Inside Logic #

Inside Logic #26

More Fallacies

You and Joe are just about to get on Jessica's plane when to your surprise you see Shantila walk into the lobby again.

"Hey!" you yell.

"Oh, hi!" she says. "Still here?"

"We're just leaving right now with Jessica," you say. "I might get to my sister's party in time because we're going on her private jet."

"Well, good for you," she says. "I hope it's a good party!"

"So you came back for him again?" you ask.

"For who?" she asks.

"The guy you were sitting with. The guy who was going to confess," you say. "The cops just took him away."

"No. I didn't come back for him," she says. "What do you mean, came back AGAIN?"

"Well, I talked to him and he wanted to know where you went. Earlier he'd said NOT AGAIN when he found out you'd left. I figured you must have left him lots of times before but always would come back."

"In his dreams," she said. "I never met him until today."

"Just today?!" you ask.

"Yes. He kept calling me on the phone and e-mailing me about logic, so I finally agreed to meet him here in the airport in between my flights. He drove up here from Ohio to meet me. I was hoping he would stop bugging me if I agreed to meet him. He is a very, very boring man."

"I think he teaches logic," you say.

"Yes, if you want to call it teaching. It's too bad he doesn't know hardly the first thing about logic," she says.

"Hmm," you say.

"I just feel so sorry for those poor students down there at Bowling Green!" she exclaims.

"Oh, how true," you reply.

"But I don't really care," she says. "I'm just here for a couple of hours between flights. I am going to Bangkok."

"Really? Wow," you say. "But wait. I thought you had known him for a long time!"

"No," she says. "I just met him today. Why did you think that?"

"Because after he got shot you said that the last time it happened he had on a bullet proof vest," you say.

"Oh, right," she says. "I did say that. But, no. I just met him today. It did happen earlier but it was just a little while before we came over here. It happened the first time in the coffee shop right over there. He tried to rob an old lady, but she shot him first."

"Oh," you say.

"Of course he managed to steal twenty dollars from her anyway," she says.

"Oh," you say.

You are a bit shocked.

"I told him he should confess. And he said he would, but he never did," she says.

"He told me that he also steals money from his college students," you say.

"That doesn't surprise me at all," she says.

"He also told me about the horrible things he did to you," you say.

"What?" she asks.

"How he wrote a logic book and accidentally used your name," you say.

Shantila laughs.

"How it ruined your life."

She laughs again.

"That is really funny," she says.

"Why?" you ask again.

"Now he's trying to steal my logic book too!"

"You mean he didn't write it?" you ask.

"Are you kidding?" she laughs. "That man cannot even reason with if. I put a version of it online and apparently he copies it and then passes it out to his students."

"So he didn't ruin your life?" you ask.

"Are you kidding?" she laughs again. "My life is just fine!"

"Oh," you say. "That's good."

"By the way, did you see a manuscript laying around here. I think I forgot it after the shoot-out. That's why I came back."

You look around. You see a black notebook a few seats away.

"Is that it?" you ask.

"Yup."

She picks up the notebook and puts it into her backpack.

"Take care of yourself!" she says.

"Ok. You too!"

Shantila waves and is gone.

There are a number of types of fallacies that can be described from the perspective of a person presenting an argument in an attempt to get another person to make an inference (and accept a certain conclusion). Other fallacies can be described from the perspective of one replying to such a presentation.

As we did in chapter 24, we can classify some forms of presentation and reply as good. Others are "near enemies" (that is, bad forms masquerading as good ones). And others of course are just plain bad.

Presenting and Replying to Arguments

Good inference	Fallacy ("near enemy")	Opposite ("far enemy")
Making coercive threats of force for good purposes in order to appeal to rational motivation (eg laws threatening punishment within a just legal system; rules by a parent acting wisely)	*Ad Baculum* (appeal to "the stick"; appeal to force) Threats in arguments; a state or parent or teacher or other person appears to make rational appeal but in fact simply coerces agreement due to real power and threat of violence. You should accept my view that there are aliens from Mars sitting in the classroom because ... anyone disagreeing with this conclusion will actually flunk this course.	Simply using coercive force wrongly (a mugger; a rapist; a blatantly unjust legal system that does not even attempt to appear just), where there is no argument at all nor any appeal to rational motivation other than response to brute force
Creatively juxtaposing ideas in new ways to stimulate imaginative thought and action	Red Herring Responding to an argument by introducing irrelevant points. Sir, your view that there are aliens from Mars attending the logic class cannot be correct. I saw last night on the Discovery channel there are no lions in the Detroit zoo.	Being boring, stuck, making no new connections between ideas, no creative juxtaposition at all
Appealing to compassionate qualities of normal human beings	*Ad misericordiam* (appeal "to pity") Irrelevant appeal to compassion; confusing compassion with pity. Please do not tell us that there are Martians attending our university because that would make us very nervous and ruin our weekend.	Appealing to hatred
Attacking an argument at its weak points	Straw Man Attacking an argument different from, and weaker, than the one that is given. There can't be Martians in the logic class because my friend Sally is in the class and she is from Cleveland, not Mars.	Simply attacking blindly, without any concern for relevance
Making reasonable presuppositions to facilitate communication and interaction	Complex Question Making a subtly unfair or false presupposition; e.g. that two statements both have to be accepted or rejected together Dear professor, have you stopped stealing money from your students?	Making blatantly unfair or false presuppositions

Here briefly are the examples of each of these types of fallacies, with a few additional brief comments.

Ad baculum: You should accept my view that there are aliens from Mars sitting in the classroom because some of the questions asked in this logic class couldn't have been asked by anyone other than a Martian. And anyone disagreeing with that conclusion will flunk the course. The reason given here for the view about aliens includes an appeal to the power of the speaker (who, apparently, is an insane logic professor).

Red Herring: Sir, your view that there are aliens from Mars attending class cannot be correct because, as I saw last night on the Discovery channel, there are no lions in the Detroit zoo. This is a pretty blatant example of the "red herring" fallacy that simply changes the subject. Without saying anything further, it just changes the topic of discussion.

Ad misericordiam: Please do not tell us that there are Martians attending our university because that would make us very nervous and ruin our weekend. If there there really are reasons for thinking Martians are here, then it isn't really compassionate to ignore those reasons even if somebody might be more comfortable doing so. As with other fallacies of this type, it is not possible to draw sharp lines between the good form and the "near enemy".

Straw man: There can't be Martians at this university because my friend Sally is from Cleveland, not Mars. This response assumes that the argument that there are Martians on campus includes the strong assumption that everybody at the university, including Sally, is from Mars. But that is much stronger than a simple claim that there are some Martians here. It is easier to attack the stronger claim that everybody on campus is from Mars than it is to respond to the relevant claim that somebody on campus is from Mars.

Complex Question: Dear professor, have you stopped stealing money from your students? The poor professor cannot really answer this question with either Yes or No without being cornered by the subtle assumption of the question that in the past the professor did steal. But that might very well be false! If the professor says Yes, then that means he was stealing in the past (since Yes, he has stopped.) If he says No, then obviously that also means he has done so before and is still doing it. The general fallacy implicitly conjoins two propositions (e.g., I stole in the past and I steal now) and assumes that one is saying yes to the first one (e.g., I stole in the past) insofar as one agrees or disagrees with the entire conjunction. The way to resist this is to point out that the question has the hidden presupposition.

There are numerous types of informal fallacies that can be identified. These (and those in chapter 24) are the only ones we will have time to discuss in this course. To see a list and discussion of other informal fallacies online (as of 12.3.06), see this site:

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/

Also, you can google "logical fallacies" and see what you find. --But always be wary of the Internet Fallacy: believing something just because you read it online!

Good

inference

Fallacy

("near enemy")

Opposite

("far enemy")

Forming beliefs based on reliable information on the Internet, after considering the credibility of the source and reflecting on how well it conforms to things you already know; Withholding belief (not forming beliefs) if you do not have reliable information about the credibility of the source.

Internet Fallacy

Believing something just because you read it on the Internet.

Jessica Simpson flies her own jet.

Believing something for no reason whatsoever, or just because you wanted it to be true.

*Practice

26.1 The identification of fallacious reasoning requires interpretation within a certain context, and it is not always clear cut when reasoning is fallacious. But assuming that each of the following is asserted or thought in a context in which it is fallacious, which fallacy (of the 6 discussed in this chapter) is most clearly exhibited by each of these?

1. The petition will be passed around now, and you should sign it because if you don't sign, we are sorry but you will lose your membership in this organization.

2. You should pay your taxes. People don't want to pay because they want to keep their money. But there are more important things in life than money.

3. You should vote for Sally for President. Our budget is tight and we need to cut expenses. You don't want our club to go into debt, do you?

4. Of course, God exists. For one thing, if you don't believe in God you are going to end up in hell.

5. Senator X's arguments against our going to war with Iraq are incredible to me. I cannot believe that an honorable man like Senator X would support a vicious dictator like Saddam Hussein.

6. You should give me the job because if I don't get it my mother is going to be heartbroken.

7. Have you stopped cheating on your income taxes?

8. What do you mean the foul is on me? C'mon, they already are ahead by 15 points!

9. Bowling Green has a very, very boring logic professor there. I know because I read it online.

10. Tom suggests we should send some money to help with the AIDS crisis in Africa. But why should we be spending all of our money in Africa?

11. My father is the chief of police. As you may know, he's the one who's been firing lots of cops. So you shouldn't be writing me that ticket, sir.

12. She asserts that we need more military spending, but are we seriously going to accept the entire federal budget being devoted to the military?

26.2 Create an example in English of each of the fallacies discussed in this chapter. (That is, come up with a new one that has not been discussed in the text or in class.).