Fallacies 08 28 2014 Affirming the consequent Denying the antecedent Deriving an ought from an is You cant validly get from premises which are purely descriptive about to the world to claims about who the world ought to be Ex social Darwinism Darwin described the world in a certain way in which creatures evolved in a natural selection survival of the fittest some people try to attempt to say this is how the world is to this is how the world ought to be the people who deserve the rewards in life are the fittest etc The fallacy of majority belief The fallacy of common practice Going from most believe this or most people do this so therefore it is true ok to do Assuming without argument because of a majority A majority belief of people who are experts in that subject isn t a fallacy Appeal to authority Ex Einstein said it so therefore it is true Often when you are appealing to an authority this person is an authority in one area or you are appealing to what they say about a different topic Concluding an authority in their specific subject with document proofs isn t a fallacy Red Herring Means something that is irrelevant to the argument Bringing up unrelated topics When someone presents support for a position the best way to determine whether you should believe would be to concentrate on their supporting evidence rather than personal surrounding stuff Ad Hominem Ad Hominem circumstantial o Means instead of addressing someone s argument you try to distract their argument by attacking them to cause them to doubt themselves or to deflect criticism from yourself o Circumstantial ex someone s trying to argue for repealing the ban for smoking inside restaurants and they talk about freedom set out an argument for why people should be able to smoke and by replying and pointing out saying the person presenting this argument is employed by tobacco company they might be presenting that argument on behalf of the company or they might just have a good argument o Ex someone argues that it s a really bad idea to text while driving a to quoque response to this would be well yea but you text while driving but that doesn t mean their argument is bad or invalid it just means they are a hypocrite Tu quoque The perfectionist fallacy Saying well doing this wont solve all our problems so its not worth it unless there s a perfect solution no other half solution should be taken Something still may be worth doing even if it isn t a perfect solution Conflation of morality with legality Confusing what s morally permissible with what s legally permissible It might be your legal right to do something but it still might not be the right thing to do Ex Cheating in a marriage Leaping from its my legal right to do it so Its my moral right to do it You also cant do the vice versa morally permissible to do something that is illegal immoral Ex Nazi Germany hiding Jews from Hitler was illegal but it wasn t You can t just simply say abortion is morally wrong so therefore it should be illegal you need further arguments Post Hoe Ergo Propter Hoe Mistaking Correlation for Causation If B happens after A you can conclude that A caused B Ex A certain state bans guns and murder rate drops Not enough evidence too many other variables Just because one thing follows another isn t enough evidence to conclude causation 9 2 Appeal to Ignorance If we don t have evidence if something is the case so therefore it is not the case Ex there s no evidence of aliens so therefore there s no aliens You cant validly go from lacking evidence that s something true to its falsehood because sometimes something can be true without being able to have evidence for it Ex Look out into the courtyard and you don t see anyone so you say there s no evidence of anyone out in the courtyard so you can conclude if someone was in the courtyard there would be evidence of them standing out there You can use this properly if there would be evidence if it were true Equivocation Slippery Slope Where a statement or a word has more than one meaning and an argument only works because it plays off that ambiguity Ex fish lay eggs roughly has multiple interpretations all fish lay eggs female fish very often lay eggs A person claims that if something were to happen then that would lead to other things to happen An exaggeration Ex genetically modified plants will lead to genetically modified animals will lead to genetically modified humans will lead to super humans who will take over normal humans Ex if we allow gay marriage it will lead to people marrying animals will lead to animals marrying animals will lead to objects marrying objects False Straw Man Someone s presented an argument and you don t like it and want to dissuade people that that person is wrong but their argument is pretty good so you present an argument similar to theirs but worse Make a similar bad argument and prove it wrong and say if I can shoot down that argument then his is wrong Ex one politician says shouldn t spend more on military other politician spins it to say they are against the US having an effective army Begging the Question You re assuming your conclusion in your premises Ex abortion is morally wrong argument murder is wrong lying is wrong abortion is wrong stealing is wrong therefore abortion is wrong Just repeating one of the premises and not really supporting it Ex argument for existence of god the bible says god exists the bible is the word of god therefore god exists Circular reasoning False Dilemma alternatives Try to argue something is the case by presenting too few Ex you re either with us supporting us or you re against us if you re not with us then you re against us Ignoring the alternative that you could be indifferent Ex either you believe in god or you believe that there is no god 9 2 Normative Ethics 9 18 14 4 47 PM Normative Ethics the branch of ethics concerned with giving a general account of what is right and wrong A normative theory will fill in this biconditional An action A is right wrong if and only if Relativism a descriptive different societies individuals may have different ideas of what s right or wrong b prescriptive stronger says what moral principals are correct depends on what cultural society you re in Some Leading Moral Theories Consequentialism results based ethical theory An action is right if and only if and because its consequences would be at least as good as the consequences of any alternative action that the agent might instead perform We can
View Full Document
Unlocking...