Flashcards
Philosophy Exam 2 - Fallacies
Cards in this deck (21)
- 1appeal to majoritypremise about something being widely believed, then a conclusion about that thing being true.
does not have to be a literal majority, just widespread acceptance - 2appeal to emotionuse emotional force to make an argument
an argument that tries to get you to believe a conclusion by playing on your emotions rather than presenting a real premise.
can be negative or positive emotions
not just the presence of emotion, but when the argument uses an emotional appeal as a substitution of evidence
-good guess fallacy when not sure - 3appeal to forcetries to get you to believe something through threats or intimidation
it can be more subtle than you may think
you should believe something because you will suffer bad consequences if you don’t believe it
does not have to have strong language - 4appeal to inappropriate authorityclaims a certain conclusion is true because an authority says so, but the authority in question is obviously a bad one
people on commercials have an incentive other than delivering the truth (kim k and detergent)
only trust it when it is totally clear that it is an appropriate authority and they have incentive to tell you the truth
not a fallacy to make a mistake in judging someone’s authority, it is a fallacy only when you believe it is true simply because someone tells you that it is and that person clearly has no authority over that topic - 5ad hom arguments, name the types-abuse
-hipocracy
-tu quoque
poisoning the well - 6abuseclaim someone’s views are false because of something you have against them
- 7hipocracysomeone who claims something that they themselves do not act on
the person can be a hypocrite, though still have a true and well thought out argument - 8tu quoque > you're anothertry to get away from a criticism by turning the argument back onto them
“you’re bad at blah, we what do you know, you’re even worse at it than I am”
an attempt to suggest that a criticism is false by directing it back on them - 9poisoning the welltries to suggest that someone's views are false, by pointing out something about her motives or circumstances that make her less than objective
making a claim for their own benefit > someone tells you you need a whistle when you go out because the sell whistles and will make money off of you if you buy one - 10false alternativeis there a (probably implicit) false disjunctive premise?
disjunctive propositions are “either or” propositions, only one of the options is true
in a false alternative argument, one of the premises needs to be false
choosing between alternatives
is love good? no love is not good, therefore love is evil.
when you do not consider all the alternatives, there are more options than just beautiful and ugly
make sure you can find the either or claim that is being presented, otherwise it is not false alternative - 11post hoc (because of this then that)is the conclusion about causality?
springfield forms bear patrol, otherwards there are no bears around, therefore the bear patrol is the cause of no bears being around
you cannot conclude from the absence of bears means the bear patrol is responsible
concluding that one thing is the effect of something else simply because it occurs after it or simultaneously with it
not the point to show that there is no causal connection, but rather that you can't prove that one thing led to the other
responsible, cause, explaining (words to look for) - 12hasty generalizationis the conclusion a generalization?
very specific kind of mistake
drawing a general conclusion on the basis of a very small sample
there are some that are obviously unsupportive (either too small or unrepresentative)
for it to be good you need to draw on a large population
draws a general conclusion (always or usually the case) on basis of insufficient evidence - 13accidentbased on idea that sometimes we make a general statement but we don’t exactly mean it to be totally general
killing is wrong > general statement, but has obvious exceptions. there are obvious exceptions (self-defense, wars, etc.)
if you assume that because killing is generally wrong, therefore it is wrong in every circumstance - 14slippery slopedeals improperly with topic of causality
usually a reactive argument, against other reasoning or other argument
we condemn someone’s views/practices etc because we claim that it will lead to problems down the line
“if we allow people to marry same sex, soon we will be allowed to marry dogs”
look for “won't somebody please think of the children”
links one thing to a very unlikely and usually very distant “fact” - 15compositiongenetic fallacy > things resemble their origins in every way
“this drug is poisonous because it is made from a poisonous plant
focus on relationships between parts and whole
if something has a certain property, then something built up out of it will have the same properties
“every player on the team is good, therefore the whole team is good”
composition > property of a part to a property of a whole - 16divisionpeople have more trouble with these than expected
division > property of a whole to a property of a part
“this team is good, therefore every player individually is also good”
often these mistakes get buried, look for arguments with averages, or numbers - 17begging the questiontakes for granted what it is trying to demonstrate
you try to show a conclusion is true by using a premise that assumes that conclusion is true
god exists because the bible says so, why because the bible is the word of god, but how do you know the bible is true? well because god exists.
the bible is the word of god can only be understood if you already believed that god exists.
a premise is supposed to give you a reason to accept the conclusion even if you don’t know if the conclusion is true, but in this case if you don’t already know the basis behind the conclusion it is assuming that the dispute is true
if you try to avoid a responsibility of backing up reasons, if you defend by restating your conclusion - 18equivocationusing the same term in two different senses, to mean different concepts
for our purposes > constructing an argument that wouldn’t seem convincing except for the fact that it’s used twice
the media should do what is the public interest (good of the public) there is great public interest (what public happens to find interesting) in politician’s sex lives, therefore the media should report on politicians sex lives
uses the same word/phrase in two different ways, and the equivocation is the only word that makes the argument convincing
that two restated phrases must be the part of the argument doing the heavy lifting - 19subjectivistwhen someone goes from an argument about something subjective (emotions, thoughts, etc.) to a conclusion about something objective.
- 20ignorancejsznfkjn
- 21bogus ad homsafs
Information
- Description
- Flashcards on Philosophy Exam 2 - Fallacies, created by Rigel Smith on 24/10/2016.
- Created by
- Rigel Smith
- Views
- 1
- Rating