Midterm 3

Question 1

• Formal logical fallacies

Answer 1

have to do with the structure of the argument and refer to deductive arguments

Question 2

• Informal logical fallacies

Answer 2

have to do with the content of the statements within the argument and have to do with the language used, the technique used by the author of the argument or the topic

Question 3

o Empirical truth-claims

Answer 3

all empirical (based on experience) truth-clams can be verified or falsified 
•	Particular empirical truth-claims can be verified directly Ex. The chalk board behind me in green.

Question 4

• General Empirical truth claims - 2 kinds

Answer 4

truth-claims are not directly verifiable since they refer to a class of empirical facts. Two kinds of general empirical truth-claims 
•	Statistical general truth-claims refer to a class of objects/facts. Ex: most people like cereal
•	Universal general truth-claims refer to all the objects/facts in one class. Even though most universal truth-claims cannot be verified directly they can be falsified if there is a counter-evidence Ex: All swans are white

Question 5

o Non Empirical truth-claims

Answer 5

they cannot be proved or disproved empirically (by experience)
• Almost all philosophical claims are non-empirical
• They are fundamental claims of science such as “all events has causes” etc.
• Non-empirical statements rely on the coherence theory of truth to be verified
• Ex: God exists Ex: one should never make a false promise

Question 6

• Informal Logical Fallacies

Answer 6

o Lack of relevance, adequacy, acceptability of premises, language, technique of persuasion rather than structure

Question 7

1. Appeal to pity

Answer 7

using one’s own tough time or pointing to someone else’s difficult situation to win the argument

a. Ex: Professor, I deserve an A in Logic. My life is a mess. I deserve a reward for my pain.
b. Context is crucial

Question 8

2. Appeal to force

Answer 8

any type of harassment falls within this argument

b. Threatened that there will be repercussions if you don’t change your mind

Question 9

3. Appeal to popularity

Answer 9

a. Thousands of students protested the bombing of Afghanistan.
b. Be cool! Smoke cigars. All cool people do it!

Question 10

4. Appeal to authority

Answer 10

a. When the level of authority is questionable – John Lennon was against the Vietnam war. So, it must have been a big mistake

Question 11

5. Appeal to person

Answer 11

occurs when instead of you dealing with the issue at hand, there is a personal attack to the person behind the argument. The personal attack aims at a personal characteristic such as age, weight, height, gender, race etc.

a. believe the death penalty to be savage and it has no place in a civilized society
i. How would you know? You only went to high school!

Question 12

6. Tu quoque – youre another one

Answer 12

→ it occurs when one is trying to discredit someone because their actions don’t match their words
a. How could he tell me to exercise when all he does is sit on the couch and watch TV?

Question 13

7. Straw man

Answer 13

occurs when an opponent’s position is presented as so extreme that it is indefensible. Then we are steered towards a more moderate position with immediately looks a more attractive alternative.
b. Those animal rights people make me sick. If they get their way, medical advances in this country will come to a grinding halt.

Question 14

1. Slippery Slope

Answer 14

arguing, without good reasons, that taking a particular step will inevitably lead to a further undesirable step
domino affect – one thing messes everything else up

Question 15

2. Appeal to anecdotal evidence

Answer 15

occurs when we draw a conclusion about a whole group based on an inadequate sample of the group

Question 16

3. Appeal to ignorance

Answer 16

occurs when it is argued that something is the case simply because you cannot prove otherwise. It goes like that “if you cant prove that I am wrong then I must be right”
a. Belief in reincarnation is unwarranted, since no one can definitely demonstrate that the soul can enter another body and come back on Earth

Question 17

1. Post hoc fallacy

Answer 17

after this therefore because of this

a. Asserts a causal connection between two events based on something earliest in time
b. The patter of the fallacy is: Because something precedes something else in time then it must be its cause – the problem is that the connection might be coincidental

Question 18

2. Confusing Cause and Effect

Answer 18

occurs when the effect is identifies as the cause and vice versa
a. According to one political analyst, a period of stock market jitters was the result of the declining popularity of the incumbent president, accompanied by doubts and his re-election

Question 19

3. Common cause fallacy

Answer 19

committed when it is claimed that there is a causal relation between A and B when in fact both A and B are caused by a third factor C
- events are related in some way but not caused by each other → their cause is somewhere else

Question 20

1. Loaded words/terms

Answer 20

these are terms that have both clear descriptive meaning as well as evaluative meaning (positive or negative)

Question 21

2. Loaded questions

Answer 21

complex questions assume that both answers (yes or no ) to the question will confirm what is stated in the question, Thus, complex questions make statements (which take the form of judgements) without appearing to do so

Question 22

3. Biased statistics

Answer 22

– occur when the inference is based upon a sample that is not representative and diverse enough of the target population. Its not a question of size as with hasty generalization, here the issue is that the group is not diverse enough to be representative for the target group

Question 23

4. Red Herring

Answer 23

occurs when the speaker intentionally takes an irrelevant line of reasoning in order to divert the attention away from the real issues at hand