RESCHEDULED ASSIGNMENT !!!

PLEASE NOTE!

Assignment #1 has been rescheduled. It is NOT due next week, but the week after.

Fallacies

The following list of fallacies should be useful as a field guide, though it's not an exhaustive explanation.

FALLACIES -- MALFORMED ARGUMENTS.

Fallacies may be used to support good conclusions, and false conclusions may include good arguments. But a fallacy is not itself a good reason to believe anything. Here are a few examples.

INDUCTIVE FALLACIES -- false analogy/unrepresentative sample, exclusion of evidence, slothful induction. Premises are based on samples that do not properly represent those involved in the conclusion, either because the samples are too few or too odd, or because some factor or pattern has been excluded from the sample population or ignored.

• The quarterback failed chem, so jocks are dumb.


• "My roommate's chem class was hard, and mine's hard, too. Chem's just hard."


• “To see if Bush would win the next election, we polled thousands of people in Venice, California”


• "Jim has arrived prepped for each essay this semester, so we can expect him to arrive prepared for the final (even though he’s running a fever of 103 degrees, his car just burst into flames on the 57 and his mother reported him to the IRS."


• “I always get ridiculously busy at the end of the semester, but it’s not bad planning: Things just happen that I don’t expect.”

DEDUCTIVE FALLACY - A thinker considers that the relations between two ideas determine the nature of a third idea. If any relation in a chain of reasoning is not valid, the conclusion, correct or incorrect, is not supported.

FALLACIES OF DISTRACTION - Irrelevant conclusions.

• False Dilemma - The thinker presumes that fewer options exist than those that may exist.
  
• "Either you're with us, or you're with the terrorists."


• Complex Question - .Two distinct statements are treated as inseparable.


• "Do you support our troops and the war in Iraq?"
  
• Slippery Slope - One idea is related to another similar (or dissimilar!) idea.


• "“If we allow same-sex marriage, pretty soon we’ll have to honor marriages to multiple partners, then to animals.”


• Argument from Ignorance - If it cannot be proven, it must be false.
  
• "In over 2,000 years, no one has proven that God exists, so obviously She doesn’t.”


• Attacking the person (not the argument) -




• "The Pope just believes that because he's Catholic."


• "You were never poor (or old, or left-handed) so you just don't understand."


• “You say pot hurts my studies, but you do seem to like your whisky sours.”




• Style over Substance - Judging whether something's true or false by how it's presented.




• "How can you believe Bush? The guy can’t say three sentences without putting his foot in his mouth.”


• “But that’s just why I trust him: He’s so downto-earth and anti-intellectual.”


• Appeal to Authority (particularly anonymous authority) -- It's true because some authority says so.


• “Oprah says Bill Clinton’s autobiography is one of the best books written this year.”


• "Starbucks says espresso over ice is a great way to chill.”


• “But I read right in The National Enquirer where experts say it’s so!”


• "Flies have four legs: Aristotle said so!”

APPEAL TO MOTIVE - Whether the conclusion is convenient or not has nothing to do with its truth.

• Prejudicial Language - Something's held to have certain characteristics because of a term applied to it.




• Operation Iraqi Freedom?”


• "If you don’t support the Patriot Act, you must not be patriotic.”


• “If you don’t like Affirmative Action, what is it you prefer? Negative action or inaction?”




• Appeal to Pity, Force, or Popularity




• “I worked so hard on this handout that you students must consider it brilliant and interesting.”


• Lucy Van Pelt, speaking to Linus, says,“I’ll give you five good reasons: (wrapping her fingers one by one into a fist) : one, two, three, four, five.” "


• Look, we’re right because we can do it,


• It works, so it's right.”


• “It’s just common sense.”


• "Joe Basketball wears Flying A sneakers.

CAUSE AND EFFECT FALLACIES -

• Coincidental Correlation - One thing follows another, so someone assumes a causal relationship.




• “Jim caused a quake. The week after he moved to L.A. and started talking about quakes, one happened.”


• Complex Cause or Insignificant Cause - Ignores the various causes of an action to concentrate on one or a few.


• Joint Effect - The same phenomenon is treated at once as its own cause and effect.


• "Violence against the population was caused by the invasion."




• Reverse Cause/Effect - "I don't revise essays because I'm a lousy writer anyway."

Charles Reznikoff

Suburban River: Summer

In the clear morning
the gulls float
on the blue water,
white birds on the blue water,
on the rosy glitter of dawn.

The white gulls
hover
above the glistening river
where sewers empty
their slow ripples

Charles Reznikoff, from Jerusalem and the Golden

Sappho on Gold

Here's the Sappho, for those who wanted to write in response.


Say what you please,

Gold is God's child;
neither worms nor
moths eat gold; it
is much stronger
than a man's heart


Sappho
After a translation by Mary Barnhard