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Logical Fallacies. They will cause you to go crazy. The Logical Fallacy. Pose challenges to civil argument because they often sound reasonable and natural. Typically they appeal to people’s self-interest. Example:
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Logical Fallacies They will cause you to go crazy
The Logical Fallacy • Pose challenges to civil argument because they often sound reasonable and natural. • Typically they appeal to people’s self-interest. Example: If we ban Hummers because they are bad for the environment eventually the government will ban all cars, so we should not ban Hummers. -This is a logical fallacy (Slippery Slope). Equating Hummers to all cars is not comparing the same thing.
Hasty Generalization • Hasty Generalization • An inference drawn from insufficient evidence. Example: Because my Honda broke down, then all Hondas must be junk. • This fallacy forms the basis for most stereotypes about people or institutions. • Because a few people in a large group are observed to act in a certain way, all members of that group are inferred to behave similarly. Other examples: • Women are bad drivers. • Men are slobs. The conclusions are neither reasonable or accurate because the evidence is sweeping and lacks specifics.
Faulty Causality • The assumption that because one event or action follows another, the first causes the second. Example: “I drank bottled water and now I am sick, so the water must have made me sick.” The problem: The author assumes that if one event chronologically follows another the first event must have caused the second. But the illness could have been caused by the burrito the night before, a flu bug that had been working on the body for days, or a chemical spill across campus. There is no reason, without more evidence, to assume the water caused the person to be sick.
Faulty Cause: A cautionary Tale • Some actions DO produce reactions. • Step on the break pedal in your car, and the car will stop. • The chair of the Federal Reserve Board will drop interest rates to lower the cost of borrowing to increase the growth of the economy to lower unemployment. • These work because they are REASONABLE arguments. • You CAN provide specific evidence to prove the conclusion follows naturally from the premise. • Finding the evidence that works becomes the trick. • EVIDENCE IS VITAL!
