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Definist Fallacy
The definist fallacy (sometimes called the Socratic fallacy, after Socrates)William J. Prior, "Plato and the 'Socratic Fallacy'", ''Phronesis'' 43(2) (1998), pp. 97–113. is a logical fallacy, identified by William Frankena in 1939, that involves the definition of one property in terms of another. Overview The philosopher William Frankena first used the term ''definist fallacy'' in a paper published in the British analytic philosophy journal '' Mind'' in 1939. In this article he generalized and critiqued G. E. Moore's naturalistic fallacy, which argued that ''good'' cannot be defined by natural properties, as a broader confusion caused by attempting to define a term using non-synonymous properties. Frankena argued that ''naturalistic fallacy'' is a complete misnomer because it is neither limited to naturalistic properties nor necessarily a fallacy. On the first word (''naturalistic''), he noted that Moore rejected defining ''good'' in non-natural as well as natural terms. On the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
William Frankena
William Klaas Frankena (June 21, 1908 – October 22, 1994) was an American moral philosopher. He was a member of the University of Michigan's department of philosophy for 41 years (1937–1978), and chair of the department for 14 years (1947–1961). Life Frankena's father and mother immigrated to the U.S. as teenagers, in 1892 and 1896 respectively, from Friesland, a province in the north of the Netherlands. William Frankena was the middle one of three children. He was born in Manhattan, Montana, grew up in small Dutch communities in Montana and western Michigan, and spoke West Frisian and Dutch. In primary school, his given name, Wiebe, was Anglicized to William. Throughout his life, his family and friends called him Bill. His mother died when he was nine years old. He graduated from Holland Christian High School in Holland, MI, in 1926. After farming, his father, Nicholas A. Frankena (1875–1955), devoted the later decades of his life to elected office in Zeeland, MI, w ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Socrates
Socrates (; ; –399 BC) was a Greek philosopher from Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and among the first moral philosophers of the ethical tradition of thought. An enigmatic figure, Socrates authored no texts and is known mainly through the posthumous accounts of classical writers, particularly his students Plato and Xenophon. These accounts are written as dialogues, in which Socrates and his interlocutors examine a subject in the style of question and answer; they gave rise to the Socratic dialogue literary genre. Contradictory accounts of Socrates make a reconstruction of his philosophy nearly impossible, a situation known as the Socratic problem. Socrates was a polarizing figure in Athenian society. In 399 BC, he was accused of impiety and corrupting the youth. After a trial that lasted a day, he was sentenced to death. He spent his last day in prison, refusing offers to help him escape. Plato's dialogues are among the most co ... [...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] |
Analytic Philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Scandinavia, and continues today. Analytic philosophy is often contrasted with continental philosophy, coined as a catch-all term for other methods prominent in Europe. Central figures in this historical development of analytic philosophy are Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Other important figures in its history include the logical positivists (particularly Rudolf Carnap), W. V. O. Quine, and Karl Popper. After the decline of logical positivism, Saul Kripke, David Lewis, and others led a revival in metaphysics. Elizabeth Anscombe, Peter Geach, Anthony Kenny and others brought analytic approach to Thomism. Analytic philosophy is characterized by an empha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mind (journal)
''MIND'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association. Having previously published exclusively philosophy in the analytic tradition, it now "aims to take quality to be the sole criterion of publication, with no area of philosophy, no style of philosophy, and no school of philosophy excluded." Its institutional home is shared between the University of Oxford and University College London. It is considered an important resource for studying philosophy. History and profile The journal was established in 1876 by the Scottish philosopher Alexander Bain (University of Aberdeen) with his colleague and former student George Croom Robertson (University College London) as editor-in-chief. With the death of Robertson in 1891, George Stout took over the editorship and began a 'New Series'. Early on, the journal was dedicated to the question of whether psychology could be a legitimate natural science. In the first issu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Naturalistic Fallacy
In philosophical ethics, the naturalistic fallacy is the claim that any reductive explanation of good, in terms of natural properties such as ''pleasant'' or ''desirable'', is false. The term was introduced by British philosopher G. E. Moore in his 1903 book ''Principia Ethica''. Moore's naturalistic fallacy is closely related to the is–ought problem, which comes from David Hume's ''A Treatise of Human Nature'' (1738–40). However, unlike Hume's view of the is–ought problem, Moore (and other proponents of ethical non-naturalism) did not consider the naturalistic fallacy to be at odds with moral realism. The ''naturalistic fallacy'' should not be confused with the ''appeal to nature'', which is exemplified by forms of reasoning such as "Something is natural; therefore, it is morally acceptable" or "This property is unnatural; therefore, this property is undesirable." Such inferences are common in discussions of medicine, sexuality, environmentalism, gender roles, race, and car ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reasoning
Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is closely associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, science, language, mathematics, and art, and is normally considered to be a distinguishing ability possessed by humans. Reason is sometimes referred to as rationality. Reasoning is associated with the acts of thinking and cognition, and involves the use of one's intellect. The field of logic studies the ways in which humans can use formal reasoning to produce logically valid arguments. Reasoning may be subdivided into forms of logical reasoning, such as: deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, and abductive reasoning. Aristotle drew a distinction between logical discursive reasoning (reason proper), and intuitive reasoning, in which the reasoning process through intuition—however valid—may tend toward the personal and the subjectively opaq ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semantics
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ..., linguistics and computer science. History In English, the study of meaning in language has been known by many names that involve the Ancient Greek word (''sema'', "sign, mark, token"). In 1690, a Greek rendering of the term ''semiotics'', the interpretation of signs and symbols, finds an early allusion in John Locke's ''An Essay Concerning Human Understanding'': The third Branch may be called [''simeiotikí'', "semiotics"], or the Doctrine of Signs, the most usual whereof being words, it is aptly enough ter ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Open-question Argument
The open-question argument is a philosophical argument put forward by British philosopher G. E. Moore i§13of ''Principia Ethica'' (1903), to refute the equating of the property of goodness with some non-moral property, X, whether natural (e.g. pleasure) or supernatural (e.g. God's command). That is, Moore's argument attempts to show that no moral property is identical to a natural property. The argument takes the form of a syllogism modus tollens: : Premise 1: If X is (analytically equivalent to) good, then the question "Is it true that ''X'' is good?" is meaningless. : Premise 2: The question "Is it true that ''X'' is good?" is not meaningless (i.e. it is an open question). : Conclusion: X is not (analytically equivalent to) good. The type of question Moore refers to in this argument is an identity question, "Is it true that X is ''Y''?" Such a question is an ''open question'' if a conceptually competent speaker can question this; otherwise it is ''closed.'' For example, "I k ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Begging The Question
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, instead of supporting it. For example: * "Green is the best color because it is the greenest of all colors" This statement claims that the color green is the best because it is the greenest – which it presupposes is the best. It is a type of circular reasoning: an argument that requires that the desired conclusion be true. This often occurs in an indirect way such that the fallacy's presence is hidden, or at least not easily apparent.Herrick (2000) 248. History The original phrase used by Aristotle from which ''begging the question'' descends is: τὸ ἐξ ἀρχῆς (or sometimes ἐν ἀρχῇ) αἰτεῖν, "asking for the initial thing". Aristotle's intended meaning is closely tied to the type of dialectical argument he discusses in his '' Topics'', book VIII: a formalized ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Fallacies
A fallacy is reasoning that is logically invalid, or that undermines the logical validity of an argument. All forms of human communication can contain fallacies. Because of their variety, fallacies are challenging to classify. They can be classified by their structure ( formal fallacies) or content (informal fallacies). Informal fallacies, the larger group, may then be subdivided into categories such as improper presumption, faulty generalization, and error in assigning causation and relevance, among others. The use of fallacies is common when the speaker's goal of achieving common agreement is more important to them than utilizing sound reasoning. When fallacies are used, the premise should be recognized as not well-grounded, the conclusion as unproven (but not necessarily false), and the argument as unsound. Formal fallacies A formal fallacy is an error in the argument's form. All formal fallacies are types of . * Appeal to probability – a statement that takes something ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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