COMFTF 08-A Logical Fallacies PPT (With Sound) Rev 4-12-05

COMFTF 08
LOGICAL FALLACIES
Dr. David F. Maas

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LOGICAL FALLACIES
♦ Writing not simply motor activity
♦ Writing primarily thinking reasoning skill
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LOGICAL FALLACIES
♦ Purpose of this unit:
♦ Train writer to spot lapses is his own
reasoning
♦ Train writer to spot lapses in other peoples’
writing
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LOGICAL FALLACIES
♦ Purpose of unit:
♦ Avoid logical fallacies in our reasoning.
♦ Detect them in articles we use for our
research,preventing them from
contaminating our research.
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LOGICAL FALLACIES
♦ Purpose of this unit:
♦ To define fallacies
♦ To provide examples for each kind of
fallacy
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LOGICAL FALLACIES
♦ Mastery demonstrated by:
♦ Define fallacies
♦ Provide text example
♦ Provide own example
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LINGUISTIC FALLACIES
♦ Linguistic Fallacies – Involve tampering
with the language structure.
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♦ EMOTIVE LANGUAGE- sole purpose of
emotive language:
♦ Arousal of unreasoned feeling
♦ Stimulation of the emotions
♦ Raise the blood pressure
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LINGUISTICS FALLACIES
♦ EMOTIVE LANGUAGE
♦ Examples
♦ Communist
♦ Socialist
♦ Fascist
♦ Pig
♦ Racist
♦ Bigot
♦ Welfare cheat
♦ Union goon
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♦ Two kinds of words:
♦ Denotation
♦ Connotation
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LINGUISTICS FALLACIES
♦ DENOTATION:
♦ Pointer function of language
♦ An agreement between two or more people
to restrict what a word can mean.
♦ The dictionary definition of a word.
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♦ DENOTATION:
♦ Pointing Function
♦ CONNOTATION:
♦ Associative function
COMFTF 08 Linguistic Fallacies
♦ Connotation
♦ Evoke Powerful Feelings
♦ Snarl words
♦ Purr words
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♦ CONNOTATION ♦ DENOTATION
♦ Snarl words: ♦ Law enforcement
♦ Pig
officer
♦ Fuzz
♦ Constable
♦ Cops
♦ Patrol man
♦ Nazis
♦ Purr words
♦ Servant of the people
♦ Guardian of the people
♦ Long blue line
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♦ EMOTIVE LANGUAGE
♦ Mightiest weapons of despots and
demagogues
♦ Dr.Goebbels-Nazi propaganda
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♦ EMOTIVE LANGUAGE:
♦ Mightiest weapon in arsenal of despots
♦ People learned in semantics would not
tolerate supreme political dictator
♦ Propaganda met with “No comprendo.”
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Linguistic Fallacies
♦ Hitler translated into intrinsic meaning-if
any.
♦ Abstract words and phrases without
discoverable referents would register a
semantic blank, noises without meaning.
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♦ The Aryan Fatherland, which has nursed the
souls of heroes, calls upon you for the
supreme sacrifice which you, in whom
flows heroic blood, will not fail, and which
will echo forever down the corridors of
history.
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♦ The blab blab,which has nursed the blabs
of blabs, calls upon you for the blab blab
which you, in whom flows blab blood, will
not fail, and which will echo blab down the
blabs of blab.
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♦ Semantic Blank
♦ Screens out emotive language
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♦ EQUIVOCATION: Allowing a key word or
phrase to shift its meaning in the course of
the argument.
♦ Etymology:
♦ EQUI = equal
♦ VOX = voice
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♦ EQUIVOCATION
♦ Example:
♦ Only man is rational.
♦ No woman is a man
♦ Therefore no woman is rational
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♦ EQUIVOCATION: Uses the same term
with different meanings.
♦ Democracy
♦ Liberal
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♦ Freedom
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♦ EQUIVOCATION
♦ Example:
♦ The things which have real educational
value should obviously be the core of a
college curriculum. Nobody who has ever
tried to get a job will deny that typing is
valuable.Certainly, then all students should
be required to take typing.
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♦ EQUIVOCATION
♦ Example:
♦ Practice makes perfect. Physicians have
practiced the art of healing for thousands of
years. My physician, therefore, who studied
at one of our greatest medical schools,
should be perfect in this field.
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♦ As far as I’m concerned, we need pay no
attention to the president of the college
when it comes to educational matters
because he has no authority in
education.
♦ He doesn’t even have enough authority to
prevent students from staging protest
rallies.
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♦ AMBIGUITY: occurs when we use terms
which are :
♦ Ill-defined
♦ Vague in meaning
♦ Signify variety of ideas
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♦ AMBIGUITY:
♦ Example:
♦ Objective consideration of contemporary
phenomena compels the conclusion that
success in competitive activities is in no
way commensurate with innate capacity,
but a considerable amount of the
unpredictable must be taken into account.
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♦ AMBIGUITY
♦ Example:
♦ Ecclesiastes 9:11- I returned and saw under
the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor
the battle to the strong, nor bread to the
wise, nor riches to men of understanding,
nor favor to men of skill; but time and
chance happen to them all.
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♦ ACCENT
♦ 1. A statement is spoken in a tone of voice
not intended for it.
♦ 2. Certain words in it are wrongly accented
or stressed.
♦ 3. Certain words (or even sentences or
paragraphs) are taken out of context and
thus given an emphasis(and therefore a
meaning) they were not intended to have.
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♦ ACCENT
♦ Aristotle – applied the term to
misinterpretations resulting from words that
differ in syllabic content.
♦ Invalid Sick person
♦ Invalid Faulty argument
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♦ ACCENT
♦ Occurs less frequently in oral speech
♦ We commit the fallacy of accent when we
try to deceive by changing the part of the
phrase to be emphasized.
♦ The meaning changes depending upon
which parts of the phrase we emphasize or
accent.
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♦ ACCENT
♦ We should not speak ill of our friends.
♦ (But other people may speak ill of them).
♦ (But we do anyway)
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♦ We should not speak ill our friends.
♦ (But we can think or write ill of them.)
♦ (But we can speak good of them.)
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♦ ( But we can speak ill of your friends.)
♦ (But we can speak ill of our enemies.)
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♦ ACCENT
♦ I never said he hit his wife.
♦ (But Fred may have said it.)
♦ (Under no circumstances did I ever say
that.)
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♦ (But I may have thought or written it.)
♦ (But his friend may have hit her.)
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♦ (But he may have hit Harry’s wife.)
♦ (But he could have hit his girlfriend or
mistress.)
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♦ ACCENT
♦ Yiddish Humor
♦ Leo Rosten’s word play
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♦ Two tickets for her concert I should buy?
♦ Two tickets for concert I should buy?
♦ (I’m having enough trouble buying one.)
♦ (You mean she isn’t giving away free
passes?)
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♦ (After she didn’t come to my son’s recital?)
♦ (She calls that hideous racket and noise a
concert?)
♦ (What about the other office members?)
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♦ ( Are you giving me a lesson in ethics?)
♦ (Why isn’t she giving them away free?)
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♦ AMPHIBOLY
♦ Result or product of poor structure.
♦ Results when words are incorrectly or
loosely grouped in a sentence, giving rise to
a meaning not intended by the author.
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♦ AMPHIBOLY
♦ Etymology: Greek
♦ AMPHO = Double (On both sides)
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♦ AMPHIBOLY
♦ Produce a two-fold interpretation because
of its awkward structure( or the awkward
way in which its words are combined),
rather than from any deliberate attempt to
deceive.
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♦ AMPHIBOLY EXAMPLES
♦ Eat here and get gas.
♦ The Longview Committee on Public
Decency is looking into plunging necklines.
♦ There are some things that one should not
eat, especially children.
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♦ AMPHIBOLY EXAMPLES:
♦ Church Sign: Do You Know What Hell Is?
♦ Come Hear Our New Organist.
♦ Clean and decent boxing every night except
Sunday.
♦ Apartment for rent: View takes in 4
counties. 2 bedrooms.
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♦ For Sale 1969 Cadillac hearse. Body in
good condition.
♦ Lost cat: owner worried, neutered and
declawed.
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♦ Church sign: Is There A God
♦ Who Cares?
♦ Sign in druggist’s window:
♦ We dispense with accuracy.
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♦ COMPOSITION:
♦ We commit the fallacy of composition
when we attempt to apply what is true of
the part or individual to the whole group.
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♦ COMPOSITION EXAMPLE:
♦ If we say Jones is the best quarterback in
the country. Smith is the best fullback in the
country. Davis is the best receiver in the
country.Putting them together on the Aggie
team will not necessarily make the Aggies
the best team in the country.
♦ Prima Donnas do not always make good
choir members.
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♦ COMPOSITION EXAMPLES:
♦ A statement about an integral part of
something is not necessarily true about the
composite whole:
♦ Six blind men and the elephant:
♦ One holding tusk:”An elephant is like a
spear.”
♦ One holding trunk: “No its flexible like a
rope.
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♦ Six Blind Men and The Elephant.
♦ One holding ear: “No its soft like a palm
leaf.”
♦ One feeling side: “It feels like a wall.”
♦ None of them described the elephant in its
totality.
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♦ The atomic bombs dropped during W.W. II
did more damage than the ordinary bombs
dropped.
♦ ( Collectively, more conventional types
were dropped. Collectively, the
conventional bombs did more damage.)
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♦ DIVISION
♦ The fallacy of division occurs when an
individual assumes that what is true of a
composite whole is true for each component
part considered separately.
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♦ DIVISION EXAMPLES:
♦ Texas A&M is a world famous institution.
♦ Carl Jones attends Texas A&M.
♦ Carl Jones is a world famous student.
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♦ DIVISION
♦ The fallacy of division takes place when
one makes the assumption that what holds
true about a collection of elements must
hold true for each of the individual elements
themselves.
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♦ DIVISION EXAMPLE:
♦ American Indians are disappearing.
♦ Jim Big Crow is an American Indian.
♦ Jim Big Crow is disappearing.
♦ What holds true of the group as a whole is

not necessarily true of the individual parts.
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LINGUSTIC FALLACIES
♦ The Chicago Symphony Orchestra is the
best symphony orchestra in the country.
That doesn’t mean the concert master is the
best violinist in the country.
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♦ Critics have hailed the Mormon Tabernacle
Choir as one of the best choirs in the world.
The choir is composed of amateurs
(housewives, laborers, farmers, and
merchants- not exactly conservatory trained
singers). Consequently, the best choir may
not be made up of the best individual
singers in the country.
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♦ VICIOUS ABSTRACTION
♦ We commit the fallacy of vicious
abstraction when we remove a statement
from its context, thereby changing the
meaning of an argument.
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♦ VICIOUS ABSTRACTION EXAMPLES:
♦ Paul: “The love of money is the root of all
evil.
♦ Emerson: “A foolish consistency is the
hobgoblin of little minds.
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♦ VICIOUS ABSTRACTION EXAMPES:
♦ Pope: “ A little learning is a dangerous
thing.”
♦ Bacon: “ A little philosophy inclineth man’s
mind to atheism,but depth in philosophy
bringeth men’s minds about to religion.”

COMFTF 08-A Logical Fallacies PPT (With Sound) Rev 4-12-05

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COMFTF 08

Dr. David F. Maas

♦ What holds true of the group as a whole is

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