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Sophistical Refutations
''Sophistical Refutations'' (; ) is a text in Aristotle's ''Organon'' in which he identified thirteen fallacies.Sometimes listed as twelve. According to Aristotle, this is the first work to treat the subject of deductive reasoning in ancient Greece (''Soph. Ref.'', 34, 183b34 ff.). Overview ''On Sophistical Refutations'' consists of 34 chapters. The book naturally falls in two parts: chapters concerned with tactics for the Questioner (3–8 and 12–15) and chapters concerned with tactics for the Answerer (16–32). Besides, there is an introduction (1–2), an interlude (9–11), and a conclusion (33–34). Fallacies identified The fallacies Aristotle identifies in Chapter 4 (formal fallacies) and 5 (informal fallacies) of this book are the following: :Fallacies in the language or formal fallacies (''in dictionem''): # Equivocation # Amphiboly # Composition # Division # Accent # Figure of speech A figure of speech or rhetorical figure is a word or phrase that intentiona ...
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Aristotle
Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, and the arts. As the founder of the Peripatetic school of philosophy in the Lyceum (classical), Lyceum in Athens, he began the wider Aristotelianism, Aristotelian tradition that followed, which set the groundwork for the development of modern science. Little is known about Aristotle's life. He was born in the city of Stagira (ancient city), Stagira in northern Greece during the Classical Greece, Classical period. His father, Nicomachus (father of Aristotle), Nicomachus, died when Aristotle was a child, and he was brought up by a guardian. At around eighteen years old, he joined Plato's Platonic Academy, Academy in Athens and remained there until the age of thirty seven (). Shortly after Plato died, Aristotle left Athens and, at the request ...
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Accident (fallacy)
The fallacy of accident (also called destroying the exception or ''a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid'') is an informal fallacy where a general rule is applied to an exceptional case. The fallacy of accident gets its name from the fact that one or more accidental features of the specific case make it an exception to the rule. A generalization that is largely true may not apply in a specific case (or to some subcategory of cases) for good reasons. It is one of the thirteen fallacies originally identified by Aristotle in ''Sophistical Refutations ''Sophistical Refutations'' (; ) is a text in Aristotle's ''Organon'' in which he identified thirteen fallacies.Sometimes listed as twelve. According to Aristotle, this is the first work to treat the subject of deductive reasoning in ancient Gree ...''. For example: # People who commit crimes are criminals. # Cutting people with knives is a crime. # Surgeons are people who cut other people with knives. # Therefore, surgeons are ...
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Fallacy Of Many Questions
A complex question, trick question, multiple question, fallacy of presupposition, or (Latin, 'of many questions') is a question that has a complex presupposition. The presupposition is a proposition that is presumed to be acceptable to the respondent when the question is asked. The respondent becomes committed to this proposition when they give any direct answer. When a presupposition includes an admission of wrongdoing, it is called a " loaded question" and is a form of entrapment in legal trials or debates. The presupposition is called "complex" if it is a conjunctive proposition, a disjunctive proposition, or a conditional proposition. It could also be another type of proposition that contains some logical connective in a way that makes it have several parts that are component propositions. Complex questions can but do not have to be fallacious, as in being an informal fallacy. Complex question fallacy The complex question fallacy, or ''many questions fallacy'', is contex ...
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Affirming The Consequent
In propositional logic, affirming the consequent (also known as converse error, fallacy of the converse, or confusion of necessity and sufficiency) is a formal fallacy (or an invalid form of argument) that is committed when, in the context of an indicative conditional statement, it is stated that because the consequent is true, therefore the antecedent is true. It takes on the following form: :: If ''P'', then ''Q''. :: ''Q''. :: Therefore, ''P''. which may also be phrased as : P \rightarrow Q (P implies Q) : \therefore Q \rightarrow P (therefore, Q implies P) For example, it may be true that a broken lamp would cause a room to become dark. It is not true, however, that a dark room implies the presence of a broken lamp. There may be no lamp (or any light source). The lamp may also be off. In other words, the consequent (a dark room) can have other antecedents (no lamp, off-lamp), and so can still be true even if the stated antecedent is not. Converse errors are comm ...
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False Cause
The questionable cause—also known as causal fallacy, false cause, or ''non causa pro causa'' ("non-cause for cause" in Latin)—is a category of informal fallacies in which the cause or causes is/are incorrectly identified. In other words, it is a fallacy of reaching a conclusion that one thing caused another, simply because they are regularly associated. Questionable cause can be logically reduced to: "A is regularly associated with B; therefore, A causes B." For example: "Every time I score an A on the test its a sunny day. Therefore the sunny day causes me to score well on the test." Here is the example the two events may coincide or correlate, but have no causal connection. Fallacies of questionable cause include: * Circular cause and consequence * Correlation implies causation (''cum hoc, ergo propter hoc'') ** Third-cause fallacy ** Wrong direction * Fallacy of the single cause * ''Post hoc ergo propter hoc'' * Observational interpretation fallacy * Regression fallacy ...
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Petitio Principii
In classical rhetoric and logic, begging the question or assuming the conclusion (Latin: ) is an informal fallacy that occurs when an argument's premises assume the truth of the conclusion. Historically, begging the question refers to a fault in a dialectical argument in which the speaker assumes some premise that has not been demonstrated to be true. In modern usage, it has come to refer to an argument in which the premises assume the conclusion without supporting it. This makes it an example of circular reasoning.Herrick (2000) 248. Some examples are: *“Wool sweaters are better than nylon jackets as fall attire because wool sweaters have higher wool content". ** The claim in this quote is that wool sweaters are better than nylon jackets as fall attire. However, the justification of this claim begs the question because it ''presupposes'' that wool sweaters are better than nylon jackets: in other words, wool sweaters are better than nylon jackets because wool is better than ...
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Irrelevant Conclusion
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 ...
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Secundum Quid
''Secundum quid'' (also called ''secundum quid et simpliciter'', meaning " hat is truein a certain respect and hat is trueabsolutely") is a type of informal fallacy that occurs when the arguer fails to recognize the difference between rules of thumb (''soft'' generalizations, heuristics that hold true ''as a general rule'' but leave room for exceptions) and categorical propositions, rules that hold true universally. Since it ignores the limits, or qualifications, of rules of thumb, this fallacy is also named ignoring qualifications or sweeping generalizations. The expression misuse of a principle can be used as well. Example The arguer cites only the cases that support his point, conveniently omitting Bach, Beethoven, Brahms etc In popular culture The following quatrain can be attributed to C. H. Talbot: I talked in terms whose sense was hid, '' Dividendo, componendo et secundum quid''; Now ''secundum quid'' is a wise remark And it earned my reputation as a learned clerk. ...
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Figure Of Speech
A figure of speech or rhetorical figure is a word or phrase that intentionally deviates from straightforward language use or Denotation, literal meaning to produce a rhetorical or intensified effect (emotionally, aesthetically, intellectually, etc.). In the distinction between literal and figurative language, figures of speech constitute the latter. Figures of speech are traditionally classified into ''scheme (linguistics), schemes'', which vary the ordinary sequence of words, and ''trope (literature), tropes'', where words carry a meaning other than what they ordinarily signify. An example of a scheme is a polysyndeton: the repetition of a conjunction before every element in a list, whereas the conjunction typically would appear only before the last element, as in "Lions and tigers and bears, oh my!"—emphasizing the danger and number of animals more than the Prose, prosaic wording with only the second "and". An example of a trope is the metaphor, describing one thing as someth ...
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Organon
The ''Organon'' (, meaning "instrument, tool, organ") is the standard collection of Aristotle's six works on logical analysis and dialectic. The name ''Organon'' was given by Aristotle's followers, the Peripatetics, who maintained against the Stoics that Logic was "an instrument" of Philosophy. Aristotle never uses the title ''Organon'' to refer to his logical works. The book, according to M. Barthélemy St. Hilaire, was not called "Organon" before the 15th century, and the treatises were collected into one volume, as is supposed, about the time of Andronicus of Rhodes; and it was translated into Latin by Boethius about the 6th century. The six works of Organon are as follows: Constitution of the texts The order of the works is not chronological (which is now hard to determine) but was deliberately chosen by Theophrastus to constitute a well-structured system. Indeed, parts of them seem to be a scheme of a lecture on logic. The arrangement of the works was made by ...
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Fallacy Of Accent
The fallacy of accent (also known as ''accentus'', from its Latin denomination, and misleading accent) is a verbal fallacy that reasons from two different vocal readings of the same written words. In English, the fallacy typically relies on prosodic stress, the emphasis given to a word within a phrase, or a phrase within a sentence. The fallacy has also been extended to grammatical ambiguity caused by missing punctuation. History Among the thirteen types of fallacies in his book ''Sophistical Refutations'', Aristotle lists a fallacy he calls (''prosody''), later translated in Latin as '' accentus''. He gives as an example: The fallacy turns here on the varying pronunciation of ''ου'', meaning "where" in the first and third occurrences, and "not" in the second. These would later be distinguished in writing with diacritics, but they were not in Aristotle's time. Aristotle noted that fallacies of this form were rare in contemporary Greek. They are rarer still in languages like E ...
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Fallacy Of Division
The fallacy of division is an informal fallacy that occurs when one reasons that something that is true for a whole must also be true of all or some of its parts. An example: # The second grade in Jefferson Elementary eats a lot of ice cream # Carlos is a second-grader in Jefferson Elementary # Therefore, Carlos eats a lot of ice cream The converse of this fallacy is called fallacy of composition, which arises when one fallaciously attributes a property of some part of a thing to the thing as a whole. If a system as a whole has some property that none of its constituents has (or perhaps, it has it but not as a ''result'' of some constituents having that property), this is sometimes called an '' emergent'' property of the system. The term ''mereological fallacy'' refers to approximately the same incorrect inference that properties of a whole are also properties of its parts. History Both the fallacy of division and the fallacy of composition were addressed by Aristotle in '' ...
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