General
Problem-Solving Tools at http://www.logicalfallacies.info; http://www.theskepticsguide.org )
The ability to identify logical
fallacies in the arguments of others, and to avoid them in one’s own arguments,
is both valuable and increasingly rare. Fallacious reasoning keeps us from:
·
knowing the truth,
·
ability to think critically
A logical fallacy is an error of
reasoning. Logical fallacies often refer
to this collection of well-known errors of reasoning, rather than to fallacies
in the broader, more technical sense. Fallacies
may be categorised as formal fallacies and informal fallacies.
Formal Fallacies (Deductive Fallacies)
·
Deductive arguments are supposed to be
water-tight.
·
to be “valid”, it must be absolutely
impossible for both its premises to be true and its conclusion to be false
·
The classic example of a deductively
valid argument is:
o (1) All men are mortal.
o (2) Socrates is a man.
o Therefore: (3)
Socrates is mortal.
·
It is simply not possible that both (1)
and (2) are true and (3) is false, so this argument is deductively valid.
Informal Fallacies
o Inductive arguments needn’t be as rigorous as
deductive arguments
o Good inductive arguments lend support to their
conclusions,
o The premises of an inductive argument do not, and are
not intended to, entail the truth of the argument’s conclusion, and so even the
best inductive argument falls short of deductive validity.
o An example of a strong inductive argument would be:
o (1) Every day to date the law of gravity has held.
o Therefore: (2)
The law of gravity will hold tomorrow.
The most common classification of
fallacies groups are fallacies of:
o relevance,
o ambiguity
o presumption
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