Dr Greg Bahnsen - Critical Thinking: Fallacies Part 1 (Part 8)

All right. Another example of how informal fallacies carry some value for us is seen in the ad hominem fallacies. Those fallacies identified because a person is arguing against the man ad hominem rather than arguing the merits of the case. The abusive ad hominem is the most obvious. We say that a person's argument is wrong because of the person himself. Well, you're somebody who was guilty of gossip or stealing, or you're a communist, and so what you're saying can't be true. That's abusive ad hominem.

But when you stop and think about.

It, well, let me take this illustration.

Say, you know, that conclusion cannot be true because the person who was arguing for it is a homosexual. All of us here will not be favorable to the homosexual lifestyle. But now, is it technically true that homosexuals can never reason to the truth, can never say anything that's right? No, I wouldn't want to claim that. However, if the homosexual were arguing something pertaining to morality or human relations or God or something like that, it might not be altogether irrelevant to point out that the person is a homosexual. Because you believe, and the Bible would teach us many times, a man's errors are interconnected. We wouldn't want to maintain that there's no relationship between a wicked lifestyle on the way a person reasons in ethics. There are influences of sin, after all, on the thinking process, and people do rationalize their lifestyle. So a man's errors can be interconnected. And in some cases, what is an abusive ad hominem argument might actually be the beginning of a consideration that should be filled out as to why you might not want to trust him. Moreover, the argument that seems abusively ad hominem could be shorthand for questioning the system as a whole of which this man is a spokesman. It may be a way of saying this view of his is really part of a broader perspective, and that broader perspective has got to be taken into account. Or consider this circumstantial ad hominem fallacy. When we say that people ought to believe something because of their special circumstances or should not believe things because of their special circumstances, we might be exposing a possible inconsistency in a person who doesn't realize that his or her circumstances would call for thinking in a certain way or reconsideration of the way that they have been reasoning. That too would be the beginning of a helpful consideration, even though it is not in itself established the truth or falsity or conclusion. In the case of irrelevant thesis, where a person ends up arguing for something that's not on point, not to the not really addressing what is being debated is not on the real issue. A person who uses an irrelevant thesis line of thought might be attempting to tie his viewpoint to something that everyone is concerned for or is committed to. You might be trying to show there's a relationship between this and a broader interest or goal or problem which you all share. In this way, the argument, though it is irrelevant and fallacious, provides an important background to the thinking of the man.

Using.

Shows how he thinks his thesis ties in to other considerations and how his thesis should be taken account. Okay, maybe one more example. How about the fallacy under fallacies of presumption known as complex question? A3C complex question complex question arises when you ask a question that really has two questions into it, or three complex questions, and by getting an answer to one of those two questions, then you can go ahead and argue against what you presume the answer was on the unanswered question.

Is that clear?

Have you stopped meeting your wife? The person says, no. You say, oh, what a horrible person you've been to life and you haven't even stopped. Have you stopped dating your wife versus yes, I'm not dating my wife. Oh, well, I'm glad you stopped. But that at least admits that you were doing it. So that's a complex question. Two questions merged together in one fallacious. We're trying to establish a conclusion. However, that complex question may reveal what a system of thought takes is unproblematic for it and taken for granted. So where somebody who doesn't share that system of thought sees two questions, the person asking the question really only saw one because given his presuppositions, you can take the other for granted. And thus the person posing the question doesn't see it as a complex question. I just gave you an example. If you stop beating your wife, we can see that's complex.

But you see, if I come to.

Somebody and I say, have you repented of your sins within the Christian community, that's not a complex question. As a pastor, if I were to say that to somebody who was having some kind of a problem, or if I were to say that to an unbeliever that I've been evangelizing, if they say, hey, now look, that's a logical fallacy, Pastor, that's a complex question. The one is, have I or have I not stopped doing something? And the other is the same that I'm sinning, that I had something to repent of. But you see, within the Christian community, that's so taken for granted that it's not a complex question to us. So all I'm getting at here is that the fallacies sometimes open up for us a view to the presuppositional structure, the lifestyle or way of thinking of a person. After all, it's systems of thought, worldviews or philosophies of life that determine what our assumptions are and what we take for granted. And therefore, what are the right questions to ask? When somebody says that's a complex question, what they're really saying is you're asking the wrong question or too many questions. But what's determined to be the right question and so forth will be a reflection of your worldview and philosophy of life. So I've done two things now in terms of our ordinary language fallacies lecture. One, I tried to explain to you what an informal fallacy is as a non sequitur in a natural language, something that's commonly found as deceptive and yet unreliable for establishing conclusion. But then secondly, I've gone on some length here trying to show that Catholicism can be valuable. Even though they don't establish their conclusions, they can reveal underlying presuppositions, and they in some cases, are the beginning of a good consideration. If you were to add more information. Pursuit of Prudence. All right, let's talk for a minute then about the types of fallacies that are found in informal communication in our ordinary language. What are some of the typical essays, errors that are made that are non sequiturs and yet seem persuasive to people? Cofie divides the fallacies one way. Engel divides the fallacies a slightly different way. You've already noticed that if you look at your textbooks, what I have given you in your outline is an attempt to combine the two into one outline. So I want to suggest that as you go through your two textbooks, use the outline I've given to you and then write down next to each one of these where that is discussed, the copi or ingold. I use C for copi and E for Engel. So that on mine, under amphibole, I have C114. That tells me that if I want to see Copy's discussion of that, that's on page 114 in his book. And then there will be an E for that on whatever page Engel discusses it. I thought it would be good to give you a master list of fallacies. Everybody cuts the cake a little bit differently. Okay, so my list will be a little bit different than copies or Engel's but at least everything in copier Engel can be merged into my list. Here I divide them. I followed Engel in this, in dividing them into fallacies of ambiguity, ambiguity, fallacies of relevance, and fallacies of presumption. In fallacies of ambiguity, there's some kind of linguistic unclarity that creates the problem. Many times it's multiple meaning, but sometimes it's unclarity that comes from the way in which words are used, or.

How.

They'Re accented, or how they even appear in visual print on a page. So fallacies of ambiguity in literary form. An ambiguity can be established or can be created, I should say, through the grammar, a problem in the person's grammar or in the emphasis given to the reading or even the printing of particular words. And so I called that a fallacy of ambiguity in literary form and set it over against fallacies of ambiguity in word usage. In word usage, we have equivocation, hypostatization, and then the fallacies of composition and division. In composition, we reason from the part two, the whole. We say this is an attribute of a part, therefore it's an attribute of the whole. In division, we go the other way. We say this is an attribute of a whole, and therefore it's an attribute of a part.

And I'm going to leave it to.

You to fill in all the different kinds of fallacies of ambiguity from your reading. Fallacies of relevance are those where emotional factors are used to buttress a conclusion rather than appealing to the merit of the position. Instead of reasoning in a logical way or appealing to evidence, there's an appeal in one way or another to some emotional factor that is not relevant to whether the conclusion is true or not. And I've divided these into two kinds, irrelevant appeals and irrelevant thesis. Let's start with the second. An irrelevant thesis is committed. Or that fallacy. An irrelevant thesis is committed when a person is supposed to be arguing about some issue. Use an argument that proves something altogether different, usually proves something much broader than the specific point that he was supposed to be proving. So if we're arguing over a.

A.

Particular legislative measure that is intended to help the poor, and a person stands up to argue for that measure and argues for helping the poor, that's what's called the fallacy of irrelevant thesis. You have not proven the point we were supposed to prove. Granted, we're supposed to help the poor. Should we help the poor in this way? One gets into irrelevant thesis all the time with the people who back up or support Operation Rescue in our Day I had yet to see a person who defense Operation Rescue avoid the fallacy of irrelevant thesis because the argument is over the method, the appropriate method to stop or try to hinder in some way discourage or talk people out of having abortions. The argument is over the method. And then when you have people who are favoring Operation Rescue in their case, they usually argue for we've got to save children, you know, these children that are going to be aborted. Well, that's irrelevant. It's irrelevant. We all take that for granted. The issue was what's the method? And then there are irrelevant appeals. Obviously not so much that the thing proven is irrelevant, but the way in which you want to prove it by appealing to emotion, be it fear or pity or some kind of popular emotion that whatever the mob holds in common. Or you can have an irrelevant appeal to authority when some expert decided that is irrelevant. I love that when the Congress has movie stars come up to tell us about the ecology, you know, or something like that. What makes them experts on that subject? Well, nothing. It's just that they've got a name and they get press coverage. Right? Irrelevant appeals to tradition. We've always done it this way or the bandwagon. The authority of everybody agrees with this. Can 6 million Americans be wrong? And then snob appeal is sometimes an appeal to reform as well. The authority of those who are the snobs around us. Another irrelevant appeal is an appeal to ignorance. That is I'm right because you haven't disproven me. And then there are the irrelevant appeals against the man himself. Abusive, talking about just being abusive. The man is a bad man. I don't like him. And so he can't be right. Genetic means appealing to the genesis or origin of an opinion. Well, I mean, the first people to come up with this were the ancient Egyptians. Now how can it be right? Circumstantial. You ought to believe this because you know, you belong to this group, you're in the unions, and you oughta. You ought to believe that we ought.

To do the following.

Well, that's really an ad hominem kind of appeal. Poisoning the well is another version of this where you try to say that your opponent cannot be right in what he's saying. What you do is you disparage his character or that he's made mistakes in the past. You put something in the well so that no one wants to go and take water from that well because you poisoned it. And then the two quoque fallacies called the fallacy, although in Christian Circles we ought to be sensitive to this. It's the well, you're another somebody comes to you and wants to point out a speck in your eye and then you say well for brother, isn't there a log in your own you ought to be concerned with that is technically tu quoque, aren't you another? And in some cases that's fallacious and interpersonal relations. It's not all the other fallacious that as Jesus teaches us, the tu quoque would kind of like, well, you've made this mistake before, so who are you to call it down? Well, the fact is if it's a mistake, it's a mistake. And then thirdly, major category of types of informal fallacies we have the fallacies of presumption, where there's some untrustworthy assumption made with the facts. In the fallacies of presumption we find an argument that resembles reasoning used in correct arguments. And so it seems persuasive. There are arguments that look like this and they are good arguments. But in the case of the fallacious use, the facts are not being correctly represented. The facts in one way or another are not incorrectly represented. They're either being overlooked in terms of their uniqueness or of other possibilities.

In.

Bifurcation or what's called false antithesis. You say well, it's this or that. As a matter of fact, there's a third or fourth option. Sometimes the facts are overlooked by just not be taking into consideration I don't need to bring it back. All this is a premise of what my conclusion is what we call circular reasoning. And then there's distortions of the facts, either in false analogies saying this is like that with the fact they don't really resemble each other or in false cause this is real. Common people will say, well this caused that because this follows that the sun rose today because the rooster crowed. We know that because the sun has always risen after the rooster crows and therefore the crowing of the rooster makes the sun come up. Well, that's a blatant example, but it's.

One of the false cause fallacies.

Well, this is just the way of introducing my outline.

I hope that you find it helpful.

To organize things in this way. Please go through the text and fill in the details. Write down the page numbers so you know where to find each of these. We'll use this as our master list. The last thing I want to say before we turn to Kopi and his discussion of the informal fallacies is just a word about how can you recognize an informal Fallacy. How can you avoid committing an informal fallacy? And the point here is there is no mechanical, automatic way of doing so. There is no mechanical test for the informal fallacies, and there's no mechanical preventative against committing them. It's not like, okay, if I follow these rules, then I'll know that I haven't committed informal fallacy, or if I look at these rules, I'll know that this person has or has not committed it. No, in this case, we have another example of what I have said I'm going to keep mentioning to you throughout the course. Again, much of critical thinking rests upon sensitivity to the use of language. Sensitivity, being able to understand, and in this case, seeing the fallacies or avoiding the fallacies requires sensitivity to the flexibility of language and its various uses, requires sensitivity to having clear meanings for our terms, sensitivity to the way facts can be distorted, and sensitivity to the kinds of irrelevance that often intrude into the reasoning process. That's not something you can't put that into a computer, run things through, and then it automatically picks out the informal fallacies. It requires the ability to understand and specifically to have a maturity of thought and sensitivity about the flexibility of language, clear meaning of terms, the way facts can be distorted, and the kinds of irrelevance that often intrude in our reasoning. And so, by going over a number of illustrations, hopefully we build up our sensitivity to the way in which things can go wrong in an argument. That's what the study of informal fallacies will be all about.

Let's turn in our books to COPI.

Chapter three, and we'll go over the chapter on fallacies and work through some of the exercises. On page 91, he begins by asking, what is a fallacy? And says, a fallacy is an error in reason. Logicians use the word to designate not.

Any mistaken idea or false belief, but.

Typical errors, mistakes that arise commonly in ordinary discourse. An argument, whatever its subject or sphere, is generally constructed to prove that its conclusion is true. And so when you're going to engage in critical thinking, you want to find out whether that does prove that the conclusion is true. The analysis of the evidence offered for the conclusion is not within the special domain of the logician, not the responsibility of the logician, but whether the premises imply the conclusion is exactly what the stage of logic is all about. And on page 92, he says you have an argument that is fallacious when the conclusion could be false even if all its premises were true. That's a fallacy. The line of reasoning is fallacious when the conclusion could still be false even though the premises were to were true. He says many kinds of mistakes can be made in an argument. And so as he goes through the fallacies, he's going to be dealing with types of incorrect argument, trying to put them into categories. It's important to remember, as he says, that although the fallacies. Fallacies are incorrect forms of reasoning, they are psychologically persuasive. And so he defines a fallacy as a type of argument that may seem to be correct, but that proves upon.

Examination, not to be so.

And he tells us we should recognize the traps that are set by such fallacious thinking. If we understand them, then maybe we'll avoid them. And then the last paragraph says there's no precisely determinable number of fallacies, since so much depends upon your system of classification. And then the footnote, which I don't expect you to follow out, but I do know some of these texts and that's right, there's so many different ways of numbering and classifying and cutting, so don't get thrown by that. And I'm not saying that mine is necessarily superior. I find mine helpful for my purposes. So we'll use mine as the master list by which we can combine Engel and copy. Okay, now he gets first into fallacies of relevance, and then he's going to discuss fallacies of ambiguity. That's the way he breaks it down with respect to fallacies about relevance. When an argument relies upon premises that are not relevant to its conclusion, that therefore cannot possibly establish its truth, the fallacy is one of relevance. Now, the premises may often be psychologically relevant to the conclusion, which explains why the fallacy can seem so persuasive, but it is not logically relevant. Relevant does not establish the truth, the conclusion. So I think he gives 12 such fallacies of relevance. Is that right? Two numbers. The first one is the argument from ignorance, or sometimes the argument from silence. Whenever it is argued that a proposition is true simply on the basis that it has not been proved false or that it is false because it has not been proved true, then we're arguing from ignorance. Obviously, our ignorance of how to prove or disprove a proposition doesn't establish either its truth or falsity. Here we're confusing proof with truth, proof with truth. If it's not proved to be false, then it is true, or if it hasn't been shown to be false, it hasn't been proven false, then it's not false. Well, of course, that's not at all the case. He gives a number of examples here. He says, interestingly, in the bottom of page 94, not to draw a conclusion in some cases is as much a breach of correct reasoning as it would be to draw a mistaken conclusion. You might want to think about that. Not drawing a conclusion is in some cases fallacious.

And then he tells us, in a court of law, the appeal to ignorance.

Is appropriate when the defense is showing that because of the presumption of innocence, the prosecution not proving its case means you should draw the conclusion that the person's innocent. And then we have appeals to inappropriate authority. Secondly, he says, it's entirely reasonable to appeal to authority when you have an acknowledged expert who has studied the matter thoroughly. And in fact, for most of us, the things that we know and have learned have come on the basis of what some authority. Our parents, teacher, what have you taught us? The fallacy arises when the appeal is made to parties having no legitimate claim to authority in the matter at hand. And the author passes over this quickly. But I would emphasize it, care must be taken in determining whose authority is reasonably to be relied upon and who is rejected. Much of the debate is going to come down to who has authority, not just to whether we can reason from authority. The issue is who has it. Page 96. It is sometimes difficult to know whether a given expert alleged to be an authority in a particular sphere is properly to be relied upon. Sometimes, and this is, I want you to really catch onto this. It's important for your theory of knowledge. He admits that sometimes we rely upon somebody's authority and later regret it. Listen to the sentence. If that expert's good reputation was deserved. However, such a choice is no fallacy. That is to say, sometimes we can be justified in believing something even though it's not true. If we relied upon a person's authority who has a well deserved good reputation in the field, then drawing the conclusion would be justified. However, it didn't happen to be true. I say that because this is a mistake that many new students to the field of epistemology make. They say, well, how can. How could an argument justify a conclusion if the conclusion wasn't true? There's a difference between justification and truth. If I believed if a certain doctor prescribed a method of treatment for, say, tuberculosis at some point in the past and it turned out not to be true, that that helps alleviate tuberculosis, would we then say the doctor was not justified in prescribing it?

No.

Given what he knew at the time, he may very well have been justified given the information available to him that was what seemed the reasonable thing to do. Later we find out it's not true, and so it's no longer reasonable to do it. But at the time it seemed justified, and it was justified. It's just that later information shows that it wasn't true. And so in the same way, we can sometimes rely upon an expert's good reputation and not be arguing in a fallacious way, although when we find out the conclusion is false, then we have.

To go back and realize that the.

Person didn't deserve that reputation. On that point, complex question is the fallacy of asking the question in such a way as to presuppose the truth of some conclusion that is buried in the question.

We talked about that already this morning.

I think that should be obvious enough to you.

He tells us at the end of this Discussion on page 97, the complex question is often not put in such a blatant way that everyone sees it that there are less explanations, explicit and trickier ways to argue by complex questions, especially when you have a single speaker. You know, I pose a question, I'm preaching against or arguing against my opponent. I pose a complex question and I answer it for the audience, and then I go on to draw a conclusion from the part of the question that was not dealt with. So if I do that, I can rhetorically get away with it. You know where I wouldn't get away with it if I did it outwardly. And I ask as an interrogatory in a debate, have you stopped beating your wife? I mean, my opponent's going to say, those are two questions.

I'll answer them both.

I've never beaten my wife. And secondly, so I have not stopped because I never began. But if I'm doing it all on my own, I can say, so has he stopped beating his wife? Well, certainly he would say he has. The point is he's been beating her. Now, again, because that example is so blatant, it may not seem very persuasive, but you watch people who are good have rhetorical skills and debaters, politicians and so forth. You'll see that happen all the time. Argument ad hominem. Here you have an argument against the man. The thrust is directed not at the conclusion that you wish to deny, but at the person who is asserting, more defensive, what it is that you deny and copy gives us two categorizations, but within them you notice he mentions the other ones on your outline. The abusive ad hominem disparages the character, intelligence, or integrity of the person that you're arguing against. But of course, his character and intelligence is irrelevant to the truth of what he says. Even dumb people can say some things that are true, and immoral people can.

Sometimes argue clearly to a conclusion.

Copie explains on the top of 98 that what makes the ad hominem argument persuasive is the psychological process of transference. What you do is you take something you know your audience will reject, show that that applies to your opponent, and then move on.

Ask them to reject what he says as well.

In the middle of the page, he discusses the genetic fallacy, where you argue against something because of its source or the genesis of the idea. And then he has an interesting discussion on page 98 of how the ad hominem fallacy is not fallacious when you're trying to impeach the credibility of a witness. A witness is on the stand. You have the right to argue against the character of the person to impeach his credibility. But then, Kopi points out, you have to understand that it's one thing to prove that this person's not reliable. Having said that, you have not proven that what the person said was false, just that if you have to go on the basis of character and reliability, don't rely on this person. And yet that person might have been speaking the truth anyway. And then a second type of ad hominem he mentions is circumstantial, where an irrelevant connection between the beliefs held and the circumstances of those holding it.

Is.

The strength of the argument. When you say you should accept this or deny this because of your situation, you're really arguing in a way that's irrelevant to the truth of what's being accepted or denied. He uses the example of sport hunters. They'll argue, why do you eat the flesh of harmless cattle? Now, that may show that the critics are not consistent. It does not show that killing animals is right or wrong. And so this comes to be called the tu quoque fallacy, or Latin for you're another you too. And he chooses to make this version of the circumstances substantial variety of ad hominem argument. Then, on page 100, he says the first use of the circumstantial ad hominem charges one's adversaries with inconsistency. The second charges one's adversaries with being so prejudiced that their alleged reasons are mere rationalizations.

And then he goes on to say.

That'S sometimes called poisoning the well, indicating that because of their special circumstances, they're bound to say what they're saying or deny what they're denying.

And so you shouldn't listen to them.

They're just rationalizing. Okay, 5 and 6 are discussed together because they're discussing is two different sides.

Of one kind of mistake.

The fallacy of accident or converse accident. People commit these fallacies when they do not understand generalization. They don't understand the nature of a generalization or how a generalization is properly formed. A generalization that is true by and large may not apply in a given case. Okay, so as a generalization, don't walk on the grass. Does that mean that a policeman can't walk on the grass when he's running.

To the house to help somebody that's being hurt?

Or, you know, a fireman can't walk on the grass when he's obviously, obviously exceptions are there. A generalization is used as though there were no special circumstances. When we apply a generalization to individual cases that it does not properly govern, we commit the fallacy of accident. You will notice that the fallacy of accident on your outline is also called sweeping generalization, where you attempt to apply.

A generalization, but the uniqueness of the.

Case to which you apply it faults at the application. And then the opposite is the fallacy of converse accident, where you take special cases and from them try, try to draw a generalization. That's what we call hasty generalization. We take unique circumstances and then you try to generalize from them. Kopi tells us on page 101, accident is the fallacy we commit when we move carelessly or too quickly from a generalization. Converse accident is the fallacy we commit when we move carelessly or too quickly to a generalization. I notice that many black people commit crimes and are convicted in LA County.

And so then I generalize.

All black, Black people living in Los Angeles are criminals at heart. That's a horrible, horrible way of thinking morally. It's a horrible way of thinking logically. And it is extremely common when people generalize from particular cases to the whole class or from unique cases to the whole class. You see some student from a school that excels, it's really brilliant. And then you conclude, boy, that school, all the students at that school must.

Be like.

Unique case. Can't generalize from it. Okay, seventhly we have fallacy, a fallacy of relevance according to copi, but what Engel will call a fallacy of presumption.

You might want to note that.

In.

Fact the ones we were just looking at, accident and converse accident are called fallacies of presumption by angle rather than fallacies of relevance. Another one where they categorize them differently. Copie speaks of false cause as a fallacy of relevance. Engel calls it a fallacy of presumption. False cause is one where the nature of the connection between cause and effect has been misconstrued. One variety of false cause, says copy on page 101, is most common, concluding that an event is caused by another simply because. Because it follows that other. And yet we should realize that mere temporal succession does not establish a causal connection. He gives the Latin for this on the top of page 102. Post hoc ergo propter hoc, after the thing. Therefore, because of the thing, the sun rose after the rooster crowing. Therefore the sun rose because of the rooster crowing. The eighth fallacy discussed by Koepi now on page 102, is begging the question, where you assume the truth of what you seek to prove. He says how silly or obvious the mistake is depends largely on the way in which the premises of the argument are formulated.

If.

If you formulate your premises with words that are different from the words in the conclusion, but it turns out you're just using synonyms or substitutable expressions, then you may not think that you've begged the question, but you've just fooled yourself by your vocabulary. And then here's something that I'll leave.

With you as a riddle.

He says the middle of page 102, that in the case of begging the question, the premises are not irrelevant.

And.

They do prove the conclusion, but they're not irrelevant because they do pertain to the conclusion. They're the same as the conclusion. So why does he call this a fallacy of relevance? Isn't that bizarre? Why is begging the question called a fallacy of relevance if the premises are relevant to the conclusion? Actually, that's just a stepping stone to the real point I want to make. Why is it called a fallacy? Because he goes on to say, it does prove the conclusion. Obviously, if I want to prove that the Dodgers won the World Series in 19. 1964, and one of my premises is the doctors won the World Series in 1964, I have proven my case, haven't I? But as he points out, I've done it in a trivial or worthless way, it is a valid argument. It's valid because the laws of logic have not been violated. And if the premise is true, the conclusion must be true. And so begging the question is kind of a bizarre animal in the discussion. We all know that it's wrong, but it's hard to. You want to Call that fallacious? Do you want to call that irrelevant and turn around and say, well, it is relevant? Does prove the point. So what he's saying here is that it's trivial. Instead of telling the person who begs the question, you have a fruit your point, you have to say something a little more sophisticated. You want to say you haven't really given separate evidence, so that if I'm not convinced of your conclusion, I'm not going to be convinced of your premises either. And I want you to make special note, I really appreciate this, the discussion on the bottom of page 102, going into 103, how copie points out that what's called the problem of induction and most every unbeliever you run into will have this very problem. They'll say, well, how can you count on nature being uniform? They'll say, well, it always was in the past. You say, well, that's assuming that nature is uniform, that it will be in the future. And I run into so many unbelievers. I've even debated one publicly in a university audience that committed this fallacy. And I'm trying to point that out to him. Oh, no, it's perfectly all right, you know, nature has been uniform in the past. It will be in the future. I said, that's the very question. Will the future be like the past? You're begging the question. He couldn't see it. But Kopi very clearly notices. You cannot prove the uniformity of nature by past experience. Okay, now, fallacies 9, 10, and 11 are all irrelevant appeals in my outline. I call them appeals to emotions. Then I distinguish what I call the popular emotion or appeal to the mob is what he calls appeal to emotion. And then there's the appeal to fear or force and the appeal to pity as well. And I'm not sure that really much needs to be said here. He points out that the appeal to force is the abandonment of reason. You might want to note that the Last sentence, page 105, the last sentence in section 11, it's good for us.

To remember that, that we have really.

Given up all reasoning and philosophy. If we start using force as the.

Reason why people should do or say.

What we want them to do.

And then the 12th informal fallacy that Copie discusses is the irrelevant conclusion. When an argument purporting to establish a particular conclusion is instead directed to proving a different conclusion, then you've missed the point. You've proven an irrelevant conclusion.

He uses the kind of example that.

I gave you earlier when we discussed. It just goes to show that a particular program is worthwhile. And instead what you prove is that the general purpose of the program is worthwhile. And then he explains the expression non sequitur. And he says the term non sequitur is also often applied to our arguments that commit a fallacy of relevance.

Because.

The stated conclusion does not follow, it is a non sequitur. Okay, let's go over fallacies of ambiguity real quickly. There's only five of them, and we can be done with our summary of the reading of COBE, page 113. He says arguments sometimes fail because their formulation contains ambiguous words or phrases whose meanings shift and change within the course of the argument. Sometimes when an argument is of that sort, it's called a sophism, which comes from a school of four philosophy in ancient Greece called the sophists, who specialized in rhetorical tricks to prove their point. Okay, of the sophisms or fallacies of ambiguity, we have, first of all, equivocation. Sometimes the several meanings of a word or phrase become confused accidentally or deliberately, and in such a case, the word is being used equivocally. When a word is used one way in the premise and another way in the conclusion, the argument equivocates. That are valid for non relative terms break down when relative terms are substituted for them.

This would be a case where we.

Don'T understand how language is used, how one kind of attribute or adjective carries a kind of language logical force that another kind of attribute or adjective does not. A non relative attribute functions one way in discourse, and a relative adjective or attribute functions differently.

And he gives some interesting examples.

An elephant is an animal, therefore a small elephant is a small animal. Now why would a person have thought that might work?

Well, because if an elephant is an.

Animal, then how does he put it with gray.

He says.

An elephant is a gray animal. No, an elephant is an animal, therefore.

A gray elephant is a gray animal.

There, that kind of attribute put with an object like elephant can carry through with that kind of logical force.

See if I can give you an example.

A red barn is a barn.

So whenever you have an attribute attached to an adjective like that, then that.

Combination is what was mentioned.

A red barn is going to be.

A barn and a blue barn will.

Be a barn, and so forth. Well, how about this?

Somebody says, okay, well then if all red barns are barns, then all pregnant mothers are mothers. That overlooks the fact that red and.

Barn relate to each other in our language in a way have a certain logical dimension to them.

That is not true of Pregnant and mother in our language. So that's what he's warning you here about. Secondly, the fallacy of the amphibole occurs in arguing from premises whose formulations are ambiguous because of their grammatical construction.

Of course, the newspaper is always full.

Of these sorts of amphibolus constructions that we laugh at. Thirdly, the fallacy of accent, where you get a shift of meaning depending on how you emphasize the words or parts.

Of expressions, and when the conclusion is.

Drawn in a way that relies upon.

The meaning of the same words being accented differently, then you permitted the fallacy of accent. I love this one. We should not speak ill of our friends. We shouldn't speak ill of our friends, but you can. We shouldn't speak ill of our friends, but we can do ill to our friends. We shouldn't speak ill of our friends, but we can speak ill of other people's friends. I mean, we shouldn't speak ill of.

Our friends, but we can speak ill of other acquaintances. In many cases, the fallacy of accent is committed because you don't understand clearly what is being denied by the affirmation.

So there's many things that might be.

Denied by that expression. Which one is being denied determines what is actually being affirmed in that case. And then you have a nice moral.

Discussion by Kofi on page 116 of.

How Horrible it is to quote out of context, to not give the qualifications that your author does.

He says you must be scrupulously accurate in quotation. Yes, you should. As Christians, we especially should know that.

Notice this on page 117. Even the literal truth can be used.

By manipulating its placement.

To deceive with accent, that is, by.

Where you state the literal truth, you can deceive somebody.

It's important in discussions of deception among.

Christians in the ninth Contrast commandment to realize this, even the truth can be.

Uttered in a way that tells a lie.

Of course, the great example here is where the sailor puts down in the.

Ship'S log, the captain was sober today. It's true, the captain was sober. But the accent, as it were, is.

That's worthy of mention because that's unusual. So that's fallacious.

And then finally, we have the fallacies of composition and division. Here we reason fallaciously from the attributes of the parts of the whole to the attributes of the whole itself. That's the fallacy of composition.

We say all the parts of the machine are lightweight, therefore the machine is lightweight.

The other, the composition of division, is to take what's true of the whole.

And then Divide it into its parts.

I'd say this machine is very complex, therefore all of its parts are very complex. Well, in fact, many of its parts may be entirely simple.

Okay. And then he distinguishes on page 120 in a way that will be helpful.

Between the related fallacies of composition and Converse accident, or division and accident. And I've marked in my book, I.

Want to make sure you get this.

Right in the middle of page 120. In converse accident, one argues that some atypical members of a class have a specified attribute, and therefore all the members of the class distributively have that attribute. But in the fallacy of composition, one argues that since each and every member of the class has that attribute, the class itself, that is the collective whole, has that attribute. Do you see the difference? One moves from some are like this to all are like this, whereas the.

Other fallacy is all are like this.

Therefore the collected whole is like this. So those are distinct fallacies.

And of course, in the opposite direction version of those as well. Okay, what we need to do is to take some illustrations, make sure that.

We understand how these fallacies come to expression can be identified.

That's what we'll do.

Beginning with the exercises on page 107. Let's begin this morning with a word of prayer. Father, we thank you for the many blessings we enjoy as your people and praise the grace of our Savior Jesus Christ, by which every good thing comes to us. We ask that you might bless us with your spirit to give us clear thoughts, that you might help us today with our work, that we might understand it, that it might take deep root in our lives, that it might be useful to us in serving you. For we pray in Jesus name. Amen. We're going to be looking at some illustrations of fallacies from Copie beginning this morning. And you prepared your homework? We'll begin with the exercises following section 3.2 on page 107 in your book. And I think we'll begin this morning with number three. We're supposed to identify the fallacies of relevance in the passages that we're looking at and explain how each specific passage involves that fallacy or fallacies. Okay. Number three says, as an academic, Professor Benedict J. Kirkvliet has given himself away as biased and unscientific. It is pathetic to see Professor Kirkvliet, a non Filipino deposit deploring political and social conditions in a foreign country like the Philippines, when his own country calls for social and moral regeneration. What fallacy is committed in this argument?

It's ad hominem.

What kind of ad hominem? Abusive.

Because it's attacking this person.

No, I don't think so. I don't see Professor Kirkvliet being attacked. Terms of being a degenerate person or an ignoramus or something like that. But it is an ad hominem argument. What kind of ad hominem is it?

I saw that it was the fact that he was a non Filipino and attacking him because he was non Filipino.

Attacking his orange, not attacking his character.

But you're right.

The key here is saying he's non Filipino. That's abusive. Circumstantial saying. Look at the circumstances of this guy. What right does he have to be criticizing? He's not even a Filipino in his own country's got problems to be taken care of, which is a too coque. Right. Like you're another. I mean, how about you, buddy? Okay, number four. Why do I know more than other people? Why in general, am I so clever? I have never pondered over questions that are not really questions. I have never wasted my strength. What a nice remark. Friedrich Nietzsche, man who went crazy later in his life.

I said, that's irrelevant.

No, I don't think so.

There's also the fact that.

Well, see, this is one of those things where. When you supposed to identify one, there is a sense in which he's not proving the point. There's a sense in which he's appealing to his own authority. So I'm not disagreeing with you. But there is something that's more obvious here, and that's that he's appealing to ignorance. There's no evidence that has to be taken into account here. I have never pondered over questions that are not really questions. That is. We don't even have to ask that question. That's not a question worth asking. It seems to me that's an appeal to ignorance. It's like you couldn't prove the opposite. But I certainly think what you brought up is worthy of consideration.

And you'll run into this.

It's the same thing we saw when we were doing the previous exercises on language. There are various possibilities. But it did seem to me that this was more an appeal to. There's no evidence to the contrary. In fact, the question doesn't even have to be asked. But then maybe it is an appeal to authority, his own authority. Here's the time to ask that question number 12 on page 108. Only when it is believed that I could have acted otherwise. That I am held to be morally responsible for What I have done for a man is not thought to be morally responsible for an action that it was not in his power to avoid.

That was an argument for. For ignorance.

What ignorance is appeal to or what kind of silences appeal to? Here I don't see that.

He'S arguing that he couldn't have acted otherwise.

No, he's not saying that he couldn't have. He's talking about what it means to be held morally responsible. And he says there that you're not responsible if you couldn't have acted otherwise. And the reason for that is that a man is not thought to be responsible for an action that was not in his power to avoid. There's no appeal to silence or ignorance here. No, no, no, no. There's no appeal to pity in here. Here he's not saying that we should feel sorry for such a person. He's trying to prove a point about moral responsibility. Does he prove his point or restate his point? He begs the question.

Exactly.

Now, I want to make sure you can see that what he wants to prove is that a person is held morally responsible only if I could have acted otherwise, or I am held morally responsible only if I could have acted otherwise. And then he says, for here's the reason, here's the proof of that. A man is not thought to be responsible for an action that was not in his power to avoid. That's just another way of saying the same thing. If I couldn't have acted otherwise or if I didn't have the power to avoid, it's just saying the same thing. So he's appealing to his conclusion to prove his conclusion. It's just that it's veiled. In different words, you see that begging the question, as our author told us already, it would seem that begging the question would be the most obvious fallacy to pick out. But here it was difficult for some of you to pick it out. Because you see, people don't see their begging the question. When they restate their point, they kind of hide it from themselves. That's just the same thing all over again. Okay, number 13. But can you doubt that air has weight when you have the clear testimony of Aristotle affirming that all the elements have weight, including air, and accepting only fire.

Appeal to the wrong authority.

Appeal to authority. Right. In this case, inappropriate authority. I mean, how does air. Aristotle. No, this is just straight out hoping to use his name to show the truth of the conclusion when he's not necessarily an expert. Number 15. This from the book of Revelation, chapter 22. I testify unto every man that hears the words of the prophecy of this book. If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in the this book. And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part in the book of life and out of the holy city and from the things which are written in this book.

That's right.

Appeal to force ad boculum. Now, does that mean it's fallacious?

Depends on your.

Yeah, this is going to be one the of those cases where it depends upon your worldview. When we say we're appealing to what God is going to do when we don't think and act correctly, we don't consider that a fallacious appeal to force, though it is an appeal to force. I thought that example would be good to be put in here because you see, that's one of those things where a non Christian would say, well, that's fallacious. Christians say, well, no, within our worldview that's not fallacious. It's only fallacious because you don't happen to believe in God of the Christian God. So oftentimes fallacies are affected by one's presuppositions or one's worldview. Okay, then we have in section two a little bit more fun because on page 110 he says, Identify any fallacies of relevance in the following passages and explain how the argument question involves a fallacy. I trust you all caught on to the difference between the exercises in number one, the exercises in number two.

Did you?

In number one it says there is a fallacy to be found. Which one is it? In section two it says identify any fallacies that can be found. So you don't automatically assume that they are fallacious. This makes it much harder and much closer to what's going to happen in the real world, as we say when we get outside of the classroom. Because when you run into something, it's not going to be flagged. The person's not going to say, okay, in this paragraph I've committed a fallacy. Which one do you think it is?

You're going to have to look at.

The paragraph and say, is there a fallacy here? As well as which fallacy would it be? Okay, let's take number two from Plato. We must accept the traditions of the men of old time who affirm themselves to be the offspring of the gods. That is what they say. And they must surely have known their own ancestors. How can we doubt the word of the children of the gods. There's a similar logical mistake in a complex question and in the fallacy that's actually here. But it's not complex question. It's not putting one question as though it were two. That question is actually intended to be a rhetorical statement. Rhetorical question. So if we eliminated that, what is the real problem here? He's not saying we have to accept it because it's traditional. He's saying we have to accept the tradition that these people claim to be the offspring of the gods. And the reason why we have to accept it is because how can you doubt the word of the children of the gods? So what is that not an appeal to tradition? Exactly. Begging the question, why must we accept the conclusion that they're children of the gods? Because they said so and they're children of the gods. Well, that's what you were supposed to prove. So, yes, that's a rather clear case of begging the question. Now, number four.

It matters very little.

Now what the King of England either says or does. He hath wickedly broken through every moral and human obligation, trampled nature and conscience beneath his feet, and by a study and constitutional spirit of insolence and cruelty, procured for himself a universal hatred. What fallacy is committed here? I mean, it just appeal to emotion. I'd say so. I'd say it's like rather blatant over and over again using these highly charged words. Now, this may be good in rhetoric, it may be good in preaching, but it certainly is not an argument. I mean, he doesn't prove anything by just building into his terminology all this emotional impact. Okay, now number five, just as some penalty deters a prospective offender by making the prospect of crime less attractive, so does a more severe penalty make crime still less attractive and so less likely to occur. Because death is perceived by most potential lawbreakers as the maximum feasible penalty, it's probably the most effective deterrent force. Now, your evaluation of that.

Not a fallacy.

Not a fallacy. Now, did you see that before looking at the back of the book?

Yeah, at first I hadn't read the instructions and I pondered over it for quite a while and then I went back, good. Number three had the same problem.

Right.

So, fallacy there, instructions.

Yeah, very good. I hope that you all had that experience. My guess is that's why it's there and starred. Because you go in there, you say, okay, now we're going to find a mistake in everything that's ever been said. So he puts something down here, said, well, you may agree or disagree with this. But there's no reasoning fallacy in this. Did you have that experience too, trying to find what's wrong with it? And then you say, I don't know. So finally I guess I'm going to cheat and look at the back of the book and you go, oh, no wonder, no fallacy. You've asked about number three. The Master said a good man does not grieve that other people do not recognize his merits. His only anxiety is lest he should fail to recognize theirs. This from Confucius in the Analects. And since we don't have the context, this is going to be rather hard to tell. But possibly it's an appeal to authority that it's true that this is the way the good man will act because it's the Master who said so. It's an appeal to the authority of the Master. It's not an ad hominem fallacy. There's no causation, there's no begging of the question. You say maybe an appeal to pity or to emotion.

Yeah, because it goes, it's a good man. Then he does not grieve that other people do not recognize his merits.

Well, maybe in a tantal, it's kind of like almost kissing up. I mean slight. Well, the good man, he doesn't care about himself, just cares about others. And so the appeal is to see him as a good man because he has this. But on the other hand, that is a good virtue, you know, to be self sacrificial and caring for others and so on. That reading it would not be a fallacy at all. This is just a statement of a point of view that this is what goodness involves. It's not trying to prove it, it's just putting it that way. Okay, okay, let's go on to the exercises at the end of section 3.3. It should begin on page 120. And here we're to identify the fallacies of ambiguity in the following passages and explain how each passage involves that fallacy. I forget where we've left off, but in section one I'm going to begin with number two. If the parts of the universe are not accidental, how can the whole universe be considered as the result of chance? Therefore, the existence of the universe is not due to chance. What fallacy is committed there? Composition.

Because what's true of the part is not necessarily true of the whole.

Okay? And that's what the person's arguing, that the parts of the universe are not by chance, not accidental. Therefore the whole of the universe cannot be. So it's reasoning from part to whole, which is composing from parts to whole. Very good. Number three from good old Leibniz. And to judge still better of the minute perceptions which we cannot distinguish in the crowd, I am wont to make use of the example of of the roar or noise of the sea which strikes one when on its shore. To understand this noise as it is made, it would be necessary to hear the parts which compose this whole, that is the noise of each wave. Although each of these little noises would not be noticed if the wave which makes it were alone. For it must be that we are affected a little by the motion of this wave and that we have some perception of each one of these noises, small as they are. Otherwise we would not have that of a hundred thousand waves. Since 100,000 nothings cannot make something sounds very dignified. What fallacy is committed seems to be.

Both composition and division. Because at one point he's talking about hey, you got all these different parts which make up the whole. And then he turns around and talks about the whole that makes up the parts.

Well, no, actually parts do make up a whole. There's no fallacy in saying that that's true by definition.

It's just the part about the hole then where he's saying that we can't have this noise here unless it's made up all these small noises combined.

Okay, now notice about midway in the statement, he says, for it must be that we are affected a little by the motion of this wave and that we have some perception of each one of these noises, small as they are. He says waves made up of all these. The ocean crashing on the shore is made up of all these waves and all these little parts. And though it may seem that we don't hear the little parts, we must hear the little parts because we hear the whole ocean crashing on the shore. So what fallacy is that? He's not arguing that you hear the part, therefore you must be able to hear the whole. It's the very opposite it. He's saying that though you don't think you hear the parts, you must, because if you hear the whole, then you must hear the parts. So what fallacy is it? Reasoning from a characteristic of the whole and then to the parts. And so we have division. That's right. We've divided the whole into its parts. We said if it's true of the whole, it must be true of the parts. Does everyone see that in number three? This is a good challenge because you have to of kind of look at it and say what's he trying to prove here? He says we all know we hear the ocean crash and so we must hear the small parts of it too.

See, I caught that part, but I also Parts and then the hole.

Yeah, but that part should be non problematic. I mean, that aspect of it should be non problematic that he says the ocean's made up of parts.

Yeah, but I was thinking that just because all these different parts make a small noise doesn't mean that they are necessarily going to to make a loud noise. Although you would assume that they would.

What he's arguing here is that you wouldn't think that you hear the small parts, but you must, because if you did, if you had, what does he say? A hundred thousand nothings. If you don't hear the small parts, that's a nothing. And if you Multiply nothing by 100,000, you still have nothing. So that's wrong. Therefore, we must actually hear the small parts. Okay, let's move on to number five. Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, who says he is giving away his $82,000 share of the Nobel Prize money, is perhaps the poorest head of government in the developed world. To which the New Yorker responded. Just give the news, please. No fallacy is committed here.

No fallacy of equivocation.

That's right. What word is equivocation upon poorest. Poorest? How? In what two senses can it be.

Taken monetarily, poor or. Poor as in not being. Oh, come on. Qualified.

Okay. Yeah. And since it is not a very adept leader. Exactly. So there's an equivocation on the two uses of the word poorest. Okay, let's go then to the end. Now, section 3.4, beginning of page 124, and do a few of those exercises.

Here.

Among the following passages, identify those in which there is a fallacy. If there is a fallacy, analyze it, give its kind, whether of relevance or ambiguity. And its specific name explained the occurrence of that fallacy in the passage. And I'm going to take number two. After deciding to sell his home in Upland, California, novelist Whitney Stein founded a for sale sign into his front yard. But he deliberately waited to do so until 2:22pm One Thursday. The house sold three days later for his asking for $238,000. And Mr. Stein credits the quick sale to the advice of his astrologer, John Bradford, whom he has consulted for 12 years. In the sale of five houses, he always tells me the exact time to put out the sign according to the phases of the moon. And the houses have always Sold within a few months. Mr. Stein says. Don't you just love it? What fallacy is committed here?

The irrelevant conclusion.

Because in the first sentence, he gives a totally unrelated premise for conclusion.

It's not as though he's supposed to be proving one thing and he ends up proving another. He doesn't prove anything here. It's terrible line of reasoning. Altogether.

It's not an irrelevant conclusion.

He's trying to prove that this astrologer should be followed because. What? Houses?

What's that?

Because he sells houses.

Well, not because the astrologer sells houses. That's what's supposed to be proven here. Does he sell houses? Why not? What's wrong with this reasoning then?

It's a appeal to the inappropriate authority.

No, because if in fact this guy's word, you know, brings about the sale of the house, it's not inappropriate. Exactly. This is a classic example of false cause. The astrologer said this, the house sold. So it must be the astrologer saying it that makes the house sell. Or you can put it this way. The position of the moon was this way and in the house sold, so it must be the position of the moon that sells houses. I'm a little discouraged that you all didn't get that, because this is the sort of thing, as Christians, you need to see. People think this way. They think this comes before that, and therefore this caused that. Not simultaneity, but because of the flow of time, something precedes the other. Therefore it's automatically the cause. And that's just an example. I mean, this is just an example of that kind of thinking. Supposed.

Hoctor hoc.

Yeah, propter something. Hoc. Anyway, I forget the Latin. But before this, therefore, because of this, or after this, therefore, because of this. Okay, let's. Let's do another one of these. Number eight. Butler, Chief counsel for the Environmental Defense. Environmental Defense Fund, which led to the attack on DDT between 1966 and 72, repeats the argument today. That is, repeats the argument against DDT. You can't prove a negative. You can't say something doesn't exist because there's always a chance that it does exist, but nobody has seen it. Therefore, you can't say something doesn't cause cancer because there's always the chance that it does cause cancer but hasn't showed up yet. Boy, this is brilliant. I hope you.

You got it.

What fallacy is committed in this line?

It's a fallacy of presumption.

It is. It may be a fallacy of presumption, but we're not in Engel. Right now we're using copious categories. What kind of fallacy is it?

Relevance.

I'm thinking I added some wrong.

Well, I don't care.

You got the broad category. But what's this? An appeal to. To prove. He's trying to prove that DDT is bad. And how does he prove that it's bad?

My answer I had down there was ignorance. Because he said, because you can't disprove it.

I mean, it just jumps out at you. You shouldn't have been hesitant about this. That is a blatant case of appealing from ignorance. He says you can't disprove it. I mean, it's always possible that there's proof for it. And so therefore DDT is bad. I mean, that's just deplorable. Here's a guy saying DDT is bad because you can't say something, you can't prove that it doesn't. And so it's an obvious appeal to ignorance. Let's say one more in this section. I like this number 12 from Ask Maryland Parade, Maryland. And I don't along real well anyway, and so I'm glad to see her get hammered here. Time heals all wounds. Time is money, therefore money heals all wounds. What's the mistake made?

I think there's an equivocation on the word time.

No, the way you can bring about a funny conclusion like this is if you. If you're changing the sense on the way. It's not as easy to define, define what those two senses are. But clearly time heals all wounds means the passage of time. Time is money, means opportunity, time, and consequently we're not talking about the same thing at all. Okay, well, that will be enough for reviewing in copi, the informal fallacies. As you know, I assigned Engel to you because he gives more detailed illustrations and explanation and a more complex breaking down of the fallacies. It's very enjoyable reading. I hope you got a lot out of it. And I want to cover a couple things in Engel and summarize. And then we're going to go through a number of his exercises before we're done today. Did you have a question?

Yeah, I was wondering if we could.

Very quickly look at number four because I had a hard time figuring out any fallacies.

Okay. Well, one of the things. One of the things you were asked to do is to decide whether there is a fallacy. So maybe there isn't one. Let's look at it together from Aristotle's Poetics. In the Poetics, Aristotle Says the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is one thing that cannot be learned from others. And it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive perception of the similarity in dissimilars. If you interpret this, which of course, we've taken out of context, but I think properly can be interpreted, that what he's trying to prove is that the greatest thing by far is the master metaphor. Now, if that's the conclusion and 1. One of the premises is that it's a sign of genius to master metaphor because it implies an intuitive perception, that's really what you're supposed to be proving, is that it's a sign of genius. It is the greatest thing of all. So it's begging the question. Is that the way the rest of you saw it? Begging the question?

When we were going over it, I saw that sign of genius.

Whoa.

Maybe it's begging the question.

Right, because that I couldn't have said.

All depends.

You see, when you're analyzing a text, you have to pick out the conclusion first and then say, okay, now how is this conclusion being supported? And once you look at it that way, it appears that the support for the conclusion is just a restatement of the conclusion. That's what we call reasoning in a circle, or begging the question. Okay, well, then, now we'll close Copie and turn to Morris Engel, who gives greater attention to the informal fallacies, more extensive attention. And I'd like to summarize the way he lays out the fallacies. First of all, turn to your table of contents just so you can see his outline. Copie had two categories, ambiguity and relevance. Engel takes most. Well, not most. Engel makes a third category, the fallacies of presumption, most of which are found under fallacies of relevance. In cofi, I believe. No.

No.

Yeah, Fallacies of relevance. Although there are some fallacies of ambiguity that he put into this category of presumption. And let's go to a nice statement, summary statement of the fallacies of ambiguity that you find on page 80. He lays out this chart here. Fallacies of ambiguity are amphibole, accent, hypostatization, equivocation, division, and composition. First of all, amphiboly, an ambiguity caused by faulty sentence structure. So when the grammar leads you to be able to take the sentence either way, then you have an amphibolous sentence, which is a fallacy. He gives an. With her enormous nose aimed toward the sky, my mother rushed to the plane. Rather humorous. Many of them are for that very reason. Obviously it's the plains nose that is enormous and aimed toward the sky. But the grammatical construction has a qualifying the mother. Okay, now, fallacy of accent is similar to this in that you have two different ways of reading it, but not because of the grammar, but because of the tone of voice. A statement that is ambiguous because one, its intended tone of voice is uncertain, two, its stress is unclear, or three, it is torn from context. So when things are taken out of context, he's going to call this a fallacy of accept. It's okay to do that. I'm not sure that's what I would have intuitively done. I might say carrying something from context is a moral problem. But that's true that it's the way in which you accent the passage. Put in context, it says one thing. Taken out of context is another. So here's an example. It is impossible to praise this book too highly, okay? Impossible because there's so much praise that you can't state it all. Or impossible because there's nothing to praise. Then he has an example here. Will Rogers never met George McGovern. That all depends on you knowing something about Will Rogers. And the famous epigram of Will Rogers was, I never met a man I didn't like. Which is way of his saying that he affirms the human race. You know, everybody has something good in them. So the sign goes up, Will Rogers never met George McGovern. If he had met him, he might have met somebody. That's taking it in two different ways, depending on how you accent the sentence. Hypostatization, something you need to say ten times every morning. The treatment of abstract terms like concrete ones, sometimes even the ascription of human like properties to them, like personification. Hypostatization takes a series of events or attributes and treats them as though they were a single entity. So a series of events. It's snowing, the rivers are running, the wind is blowing, the trees are growing. Here are all these events that we consider natural events. And we summarize by saying nature, nature this and nature that. Or there's a president in the White House doing certain things. People in the Congress doing certain things. Judges on the Supreme Court doing certain things. And we speak of the state or the government. That's hypostasizing. Turning into a substance, a concrete entity. What is a series of events or attributes? The example he gives is this system stifles creativity and suppresses those who work hardest. This system does certain things. Well, systems don't do things. People do things. The fourth fallacy is that of equivocation, an ambiguity caused by a shift between two legitimate meanings of a term. He contrasts this with amphibole, where the fallacy involves the whole sentence, not one word or the grammar of the sentence. Whereas in equivocation, the fallacy turns on a short phrase or word. His example is, if you believe in the miracles of science, you should also believe in the miracles of the Bible. Well, the word miracles is being taken in two different ways here, right? Miracles of science. The wonders you do when you master the natural world. The miracles of the Bible, those things which go beyond the natural world. Okay, now, the fallacy of division and composition. These two, I hope you're mastering. You've seen them in copi. You run into them a lot. Division, the assumption that what is true of the whole or the group must be true of the parts or the members. That is, you divide what is true of the whole among its parts. So that's fallacy, division. And here's a great example. I can't break this bundle of sticks, therefore I can't break any one of them. What's true of the whole? I can't tear the telephone book in half, therefore I can't tear even one page of it in half. Balancing division. The opposite is the fallacy of composition, the assumption that what is true of a part of a whole or a member of a group must be true of the whole or of the group that is composing the whole out of the parts. He gives an example here. Someday man will disappear from Earth, for we know that every man is mortal. Every individual man is mortal. Therefore the human race is mortal. Will disappear. You have to remember, we believe the human race won't disappear, but history as we know it will end. But not because each individual in history ends. I mean, after all, some people die and other people live. And so it doesn't mean that all at once the human race is going to die out. These are fallacies of ambiguity, where you can take something in two different ways, depending on how you understand part, whole, how you understand the grammar, the accent, the way it's stressed, or understand the definition of the words. And I think it would probably be good if we looked at some of the exercises. On page 108. I think we'll begin. All right. These exercises call for us to identify the fallacy of ambiguity. So it's limited. We're either going to say it's amphibole, accent, hypostasization, equivocation, division, or composition. Identify the fallacy which is committed in or which could result from each of the following. Explain the error committed in each case. And let's begin with number three. Tourists taken in a road sign.

Because the word taken in can mean.

A couple different things.

Well, amphibole arises from the grammatical construction. The grammar here is not the problem. What is the problem? Let's be more precise.

The accent.

No. Well, you might say it's the accent, but I really think there's two different ways of explaining. Taken in, equivocation on. Taken in. Taken in can mean deceived. Taken advantage of. Taken in can mean allowed to come into out of the cold. Taken in. So it's an equivocation. What did the author say? Since it's a start exercise? Oh, he said amphibole. Because as I said, it would be a matter of accent. I really think I would correct him, though. It's more an equivocation on the expression taken in. Is the sign really telling us that tourists are welcome there or is it all letting us know that tourists are cheated there? Yeah, but it doesn't depend upon. Try different ways of accenting it. Tourists taken in. Tourists taken in. I suppose you could get the two different senses from the way you express it, but that doesn't jump out at me. Anyway, we know there's a problem here that it goes two different ways. Whether it's due to accent or the two different meanings of the expression will let go. Number five. All I keep hearing from mom and dad is the importance of nutrition. Why do I have to eat carrots, spinach and liver? Why don't they just give me some nutrition to eat?

Fallacy of equivocation.

No, no, it's not equivocation. What word do you think is equivocated upon nutrition? Nutrition means the same thing both times.

It appears.

The importance of nutrition. And it's this importance that the guy wants to take in. How's he treating nutrition? Is he treating it like something that exists in itself?

Okay, so then it'd be hypostatization.

That's right, hypostatization. I told you to say it ten times every morning. Your tone won't do that. Hypostatization. I mean, it's really kind of a clip example of it too. Here he's looking at nutrition as something in addition to the carrots and spinach and liver and so forth. Well, it's not. It's an attribute of those things, not a separate entity. Okay, let's try number nine. The end of a thing is its perfection. Death is the end of life. Death is therefore the perfection of life. Believe it or not, some Greek philosophers reasoned the this way. What is the fallacy committed?

Equivocation.

On which word perfection? No, perfection is taken the same way in both cases. But there is an equivocation.

It will be on death.

Because it weren't quite death.

As no, death means the same thing both places. Come on now, let's wake up. What word is understood in two different ways? Not death or perfection.

The end of a thing.

The end. End taken as goal.