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Attacking Faulty Reasoning
''Attacking Faulty Reasoning: A Practical Guide to Fallacy-free Arguments'' is a textbook on logical fallacies by T. Edward Damer that has been used for many years in a number of college courses on logic, critical thinking, argumentation, and philosophy. It explains 60 of the most commonly committed fallacies. Each of the fallacies is concisely defined and illustrated with several relevant examples. For each fallacy, the text gives suggestions about how to address or to "attack" the fallacy when it is encountered. The organization of the fallacies comes from the author’s own fallacy theory, which defines a fallacy as a violation of one of the five criteria of a good argument: * the argument must be structurally well-formed; * the premises must be relevant; * the premises must be acceptable; * the premises must be sufficient in number, weight, and kind; * there must be an effective rebuttal of challenges to the argument. Each fallacy falls into at least one of Damer's five fa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logical Fallacies
In logic and philosophy, a formal fallacy is a pattern of reasoning rendered invalid by a flaw in its logical structure. Propositional logic, for example, is concerned with the meanings of sentences and the relationships between them. It focuses on the role of logical operators, called propositional connectives, in determining whether a sentence is true. An error in the sequence will result in a deductive argument that is invalid. The argument itself could have true premises, but still have a false conclusion. Thus, a formal fallacy is a fallacy in which deduction goes wrong, and is no longer a logical process. This may not affect the truth of the conclusion, since validity and truth are separate in formal logic. While a logical argument is a ''non sequitur'' if, and only if, it is invalid, the term "non sequitur" typically refers to those types of invalid arguments which do not constitute formal fallacies covered by particular terms (e.g., affirming the consequent). In other wor ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Argument From Ignorance
Argument from ignorance (), or appeal to ignorance, is an informal fallacy where something is claimed to be true or false because of a lack of evidence to the contrary. The fallacy is committed when one 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. If a proposition has not yet been proven true, one is not entitled to conclude, solely on that basis, that it is false, and if a proposition has not yet been proven false, one is not entitled to conclude, solely on that basis, that it is true. Another way of expressing this is that a proposition is true only if proven true, and a proposition is false only if proven false. If no proof is offered (in either direction), then the proposition can be called unproven, undecided, inconclusive, an open problem or a conjecture. Use The term was likely coined by philosopher John Locke in the late 17th century. In debates, appealing to ignorance is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logic Books
Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclusions follow from premises based on the structure of arguments alone, independent of their topic and content. Informal logic is associated with informal fallacies, critical thinking, and argumentation theory. Informal logic examines arguments expressed in natural language whereas formal logic uses formal language. When used as a countable noun, the term "a logic" refers to a specific logical formal system that articulates a proof system. Logic plays a central role in many fields, such as philosophy, mathematics, computer science, and linguistics. Logic studies arguments, which consist of a set of premises that leads to a conclusion. An example is the argument from the premises "it's Sunday" and "if it's Sunday then I don't have to work" leading to the conclusion "I don't have to work." Premis ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Logical Reasoning
Logical reasoning is a mind, mental Action (philosophy), activity that aims to arrive at a Logical consequence, conclusion in a Rigour, rigorous way. It happens in the form of inferences or arguments by starting from a set of premises and reasoning to a conclusion supported by these premises. The premises and the conclusion are propositions, i.e. true or false claims about what is the case. Together, they form an argument. Logical reasoning is norm-governed in the sense that it aims to formulate correct arguments that any rational person would find convincing. The main discipline studying logical reasoning is logic. Distinct types of logical reasoning differ from each other concerning the norms they employ and the certainty of the conclusion they arrive at. Deductive reasoning offers the strongest support: the premises ensure the conclusion, meaning that it is impossible for the conclusion to be false if all the premises are true. Such an argument is called a Validity (logic), v ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fallacy
A fallacy is the use of invalid or otherwise faulty reasoning in the construction of an argument that may appear to be well-reasoned if unnoticed. The term was introduced in the Western intellectual tradition by the Aristotelian '' De Sophisticis Elenchis''. Fallacies may be committed intentionally to manipulate or persuade by deception, unintentionally because of human limitations such as carelessness, cognitive or social biases and ignorance, or potentially due to the limitations of language and understanding of language. These delineations include not only the ignorance of the right reasoning standard but also the ignorance of relevant properties of the context. For instance, the soundness of legal arguments depends on the context in which they are made. Fallacies are commonly divided into "formal" and "informal". A formal fallacy is a flaw in the structure of a deductive argument that renders the argument invalid, while an informal fallacy originates in an error in ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is the process of analyzing available facts, evidence, observations, and arguments to make sound conclusions or informed choices. It involves recognizing underlying assumptions, providing justifications for ideas and actions, evaluating these justifications through comparisons with varying perspectives, and assessing their rationality and potential consequences. The goal of critical thinking is to form a judgment through the application of rational, skeptical, and unbiased analyses and evaluation. In modern times, the use of the phrase ''critical thinking'' can be traced to John Dewey, who used the phrase ''reflective thinking,'' which depends on the knowledge base of an individual; the excellence of critical thinking in which an individual can engage varies according to it.Piergiovanni, P. R.Creating a Critical Thinker ''College Teaching'', Vol. 62, No. 3 (July–September 2014), pp. 86-93, accessed 26 January 2023 According to philosopher Richard W. Paul, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Argumentation
An argument is a series of sentences, statements, or propositions some of which are called premises and one is the conclusion. The purpose of an argument is to give reasons for one's conclusion via justification, explanation, and/or persuasion. Arguments are intended to determine or show the degree of truth or acceptability of another statement called a conclusion. The process of crafting or delivering arguments, argumentation, can be studied from three main perspectives: the logical, the dialectical and the rhetorical perspective. In logic, an argument is usually expressed not in natural language but in a symbolic formal language, and it can be defined as any group of propositions of which one is claimed to follow from the others through deductively valid inferences that preserve truth from the premises to the conclusion. This logical perspective on argument is relevant for scientific fields such as mathematics and computer science. Logic is the study of the forms ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Poisoning The Well
Poisoning the well (or attempting to poison the well) is a type of informal fallacy where adverse information about a target is preemptively presented to an audience, with the intention of discrediting or ridiculing something that the target person is about to say. Poisoning the well can be a special case of '' argumentum ad hominem'', and the term was first used in this sense by John Henry Newman in his work '' Apologia Pro Vita Sua'' (1864). See also: Structure Poisoning the well can take the form of an (explicit or implied) argument, and is considered by some philosophers an informal fallacy. A poisoned-well "argument" has the following form: # Unfavorable information (be it true or false) about person A is presented by another. Example: ''"Before you listen to my opponent, may I remind you that he has been in jail."'' # Therefore, the claims made by person A will be false. Poisoned-well arguments are sometimes used with preemptive invocations of the association fallacy. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Straw Man
A straw man fallacy (sometimes written as strawman) is the informal fallacy of refuting an argument different from the one actually under discussion, while not recognizing or acknowledging the distinction. One who engages in this fallacy is said to be "attacking a straw man". The typical straw man argument creates the illusion of having refuted or defeated an opponent's proposition through the covert replacement of it with a different proposition (i.e., "stand up a straw man") and the subsequent refutation of that false argument ("knock down a straw man"), instead of the opponent's proposition. Straw man arguments have been used throughout history in polemical debate, particularly regarding highly charged emotional subjects. Straw man tactics in the United Kingdom may also be known as an Aunt Sally, after a pub game of the same name, where patrons throw sticks or battens at a post to knock off a skittle balanced on top. Overview The straw man fallacy occurs in the following p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ignoratio Elenchi
An irrelevant conclusion, also known as or missing the point, is the informal fallacy of presenting an argument whose conclusion fails to address the issue in question. It falls into the broad class of relevance fallacies. The irrelevant conclusion should not be confused with formal fallacy, an argument whose conclusion does not follow from its premises; instead, it is that despite its formal consistency it is not relevant to the subject being talked about. Overview ''Ignoratio elenchi'' is one of the fallacies identified by Aristotle in his ''Organon''. In a broader sense he asserted that all fallacies are a form of ''ignoratio elenchi''. ● Example 1: A and B are debating as to whether criticizing indirectly has any merit in general. attempts to support their position with an argument that politics ought not to be criticized on social media because the message is not directly being heard by the head of state; this would make them guilty of ''ignoratio elenchi'', as peo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Post Hoc Fallacy
''Post hoc ergo propter hoc'' (Latin: 'after this, therefore because of this') is an informal fallacy that states "Since event Y ''followed'' event X, event Y must have been ''caused'' by event X." It is a fallacy in which an event is presumed to have been caused by a closely preceding event merely on the grounds of temporal succession. This type of reasoning is fallacious because mere temporal succession does not establish a causal connection. It is often shortened simply to ''post hoc fallacy''. A logical fallacy of the questionable cause variety, it is subtly different from the fallacy ''cum hoc ergo propter hoc'' ('with this, therefore because of this'), in which two events occur simultaneously or the chronological ordering is insignificant or unknown. Post hoc is a logical fallacy in which one event seems to be the cause of a later event because it occurred earlier. ''Post hoc'' is a particularly tempting error because correlation sometimes appears to suggest causality. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
