http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=teMlv3ripSM

“an argument is a collective series of statements to establish a definite proposition…an intellectual process” (Chapman and Cleese)

Small Group Response

How is the “Death” essay flawed in terms of argument?

LOGICAL FALLACIES

What’s wrong with these statements?

What is a logical fallacy?

A statement that may sound reasonable or superficially true but is actually flawed or dishonest

Why don’t the following statements work in arguments? (Respond in writing as a group –you’ll need a note-taker and speaker to share your group’s discussion):

“Television can’t be harmful to children because it occupies their attention for hours and thus keeps them off the streets” (Engel 167).

“Marijuana can’t be all that bad. Everyone knows about barroom brawls, but marijuana makes people peaceful” (Engel 171).

“California obstetrician William Waddill stood trial in 1978 – and again in 1979 – for allegedly strangling a baby girl delivered alive after he performed a saline abortion on Mary Weaver, age eighteen. Waddill admitted that the thirty-one-week-old fetus was struggling for breath, but claimed that they were dying gasps and that “no doctor walking on the face of the earth could have resuscitated that baby (News item)” (Engel 173).

The Red Herring

Topic A is under discussion. Topic B is introduced under the guise of being relevant to topic A (when topic B is actually not relevant to topic A). Topic A is abandoned.

“Shakespeare cannot have been a great writer, for he did not even make up his own plots” (Engel 132).

“Doctors are all alike. They really don’t know any more than you or I do. This is the third case of faulty diagnosis I’ve heard of in the last month” (Engel 132).

“Let me warn you that you will find in the world a few scoffers who will laugh at you and attempt to do you injury. They will tell you that John D. Rockefeller was a thief and that Henry Ford and other great men are also thieves. Do not believe them. The story of Rockefeller and of Ford is the story of every great American, and you should strive to make it your story. Like them, you were born poor and on a farm. Like them, by honesty and industry, you cannot fail to succeed (Nathaniel West, A Cool Million)” (Engel 133).

Hasty Generalization

The scope of evidence is too small to support the conclusion.

“We ought to be guided by the decision of our ancestors, for old age is wiser than youth” (Engel 108).

“The end of a thing is its perfection; death is the end of life; death is, therefore, the perfection of life” (Engel 108).

“If Americans can be divorced for ‘incompatibility,’ I cannot conceive why they are not all divorced. I have known many happy marriages, but never a compatible one. For a man and a woman, as such, are incompatible (G. K. Chesterton)” (Engel 109).

Equivocation

Changing definitions half-way through the discussion

“Haste makes waste, because hurried activity is always careless activity” (Engel 147).

“You can tell that Frank is a disreputable person by the character of his associates, because people who go around with somebody like Frank are the lowest type” (Engel 171).

“Comedian W.C. Fields said he knew a sure cure for insomnia – a good rest” (Engel 148).

“The new bell in the chapel is louder than the old one. The old one didn’t make nearly as much noise” (Engel 147).

Circular Reasoning

The argument relies on a premise that says the same thing as the conclusion.

“I’m surprised at you. A person of your culture and upbringing – defending those hoodlums!” (Engel 147).

“The deplorable deterioration of governmental efficiency one find here is a direct cause of a widespread indifference” (Engel 171).

“On November 5, three of the accused met at the house of the fourth defendant, Smith. There, behind locked doors and heavily curtained windows, these four conspirators began to hatch their dastardly plot” (Engel 148).

Loaded Language

A word or phrase is “loaded” when it has a secondary, evaluative meaning in addition to its primary, descriptive meaning.