Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Sabbatical Week Day 2 Reflections

A picture on fallacy, something that I will talk about in this post


Essence of Today's sabbatical

-Rebuttals
Start with the very fundamental assumption made in the opponent's premises (on the criteria)
Go on to question on the analysis of the opponent:
>Questioning it's relavance
>Pointing out inconsistency throughout the speech of the entire team
>disprove to the analysis

Try to use the words EVEN IF to show the many flaws in an argument.
"Your argument is flawed as you say that x will happen if v happens. Even if x happens, it not necessarily will lead to y. Even if y happens, it might not necessarily lead to z"
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Scattergun rebuttal: make your rebuttal more effective by making the opponent sound silly and ridiculous

-Fallacy/Fallacies
A fallacy is a flaw in the logic of an incorrect argument. (These arguments might seem to be valid or convincing)

Interesting fallacies:

Argumentum ad misericordiam/appeal to pity
Example:
Interviewer: Why should I hire you?
Interviewee: I have a wife, 2 sons and 2 daughters at home and they are starving. I need the money to buy food for them.

In this example, the interviewee is appealing to the pity of the interviewer, instead of answering the interviewer's question.

Hasty Generalization
Example:
"Richard Nixon was a dishonest president and therefore all presidents are dishonest"

This fallacy is made when a person forms a general rule only by examining a few specific (out of the norm.) cases.

Slippery slope argument
Example:
"If we legalize marijuana, then we would have to legalize heroin and we'll have a nation full of drug-addicts. Therefore we cannot legalize marijuana"

There is no reason to say that after legalizing marijuana they will have to legalize heroin.
Even if they did, there is no reason to say that the entire nation will be drug addicts.

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Reflections
I feel that today's session was more interesting and engaging then yesterday's class. I think that it is partly due us dealing with rebuttals. To me, rebuttals feel as if I am scolding a person in return for scolding me. I found out that rebutting takes skill and there is structure to it too - it is not randomly shooting off at a person.

Fallacy was also an interesting subject. Although i had trouble with remembering the names of all the fallacy and had to constantly refer to the handout, I feel that finding flaws in a seemingly valid argument very exciting. I am also quite amused after this class - I realise that there are too many fallacies in our daily conversation. To think that we have been talking all our lives without knowing there's so much flaw in our logic!


“I'm not afraid of facts, I welcome facts but a congeries of facts is not equivalent to an idea. This is the essential fallacy of the so-called ''scientific'' mind. People who mistake facts for ideas are incomplete thinkers; they are gossips.”
Cynthia Ozick