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Animistic Fallacy
The animistic fallacy is the informal fallacy of arguing that an event or situation necessarily arose because someone intentionally acted to cause it. While it could be that someone set out to effect a specific goal, the fallacy appears in an argument that states this ''must'' be the case. The name of the fallacy comes from the animistic belief that changes in the physical world are the work of conscious spirits. __NOTOC__ Examples Thomas Sowell in his book '' Knowledge and Decisions'' (1980) presents several arguments as examples of the animistic fallacy: * that people earn wealth always because of superior choices * that central planning is necessary to prevent chaos in society Sowell repeatedly dismisses the necessity that order comes from design, and notes that fallacious animistic arguments tend to provide explanations that require comparatively little time to implement. In this light he contrasts the six-day creation of the world described in the Bible to the development ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Informal Fallacy
Informal fallacies are a type of incorrect argument in natural language. The source of the error is not just due to the ''form'' of the argument, as is the case for formal fallacies, but can also be due to their ''content'' and ''context''. Fallacies, despite being incorrect, usually ''appear'' to be correct and thereby can seduce people into accepting and using them. These misleading appearances are often connected to various aspects of natural language, such as ambiguous or vague expressions, or the assumption of implicit premises instead of making them explicit. Traditionally, a great number of informal fallacies have been identified, including the fallacy of equivocation, the fallacy of amphiboly, the fallacies of composition and division, the false dilemma, the fallacy of begging the question, the ad hominem fallacy and the appeal to ignorance. There is no general agreement as to how the various fallacies are to be grouped into categories. One approach sometimes found in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Animism
Animism (from Latin: ' meaning 'breath, Soul, spirit, life') is the belief that objects, places, and creatures all possess a distinct Spirituality, spiritual essence. Potentially, animism perceives all things—Animal, animals, Plant, plants, Rock (geology), rocks, River, rivers, Weather, weather systems, human handiwork, and perhaps even Word, words—as animated and alive. Animism is used in the anthropology of religion, as a term for the Belief, belief system of many Indigenous peoples, especially in contrast to the relatively more recent development of organized religions. Animism focuses on the Metaphysics, metaphysical universe, with a specific focus on the concept of the immaterial soul. Although each culture has its own mythologies and rituals, animism is said to describe the most common, foundational thread of indigenous peoples' "spiritual" or "supernatural" perspectives. The animistic perspective is so widely held and inherent to most indigenous peoples, that they ofte ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Sowell
Thomas Sowell (; born June 30, 1930) is an American author, economist, political commentator and academic who is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. With widely published commentary and books—and as a guest on TV and radio—he became a well-known voice in the American conservative movement and is considered one of the most influential black conservatives. He was a recipient of the National Humanities Medal from President George W. Bush in 2002. Sowell was born in segregated Gastonia, North Carolina, to a poor family, and grew up in Harlem, New York City. Due to poverty and difficulties at home, he dropped out of Stuyvesant High School and worked various odd jobs, eventually serving in the United States Marine Corps during the Korean War. Afterward he took night classes at Howard University and then attended Harvard University, where he graduated '' magna cum laude'' in 1958. He earned a master's degree in economics from Columbia University the next year and a doc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Knowledge And Decisions
''Knowledge and Decisions'' is a non-fiction book by American economist Thomas Sowell. The book was initially published in 1980 by Basic Books and reissued in 1996. Sowell analyzes social and economic knowledge and how it is transmitted through society, and how that transmission affects decision making. The book's central theme of dispersed knowledge is drawn from F.A. Hayek's article "The Use of Knowledge in Society." Hayek said that this book expanded admirably on his original concepts and made them clear to lay readers, with examples of economic activity drawn from the real world. Reason, 1981, retrieved 2021-07-24 Sowell rejects the tendency to put economic and political decisions and their results in moral terms. Doing so, he argues, ignores the tradeoffs and limitations inherent in every economic system and society. Consistent ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Genesis Creation Narrative
The Genesis creation narrative is the creation myth of both Judaism and Christianity. The narrative is made up of two stories, roughly equivalent to the first two chapters of the Book of Genesis. In the first, Elohim (the Hebrew generic word for God) creates the heavens and the Earth in six days, then rests on, blesses, and sanctifies the seventh (i.e. the Biblical Sabbath). In the second story God (now referred to by the personal name Yahweh) creates Adam, the first man, from dust and places him in the Garden of Eden. There he is given dominion over the animals. Eve, the first woman, is created from Adam’s rib as his companion. The Hebrew creation narrative borrowed themes from Mesopotamian mythology, but adapted them to their unique belief in one God. The first major comprehensive draft of the Pentateuch (the series of five books which begins with Genesis and ends with Deuteronomy) is thought to have been composed in the late 7th or the 6th century BCE (the Jahwist sour ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts of a variety of forms originally written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek. These texts include instructions, stories, poetry, and prophecies, among other genres. The collection of materials that are accepted as part of the Bible by a particular religious tradition or community is called a biblical canon. Believers in the Bible generally consider it to be a product of divine inspiration, but the way they understand what that means and interpret the text can vary. The religious texts were compiled by different religious communities into various official collections. The earliest contained the first five books of the Bible. It is called the Torah in Hebrew and the Pentateuch (meaning ''five books'') in Greek; the second oldest part was a coll ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation tends to exist within any given population as a result of genetic mutation and recombination. Evolution occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection (including sexual selection) and genetic drift act on this variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more common or more rare within a population. The evolutionary pressures that determine whether a characteristic is common or rare within a population constantly change, resulting in a change in heritable characteristics arising over successive generations. It is this process of evolution that has given rise to biodiversity at every level of biological organisation, including the levels of species, individual organisms, and molecules. The theory of evolution by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics to abstract concepts such as nations, emotions, and natural forces, such as seasons and weather. Both have ancient roots as storytelling and artistic devices, and most cultures have traditional fables with anthropomorphized animals as characters. People have also routinely attributed human emotions and behavioral traits to wild as well as domesticated animals. Etymology Anthropomorphism and anthropomorphization derive from the verb form ''anthropomorphize'', itself derived from the Greek ''ánthrōpos'' (, "human") and ''morphē'' (, "form"). It is first attested in 1753, originally in reference to the heresy of applying a human form to the Christian God.''Oxford English Dictionary'', 1st ed. "anthropomorphism, ''n.''" Oxford University P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Argument From Ignorance
Argument from ignorance (from la, argumentum ad ignorantiam), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which ''ignorance'' represents "a lack of contrary evidence"), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true. This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes the possibility that there may have been an insufficient investigation to prove that the proposition is either true or false. It also does not allow for the possibility that the answer is unknowable, only knowable in the future, or neither completely true nor completely false. In debates, appealing to ignorance is sometimes an attempt to shift the burden of proof. The term was likely coined by philosopher John Locke in the late 17th century. Examples * "I take the view that this lack (of enemy subversive activity in the west coast) is the most ominous sign in our whole situation. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pathetic Fallacy
The phrase pathetic fallacy is a literary term for the attribution of human emotion and conduct to things found in nature that are not human. It is a kind of personification that occurs in poetic descriptions, when, for example, clouds seem sullen, when leaves dance, or when rocks seem indifferent. The British cultural critic John Ruskin coined the term in the third volume of his work ''Modern Painters'' (1856). History of the phrase Ruskin coined the term ''pathetic fallacy'' to attack the sentimentality that was common to the poetry of the late 18th century, and which was rampant among poets including Burns, Blake, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats. Wordsworth supported this use of personification based on emotion by claiming that "objects ... derive their influence not from properties inherent in them . . . but from such as are bestowed upon them by the minds of those who are conversant with or affected by these objects." However Tennyson, in his own poetry, began to refine and di ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reification (fallacy)
Reification (also known as concretism, hypostatization, or the fallacy of misplaced concreteness) is a fallacy of ambiguity, when an abstraction (abstract belief or hypothetical construct) is treated as if it were a concrete real event or physical entity. In other words, it is the error of treating something that is not concrete, such as an idea, as a concrete thing. A common case of reification is the confusion of a model with reality: " the map is not the territory". Reification is part of normal usage of natural language (just like metonymy for instance), as well as of literature, where a reified abstraction is intended as a figure of speech, and actually understood as such. But the use of reification in logical reasoning or rhetoric is misleading and usually regarded as a fallacy. Etymology From Latin ''res'' ("thing") and -''fication'', a suffix related to ''facere'' ("to make"). Thus ''reification'' can be loosely translated as "thing-making"; the turning of something abstra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Resistentialism
Resistentialism is a jocular theory to describe "seemingly spiteful behavior manifested by inanimate objects", where objects that cause problems (like lost keys or a runaway bouncy ball) are said to exhibit a high degree of malice toward humans. The theory posits a war being fought between humans and inanimate objects, and all the little annoyances that objects cause throughout the day are battles between the two. The concept was not new in 1948 when humorist Paul Jennings coined this name for it in a piece titled "Report on Resistentialism", published in ''The Spectator'' that year and reprinted in ''The New York Times''; the word is a blend of the Latin ''res'' ("thing"), the French ''résister'' ("to resist"), and the existentialism school of philosophy. The movement is a spoof of existentialism in general, and Jean-Paul Sartre in particular, Jennings naming the fictional inventor of Resistentialism as Pierre-Marie Ventre. The slogan of Resistentialism is "''Les choses sont ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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