Logical Fallacies: can we make this a sticky please?

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eldad9

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Logical fallacies: They taint the discussion of almost every topic here. They're false; everybody should be able to recognize them, and know better than to use them. What's the best way to get at least some people to even know about them? (and why are most children never taught about them at school?)

Here are a few links on this subject.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/logic.html
http://www.logicalfallacies.info/
http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/fallacies_list.html

Thoughts? Comments? No need for sarcastic remarks demonstrating the techniques, thank you.
 
[quote name='eldad9']Logical fallacies: They taint the discussion of almost every topic here. They're false; everybody should be able to recognize them, and know better than to use them. What's the best way to get at least some people to even know about them? (and why are most children never taught about them at school?)

Here are a few links on this subject.

http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logical_fallacy
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/logic.html
http://www.logicalfallacies.info/
http://web.cn.edu/kwheeler/fallacies_list.html

Thoughts? Comments? No need for sarcastic remarks demonstrating the techniques, thank you.[/QUOTE]

The ironical implications of this thread are limitless.
 
There are many typos and common mistakes; for the most part they don't impact the readability of a post, unless many of them are clustered together. Logical fallacies, in contrast, can easily render an entire thread useless.

(Favorite typo/mistake: a lot of people write "alot", but almost nobody writes "alittle". Why is that?)
 
[quote name='eldad9']There are many typos and common mistakes; for the most part they don't impact the readability of a post, unless many of them are clustered together. Logical fallacies, in contrast, can easily render an entire thread useless.

(Favorite typo/mistake: a lot of people write "alot", but almost nobody writes "alittle". Why is that?)[/quote]

Well - most of us know alittle grammar, it's just the common mistakes that we make.
 
[quote name='eldad9']Logical fallacies: They taint the discussion of every thing every where. They're false; everybody should be able to recognize them, and know better than to use them. What's the best way to get at least some people to even know about them? (and why are most children never taught about them at school?)

[/QUOTE]


fixed.

just gotta brush it off. not everyone gets a logic class and nobody wants to edit themselves constantly.
 
Making an argument which is founded upon an incorrect assumption or inappropriate reference is a relatively small problem, I would say.

The real pisser is when someone else catches you out in your misstatement and you attempt to bluster your way out of it. You try to adopt a "big picture" approach on the issue at large, or you try to render the other poster's position equally invalid by putting words in his mouth, or you accuse the other side of "not getting" your post and then cooking up a replacement argument on the fly, etc., etc.

One might as well request a sticky that says,"Be reasonable."
 
I could certainly do without these:

Description of Ad Hominem

Translated from Latin to English, "Ad Hominem" means "against the man" or "against the person."

An Ad Hominem is a general category of fallacies in which a claim or argument is rejected on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument. Typically, this fallacy involves two steps. First, an attack against the character of person making the claim, her circumstances, or her actions is made (or the character, circumstances, or actions of the person reporting the claim). Second, this attack is taken to be evidence against the claim or argument the person in question is making (or presenting). This type of "argument" has the following form:

1. Person A makes claim X.
2. Person B makes an attack on person A.
3. Therefore A's claim is false.

The reason why an Ad Hominem (of any kind) is a fallacy is that the character, circumstances, or actions of a person do not (in most cases) have a bearing on the truth or falsity of the claim being made (or the quality of the argument being made).
Example of Ad Hominem

1. Bill: "I believe that abortion is morally wrong."
Dave: "Of course you would say that, you're a priest."
Bill: "What about the arguments I gave to support my position?"
Dave: "Those don't count. Like I said, you're a priest, so you have to say that abortion is wrong. Further, you are just a lackey to the Pope, so I can't believe what you say."
Click to expand...

This is also very common on this forum:

Description of Straw Man

The Straw Man fallacy is committed when a person simply ignores a person's actual position and substitutes a distorted, exaggerated or misrepresented version of that position. This sort of "reasoning" has the following pattern:

1. Person A has position X.
2. Person B presents position Y (which is a distorted version of X).
3. Person B attacks position Y.
4. Therefore X is false/incorrect/flawed.

This sort of "reasoning" is fallacious because attacking a distorted version of a position simply does not constitute an attack on the position itself. One might as well expect an attack on a poor drawing of a person to hurt the person.
Examples of Straw Man

1. Prof. Jones: "The university just cut our yearly budget by $10,000."
Prof. Smith: "What are we going to do?"
Prof. Brown: "I think we should eliminate one of the teaching assistant positions. That would take care of it."
Prof. Jones: "We could reduce our scheduled raises instead."
Prof. Brown: " I can't understand why you want to bleed us dry like that, Jones."

2. "Senator Jones says that we should not fund the attack submarine program. I disagree entirely. I can't understand why he wants to leave us defenseless like that."

3. Bill and Jill are arguing about cleaning out their closets:
Jill: "We should clean out the closets. They are getting a bit messy."
Bill: "Why, we just went through those closets last year. Do we have to clean them out everyday?"
Jill: "I never said anything about cleaning them out every day. You just want too keep all your junk forever, which is just ridiculous."
Click to expand...
 
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