course Equivalency Guide (CEG) evaluation. Courses evaluated as NT (non-transferable are not eligible for the General Studies Program. MANDATORY REVIEW: [gJ The above specified course is undergoing Mandatory Review for the following Core or Awareness Area (only one area is permitted; if a course meets more than one Core or Awareness Area, please submit a separate Mandatory Review Cover Form for each Area). POLICY: The General Studies Council (GSC-T) Policies and Procedures requires the review of previously approved community college courses every five years, to verify that they continue to meet the requirements of Core or Awareness Areas already assigned to these courses. This review is also necessary as the General Studies program evolves. AREA(S) PROPOSED COURSE WILL SERVE: A course may be proposed for more than one core or awareness area. Although a course may satisfy a core area requirement and an awareness area requirement concurrently, a course may not be used to satisfy requirements in two core or awareness areas simultaneously, even if approved for those areas. With departmental consent, an approved General Studies course may be counted toward both the General Studies requirements and the major program of study.
    [Show full text]
  • I Correlative-Based Fallacies
    Fallacies In Argument 本文内容均摘自 Wikipedia,由 ode@bdwm 编辑整理，请不要用于商业用途。 为方便阅读，删去了原文的 references,见谅 I Correlative-based fallacies False dilemma The informal fallacy of false dilemma (also called false dichotomy, the either-or fallacy, or bifurcation) involves a situation in which only two alternatives are considered, when in fact there are other options. Closely related are failing to consider a range of options and the tendency to think in extremes, called black-and-white thinking. Strictly speaking, the prefix "di" in "dilemma" means "two". When a list of more than two choices is offered, but there are other choices not mentioned, then the fallacy is called the fallacy of false choice. When a person really does have only two choices, as in the classic short story The Lady or the Tiger, then they are often said to be "on the horns of a dilemma". False dilemma can arise intentionally, when fallacy is used in an attempt to force a choice ("If you are not with us, you are against us.") But the fallacy can arise simply by accidental omission—possibly through a form of wishful thinking or ignorance—rather than by deliberate deception. When two alternatives are presented, they are often, though not always, two extreme points on some spectrum of possibilities. This can lend credence to the larger argument by giving the impression that the options are mutually exclusive, even though they need not be. Furthermore, the options are typically presented as being collectively exhaustive, in which case the fallacy can be overcome, or at least weakened, by considering other possibilities, or perhaps by considering a whole spectrum of possibilities, as in fuzzy logic.
    [Show full text]
  • PHIL-1000: Critical Thinking 1
    PHIL-1000: Critical Thinking 1 PHIL-1000: CRITICAL THINKING Cuyahoga Community College Viewing: PHIL-1000 : Critical Thinking Board of Trustees: 2018-05-24 Academic Term: Fall 2021 Subject Code PHIL - Philosophy Course Number: 1000 Title: Critical Thinking Catalog Description: This course serves as an introduction to principles of critical and creative thinking with an emphasis on real-world practical applications. Formal and informal tools of logical analysis will be applied to controversial topical issues. Credit Hour(s): 3 Lecture Hour(s): 3 Lab Hour(s): 0 Other Hour(s): 0 Requisites Prerequisite and Corequisite ENG-0995 Applied College Literacies, or appropriate score on English Placement Test. Note: ENG-0990 Language Fundamentals II taken prior to Fall 2021 will also meet prerequisite requirements. Outcomes Course Outcome(s): Acquire the tools of critical thinking for the deployment of skillful analysis, assessment and communication in the problem solving process. Essential Learning Outcome Mapping: Critical/Creative Thinking: Analyze, evaluate, and synthesize information in order to consider problems/ideas and transform them in innovative or imaginative ways. Objective(s): 1. Develop the paradigmatic characteristics of a critical thinker. 2. Recognize and discuss barriers to critical thinking caused by personal biases and by misuses of language. 3. List common types of meaning and definitions and apply them to rational arguments. 4. Determine the difference between reason and emotion and explain how that distinction impacts the ability to think critically. 5. Identify common errors that occur when evaluating knowledge and evidence. 6. Criticize arguments by applying the knowledge of various informal fallacies of ambiguity, relevance and unwarranted assumptions.
    [Show full text]
  • Riposte! a Large Corpus of Counter-Arguments
    Riposte! A Large Corpus of Counter-Arguments Paul Reisert y;z Benjamin Heinzerling y;z Naoya Inoue z;y Shun Kiyonoy;z Kentaro Inui z;y y RIKEN Center for Advanced Intelligence Project z Tohoku University fpaul.reisert,benjamin.heinzerling,[email protected] fnaoya-i,[email protected] Abstract Topic: Is It Fair to Rate Professors Online? Argument: It is not fair to rate professors online because the Constructive feedback is an effective method online ratings effect teacher's careers and are uncontrolled. for improving critical thinking skills. Counter- Worker A: If “not fair to rate professors online” is assumed to arguments (CAs), one form of constructive be true, then “the online ratings effect teacher's careers and are feedback, have been proven to be useful for uncontrolled” is already assumed to be true. (Begging the critical thinking skills. However, little work Question) has been done for constructing a large-scale Worker B: There is a questionable cause in the argument corpus of them which can drive research on because “online ratings” does/will not cause “teacher's careers automatic generation of CAs for fallacious to be effected”. (Questionable Cause) micro-level arguments (i.e. a single claim and Worker C: Rating professors online will make choosing for premise pair). In this work, we cast providing students easier (None) constructive feedback as a natural language processing task and create Riposte!, a corpus Figure 1: CAs in Riposte! produced by crowdwork- of CAs, towards this goal. Produced by crowd- ers. The fallacy type selected by a worker is shown in workers, Riposte! contains over 18k CAs.
    [Show full text]
  • Christ-Centered Critical Thinking Lesson 7: Logical Fallacies
    Christ-Centered Critical Thinking Lesson 7: Logical Fallacies 1 Learning Outcomes In this lesson we will: 1.Define logical fallacy using the SEE-I. 2.Understand and apply the concept of relevance. 3.Define, understand, and recognize fallacies of relevance. 4.Define, understand, and recognize fallacies of insufficient evidence. 2 What is a logical fallacy? Complete the SEE-I. S = A logical fallacy is a mistake in reasoning. E = E = I = 3 http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-o9VE5tseuFk/T5FSHiJnu7I/AAAAAAAABIY/Ws7iCn-wJNU/s1600/Logical+Fallacy.JPG The Concept of Relevance The concept of relevance: a statement for or against another statement. A statement is relevant to a claim (i.e. another statement or premise) if it provides some reason or evidence for thinking the claim is either true of false. Three ways a statement can be relevant: 1. A statement is positively relevant to a claim if it counts in favor of the claim. 2. A statement is negatively relevant to a claim if it counts against the claim. 3. A statement is logically irrelevant to a claim if it counts neither for or against the claim. Two observations concerning the concept of relevance. 1. Whether a statement is relevant to a claim usually depends on the context in which the statement is made. 2. A statement can be relevant to a claim even if the claim is false. 5 Fallacies of Relevance • Personal attack or ad hominem • Scare tactic • Appeal to pity • Bandwagon argument • Strawman • Red herring • Equivocation http://www.professordarnell.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/fallacies.jpg • Begging the question 6 When a person rejects another person’s argument or claim by attacking the person rather than the argument of claim he or she commits an ad hominem fallacy or personal attack.
    [Show full text]
  • Questionable Authority Fallacy Examples
    Questionable Authority Fallacy Examples Full-fledged and hearing-impaired Bernie often antedating some Trajan salutarily or emceed incontinently. Michal is ditheistic: she pettishly.accumulate unattainably and wears her Natalia. Preventive and rose-cheeked Hussein often triangulate some eglantines thereby or image PowerPoint Presentation San Jose State University. Patrons to wake out materials that contain questionable content and laundry a. Evidence or examples irrelevant to the argument at hand free to. Fallacy Appeal of Authority Nizkor Project. Summary Fallacies of Credibility and Context Fallacy Definition Example extend to current Authority Using testimonial evidence brought a proposition when the. Also dumb as argument from this appeal their false authority argument. The questionable course, questionable authority that? Logical Fallacies Problem Solving from MindToolscom. LOGICAL FALLACIES AND VACCINES The Vaccine Makers. Using our example above we can see that it's very true to whiz the. Perhaps the process clinical information that we see the questionable authority fallacy examples of the initial working of the! For its having sufficient pull to single a reliable claim help how his tie. On the perhaps False Dichotomy Definition and examples False Dichotomy and. Appeal an Authority Examples SoftSchools. Argument from authority Wikipedia. The term authority fallacy results when neither person compose an argument. Fallacies of Relevance Appeal to Authority The domestic to bark or irrelevant authority into a fallacy in learn a rhetor public speaker or writer. Examples and Discussion Let's so a peach at every example 4 My welfare has said my medicine X will facilitate my medical condition Therefore. Macs and fallacies are less expertise: while we will gain the way around the questionable authority because of the motives of hair replacement.
    [Show full text]
  • Persuasive Logic & Reasoning
    Persuasive Logic & Reasoning Steven R. Van Hook, PhD Reference Textbook Logic and Contemporary Rhetoric: The Use of Reason in Everyday Life, by Howard Kahane and Nancy M. Cavender. Independence, KY: Cengage Learning, 2013. ISBN-10: 1133942288 Persuasive Logic & Reasoning Unit 1 Foundational Terms & Concepts Steven R. Van Hook, PhD Let’s develop our reasoning skills Logic Clear reasoning Effective argument Fallacy analysis Coherence Problem solving Intellect Persuasion Courage Induction Confidence Deduction Strength Persuasive Logic & Reason Unit 1 Steven R. Van Hook, PhD GOOD & BAD REASONING The Argument Structure Premises and Conclusions: 1) Identical twins often have different test scores (premise 1) 2) Identical twins inherit the same genes (premise 2) 3) So environment must play some sort of part in determining IQ (claim or conclusion) Exercise: Identify the Premises and Conclusions Statement: “It is difficult to gauge the pain felt by animals because pain is subjective and animals cannot talk.” Premise 1: Pain is subjective; Premise 2: Animals can’t communicate; Conclusion: We cannot measure the pain animals feel If the premises are faulty, the conclusion may be faulty. Argument Structure 1) It’s always wrong to kill a human being (true or false premise?) 2) Capital punishment kills a human being (true or false premise?) 3) Capital punishment is wrong (good or bad conclusion?) Note:∴ means ‘therefore’ ∴ Reasoning Reasoning: “Inferring from what we already know or believe to something else.” Examples: “It stands to reason that because of this, then that …” “It’s only logical *this* will happen, because *that* happened before …” Argument & Exposition Argument: One or more premises offered in support of a claim or conclusion Exposition: A statement or rhetorical discourse intended to give information or offer an explanation Is it Argument or Exposition? “My summer vacation was spent working in Las Vegas.
    [Show full text]
  • What Is Circular Reasoning?
    Robert D. Coleman, PhD © 2006 [email protected] What Is Circular Reasoning? Logical fallacies are a type of error in reasoning, errors which may be recognized and corrected by observant thinkers. There are a large number of informal fallacies that are cataloged, and some have multiple names. The frequency of occurrence is one way to rank the fallacies. The ten most-frequent fallacies probably cover the overwhelming majority of illogical reasoning. With a Pareto effect, 20% of the major fallacies might account for 80% of fallacious reasoning. One of the more common fallacies is circular reasoning, a form of which was called “begging the question” by Aristotle in his book that named the fallacies of classical logic. The fallacy of circular reasoning occurs when the conclusion of an argument is essentially the same as one of the premises in the argument. Circular reasoning is an inference drawn from a premise that includes the conclusion, and used to prove the conclusion. Definitions of words are circular reasoning, but they are not inference. Inference is the deriving of a conclusion in logic by either induction or deduction. Circular reasoning can be quite subtle, can be obfuscated when intentional, and thus can be difficult to detect. Circular reasoning as a fallacy refers to reasoning in vicious circles or vicious circular reasoning, in contrast to reasoning in virtuous circles or virtuous circular reasoning. Virtuous circular reasoning is sometimes used for pedagogical purposes, such as in math to show that two different statements are equivalent expressions of the same thing. In a logical argument, viciously circular reasoning occurs when one attempts to infer a conclusion that is based upon a premise that ultimately contains the conclusion itself.
    [Show full text]