Modes of reasoning Questions 3
lazy808
ExercisesforFallacies.ppt“Reasoning About Social Issues”
Petrenko Anton, PhD
Hours: By appointment (Monday 11:30-12:30)
E-Mail: [email protected]
AP/MODR1730 D
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Neutralizing Fallacies
With each question, do the following steps. These steps will help you to understand the problem with the argument and allow you to detect the fallacy correctly. It is very important to write down premises and conclusion and see how the premises are supposed to support the conclusion (answers are at the back):
1. Summarize the argument where it occurs
2. Name the fallacy
3. Give the criteria for committing the fallacy
4. Explain how the fallacy happens in the argument
5. Challenge the fallacy
Either you like hokey, or you are gay
You don’t like hokey
You are gay
False Dichotomy
False Dichotomy is committed when options are artificially limited (others are ignored)
Only two options are given: a) gay or b) like hokey
Not exclusive: one can be gay and like hokey or not gay and like hokey (maybe the person finds it dull or too violent)
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Neutralizing Fallacies
Are you sure that you oppose the proposal to amalgamate with the Canadian Chiropractic College? After all, both the president and the dean are strongly in favour, and you haven’t gotten tenure yet.
It is hard for me to see how my neighbours and I can be blamed for discrimination when it comes to deciding who is to live in our condominium building. We make discriminations all through life. If people are not allowed to discriminate, how can they make decisions between right and wrong? Indeed, how can they even act responsibly if they must be indiscriminate in their choices?
When it comes to race relations, you are either part of the solution or part of the problem.
Appeal to force
False Dichotomy
Equivocation
1. Paraphrase into traditional form; 2. Name the Fallacy; 3. Give criteria; 4 Explain how it occurs; 5. Explain why wrong.
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Neutralizing Fallacies
Capital punishment for murderers and rapists is quite justified; there are a number of good reasons for putting to death people who commit such crimes.
The university shouldn’t teach Critical Thinking, because Critical Thinking teaches people to argue, and arguments create conflict and dissent between people.
If you took a lecture course with Professor Smith, you would know that lectures are a lousy way of learning.
Hasty Generalization
Equivocation
Begging the Question
1. Paraphrase into traditional form; 2. Name the Fallacy; 3. Give criteria; 4 Explain how it occurs; 5. Explain why wrong.
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Neutralizing Fallacies
Blacks must be happy with their situation these days. There haven’t been any protest marches or loud voices of dissent for some time now.
Asked to explain why a payroll cheque bounced, the owner of a professional basketball team replied, “Obviously, we didn’t have enough money in the bank.”
A good Christian should not dance because dancing was originally used in pagan mystery cults as a way of worshipping pagan gods.
The evolutionists claim that man evolved from apes. But this couldn’t be true. Apes and men don’t look at all alike.
Appeal to Ignorance
Begging the question
Genetic Fallacy
Straw Man Fallacy
1. Paraphrase into traditional form; 2. Name the Fallacy; 3. Give criteria; 4 Explain how it occurs; 5. Explain why wrong.
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Neutralizing Fallacies
“We think our proposal is a good one and should be implemented. You need to give us compelling reasons why it isn’t.”
Aristotle's comments on women can safely be ignored, for they simply reflect the patriarchal society of the 5th century B.C.E.
Professor to student: “How often have you plagiarized before this and not gotten caught?”
Anyone who challenges M. Bouchard, a leading separatist, is not a true Quebecker.
Loaded Presupposition
Appeal to Ignorance (Reversed Burden of Proof)
Poisoning the well
Genetic Fallacy
1. Paraphrase into traditional form; 2. Name the Fallacy; 3. Give criteria; 4 Explain how it occurs; 5. Explain why wrong.
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Neutralizing Fallacies
Students have to be taught respect for authority. Everyone agrees that the time has come to reintroduce the lash into the public school system.
Parent to teenager: “If I let you have the car to go to the dance on Saturday, then pretty soon, you’ll be wanting it to go to school, and I won’t have any way of getting to work. No. You’re not getting the car.”
From a recent survey of a large number of representatively selected people in Toronto, it was discovered that less than two percent of Canadians engage in hunting for sport. Therefore, most Canadians are not hunters.
Hasty Generalization
Appeal to Popular Sentiment
Slippery Slope
I will not commit this act because it is unjust. I know it is unjust because my conscience tells me so, and my conscience tells me so because the act is unjust.
Begging the Question
1. Paraphrase into traditional form; 2. Name the Fallacy; 3. Give criteria; 4 Explain how it occurs; 5. Explain why wrong.
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Neutralizing Fallacies
All three sex offenders arrested this month by municipal authorities have previous records for the same crime. It seems that once a sex offender, always a sex offender.
Because human bodies become less active as they grow older and because they eventually die, it is reasonable to expect that political bodies will become less and less active the longer they are in existence, and they, too, will eventually die.
Nobody sticks to the one hundred kilometres per hour speed limit. Almost everybody drives one-twenty. The speed limit really ought to be raised twenty kilometres an hour.
Hasty Generalization
Appeal to Common Practice
False Analogy
1. Paraphrase into traditional form; 2. Name the Fallacy; 3. Give criteria; 4 Explain how it occurs; 5. Explain why wrong.
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Neutralizing Fallacies
Solar energy can’t meet all of our energy needs now, nor will it ever be able to. We must abandon the notion that it will and continue investing in nuclear energy.
The late eighteenth-century/early nineteenth-century social reformer Thomas Malthus, noting that sober and industrious farmers owned at least one cow, while those who had none were usually lazy and drunken, proposed that the government give a cow to farmers who had none in order to make them sober and industrious.
It’s no wonder you think that promiscuity is all right. You’ve never had a good relationship with a man. So it’s not strange that you’d resort to recreational sex.
Ad hominem
False Cause/Post Hoc
False Dichotomy
1. Paraphrase into traditional form; 2. Name the Fallacy; 3. Give criteria; 4 Explain how it occurs; 5. Explain why wrong.
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Neutralizing Fallacies
Said to a white middle-aged male teaching a course on race and gender: You can’t teach about women, race, and discrimination. You are a white, middle-aged, privileged male. What can you know?
We should impeach the Solicitor General. There have been many allegations of unethical conduct on her part. However, she has done nothing to demonstrate her innocence.
Senator Biddle has argued that we should outlaw violent pornography. The senator obviously favours complete governmental censorship of books, magazines and films. I am shocked that such a view should be expressed on the floor of the Senate. It runs counter to everything that this nation stands for.
Genetic fallacy
Straw man fallacy
Appeal to ignorance (reversed burden of proof)
1. Paraphrase into traditional form; 2. Name the Fallacy; 3. Give criteria; 4 Explain how it occurs; 5. Explain why wrong.
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Neutralizing Fallacies
My opponent is a dentist, so, of course he will oppose the fluoridating of water, since it will mean that he would lose business.
The head of the Skeptics organization, a known atheist, says that talking with the dead is impossible. I don’t think we need to consider his so-called “evidence”.
Poisoning the well
Ad Hominem (circumstances)
Ms Norman argues that a woman has a right to decide what happens inside of her own body, and that the state has no right interfering with that right. I say that we cannot stand by and simply allow pregnant teenagers to use abortion as a morning after form of birth control, and Ms Norman is wrong when she demands that right.
Straw Man
1. Paraphrase into traditional form; 2. Name the Fallacy; 3. Give criteria; 4 Explain how it occurs; 5. Explain why wrong.
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Neutralizing Fallacies
In a case in Alberta, the prosecution established that the defendant, previously a model young man, had been smoking marijuana. He became inflamed -- nay possessed – by overwhelming lust and slew a rival for his girlfriend's affections. This is not the only case like this. In New York, several young children were smoking marijuana. They went on a rampage, smashing everything in their apartment. In San Francisco, an arsonist torched several buildings -- this after he became a regular marijuana user. Marijuana obviously leads to violent behaviour.
Allowing voluntary euthanasia would inevitably lead to involuntary euthanasia. And it is morally repugnant to kill people against their will, simply because they are old or disabled or we don’t want them. We must stop all attempts at implementing voluntary euthanasia.
I see nothing morally wrong with paying bribes to elected officials in other countries to obtain business favours. That is the way business is done in many parts of the world.
False Cause (Post Hoc)
Appeal to common practice
Slippery Slope
1. Paraphrase into traditional form; 2. Name the Fallacy; 3. Give criteria; 4 Explain how it occurs; 5. Explain why wrong.
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Neutralizing Fallacies
God must exist. Most people believe in him (her).
I see nothing morally wrong with paying bribes to elected officials in other countries to obtain business favours. That is the way business is done in many parts of the world.
Appeal to common practice
Appeal to popular sentiment
You’re not going to wear a wedding ring, are you? Don’t you know that wedding rings originally symbolized the ankle chains worn by women to prevent them from running away from their husbands? I wouldn’t have thought you would be party to such a sexist practice.
Genetic Fallacy
1. Paraphrase into traditional form; 2. Name the Fallacy; 3. Give criteria; 4 Explain how it occurs; 5. Explain why wrong.
We should be suspicious of the Honourable Member’s argument for not closing the naval base in Esquimalt, B.C., because he is from British Columbia and closing the base will have adverse effects on the B.C. economy.
Genetic fallacy
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Neutralizing Fallacies
Places with a higher percentage of people who listen to music have higher suicide rates. Obviously country music drives people to suicide.
The recent Supreme Court decision outlawing a moment of silence for prayer in public schools is scandalous. Evidently, the American Civil Liberties Union and the other radical groups will not be satisfied until every last man, women, and child in the country is an atheist. I’m fed up.
How can you argue that gambling should be banned? Gambling is something we can’t avoid – an integral part of human experience. People gamble every time they get in their cars or decide to get married.
False Cause (Post Hoc)
Equivocation
Straw Man
1. Paraphrase into traditional form; 2. Name the Fallacy; 3. Give criteria; 4 Explain how it occurs; 5. Explain why wrong.
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