PHI 105 Topic 4: Assignments, Quiz plus Discussions

PHI 105 Topic 4: Assignments, Quiz plus Discussions

(PHI 105 Topic 4)

PHI 105 Topic 4 Assignment: Persuasive Essay: Outline Worksheet

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PHI-105 Topic 4 Quiz: Fallacies In Everyday Life Quiz (2 Versions)

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PHI-105 Topic 4 Discussion Question 1

Permalink: https://collepals.com/phi-105-topic-4-…plus-discussions/

Review a social media blog and examine it for fallacious reasoning. Identify at least two examples of fallacies that we have discussed in class within the selected blog. Record the fallacious quotes from the blog, and explain what type of fallacy you believe they are. For follow-up discussion, decide whether or not you agree or disagree with your classmates and explain why. Your response should be based on the fallacy only, not the content of the selected blog.
Include a citation for the source you use.

 

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PHI-105 Topic 4 Discussion Question 2

As you are working on your outline this week, review your three subtopics. Do you see any fallacies in them? How will you avoid using fallacious reasoning in your essay?

You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.

Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.

Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.

The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.

 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION 

Fallacious reasoning with examples

Introduction

Logic is a set of rules that govern the valid inferences we can make from one piece of information to another. The key question in any argument is whether or not the premises are true and/or complete. For example, if you say “The sky was blue yesterday” then it follows that today’s sky must also be blue due to a law of nature known as correlation (and because you can’t have two different skies).

Equivocation

In an equivocation, a term that has one meaning is used with another. For example: “I am not a crook.”

This example is an instance of logical fallacy because it doesn’t accurately convey what your sentence means. You could be lying or just being dishonest in general; but if you were to say “I am not crook” while actually being a crook (which would be impossible), then this would be a case of equivocation.

Amphiboly

Amphiboly is the art of using ambiguous language to confuse and deceive. It’s often used in politics, religion, and law because it can be intentional or unintentional. For example:

• In politics, an ambiguous statement like “I’m going to be the president” could mean that you plan on running for office (the intended meaning), or it could mean that you may want to be president someday but aren’t sure if now is the right time (the unintended meaning).

• In religion: “God” means different things depending on who uses it—for example, when someone says “God loves me,” they may mean they’re part of some organized religion; however when someone says “God loves us all” this person could mean something completely different than what most people would think!

Complex question

A complex question is a type of question that has more than one answer. This means that the word “yes” does not necessarily mean yes, and “no” does not necessarily mean no.

It can be tempting to give a simple answer when you’re asked something with multiple possible answers by someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing (for example: “Do you want fries with your burger?”). But this can be problematic because it makes it seem like they’re asking for your opinion instead of giving them one themselves—and if they don’t understand why their question would have multiple possible answers, then chances are good that they don’t really care about getting an answer at all!

In addition to being impossible for us humans and our limited cognitive abilities; this fallacy also has some major problems in terms of logic:

Composition

A second type of reasoning involves comparing parts to the whole. For example, you might conclude from the fact that your car has four wheels that it must be a car because it has four wheels. Or you could argue that since your computer is made up of several different components, it cannot be a computer because there are more than two components.

In this type of argumentation there are two ways we can go wrong:

• We may fail to notice when something we’ve assumed is true is actually false (e.g., “my computer has eight hard drives”).

• We may ignore things which really do belong together (e.g., my car and my house).

Division

Division is a common logical fallacy that can be used in many different ways. For example, division can be used to divide something into parts so that it’s easier to understand. This can be done in two ways:

• Divide the whole pizza into 8 slices. If you want one slice of your pizza, you need to divide it into two equal parts and eat each part individually (this is called splitting). If you have 2 people eating pizza together and each person gets their own half of the pie, then they’ll each eat half of their respective halves at once!

• Divide the whole pizza into 2 pieces (called halving), which means sharing them with another person who’s getting his/her own piece too!

False analogy

An analogy is a comparison between two or more things that are not logically related.

An example of this fallacy would be if you were to say, “If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it make a sound?” The first part of this argument is based on false premises, namely “if something happens somewhere else then it must happen here”, which is wrong because we don’t know what happens at other places when they have similar weather conditions like rain and snowfall. Also, there are other factors involved with whether or not something makes noise such as wind blowing through trees etcetera which could also affect how loud something might sound if it fell into someones backyard (or even another yard).

The second part of this analogy doesn’t actually apply because even though we don’t know about all these things happening elsewhere due to lack of evidence (and therefore cannot assume anything), we do know how loud things generally are when they fall from great heights onto hard surfaces such as pavement or concrete streets—they don’t make much noise at all! So again I would argue that since neither part applies directly here then there isn’t really any reason why those statements should be true either.”

Special pleading

Special pleading, also known as ad hominem fallacy or circular reasoning, is when a person attempts to support their position by attacking the credibility of the other party. The person making special pleading might claim that their opponent has said something false or untrue when in fact they have not said anything of the sort.

For example: “You’re wrong because I’m right!”

Post hoc ergo propter hoc (causal fallacy)

Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a Latin phrase meaning “after this, therefore because of this.” It’s a form of fallacy in which it is assumed that because one event follows another, the first event caused the second.

It’s often used as an excuse to make erroneous conclusions or justify inaccurate assumptions.

For example: You see your friend come into work 15 minutes late today, then you notice that he was late for work yesterday too. You think “Oh my god! He’s always late! This isn’t good at all! I wonder if there is anything wrong with him? Maybe he needs help with his home life? Maybe he needs more sleep so we can go out more often together?”

Conclusion

Remember, if you’re going to use a logical fallacy, don’t make it too obvious. The way you choose your examples will vary depending on the kind of argument you are making. For instance, if you want to prove that something does not exist (such as unicorns), then an example like “there is no such thing as unicorns” would be appropriate. However, if your goal is instead to show that something exists but may not be exactly how we think it does (such as dragons), then an example like “unicorns are real but they are not horses because horses have four legs and unicorns do not” may be more effective for this purpose than just saying “unicorns don’t exist”.