A presumption fallacy occurs when an arguer shirks the burden of
proof by presenting a premise that is just as much in need of proof as his
conclusion. Remember that an argument is supposed to support a
claim that we don't already believe by means of premises that we do
already believe. If we don't already believe those premises, then those
premises need to be supported by their own arguments. When an arguer
relies on a premise that is clearly just as much in need of
support as his conclusion, then he commits a presumption fallacy.
Basically, in a presumption fallacy an arguer explicitly or implicitly
assumes something that logically should not be assumed.
Another way of putting it is to say that you make some kind of presumption
fallacy every time you mistake one of your own personal opinions for a fact.
The difference between relevance fallacies and presumption fallacies is
that in the former the premises offered simply fail to support the
conclusion while in the latter the premises offered do support
the conclusion, but themselves have no more support than that
conclusion has without them. (A helpful student suggested that a
less boring way to say this would be "A relevant fallacy is attempts to prove a conclusion by offering thought that do not stand on its truth. While a presumption fallacy begins with a false assumption and fails to establish their conclusion.")
Recall that a premise is supposed to meet two different requirements.
First, it is supposed to provide support for the conclusion. Second, It is
supposed to be either uncontroversial or independently supported. That is,
it is to be supposed to either be something that a properly educated,
reasonable person would generally agree to without argument, or it is
supposed to be backed up by a logically compelling argument of its own. Of
course, reasonable people often disagree about what is uncontroversial, so
some unsupported premises may be considered controversial by some people
but not by others. That's fine in itself. The problem of presumption
appears when an unsupported premise turns out to be pretty much exactly as
controversial, and in the same way, as the conclusion it supports. People
who already agree with the conclusion won't worry about this, but then,
these people don't need an argument to convince them. People who don't
already believe the conclusion won't believe the premise either, so this
argument won't ever convince them. Either way, a question begging argument
won't ever change any logical person's mind, so as far as logic is
concerned, it isn't even an argument.
In this chapter, I'm going to say that a claim is "controversial" if it is
something that at least some well-informed reasonable people would tend not
to agree with and/or it is something that people would generally only
agree with if they also already agreed with the conclusion of
the relevant argument. If people who do not already agree with the
conclusion of an argument would also strongly tend to disagree with one of
that argument's premises, then that premise is controversial, as far as
I'm concerned.
Begging the Question
An argument is begging the question when its main "premise" is
either a restatement of its conclusion, or is otherwise so clearly
unsupported that the listener instinctively wants to jump in and question
that main premise. In other words, the argument relies upon a premise
that's at least as controversial as the conclusion.
(It's called "begging the question" because it makes the listener want to
jump in with "say what? How do you know that...")
The classic way to beg the question is to provide a "premise" that is
nothing more than the conclusion expressed in different words.
We know that alien abduction
stories are valid and accurate because the abductees are completely
accurate in their reccollections of events. (And how do
you know that these "abductees" are completely accurate?)
The question can be begged by presenting the conclusion as a specific
instance of some general rule that itself is not backed up by any reasons.
My refusal to allow make-up exams is justified by the fact that it is
not my policy to allow make-up exams. (And what
justifies the policy?)
Another way to beg the question is to think that because one has already
made up one's mind, arguments can be judged good or bad based solely on
whether or not their conclusions agree with one's pre-existing opinion.
I can't tell much about the logic
of this argument, but it's conclusion is true so, yeah, I guess it's a
logically compelling argument. (It's only a logically
compelling argument if it's good enough to change somebody's
mind. Even if the conclusion was true, how could that make the
argument good? And how do you know that conclusion's true?)
The conclusion of this argument
isn't true, so it's logic must be inadequate. (If you
haven't looked at the logic, how could you know that it's inadequate? And
how do you know that conclusion isn't true? If there's no problem with the
logic of the argument, the conclusion is true, whether you like it or
not.)
Rilda. That Punter Dublin is such a liar!
Joyce.
Can you tell me one lie he's told?
Rilda. Well... no. But he's a liar, I know
that!(How can you know that someone is a liar without
knowing of any lies he's told?)
Joyce.
What about Farmer Shrub? I can tell you a dozen lies he's told.
Rilda. Not in this house you won't! (How
can you think that somebody's honest if you're unwilling to look at the
evidence?)
Things that look like authority arguments can turn out to be mere
question-begging. If someone says that some authority supports his
conclusion, but doesn't tell us who that authority is, he then
begs the question, and we can dismiss his argument.
Scientists have proved that we
only use ten percent of our brains. (What scientists?
When? How did they prove this?)
And here's a personal favorite.
Delilah. I don't
think we should consider President Suharto of Indonesia a humanitarian
leader. After all, he did lead Indonesia in an invasion and occupation
of East Timor in which they killed about a third of the East Timorese.
Garrison. You're
making that up!
This should be fairly easy, right? I mean, it should be clear that
Garrison is begging the question. The trouble is, this set is based on a
real conversation with a fellow graduate student. He really reacted like
that. He heard something he didn't want to believe, so he immediately
jumped to the conclusion that I had made it up. He even laughed. So let's
make this perfectly clear: the automatic dismissal of information you
don't like is always a fallacy. Always.
Here's another example.
We can see that everyone is really selfish simply by
looking at society and noticing that everyone only acts to serve his or
her own self interest.
This argument has a conclusion "everyone is really selfish," which is
based on the premise that "everyone only acts as his or her own
self-interest." So we could standardize this argument as follows:
Everyone in society only acts to serve his or her
own self interest.
Everyone is really selfish.
But if we leave it at that, we might fail to notice a very interesting
fact about this argument. Consider the definition of the term "selfish."
The word "selfish" simply means "only acts to serve his or her own self
interest," which means that the premise and the conclusion actually say
exactly the same thing. This means that all of the following are in fact
completely accurate standardizations of the above argument.
Everybody is really selfish.
People only act to serve
themselves.
Everybody is really selfish.
People only act to serve themselves.
Everyone in society
is selfish.
Everybody only acts to serve
his or her own self interest.
Everyone in society is selfish.
Everybody only acts to serve his or her own self
interest.
The advantage of standardizing the argument in one of these ways is that
it really makes it clear how the premise is related to the conclusion. Of
course, doing it this way also makes it clear that you need to be very
careful to make sure that the premise of the argument you are
standardizing really is the same as the argument's conclusion. If it turns
out that there is actually a significant difference between the two, then
you should not paraphrase them as saying the same thing.
Here's a more complicated example, which I discussed previously as a
relevance fallacy: Steve Fuller, who (amazingly) works as a philosophy
professor, appeared in the 2008 film Expelled: No Intelligence
Allowed, in which he told interviewer Ben Stein that "Darwinism"
leads to abortion and euthanasia. He said "If you take seriously that
evolution has to do with the transition of life forms, and that life and
death are just natural processes, then one gets to be liberal about
abortion and euthanasia. All of those kinds of ideas seem to me follow
very naturally from a Darwinian perspective-- a deprivileging of human
beings, basically. And I think people who want to endorse Darwinism have
to take this kind of viewpoint very seriously."
If we take this as an argument against Evolution Through Natural
Selection, then it commits two presumption fallacies.
First, Fuller begs the question when he assumes that acceptance of
evolution leads to being liberal about abortion and euthanasia. Saying
that X leads to Y is a causal claim and it needs to be supported
by a correlation argument, which Fuller does not provide.
Second, he begs the question when he assumes that what he calls a
"deprivileging of human beings" is a bad thing. For something to be a bad
thing it has to have demonstrably bad consequences, and Fuller has not
even begun to demonstrate that "deprivileging" human beings has had any
demonstrably bad consequences. It's just something he doesn't like.
Slippery Slope
The fallacy of slippery slope combines a whole string of presumed
causal relationships. The difference between a slippery slope fallacy and
a legitimate causal chain argument is that the
legitimate argument depends upon a series of well-established causal
relationships while the slippery slope includes at least one dubious or
speculative causal claim.
Censoring hardcore pornography
will soon lead to censorship of softcore pornography, which in turn
will lead to suppression of harmless erotica like swimsuit photos, and
that itself will finally cause censorship of nude pictures in medical
textbooks.
If you make marijuana legal then it'll be magic mushrooms. If
'shrooms, then speed, and after that, peyote! Then cocaine won't be
far behind. Which means crack! And what about heroin? And acid! Then
there's angel dust, and finally those designer drugs that make
people's heads explode! So if we make marijuana legal, decent people
won't be able to sleep for the sound of all the exploding heads.
Would legalizing marijuana cause 'shrooms to become legal? Would
legalizing 'shrooms cause speed to become legal? Would legalizing
speed cause peyote to become legal? Would legalizing peyote cause
crack to become legal? Would legalizing crack cause heroin to
become legal? Would legalizing heroin cause angel dust to become
legal? Would legalizing angel dust cause designer drugs to become
legal? Is there anything about legalizing one drug that makes it
impossible, or extremely difficult to avoid legalizing the next
drug in the sequence? If there's any point where we can legalize
one (relatively harmless) drug without having to legalize the
next (more harmful) drug, the causal chain snaps, and the slippery-slope
argument fails.
False Choice
An arguer commits a false choice fallacy when she leaves out a
viable alternative. The usual way of doing this is to pretend that
there are only two alternatives when there are fact more than two.
(There's a name for doing it with exactly two alternatives but it won't be
on the test.)
You should stop that protesting
and support our president. It's America. Love it or leave it!
Russia has a choice. Stride forward in capitalism or turn back to
communism.
Shamu is not a dog, therefore he's a cat.
Candidate principles:
1. You cannot love a country without unconditionally supporting its
leaders.
2. Capitalism and communism are the only two possible political systems.
3. All animals are either cats or dogs.
This kind of fallacy can be committed with any number of alternatives,
just so long as a reasonable alternative is left out.
Circular Argument
An argument is circular when questioning its dubious premise
sooner or later leads right back to the unsupported restatement of the
conclusion. (This can happen when someone attempts to save a
question-begging argument by coming up another question begging argument
for that question-begging premise. Keep doing that over and over, and
you'll eventually start to repeat yourself.) An argument can only work if
its premises are supported by existing, well-established knowledge, or by
premises that themselves are supported by existing, well-established
knowledge. An argument that attempts to support itself in mid air will
always fall.
I know Jeff is honest because
Marie insists that he is. And we can trust Marie because Rudy swears
that Marie is absolutely honest. As for Rudy, well, Jeff insists that
Rudy is absolutely reliable! (So the claim that Jeff is
honest ultimately rests on... the claim that Jeff is honest!)
We know that astrology works
because it has been validated by our best psychics. How do we know
that validation by these psychics can be trusted? Simply because each
of them has an astrological chart that indicates absolutely stunning
psychic ability. (So astrology tells us that astrology
is reliable.)
Benjamin. You
should believe Rush Limbaugh is a political expert because Ben Stein
says he is.
Shaylee. But is
Ben Stein a good judge of political expertise?
Benjamin. Of
course he's a good judge of political expertise! Rush Limbaugh says
he's a genius!
Accident
The fallacy of accident, a presumption fallacy, occurs
when an arguer applies a rule of thumb or general principle to a case that
it clearly does not cover. He fails to recognize a valid exception to the
rule. It's like equivocation because it stems from confusion (or
dishonesty) about the meaning of a rule or saying, whereas equivocation
stems from confusion (or dishonesty) about the meaning of a word.
Discrimination on the basis of race is wrong, so minority scholarship
funds should be open to everyone.
Violence is wrong, so the cops shouldn't shoot back at that guy
blazing away with an AK47.
Never draw to an inside straight, so I shouldn't draw even though my
X-ray vision reveals that the cards I'd draw would fill my straight
and win me that $42,000.000.00 pot.
Candidate principles:
1. You should never, never, never follow any policy that
discriminates on the basis of race, no matter how morally necessary a
particular such policy might be.
2. You should never use violence, even when you are being
unjustly attacked in the performance of your morally necessary duties.
3. You should never draw to an inside straight, even when you
know absolutely that doing so would make you an awful lot of money.
The reason for this fallacy is that people often forget that most of the
rules we live by are rules of thumb rather than laws of nature. They were
made up by smart people to cover situations that occur over and over again
but they don't necessarily cover all possible situations.
(Practice thinking up exceptions to various rules like "never play with
matches," "never run with scissors" or "never eat anything bigger than
your head.")
Here's another example:
Rocky: I just found
out that the Reagan administration killed a unanimous Senate bill that
would have punished Saddam Hussein's Iraq for it's use of chemical
weapons against Iraqi Kurds starting with their March 1988 nerve gas
attack on the civilian population of Halabja. The Senate wanted to cut
Iraq off from loans, military and non-military assistance and U.S.
imports of Iraqi oil, but the Reagan administration stalled the bill
in the House until it died on the last day of that legislative
session.
Eliezer: It's the
president's job to ensure good relationships with America's trade
partners. That assistance meant a lot to the Iraqis, and it would have
soured relations with them if the United States had gone back on it's
word. You wouldn't want the president to poison relations with other
countries, would you? So obviously, stopping that Senate Bill from
becoming law was the right thing to do.
Ensuring good trade relations is an important duty of the president, but it's not an absolute rule. He also has a duty to keep the US from doing morally wrong things, and from supporting tyrants and murderers abroad. Clearly, a duty to promote trade cannot override a duty to oppose tyrrany.
A version of this fallacy is committed by people who object to affirmative action on the basis that it is a form of discrimination. (There may be other reasons to criticize various programs of affirmative action, but I'll ignore them.) Segregation was outlawed because that it was a form of racial discrimination that caused great and long-lasting harm to all members of a segment of the American population. But it was the fact that it did unjustified, serious harm that justified banning it, not the mere fact that it was discrimination on the basis of race. Affirmative action, when properly applied, does justified and trivial harm to a few members of an otherwise generally privileged section of our society. We may criticize affirmative action for other reasons, but the mere fact that it is discrimination on the basis of race is not enough reason to ban it.
Weaseling
The fallacy of weaseling, another language fallacy, is
sort-of another form of equivocation. Where the usual form of
equivocation keeps a word but substitutes in a different meaning for
that word, weaseling pretends that something should be called by a
different word than the one that is really appropriate. This is done
where the right word would reveal something that the speaker does not
want revealed. (I suppose that it's possible for someone to weasel
unintentionally, but generally speaking people who weasel should
properly be referred to as lying bags of scum.)
One of my friends recently came up with an absolutely classic example of
weaseling. We were talking about whether or not using the power of the
state to create peer pressure on children to reverently utter the words
"one nation under God" constituted a state effort to establish religion,
and he came up with "Well, you know, the meaning of the word 'God' has
changed in our society." This was an effort to imply that the words "one
nation under God" in the pledge of allegiance didn't mean "one
nation under God" when they were said out loud, or that reverently
saying a phrase that clearly implied that his god existed and had
authority over Americans was somehow not an affirmation of his
god's existance and authority.
In this example, Larissa is not weaseling
7. Uriel. You know there's a moral rule against killing human beings, right?
Larissa. Of course I do! It's a very, very serious thing to violate the rule against killing people.
Uriel. So you must agree that the death penalty is morally wrong, since it involves killing people.
Larissa. Oh, no, I forgot about murderers. I think the rule here is that you shouldn't kill innocent people. Killing murderers might be wrong, but it doesn't violate the rule against killing innocent people, and that's a clearly justified moral rule. A rule against killing anyone at all isn't so clearly justified.
Uriel. Now you're just weaseling. First it's "thou shall not kill people," now it's "thou shall not kill innocent people." Moral rules are universal, you know, and you can't just go changing them about to suit yourself.
There's actually two ways to think about weaseling. The
first is to treat it as a form of magical thinking regarding language,
with the candidate principle of "if something can be given a
positive-sounding or inoffensive name or description, then it has to be
a positive thing." The second way is to treat it as another form of
suppressed evidence, with the candidate principle of "facts I can ignore
don't count." Either way, it's at least irrational, and may even be dishonest. Don't do it, and don't be fooled by it.
Okay, there are other language fallacies, but they occur so rarely I'm
not going to mention their names. The only thing you really need to know
about them right now is that there are other ways to go wrong with
language. People can mess with the definitions of words, either by
writing their own definition of the word in an attempt to
distort the way someone else uses the word, or by citing a
dictionary definition in a case where some other definition
was clearly intended by the speaker. You can call these "equivocation"
or "weaseling" depending on whether you think the speaker is confusing
two legitimate usages of a word (equivication), or trying to
distort the single, basic, meaning of a word (weaseling).
The fallacy of self-contradiction happens in extended arguments or conversations when the arguer uses a particular rule at one point, and then appeals to the opposite rule at another point in the same extended argument for a single thesis. Thus he simultaneously
claims that a particular argument or standard of proof is both
good and bad. It's good when he uses it, bad when you
use it.
Elron. You
should worship the true god Fnorbert, and not the false god
Eki-Eki-Eki-Fatang-Fatang because the followers of
Eki-Eki-Eki-Fatang-Fatang base their belief on nothing but their faith
that
Eki-Eki-Eki-Fatang-Fatang exists, and as we all know, faith is just
another word for belief, and belief by itself proves nothing.
Princess. Well,
that seems to refute Eki-Eki-Eki-Fatang-Fatang, but why should I believe
in Fnorbert?
Elron. If you
just have faith, then you will know for certain that Fnorbert exists.
Zoomer. We can
discount professor Toohey's hypothesis because it's only 92% probable
according to our available data. With professor Toohey's hypothesis
out of the way, we are left with my hypothesis. My hypothesis is
supported to 89% probability by the available data, which means we
should accept it, since it's the only hypothesis we have left.
Stinky. The
great god Vuntag determines what morality
is.
Potch. How ya
figure?
Stinky. Well, Vuntag can condemn us to
everlasting torment, so obviously what ever she says to do is the morally
right thing to do.
Potch. Well,
Saddam Hussein can condemn people to years of torment, does that mean
that what he says
to do is the morally right
thing to do?
Stinky. Of
course not!
Potch. But if
Saddam Hussein could condemn people to everlasting torment, that would mean that what he
says to do is the morally
right thing to do,
wouldn't it?
Stinky. Don't
be stupid. Being able to inflict everlasting torment wouldn't make Saddam Hussein determine what morality is.
If faith works for Fnorbert, it works for Eki-Eki-Eki-Fatang-Fatang. If
92% is low enough to reject professor Toohey's hypothesis, 89% is low
enough to reject Zoomer's hypothesis. If the ability to inflict
everlasting torment wouldn't make Saddam Hussein determine what morality
is, then it wouldn't make Vuntag determine what morality is.
Basically, in a presumption fallacy an arguer explicitly or implicitly
assumes something logically should not be assumed. In begging the
question, the arguer more-or-less assumes the very thing he is supposedly
trying to prove, so something that is so close to it that it might as well
be the same thing. In other types of presumption fallacy, the arguer illegitimately
assumes things that would, if true, imply that his conclusion is true.
Here are some exercises to work on..
29. Jasmyn. You keep telling me that the testimony of believers
in Vuntag can be absolutely relied upon as proof of Vuntag's existence.
But by that logic, the testimony of believers in Phobodisda can be
absolutely relied upon as proof of Phobodisda's existence. So if Vuntag
exists, so too does Phobodisda. Since they can't both exist, the rule
that testimony of believers constitutes absolute proof can't work for
anyone, not even Vuntag.
Efren. The trouble with that reasoning is that you are
suppressing a vital piece of evidence. Vuntagian testimony can be relied
upon as proof of Vuntag's existence, because it is backed by divine
revelation from Vuntag, but Phobodisdan testimony cannot be relied upon
as proof of the existence of Phobodisda because it is not backed by
divine revelation from Vuntag.
Explain Self Contradiction.
s. If a rule is valid,, does that mean it's valid in every situation to
which it can be applied?
t. Are there any logical rules that work for one person but not for
someone else?
1. (Paraphrased from an actual column by Ann
Coulter) It's ridiculous to say that the US government
is engaged in a relentless, single-minded march towards war with Iraq,
since it will be two whole years after 9/11 before we attack.
2. Robert: I
really don't see why I should believe in Vuntag, after all, there really
isn't any concrete evidence of her existence.
Mary: But you
are ignoring the fact that Vuntag condemns all unbelievers to an
eternity of being forced to watch Dukes of Hazzard reruns! So you'd
better believe in Vuntag or you will find yourself spending all of
eternity having to watch Bo and Luke foil Sheriff Lobo.
3. Elizabeth.
I want to thank you for this
book you gave me on voodoo. And I appreciate your attempt to help me
deal with my many enemies, but I really don't see how sticking pins into
little wax figurines is going to kill anyone.
David. I understand that you need some
reason to believe that voodoo works. I can give you that reason. You can
be sure that voodoo works, because it really is an effective way of
hurting your enemies.
4. James.
We have good reason to think
that the universe is deterministic. After all, all our technology, and
in fact all of our attempts to accomplish anything at all always assume
that each particular cause will inevitably bring about the same effect
it has always done. We couldn't make any plans if we didn't assume that
the universe is deterministic. Since we successfully make and carry out
all kinds of plans, it follows that the universe is deterministic.
William. You're forgetting one thing. Free
will. We know that determinism isn't true because we also know that we
have free will.
5. Ruskin. It seems to
me that of all the Christian sects, Mormonism is the most misunderstood.
I think it is somewhat unfair for the World Council of Churches to
exclude the Mormon Church as non-Christian, since all the Mormons I've
ever heard of treat the figure of Jesus with exactly the same
significance as all the churches that the WCC does consider "Christian."
Dusty. I'm tired of hearing Mormonism described as a Christian
religion. It seems that people like you are willfully ignorant about the
facts of Christianity. It is easy to see that Mormonism is not a
Christian religion. All you have to do is pay attention to the fact that
the "Jesus" of Mormonism is not the Jesus of Christianity. Mormonism
could only be a Christian religion if their Jesus was the same as
Christianity's Jesus. Since he is not, they are not Christians.
6. Reanna. The first thing you have to
realize is that The
Book of Vuntag is
absolutely
right about everything, particularly in it's claims about morality. In
fact, the Book of
Vuntag actually
defines what morality is.
Johan. But The Book
of Vuntag tells
me that it is immoral for someone to be left-handed. It also tells me
that everybody should persecute left-handed people until they change
their ways, and torture or kill them if they don't. Left-handed people
don't hurt anyone else, and they can't help being left-handed, so the Book of Vuntag has to be wrong about that.
Reanna. Much as we might regret the
unfortunate necessity of persecuting left-handed people, we know that
the Book of Vuntag
is right about morality because
Vuntag says so! And Vuntag cannot lie.
Johan. But what makes you think that
Vuntag even exists? And how can you be certain that Vuntag cannot lie?
Reanna. Oh Johan, Johan, my poor foolish
Johan. Don't you know that it's all written in the Book
of Vuntag?
7. Isaias.
You know, you'd better start believing in Fnorbert.
Joaquin.
Not that again! You still haven't given me any credible reason to
believe in Fnorbert.
Isaias.
Here's your reason. Fnorbert punishes unbelievers very harshly, so you'd
better get on the right side now.
Joaquin.
So if he exists, and I don't believe, eventually he'll hurt me very
badly?
Isaias.
Exactly. You've got it now!
Joaquin.
But you still haven't given me any reason to believe he exists, so I
don't think he does.
Isaias.
What are you, stupid? I just gave you a heck of a good reason!
Joaquin.
Nope, you didn't give me any reason at all.
8. Jane. The
state should legalize gay marriage, because people in committed
homosexual relationships deserve exactly the same legal protections as
people in committed heterosexual relationships.
Welsh. You're
forgetting the fact that there are only two kinds of relationships, the
committed, deeply loving relationships we have between heterosexual
couples, and the impoverished, purely sexual relationships that exist
between homosexual couples.
9. Vaughn. I
think you are finally going to be convinced about the reality of the god
Vuntag. Professor Slobbert's book Footsteps
of
Divine Vuntag finally has the proof
you're looking for.
Anjali. I
read that book ten years ago! It's best argument was the claim that Mat
Tel, a priest of Vuntag, raised Clay Moore from the dead in the town of
Punji Stick. I would have been impressed, but it wasn't documented with
any evidence from Punji Stick, and so I had to discount it.
Vaughn. Well,
the second edition of Footsteps
has the documentation you're looking for. It turns out
that the people of Punji Stick put up a monument to the day that Mat Tel
raised Clay More. Here's a picture of the monument.
Anjali. Wow,
it's a big one! And it even has a picture of Mat Tel raising Clay More.
Wait, this picture looks exactly like the sketch of Mat Tel raising Clay
More that Prof. Slobbert drew in his book! That's a bit of a weird
coincidence, isn't it?
Vaughn. Oh
I can explain that. The town council decided to build the monument after
they all read Professor Slobbert's book five years ago, so naturally
they used the sketch from the book since no-one in the town happened to
know anything about the story before they read the book.
10. Diana: I
sympathize with you about Abmiel, but he's entitled to follow his own
religious beliefs.
Theresa: Abmiel
won't
marry me just because
I'm
a consecrated priestess of the fiery leaping goat-goddess Bloodfang and
he is
committed to building a christian family as part of creating the Kingdom
of God on earth. That's religious discrimination, so he should marry me!
11. Omari.
I still don't see why you think that unregulated gun
ownership is necessary for the existance of a free society. Great
Britain is a very free society, and gun ownership is strictly regulated
there.
Daisha. Look,
the
basic question you have to ask yourself is, Do I want to live under a
tryannical government that makes it extremely difficult for law-abiding
citizens to own guns, or do I want to live in a free society where gun
ownership is recognized as a basic right of law-abiding citizens?
Do the following questions closed book, and then test yourself by
looking up the answers in this chapter. Repeat until you can answer every
question correctly off the top of your head.
12. In logic, is an arguer allowed to assume controversial claims as
premises?
13. Can an argument that relies on ruling out alternatives to the
conclusion succeed if it fails to rule out all of the
alternatives to that conclusion?
14. Can a group of "authorities" succeed in certifying each other as real
authorities if the only reason for thinking that any
one of them is a real authority is the fact that one of the others
says that he is?
15. What is a rule-of-thumb? Is a rule of thumb the same as a genuine
logical (or moral) principle?
16. Is a rule-of-thumb valid in a case where the underlying
justification for having the rule clearly doesn't apply?
17. Can I rationally say that some rule is a true logical principle if
it's obvious that this rule would be absolutely invalid if applied outside
of my argument?
1. Coulter's argument can be summarized as:
It will be two whole years after 9/11 before the
United States attacks Iraq.
he US government is not engaged in a relentless, single-minded march
towards war with Iraq.
This argument commits two red herrings . First, there is the
introduction of the two-year time period. How could the fact that
something takes two years mean that it is not a relentless, single-minded
march towards war? When one country deliberately plans to attack another,
it generally takes a couple of years to get ready, so the fact that the
Iraq war was two years in the making does not by itself mean that the
people planning the war have seriously considered any other options. The
other red herring is the mention of 9/11. Since Iraq had nothing
to do with 9/11, that date has nothing to do with whether or not the
American government is relentlessly marching towards war.
Coulter's argument is analogous to:
In 1938, it had been 20 years since Britain and
France defeated Germany.
Germany is not engaged in a relentless, single-minded march towards war
with Russia.
Any student of history will tell you that this is ridiculous. Since it uses exactly the same candidate principle as Coulter's argument, it follows that Coulter's argument is ridiculous.
2. Robert's argument can be standardized as:
There is no concrete evidence of the existence of
Vuntag.
(We should not believe in things for which
there is no concrete evidence.)
We should not believe in Vuntag.
Mary's argument can be standardized as:
(Vuntag exists).
Vuntag punishes all unbelievers by forcing them to watch Dukes of
Hazzard reruns eternally.
(There is no way for unbelievers to avoid the
psychotically small-minded revenge of Vuntag.)
We should believe in Vuntag.
Based on this, Vuntag does not exist, and we should not believe in her. As
with any supernatural being, our initial presumption must be that Vuntag
does not exist since all the evidence we have strongly supports the
position that no supernatural beings exist. Therefore Mary bears an
extremely heavy burden of proof. She tries to meet this burden of proof by
threatening Robert with dire consequences if he does not believe. (Fallacy
of force.) These consequences are only a possibility if Vuntag actually
does exist, so she has to prove the Vuntag exists before she can prove
that there is any danger to Robert. (Here she commits the fallacy of
begging the question.) Since she doesn't provide any evidence for Vuntag's
existence, she loses the argument.
3. Elizabeth's argument can be standardized as:
There is no obvious mechanism by which
sticking pins into wax figurines can kill anyone.
Voodoo doesn't work.
David's argument can be standardized as:
Voodoo
is
an effective way of hurting your enemies.
Voodoo does work.
Well, if it's true that voodoo is an effective way of hurting your enemies,then it absolutely follows that voodoo does work. But that's mainly because the sentences "voodoo does work" and "voodoo is an effective way of hurting your enemies" mean basically the same thing. David's argument begs the question. Given that the burden of proof lies on David to prove that such a contrascientific practice as voodoo can have any effect at all, this means that the only reasonable conclusion here is that voodoo does not work.
4. James's argument can be standardized as:
Our technology would only work if
determinism is true.
Our attempts to accomplish our goals would only work if determinism is
true.
(Our technology works.)
Determinism is true.
William's argument can be standardized as:
Free will exists.
(If free will exists, determinism isn't true.)
Determinism isn't true.
William's argument is analogous to
We know that Christianity is not true
because cheese exists.
Or
Cheese exists.
Christianity is false.
It's possible that William believes
that free will and determinism are mutually exclusive. But this is
not something he can just assume. It is something that he has to
prove. Since he doesn't bother to give a reason why anyone should
think these two things are mutually exclusive, he is begging
the question. Based
on the arguments given above, determinism is true. Although it is
a fact that science and technology would not work if determinism
wasn't true, it's sometimes hard to see why this is true, and most
people could be forgiven for thinking that our initial presumption
would be that we don't know whether or not determinism is true.
James's argument gives us the basic reasons to think that
determinism is true, and I don't see anything wrong with his
logic. William offers a claim of fact that he believes contradicts
James's conclusion. However, there are two problems with his
logic. First, because he doesn't give us any reason to think that
free will exists, the most he could prove by holding that free
will and determinism are mutually contradictory would be that free
will does not exist. Second, however, he only presumes that
freewill contradicts determinism. He doesn't prove that either.
Since our initial presumption about free will is that it exists,
(since we perceive ourselves acting freely), it follows that
William is begging the question on the issue of whether or not
free will contradicts determinism.
5. Dusty begs
the
question of "what makes you think that the
Church of Jesus
Christ and the Latter Day Saints is talking
about a different Jesus?"
6. I'll do Johan's argument first.
The Book of Vuntag makes at least
one false claim about morality.
The
Book of Vuntag is not absolutely right in all it's claims about
morality.
Here's Reanna's arguments.
Vuntag says that the Book of Vuntag is
absolutely right in all it's claims about morality.
Vuntag
cannot
lie.
The
Book of Vuntag is absolutely right in all it's claims about
morality.
This is supported by.
The Book of Vuntag says that Vuntag
cannot lie.
The
Book of Vuntag is absolutely right about everything
Vuntag
cannot lie.
This is basically a circular argument.
The
Book of Vuntag is cited as an authority about morality. This claim
of authority is backed up by citing Vuntag himself as another
authority. But then the claim that Vuntag exists and is an
infallible authority is backed up by citing the Book of Vuntag,
which puts us right back where we started. Based on the
information presented above, the book of Vuntag is not completely
accurate about morality. Johan proves this by giving one instance
of a false moral claim found in the book of Vuntag. Reanna tries
to defeat this argument by claiming that the moral claim Johan
cites is in fact true. She justifies this by claiming
Vuntag as an authority for the veracity of the book of Vuntag.
Then he tries to support the authority of Vuntag by claiming the
book of Vuntag as an authority. This is the fallacy of circular
argument, so it obviously does not defeat Johan's argument.
7. Isaias uses scare tactics
when he threatens Joaquin. He also commits begging the question when he assumes that Fnorbert's
assumed psychotic cruelty is a reason to believ that Fnorbert exists.
8. Welsh commits false choice.
9. Vaughn commits circular argument.
10. Theresa commits accident
11. Daisha commits false choice.
12. In logic, an arguer is not allowed
to assume controversial claims as premises.
13. An argument that relies on ruling out alternatives to the conclusion
cannot succeed if it fails to rule out all of the alternatives
to that conclusion.
14. A group of "authorities" cannot succeed in certifying each
other as real authorities if the only reason for thinking that
any one of them is a real authority is the fact that one of the others
says that he is.
15. A rule of thumb is a simple rule that stands in for a more
complicated rule in most circumstances. A rule of thumb is not the same as a genuine logical (or
moral) principle.
16. A rule of thumb is not alid in a case where the underlying
justification for having the rule clearly doesn't apply.
17. If it's obvious that a rule would be absolutely invalid if applied outside
of a particular argument, then it's clearly not a real logical
principle, and it doesn't count anywhere.