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8.10: Review of Major Points

  • Page ID
    36205
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    The logical reasoner sticks to the issue, makes only relevant remarks, doesn't withhold relevant information, and accurately represents the position of the opposition. Failing to do some of these things is the source of the following fallacies: ad hominem, straw man, false dilemma, faulty comparison, fallacious appeal to authority, genetic fallacy, and non sequitur. Fallacies often are successful at convincing someone of what to do or to believe, but they should not be successful and often use an illicit means of persuasion. In this chapter we saw how to identify these fallacies and how to revise passages containing them. We noted that if an argument has the logical form of a fallacy it still might not be a fallacy. For example, the ad hominem fallacy has the logical form “The argument is made by a person who has a bad trait, so the argument is faulty.” Some arguments of this ad hominem form are fine provided having that trait is relevant to the argument quality. Relevance is not about logical form. A more comprehensive list of the fallacies is presented in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy at: http://www.iep.utm.edu/fallacy.htm

    The world is full of con artists, many of whom are out there right now thinking of new ways to con you into doing things for the wrong reasons. You, the logical reasoner, need eternal vigilance.


    This page titled 8.10: Review of Major Points is shared under a CC BY-NC-SA license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Bradley H. Dowden.

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