PRESENTATION OUTLINE
Discovering other common reasoning fallacies
This chapter take readers through some exercises in discovering more common fallacies. When ‘s readers encounter and try to apply the fallacy, they finding hints and developing good fallacy-dectation habits. Then it’s more easy to find fallacies.
There are too many examples in this chapter so I can’t list them.
But from the examples, there’re some points we need to pay attention about.
Fallacy1: Equivocation: A key word or phrase is used with two or more meanings in an argument such that the argument fails to make sense once the shifts in meaning are recognized.
Fallacy2: Appeal to Popularity: An attempt to justify a claim by appealing to sentiments that large groups of people have in common; falsely assumes that anything favored by a large group is desirable.
Fallacy3: Appeal to Questionable Authority: Supporting a conclusion by citing an authority who lacks special expertise on the issue at hand.
Fallacy4: Appeal to Emotions: The use of emotionally charged language to distract readers and listeners from relevant reasons and evidence. Common emotions appealed to are fear, hope, patriotism, pity, and sympathy.
Fallacy5: Straw Person: Distorting our opponent’s point of view so that it is easy to attack; thus we attack a point of view that does not truly exist.
Fallacy6:Either-Or(or False Dilemma): Assuming only two alternative when there are more than two.
Fallacy7:Explaining by Naming: Falsely assuming that because you have provided a name for some event or behavour, you have also adequately explained the event.
Looking for diversions
Frequetly, those trying to get an dudience to accept some claim find that they can defend that claim by preventing the audience from too close a look at the relevant reasons. They prevent the close look by diversion tactics. As you look for fallacies, you will find it helpful to be especially alert to reasoning used by the communicator that diverts your attention from the most relevant reasons.
There are two fallacy points here.
They are about:
Fallacy1: Glittering Generality: The use of vague, emotionally appealing virtue words that dispose us to approve something without closely examining the reasons.
Fallacy2:Red Herring: An irrelevant topic is presented to divert attention from the original issue and help to win an argument by shifting attention away from the argument and to another issue. The fallacy sequence in this instance is as follows; (a)Topic A is being discussed;(b)Topic B is introduced as through it is relevant to topic A, but it is not; and(c) Topic A is abandoned.
