Fallacies involving credibility and context

Fallacies involving credibility and contextChapter 6 Fallacies Involving Credibility Fallacies of ContextFallacies Involving CredibilityAPPEAL TO chest using testimonial evidence for a offer when the conditions for credibility ar not satisfied or the use of such evidence is in becharm.This is normally called appeal to false sanction, because not all appeals to authority ar bad. presuppose of either celebrity endorsement commercial-Michael Jordan telling you to wear Hanes belowwear. MJ is awful cool, hardly hes no Undergarment Scientist. From an advertising position of view this is good business, exactly not from the logical viewpoint. More glum occurrences happen when soulfulness who is an authority in a specific field urges a proposition concerning a related field. For prototype, you may drive seen whizz of these commercials for the miracle weight loss pill-the reader in the white lab coat with the stethoscope is not a animate at all (in one case I saw someone in labeled in residency which is apparently all the get word you need to give a medical recommendation for super-fat-destroying pills).AD HOMINEM-using a negative trait of a speaker as evidence that their affirmation is false or their argument is weak.Abusive This is the easiest form of this false belief to spot. It goes analogous this You shouldnt pick Susan to be on our basketball team because shes a information processing system geek. This fallacy aims at saying something distasteful about a persons character. It is appropriate to attack someones character if it is on a relevant topic. If the prosecutions star get has a history of lying, that is very pertinent to the case.Exception to the rule it is OK to point out a negative personality trait as long as it is relevant. For instance, Ms. Smiggles declares that she saw Mr. Rwowrth murder Mr. Gritspit. But many of her friends and coworkers turn in declared that Ms. Smiggles is a notoriously liar.Circumstantial-This form of Ad Hominem aims to hurt a persons reputation through an association with something in that persons context. For instance You shouldnt vote for Hilary Clinton because her husbands chum salmon is in jail. You squeeze out attack someone for being in a bad circumstance that they succored cause. For model if someone is running for political agency and it comes out that they were once part of a business that went bankrupt and that scene had made decisions that contributed to the companys demise, that would be important evidence to consider.Tu Quoque-This means you too it happens when one corrupt politician says to an separate corrupt politician Youre corrupt and the other one responds that doesnt matter, you are too That is to say, this is not a real excuse. If we free-base out that the Secretary of Defense had been using his government credit note to buy weekends in France, the Secretary of Defense will not help himself by saying, but everyones doing itPoisoning the Well-A partic ularly wicked kind of attack. For example if someone were to say Of course you support universal health care, youre a liberal The insinuation is that the criminate is so dominated by their have got ideology that they cant think straight (see terrorists). The accused person can now say nothing that is not suspicious. Every reason that accused person would produce to support their claims will fall under the category, Things Liberals forever Say. So the accused person is left self-renunciationless. The other way fatten it might look like this Of course you support increased defense spending, youre a conservative implying that being a conservative made it unattainable to rationally consider defense spending. Surely there are wad who are so completely wrapped in their own point of view that they cannot be rational, but this kind of attack is bad because it prevents any further debate.Fallacies of ContextFALSE ALTERNATIVE (FALSE DELIMA) excluding relevant possibilities without jus tification.This fallacy usually presents two alternatives, one which the arguer deprivations you to pick and one which is undesirable. For example, You can either volunteer for military service now, or you can be drafted later. You dont loss to wait to be drafted later as grunt, so you should volunteer now. The occupation is that those arent the only two options available to us. This fallacy is often committed by the demagogues who say things like youre either with us or youre against us. The move tries to fright people into joining the speaker for fear of becoming their enemy.POST HOC-using the particular that one even preceded another as sufficient evidence for the mop up that the first caused the second.This will be the foundation of a lot of the superstitions. I stepped under a run for, and that made me have a bad day. Stepping under the ladder only came before the rest of my day, but stepping under the ladder did not cause the rest of my day to sour. More sophisticated v ersions of this fallacy seek to reinterpret history such as Since the American civilian War occurred before World War I, the Civil War is patently the cause of World War I.Slipper Slope-This version of Post Hoc seeks to groom up a chain of events to connect two unrelated propositions. Heres an example If you start listening to the Beatles, youll want to listen to other rock n roll, then youll listen to Nirvana, then youll start smoking and drinking, and that will remove marijuana, which will in turn lead to coke, crack, meth, and steroids, and the only way to watch up youre habit youll have to steal, and someone will shoot you. So, if you dont want to be shot to death, dont listen to the Beatles.HASTY GENERALIZATION-inferring a general proposition from an inadequate sample of particular cases.Taking to few samples and then generalizing to broadly speaking is whats happening here. This fallacy is most often seen in arriving at stereotypes of people. For instance, The perpetrato rs of the 9/11 massacre were Islamic, therefore all Islamic people are terrorists.COMPOSITION-inferring that a whole has a property merely because its split have that propertyFor example, This sparkplug is part of the car. It is very light. So, the whole car must be light. This is a lot like Hasty Generalization. Heres a more sinister example, Ralph is Native-American and Ralph is an anarchist, so all Native-Americans must be anarchists.DIVISION-inferring that a part has a property merely because the whole has that property.For instance, This computer is heavy, so all of its parts must be heavy. More sinisterly, In the U.S., most people consider in God, so my buddy, Garth, must believe in God.