chapter 4 log + ana Flashcards
(33 cards)
During the mass protests in Egypt in 2011, Jim Lehrer, News Hour anchor asked Vice President Joe Biden whether Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak should be seen as a dictator. Biden replied: “Look, Mubarak has been an ally of ours in a number of things and he’s been very responsible… relative to geopolitical interests in the region.. I would not refer to him as a dictator.”
irrelevant reason,
2. evading the issue
In a column about Al Gore’s book The Assault on Reason, David Brooks roundly criticized the book, but wrote that it was well worth reading. It reminds us that whatever the effects of our homogenizing mass culture, it is still possible for exceedingly strange individuals [meaning Al Gore] to rise to the top.”
ad hominem
Charlton Heston (then president of the National Rifle Association), in an interview after the 1999 shootings at Columbine High School, told ABC’s This Week that he opposed President Clinton’s attempt to limit handgun purchases to one a month. “Before you know it, it becomes no guns.”
slippery slope
Football player Roger Craig, on George Seifert’s promotion to head coach of the National Football League’s San Francisco 49ers: “I think George will do an excellent job, because he’s been searching for a head coaching job for some time, and what better place to start his head coaching job.” (In fact, Seifert did have an excellent record with the 49ers before being canned.)
irrelevant reason
From a 1972 article in the Hartford Courant still relevant today on the possibility of women priests in the Catholic Church: “citing the historic exclusion of women from the priesthood,… the study [of a committee of Roman Catholic bishops] said ‘… the constant tradition and practice, interpreted as divine law, is of such a nature as to constitute a clear teaching of the Ordinary Magisterium [teaching authority of the church].’”
traditional reason
Bumper sticker seen in California when a handgun bill was before voters of that state: Gun Registration Equals Mass Extermination First Register Guns, Then Register the Jews
- slippery slope
2. straw man
In an article for the Atlanta Constitution Cynthia Tucker pointed out how the rich and powerful often are given special privileges. “These revelations make the case for affirmative action. People of color, who rarely have power or connections, are just seeking the same favors available to those who have [already] had them.”
- common practice
2. two wrongs make a right
At a donor dinner for the 2012 presidential campaign, Mitt Romney said that 47 percent of Americans who “pay no income taxes” are people who are “dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health car, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them.”
- division
2. ad hominem
Jan Berger in the Baltimore Evening Sun: “Weeks of patient investigation have revealed that the has leaked at Bhopal [India - with thousand of casualties] because something went wrong.”
- begging the question
2. equivocation
Rush Limbaugh, on his February 29, 2012 show, caused a furor when he lashed out at a college coed who testified before Congress in favor of religiously affiliated schools providing insurance coverage for contraception. Limbaugh’s response was “What does that say about the college coed… who goes before a congressional committee and essentially says that she must be paid to have sex? What does it make her? It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute. She wants to be paid for having sex. She’s having so much sex she can’t afford the contraception.
- ad hominem
2. irrelevant reason,straw man
Claim made by opponents of an initiative to legalize marijuana for medicinal purposes: “It would be foolish to permit the sale of marijuana to seriously ill people on the recommendation of their physicians. That just opens the floodgates to complete legalization of that dangerous drug.”
slipery slope
A letter to the editor of Connoisseur magazine defended a previous article favoring bullfighting from “the protesting letters you are sure to receive,” by reminding readers that bulls sleeted for the arena live twice as long as those destined for McDonalds and die in a far more noble fashion.
- irrelevant reason
2. either or
When President Bush attempted to justify sending 20,000 more troops to secure Iraq in 2007, congressional leaders asked him why he this strategy would succeed when previous efforts had failed. Bush responded, “Because it has to.”
- irrelevant reason
2. either or
Indian mystic Vivekananda: “There is no past or future even in thought, because to think you have to make it present.
equivocation
From a conversation with a friend (non verbatim): “Sure, I’ve told you before that I believe everyone’s opinion counts on moral matters like abortion. But not everyone’s opinion counts - I wouldn’t want Hitler’s to count. Well, [name deleted] isn’t Hitler, but she sleeps around like sex was going out of style next week or something. She’s a slut, and she’s broken up at least one marriage I know about, Why should her opinion count on anything? Why should we listen to her opinion on the abortion business?”
- ad hominem
2. inconsistency, guilt by association
In a Virginia court ruling against President Obama’s health care law, Judge Henry E. Hudson argued that a law requiring most Americans to buy health insurance was unconstitutional and that it “exceeds the constitutional boundaries of congressional power.” Judge Hudson cautioned that the law would “invite unbridled exercise of federal police powers” and would give Congress “boundless” authority to force Americans “to buy an automobile, to join a gym, to eat asparagus.”
slippery slope, straw man
Jules Crittenden, an embedded journalist for the Boston Herald in the Iraq War defended himself from criticism for bringing home some illegal “souvenirs” from Iraq: “I understand and share the world’s concern about the disappearance of legitimate Iraqi national treasures that are in fact treasures of human civilization,” Crittenden wrote in an open letter to journalists in this country. “However, those are matters separate from the time-honored tradition among soldiers of bringing home reminders of some of the practice in this war… [until reporters and soldiers were subject to search by federal agents on returning to the United States].”
common practice
Argument heard all too frequently in introductory philosophy classes: “We’re perfectly entitled to believe there is a God. After all, every effort by atheists to prove otherwise has failed.”
appeal to ignorance
Lewis Carroll, in Through the Looking Glass: “ ‘You couldn’t have it if you did want it,’ the Queen said. ‘The rule is jam tomorrow and jam yesterday - but never jam today.’ ‘It must sometimes come to jam today,’ Alice objected. ‘No it can’t,’ said the Queen. ‘It’s jam every other day: today isn’t any other day, you know.’ “
equivocation
As the country slid into the Great Recession in 2008, Phil Gramm former senator from Texas, told Americans to stop complaining about the economy, calling them “a nation of whiners.” He said, “You’ve heard of mental depression; this is mental recession.”
ad hominem
Robert Ringer in The Tortoise Report touting gold as an investment: “Two thousand years after the human flesh had disappeared the gold that adorned it [an ancient Egyptian corpse] remained virtually unchanged. That’s a real hard act for paper money to follow.
irrelevant reason
Margaret Morissey, an anti-garbage activist, was interviewed on As It Happens, a Canadian news program about her arrest for blocking trucks from dumping garbage on a hill overlooking St. Brides, Newfoundland. The arrest occurred despite the fact that it was illegal to us the hill as dumpsite. When she asked the mayor why the dumping was still allowed, he said, “We’ve been doing it for 30 years.”
traditional wisedom
Overheard on the bust to Atlantic City: “I just play the quarter slots when I go to Atlantic City. That way, I don’t lose too much money.”
composition
Sigmund Freud: “Our own death is… unimaginable, and whenever we make the attempt to imagine it we can perceive that we really survive as spectators.
equivocation
