Final Exam Prep

Question 1

Naturalistic Fallacy

Answer 1

When an argument attempts to extract a moral conclusion from alleged facts about the world

Question 2

Logical fallacy

Answer 2

A class of fallacy that can be given formal or quasiformal definition with regard to argument structure.

Any kind of error in reasoning that renders an argument invalid

Question 3

Non sequiter

Answer 3

A Latin term loosely translated as “it doesn’t follow”

Question 4

ignoratio elenchi

Answer 4

An argument with an irrelevant conclusion.

Not valid

Question 5

Affirming the Consequent

Answer 5

1. If P then Q
2. Q
   Therefor,
3. P
   (Conditional Fallacy)

Question 6

Denying the Antecedent

Answer 6

1. If P then Q
2. It is not the case that P
   Therefore,
3. It is not the case that Q
   (Conditional fallacy)

Question 7

(Quantifier) Scope Fallacy

Answer 7

A fallacy that consists in a misordering of a universal quantifier (all, every, each) and an existential quantifier (some, a, the, one), resulting in an invalid inference.
(Logical fallacy)

Question 8

Equivocation

Answer 8

Fallacy
Disguising an invalid inference by using a single expression in two different ways.
(logical fallacy)

Question 9

Evidential Fallacy

Answer 9

Evidential fallacies are defined in terms of not meeting the aim to show its conclusion to be reasonably likely

Question 10

Argument from Ignorance

Answer 10

(Evidential fallacy)
1. We have no evidence that P
Therefore,
2. It is not the case that P

Question 11

Arguments from Missing Evidence or Non-Fallacious instances

Answer 11

if you arrive at P without any thorough search using appropriate methods.
(Evidential fallacy)

Question 12

Overgeneralizations

Answer 12

Drawing a general inference too strong for specific evidence in hand. (Hasty Generalization or Sweeping Generalization)
(Evidential fallacy)

Question 13

Conspiracy Theories

Answer 13

1. There is no evidence that P.
2. No evidence is exactly what we should expect if P is true.
   Therefore,
3. P.
   (Evidential fallacy)

Question 14

Vicarious Authority

Answer 14

Argument from Authority or Genetic Fallacy: evaluating a claim on the basis of irrelevant facts about its origins, rather than on the basis of the evidence for it. If the claim is justified by appeal to proper authority, the justification may be evidentially cogent.

(Evidential Fallacy)

Question 15

Appeal to Popular Opinion

Answer 15

1. it is widely believed that P.
   Therefore,
2. P.

“Do you think that all these people could be wrong?”

“If there is such an obvious problem with P, how come so many people believe it?”

(Evidential Fallacy)

Question 16

Multiple Endpoints.

Answer 16

This is the biggest or probable threat to statistical reasoning in the methods of good science.
This fallacy occurs when we first gather data and then look for the significance, instead of first deciding on a hypothesis and then testing it. Also known as the Sharpshooter Fallacy.

(Evidential Fallacy)

Question 17

Procedural and Pragmatic Fallacies

Answer 17

Argumentative or conversational moves that undermine good reasoning by distracting the discussants for, the real issues or otherwise damaging the procedure for exchanging ideas and evidence.

Question 18

Fallacy of Relevance

Answer 18

introducing irrelevant factors to the real issue under discussion. these may be deployed as rhetorical factors.
(distractors) (Procedural and pragmatic fallacies)

Question 19

Red Herring

Answer 19

Statements or objections that lead the discussion away from the key point, especially when there is some suggestion that this is done deliberately.
(Procedural and pragmatic fallacies) (distractor) (fallacy of relevance)

Question 20

Straw man fallacy

Answer 20

Misrepresenting an argument or a view in order to refute a dumbed-down version of it. (The idea behind the name is that you build a dummy opponent out of straw instead of confronting the actual opponent. Most often it is a mostly unintentional result of thinking the worst of one’s opponent (Procedural and pragmatic fallacies) (Distractor)

Question 21

Ad Hominem

Answer 21

Another species of genetic fallacy. it involves dismissing an argument on the basis of personal facts about the arguer. It can be a matter of saying something insulting or nasty about someone, but it need not be (Procedural and pragmatic fallacies) (Distractor)

Question 22

Poisoning the well

Answer 22

Related to ad hominem. A statememnt poisons the well if it is a general attack on the worth or reliability of an arguer’s utterences. If successful this can have the effect of destroying the very conditions required for the rational dialog. It is different from ad hominem.

To dismiss an argument don’t he grounds of the speaker’s criminal past, whether or not they have one is probably just ad hominem. To dismiss an argument with the claim that the speaker is just conditioned to say that sort of thing is to poison to well. It taints everything the speaker might say and undermines the whole conversation. A mix of ad hominem and sweeping generalization.
(Procedural and pragmatic fallacies) (Distractor)

Question 23

The Mrs Lincoln Fallacy

Answer 23

The fallacy of ignoring completely relevant factors.

Procedural and pragmatic fallacies) (Distractor

Question 24

Begging the question or circular argument.

Answer 24

An argument is circular when it assumes the truth of what it purports to prove. The most direct way of committing the fallacy is for the conclusion of an argument to also be one of its premises
A circular argument is always valid and sound as long as the premise and conclusion are true.
It is a fallacy if it fails to provide a reason to believe its conclusion

(Procedural and pragmatic fallacies) (Confusions)

Question 25

False Presuppositions

Answer 25

A presupposition are propositions that one must grant or assume in order for a statement to make sense. The problem is that a statement’s presupposition may be false.
Lying about the pretense of an argument

(Procedural and pragmatic fallacies) (Confusions)

Question 26

Fallacies of Definition and Connotation

Answer 26

Assumptions and Biases may find their way into a persuasive case without being explicitly represented in the premises is through the particular choice of words and the communicators’ assumptions about them.

Question 27

Slanting Language

Answer 27

it is committed in its most general form when a speaker describes some situation in terms that already entail or suggest the desired conclusion.

example: “Abortion is immoral right from conception, because a baby has a right to life” The term baby has an emotional connection to it but is not an accurate depiction of a 1 or 2 celled organism. The term is being used to illicit an emotional response.
example: what is Moral in relation to the statement that person A asserts might not be Moral for person B and his or her choice of words in their statement.

( Fallacies of Definition and Connotation)

Question 28

Persuasive definition

Answer 28

Not simply describing something in question-begging terms, but attempting to define it in such language

Question 29

No true scots fallacy

Answer 29

a kind of equivocation between an empirical claim and a definition. A form of persuasive definition in relation to slanting language

A: All true scots eat oatmeal
B: But MacGregor doesn’t eat oatmeal
A: Well, then he is no true scot

Question 30

Argument by Dictionary

Answer 30

This is committed when a speaker appeals to the dictionary definition as a means of settling a dispute.
(Procedural fallacy)

Question 31

Fallacies of the complex question

Answer 31

Involving subtle shenanigans with disjunction

Question 32

Loaded Question

Answer 32

The proposition is presupposed whether the answerer replies in the negative or the positive. A form of False Presuppotion

Question 33

Outliers

Answer 33

Something that is far from the norm and not easily categorized.

Question 34

The Fallacy of False Enchotomy (False Dilemma, False Dichotomy)

Answer 34

the assumption that there are only a certain number of possibilities when in fact there are more.
it contains false disjunctive premises.
this makes it hard to classify since an argument with false premises is not a very helpful category. yet it is an easily identifiable pattern of unsound reasoning.

1. P or Q,
2. Not- Q
   Therefore,
3. P.

Question 35

Fallacies of Composition

Answer 35

When we say the form of when the part of the thing consists of X, therefore the whole is X.

Question 36

Fallacies of Division

Answer 36

The whole is X, therefore its parts have the property of X.

Question 37

Heuristics

Answer 37

Problem-solving methods that trade some accuracy for simplicity and speed

Question 38

Repetition effect

Answer 38

The tendency of people to judge claims they hear more often as likelier to be true

Question 39

Argumentum Ad Baculum

Answer 39

Argument from Threat of Force

Question 40

Bias

Answer 40

The disposition to reach a particular kind of endpoint in reasoning or judgement, being skewed toward a specific

Question 41

Appeal to Emotions

Answer 41

To bias the audience towards a conclusion, by exciting some powerful emotion that will lead them to jump directly to the desired conclusion.

Question 42

Low Level biases

Answer 42

biases built into our perceptual “hardware”. results of the basic structure of our perceptual and neurological mechanisms

Question 43

Hollow face Illusion

Answer 43

The Hollow-Face illusion (also known as Hollow-Mask illusion) is an optical illusion in which the perception of a concave mask of a face appears as a normal convex face.

Question 44

Multi-modal

Answer 44

Involves more then one sensory system

Question 45

Perceptual Bias

Answer 45

there are variety of perceptual illusion that show our senses can mislead us in certain circumstance.

our visual judgment of an objects size are not absolute, but are influenced by other objects in our visual field.

sense of two things: the sort of biases that can affect our perceptions, and the sort of circumstances under which it is reasonable to worry that they are having an effect.

Question 46

McGurk Effect

Answer 46

When a visual output overrides the way we hear something. What you hear is neither the sound it looks like the person is saying nor the sound actually recorded, but something else altogether.

Question 47

Top-Down Effects on perception

Answer 47

In top-down processing, perceptions begin with the most general and move toward the more specific. These perceptions are heavily influenced by our expectations and prior knowledge.

 Put simply, your brain applies what it knows to fill in the blanks and anticipate what’s next.

For example, if half of a tree branch is covered, you usually have an idea of what it looks like, even though half is not being shown. This is because you know what trees look like from prior knowledge

Question 48

Inattentional Blindness

Answer 48

Inattentional blindness is the failure to notice a fully-visible, but unexpected object because attention was engaged on another task, event, or object.

Question 49

Cognative Biases

Answer 49

A cognitive bias is a systematic error in thinking that occurs when people are processing and interpreting information in the world around them and affects the decisions and judgments that they make.

Question 50

Confirmation Bias

Answer 50

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms or supports one’s prior beliefs or values.[1] People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information, or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes.

The idea applies to any way of gathering noticing interpreting or remembering evidence so as to make one overestimate the evidence for the sort of conclusion

Question 51

Creating Evidence:

Answer 51

for instance, seeing resemblance between a newborn and its parents. due to biological implications, logic flows deceptively to ease the resemblances between them, even though, on the implications of resemblance by itself, it is less likely for someone to state that the baby resembles the parents.

Question 52

confirmation biases ( Emotions, Beliefs, Expectations).

Answer 52

when one has beliefs about a particular thing (X), the person will evaluate the standard of the particular thing (X), while basing him or herself in favors of the belief that the thing (X) is effective.

Question 53

Situational or Structural Biases

Answer 53

affect the availability of evidence for or against a hypothesis

Question 54

Attentional biases

Answer 54

affect the degree to which we examine and remember evidence even if it is avaliable

Question 55

Interpretive biases

Answer 55

affecting the significance we assign to evidence that we do examine and remember

Question 56

The Accessibility of Information

Answer 56

situations that are structurally biased to deliver only information that supports or information that undermines a hypothesis.

one might end up with too strong a sense of evidence supporting a hypothesis and too little sense of evidence undermining it is that only or mostly evidence supporting the hypothesis is provided.

Question 57

Counterfactually

Answer 57

as events that could have happed but did not. For the most part, we learn about them statistically, by noticing changes in the number of events of that sort over time.

(Confirmation Biases)

Question 58

Motivated Inference

Answer 58

reasoning that is coloured by emotional attachments

Question 59

Motivated Inferences

Answer 59

denoting reasoning that is coloured by emotional attachments. it is a mater of shading our reasoning at every level of information processing, including through the behavior that agents our reasoning.

Question 60

Remembering evidence

Answer 60

Memory is implicated in confirmation biases that create the unwarranted perception of a trend or regularity when chance occurrences of a kind of event remind us of the other events of that kind we have experienced. Such effects can not only reinforce existing unwarranted beliefs and expectations but can introduce new unwarranted beliefs.

Question 61

Double Standard

Answer 61

When one holds the opposing position to higher evidential standards then ones on belifs.

Question 62

Self-fulfilling prophecies

Answer 62

Predictions that come true, not simply because the predictor foresees how events will unfold, but because the prediction itself has an effect on how things will unfold.

Question 63

Interpreting and Assessing Evidence

Answer 63

(confirmation bias) is active when the existence of an expectation or motivation leads one to place disproportionate credence in evidence supporting a belief or hypothesis.

The is neither a situation confirmation bias nor a bias in the extend to which I notice the evidence that is available. this leads to biases that are felt when the supporting evidence is judged to be disproportionately significant or weighty, in comparison to the apparently countervailing evidence also in my position.

Question 64

Egocentric Biases

Answer 64

Egocentric bias is the tendency to rely too heavily on one’s own perspective and/or have a higher opinion of oneself than reality. It appears to be the result of the psychological need to satisfy one’s ego and to be advantageous for memory consolidation. Research has shown that experiences, ideas, and beliefs are more easily recalled when they match one’s own, causing an egocentric outlook.

Question 65

Lake Wobegon Effect (Optimistic Self-Assessment)

Answer 65

(Egocentric Bias)
More people tend to rank themselves as above average with respect to certain virtues. The effect seems to be limited to virtues that are more vaguely defined and that are not frequently or publicly measured or compared. examples such as leadership skills and cooperativeness are more amenable to over-interpretation.

(Egocentric Biases)

Question 66

Attribution theory

Answer 66

An approach to studying how people ascribe psychological states and explain behavoir.

Question 67

Self-serving bias

Answer 67

The self-serving bias describes when we attribute positive events and successes to our own character or actions, but blame negative results to external factors unrelated to our character.

Question 68

Hindsight Bias

Answer 68

hindsight bias, the tendency, upon learning an outcome of an event—such as an experiment, a sporting event, a military decision, or a political election—to overestimate one’s ability to have foreseen the outcome. It is colloquially known as the “I knew it all along phenomenon.”

Question 69

Continued influence effects

Answer 69

The continued influence effect (also known as the continued influence of misinformation) refers to the way that falsehoods persist in our thinking.

Examples of such falsehoods include dubious claims by advertisers or politicians or “old wive’s tales” (like how going outside with wet hair causes colds or how eating candy causes acne). These false claims, once heard, can continue to influence thoughts and feelings long after they have been proven false. Modern-day examples include the belief that the Great Wall of China can be seen from the moon (it can’t!) or that cats can kill babies by sucking out their breath (they can’t!). Once pieces of information like this are internalized it isn’t easily forgotten, no matter how untrue and disproven the beliefs are.

Question 70

Framing Effects

Answer 70

The way a situation is described can have a powerful influence on our thinking about it

The framing effect is a cognitive bias where people decide on options based on whether the options are presented with positive or negative connotations; e.g. as a loss or as a gain. People tend to avoid risks when a positive frame is presented but seek risks when a negative frame is presented.
(egocentric Bias)

Question 71

biases of Memory

Answer 71

not having a great deal on the accuracy of a memory.

Question 72

Flashbulb Memories

Answer 72

memories if traumatic or famous events. it consists of the frozen-moment photographic quality that one often subjectively posses.