Lecture 9, CH.7 - Pseudoreasoning

Question 1

What are Fallacies?

Answer 1

Fallacies are bad arguments:
- They consist of premises and conclusions, but don’t have good evidence to believe the conclusion (because the reasons that support a claim (conclusion) fail to do so).
- Consist of:
~ Formal Fallacies
~ Substantive fallacies
- Arguers are often aware of their fallacies, but might use the fallacy to persuade others in favor of their argument

Question 2

Formal Fallacies

Question 3

What are Formal Fallacies?

Answer 3

Formal Fallacies are arguments that are invalid:
!!! There is a failure in the logical connection between the premises and the conclusion !!!

Question 4

What are the different types of Formal Fallacies?

Answer 4

• Affirming the Consequent
• Denying the Antecedent
• Deriving ‘ought from is’
• Base Rate Fallacy
• Undistributed middle fallacy

Question 5

Formal Fallacies

What is the fallacy of affirming the Consequent and why is it a fallacy?

Answer 5

P1) If P then Q
P2) Q
C) P
Reason for fallacy: e.g. P: Philosopher, Q: Wise. If you are wise you are not also necessarily a philosopher, you can be wise and the reason for your wisdom may be due to many things

Question 6

Formal Fallacies

What is the fallacy of Denying the Antecedent and why is it a fallacy?

Answer 6

P1) If P then Q
P2) Not-P
C) Not-Q
Reason for fallacy: Again, say P: Philosopher, Q: Wise, even if you are not a philosopher, that doesn’t mean you are definitely not wise. You might not be a philosopher and still be wise

Question 7

Formal Fallacies

What is the fallacy of deriving ought from is?

Answer 7

P1) British Monarchy has existed for 1.000 years
C) British monarchy should be retained
NOTE: P1) is a descriptive premise (it just describes a situation) and C) is a prescriptive premise (it tells us what action we should take).
Reason for Fallacy: A prescriptive conclusion can not be derived just from descriptive premises. (Just because something is the way it is isn’t enough for us to act or do something else, there must also be a motivation for oru action)

Question 8

What is the base rate fallacy?

Answer 8

When people tend to ignore the prevelance or base rate of an occurence across the population

Question 9

Undistributed middle

Answer 9

• P1 all cats are animals
• P2 all dogs are animals
• C all cats are dogs

Question 10

Substantive Fallacies

Question 11

What are Substantive (Informal) Fallacies?

Answer 11

Fallacies that have an inappropriate connection based on a very common but unjustified assumption. Usually there is an implicit premise, which needs to be stated explicitly for the argument to be valid (BUT NOT SOUND)

Question 12

Substantive Fallacies

What are the different types of Substantive Fallacies?

Answer 12

• Fallacy of Majority Belief
• Common practice
• Gambler’s Fallacy
• Ad Hominem
• Tu Quoque
• Appeal to authority
• Perfectionist Fallacy
• Conflation of morality with legality
• Weak Analogy
• Causal Fallacies
• ~ Post hoc ergo propter hoc
• ~ Mistaking Correlation for cause
• ~ Inversion of cause and effect
• Appeal to ignorance
• Epistemic Fallacy

Question 13

Substantive Fallacies

What is the Fallacy of Majority Belief?

Answer 13

Concluding that something is true because the majority believes it.
P1) Most people believe the government should lower taxes
C) The government should lower taxes
- Fallacy can be fixed if you add the premise: P2) Any belief shared by most people is true
- Can be a common problem in juries or trials, for example
- Similar to the rhetorical ploy of appeal to popularity, because both use the fact of something’s popularity or commonality to attempt to persuade
- In some cases, such arguments entail both the fallacy of majority belief and the rhetorical ploy of appeal to popularity, in other cases the argument only has one of the two

Question 14

Substantive Fallacies

What is the Fallacy of Common practice?

Answer 14

When we persuade someone to do something because everyone else does it
P1) Everyone claps at public events
C) It is morally acceptable to clap at public events
- Fallacy can be fixed if you add the premise P2) Any act that everyone performs is morally acceptable

Question 15

Substantive Fallacies

What is Gambler’s Fallacy?

Answer 15

Assumption that an event occuring frequently or infrequently makes it less likely or more likely respectively to happen again on the next occasion.
P1) I buy five lottery tickets every year
P2) I have never won anything
C) I’m going to buy 5 lottery tickets this year because I haven’t won and now favor’s on my side; it’s my time to win
- Fallacy can be fixed if you add the premises P3) Not winning for a long time means I have better chances of winning and P4) If my chances of winning are increased, it makes sense to buy tickets

Question 16

Substantive Fallacies

What is the Fallacy of Ad Hominen?

Answer 16

• Responding to someone’s argument by making an attack on that person instead of addressing the argument itself, OR:
• Rejecting a claim because of disapproval/dislike for the perosn who makes it
  P1) The prime minister wants to increase taxes
  P2) The prime minister doesn’t wear a tie
  C) We shouldn’t increase taxes
• Fallacy can be fixed if you add the premise P3) Legislation shouldn’t be proposed by someone who doesn’t wear a tie

Question 17

Fallacy of Ad Hominem

What is the Fallacy of Ad Hominem circumstantial?

Answer 17

When we discount/refute somebody’s argument because the arguer would benefit from that argument (It doesn’t matter if that person will gain or not from his argument, if the reasoning and argument is good, that’s all that matters)
P1) The prime minister wants to increase taxes
P2) The prime minister will benefit from this
C) We shouldn’t allow the prime minister to increase taxes
- Fallacy can be fixed if we add the premise P3) Whenever somebody benefits from something they propose, we should reject their arguments

Question 18

Fallacy of Ad Hominem

What question does the fallacy of Ad Hominem bring up?

Answer 18

Is a person’s character and actions relevant to the credibility of his/her argument?
IN GENERAL: Assess always the argument in itself, but take into consideration the person and the person’s motives, without that being though the sole reason to refute an argument

Question 19

Substantive Fallacies

What is the Fallacy of Tu Quoque?

Answer 19

When we make wrong connections between a person’s lack of credibility and the strength of the argument
!!! Lack of argument comes about from arguer’s perceived inconsistency between their actions and claims !!!
P1) My dad says you shouldn’t talk on the phone while driving
P2) My dad talks on the phone while driving
C) It’s ok to talk on the phone while driving
(Just because the person does seomthing different than what he argues is right, doesn’t mean that what he argues to be right is false or not that credible; it might be very correct, as in iths example)

Question 20

Substantive Fallacies

What is the Appeal to Authority?

Answer 20

When an argument makes an unjustified appeal to a supposed authority (Just because somebody’s an expert on a matter, doesn’t mean that’s wnough of a reason to think they’re always right on this matter)
P1) Bob says that alcohol education should be introduced for five-year olds
P2) Bob has 30 years of experience as a whisky blender
P3) If someone has 30 years of experience as a whisky blender, they must be an expert on alcohol education
P4) If someone is an expert on a subject, we have good reason to accept their opinion on the matter
C) Alcohol education should be introduced for 5 year olds
NOTE: This is the only fallacy that doesn’t include hacing to state explicitly an implicit premise. Still, it’s a fallacy

Question 21

Fallacy of Appeal to Authority

What are some other notes on the Fallacy of Appeal to Authority?

Answer 21

• Not all appeals to authority are fallacious: only those that believe that someone’s claim is authoritative about the matter are fallacious
• Appeal to authority is also used sometimes as a rhetorical ploy, to convince others to accept your argument

Question 22

Substantive Fallacies

What is the Perfectionist Fallacy

Answer 22

Place excessive demands on an idea/proposal, then reject it because it will not completely solve a problem
P1) Politicians proposals to cut CO2 emissions by 20% will not solve climate change completely
C) We should reject this proposal by politicians
- Fallacy can be fixed if we add the premise P2) If a proposed solution won’t completely solve the problem, it should be rejected

Question 23

Substantive Fallacies

What is the Fallacy of Conflation of Morality with Legality?

Answer 23

When we assume that anything legal must be moral, or anything illegal must be immoral
(Cheating or manipulating others is immoral, but no illegal. In some coutnries not voting is illegal, but not voting isn’t necessarily immoral)

Question 24

Substantive Fallacies

What is the Fallacy of Weak Analogy?

Answer 24

When we have a fallacious analogy of the following nature: Because one thing is similar to another in one respect, it’s therefore similar in another respect.
P1) Object X is similar to object Y in respect of characteristic A
P2) When object X is similar to object Y in one respect, the 2 objects are similar in all respects
P3) Y has characteristic B
C) X has characteristic B
(doesn’t take into account the dissimilarities between objects)

Question 25

Substantive Fallacies - Causal Fallacies

What are the 3 criteria for Causality?

Answer 25

• X precedes Y (Priority)
• X covaries with Y (Consistency/Correlation)
• X is the only cause of Y (Exclusivity)

Question 26

Substantive Fallacies - Causal Fallacies

What are the 3 different types of Causal Fallacies?

Answer 26

• Post hoc ergo propter hoc
• Mistaking correlation for cause
• Inversion of Cause and effect

Question 27

Substantive Fallacies - Causal Fallacies

What is the fallacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc?

Answer 27

When we mistkanely infer that X caused Y just because Y occured after X (Fallacy in the 1st criterion of Causality, the Priority Criterion)
- Usually happens when arguers want to attribute responsibility for some policy or action
- ~ If policy was a success: You claim credit
- ~ If policy was a failure: You blaim others or other factors

Question 28

Substantive Fallacies - Causal Fallacies

What is the Fallacy of Mistaking correlation for cause?

Answer 28

When you find two events in conjunction and you also mistakenly assume that on event caused the other (Fallacy in the 2nd criterion of the Causality Criteria, the consistency criterion)
P1) X is correlated statistically with Y
C) X causes Y
- Fallacy can be fixed if you add the premise P2) Whenever X and Y are correlaed, X is the cause of Y

Question 29

Substantive Fallacies - Causal Fallacies

What is the Fallacy of Inversion of cause and effect?

Answer 29

If X causes Y, then we mistakenly infer that the absence of X will prevent Y (Fallacy in the 3rd criterion of Causality, the Exclusivity Criterion)
NOTE: Sometimes Inversion of Cause and Effect and Mistaking correlation for cause co-occur

Question 30

Substantive Fallacies

What is the fallacy of appeal to ignorance?

Answer 30

• Mistakenly concluding that because a claim has not been proven it msut be false (negative form) or because it has not been disproven it must be true (positive form)

Question 31

Substantive Fallacies

What is the epistemic fallacy?

Answer 31

Mistakenly inferring that if someone believes P then they must also believe Q based on the fact that P and Q are the same person, even though the way we refer to P and Q are different.
P1) I believe the 1st female UK prime minister was known as the Iron Lady
P2) Margaret Thatcher was the first female UK prime minister
C) I believe Margaret Thatcher was the Iron Lady
(I know that the 1st female UK prime minister was known as the Iron Lady, but how do I know that the first UK female prime minister was Margaret Thatcher?)
- Fallacy can be fixed if you add the premise P3) I know Margaret Thatcher was the first female UK prime minister
- Such inferences are based on Leibniz’s Law: If X is the same or identical to another, then what is true of one must be true for the other as well (e.g. if Superman is blonde and Clark Kent is Superman,, Clark Kent must be blonde)

Question 32

Substantive Fallacies - Epistemic Fallacy

In what other occasions is the Epistemic Fallacy used?

Answer 32

• It can be used to discredit someone’s opinion:
  P1) Mr Smith believes it should be illegal to produce or use cannabis
  P2) Cannabis is the most effective anti-nausea drug for chemotherapy patients
  C) Mr Smith believes it should be illegal to produce or use the most effective anti-nausea drug for chemotherapy patients
  (How do we know that Mr Smith knows about P2)?)
• Another use of this fallacy is in the “If you’re not with us you’re against us” case
  P1) The prime minister knows who the terrorists are, and he’ll hunt them down
  P2) Senator Routman wants to set limits on the pursuit of these killers
  C) Senator Routman thinks we should simply let the terrorists free

Question 33

Faulty Arguments and Techniques

Question 34

Faulty Arguments and Techniques

What are the different types of Faulty Arguments and Techniques?

Answer 34

• Equivocation
• Red Herring
• Slippery Slope
• Straw Target
• False Dilemma
• Begging the question

Question 35

Faulty Arguments and Techniques

What is Equivocation?

Answer 35

When you deliberately use words or the form of words to confuse the audience. The arguer hopes that the audience will combine the two or more possible interpretations.
P1) In some countries, men have the right to confine their wives forcibly, in others they don’t
C1) It is not the case that human beings have the same rights in all places and at all times
C2) The conservative claim, that throughout history in all times and places, people fundamentally have the same rights, is false
- One sense of the word “right”: You’re allowed by culture or other social environment you’re in to perform a certain action
- Other sense of the word “right”: You can do anything, regardless of culture, society or if you’re allowed to or not.
The two conclusions use a different sense of the word right

Question 36

Faulty Arguments and Techniques

What is Red Herring?

Answer 36

When you throw someone off general meaning of the argument by distracting them with an irrelevance (similar to rhetorical ploy of smokescreen or whataboutism, only that in this case it is when an irrelevant premise is given as an argument).
In other words, infer a conclusion from a premise irrelevant to the topic
- Common example: In response to someone criticizing me, I say that the person criticizing me offers no counter solution, so their criticism of me is wrong
!!! IMPORTANT NOTE !!! If you honestly believe that something irrelevant to the matter is linked with the subject, then that is not red herring; you’re just badly informed, but it isn’t a faulty argument technique

Question 37

Faulty Arguments and Techniques

What is Slippery Slope?

Answer 37

When you mistakenly assume that if you permit or forbid a course of action, other related or undesirable events will follow, and you provide no reasoning for such an argument
- Related to the rhetorical ploy appeal to fear
P1) If cannabis were to be decriminalized, the use of hard drugs would increase
C) Cannabis should not be decriminalized
- Fallacy can be fixed if you add the premise P2) Anything leading to increased use of harder srugs should be avoided
(Such argument forms are also called floodgates)

Question 38

Faulty Arguments and Techniques

What is the Straw Target?

Answer 38

When we ignore our opponent’s real position on an issue and set up a weaker version of that position by misinterpretation, exaggeration, distortion or simplification

Question 39

Faulty Arguments and Techniques

What is the False Dilemma Technique?

Answer 39

Limiting considerations of positions/solutions on an issue to fewer alternatives than are actually available (arguer might say that there are only two options, when in truth, there might be more)
P1) We should stimulate the economy
P2) The only way to stimulate the economy is by cutting taxes
C) We should cut taxes

Question 40

Faulty Arguments and Techniques

What is begging the question?

Answer 40

When the truth of a conclusion is assumed by one or more of its premises and the truth of the premises depends for its justification on the truth of the conclusion
P1) I’m getting the biggest share of the haul
P2) Whoever gets the biggest share of the haul is the gang leader
C1) I must be the leader of the gang
P3) Gang leaders always receive the biggest share of the haul
C2) I’m getting the biggest share of the haul
C2) and P1) are the same. It’s sufficient that the premise be a version of, or rely upon the claim made by the conclusion. They don’t have to be identical

Question 41

Fallacies in interpreting statistical material

Question 42

Fallacies in interpreting statistical material

What is the absolute and relative difference, and what mistake do we often make regarding those two terms?

Answer 42

• Relative risk: measure of difference in risk between someone in one condition and another person in another condition
• Absolute risk is the odds of something happening over a stated period of time
  Often we confuse the two terms

Question 43

Fallacies in interpreting statistical material

What other mistakes do we make when interpreting statistical material?

Answer 43

• Misinterpreting the margin of error
• Base Rate Fallacy