PHI2630 Test 1 Study Guide Fallacies Reasoning Errors Fallacy of Common Practice If other people do something then it is a reasonable thing to do Ad Hominem This fallacy occurs when instead of addressing someone s argument or position you irrelevantly attack the person or some aspect of the person who is making the argument Example Student Hey Professor Moore we shouldn t have to read this book by Freud Everyone knows he used cocaine Example If x does it then x is right Ad Hominem Circumstantial Suggesting that the person who is making the argument is biased or predisposed to take a particular stance and therefore the argument is necessarily invalid Example Person 1 is claiming Y Person 1 has a vested interest in Y being true Therefore Y is false Example According to person 1 Y is true Therefore Y is true Appeal to False Authority Using an authority as evidence in your argument when the authority is not really an authority on the facts relevant to the argument As the audience allowing an irrelevant authority to add credibility to the claim being made False Dilemma A reasoner who unfairly presents too few choices and then implies that a choice must be made among this short menu of choices When you reason from an either or position and you haven t considered all relevant possibilities Slippery Slope Fallacy A course of action is rejected because with little or no evidence one insists that it will lead to a chain reaction resulting in an undesirable end or ends The slippery slope involves an acceptance of a succession of events without direct evidence that this course of events will happen Example Today late for ten minutes tomorrow late for an hour and one day you will simply cease to show up Example Be my friend or be my enemy Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc The Latin phrase post hoc ergo propter hoc means literally after this therefore because of this The post hoc fallacy is committed when it is assumed that because one thing occurred after another it must have occurred as a result of it Example Most people who are read the last rites die shortly afterwards Therefore Priests are going around killing people with magic words When someone reasons that as they prayed for something and it then happened it therefore must have happened because they prayed for it they commit the post hoc fallacy The correlation between the prayer and the event could result from coincidence rather than cause so does not prove that prayer works Correlation does not imply causation Mistaking Correlation for Causation People frequently mistake a noted correlation of two events as a causative relationship between the two events Hasty Generalization Drawing a conclusion based on a small sample size rather than looking at statistics that are much more in line with the typical or average situation Example Sample S is taken from population P Sample S is a very small part of population P Conclusion C is drawn from sample S Straw Man A straw man argument is one that misrepresents a position in order to make it appear weaker than it actually is refutes this misrepresentation of the position and then concludes that the real position has been refuted Example Trinitarianism means that 3 equals 1 3 doesn t equal 1 Therefore trinitarianism is false Perfectionist Fallacy If you remark that a proposal or claim should be rejected solely because it doesn t solve the problem perfectly in cases where perfection isn t really required then you ve used the Perfectionist Fallacy Free Speech Harm Principle A government may justi ably pass laws that interfere with the liberty of individuals in order to prohibit individuals from causing harm to other individuals or to society Three issues that need to be clari ed with this principle 1 What counts as harm Physical harms killing maiming or in icting physical pain Psychological harms to ones mental health Economic harms Harms to ones career or reputation In order for the harm principle to justify government backed prohibition of the activity the result of the harm must be serious enough to not let citizens engage in the activity 2 How serious is the harm 3 When applying the law we must balance the effects of passing vs not passing the law If the negative social consequences of passing the law outweighs the level of harm that is produced by allowing the activity the harm principle cant justify government legislation prohibiting the activity Offense Principle A government may justi ably pass laws that interfere with individual liberty in order to prohibit individuals from offending others Offensive behavior includes causing others shame embarrassment discomfort Hate Speech Language oral or written tat expresses a strong hatred contempt or intolerance for some social group particularly social groups classi ed according to race ethnicity gender sexual orientation religion disability or nationality Speaker aims hate speech to degrade dehumanize intimidate or incite violence against the targeted group Speech Codes Chilling Effect Forbidden Fruit Effect Principle of Legal Moralism the theory that says laws may be used to prohibit or require behavior based on society s judgement on whether it is moral Charles R Lawrence s argument argues that the use of harmful language should not be protected by the First Amendment Law in order to stop racism Believes we should endorse a policy that will protect the rights of those who are victimized by this racial nuisance while at the same time not censoring our constitutional right of free speech Nadine Strossen s argument Defends pornography Free speech sex and the ght for women s rights Disagrees with government intervention because she thinks it goes against our First Amendment rights Ethical Theories Normative Ethics The part of moral philosophy concerned with criteria of what is morally right and wrong It includes the formulation of moral rules that have direct implications for what human actions institutions and ways of life should be like A classi cation within western philosophy that attempts to derive its standard of right and wrong from subjectively interpreted social behavior Attempt to provide a general theory that tells us how we should live Example This action is wrong in this society but it is right in another Act Consequentialism A type of moral theory according to which consequences of actions are all that matter in determining the rightness and wrongness of actions Guiding idea Right action is to be understood entirely in terms of the overall
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