Logic Part 2: How to argue better and recognize fallacious arguments

[Louisiana1976]

Hopefully what you took away yesterday with the addressing of formal fallacies should not have been their names, but instead why they were fallacious. All of the statements I'm going to quote today have at least one example of a fallacy in them. The minor, less common formal fallacies are for the most part just special cases of the major ones. As such, your goal today shouldn't always be able to name the reason the statement is fallacious, but rather why they are fallacious. Name's are extra credit ;)

snip

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2009/12/9/812425/-Logic-for-Kossacks-Part-2:-How-to-argue-better-and-recognize-fallacious-arguments

[ZombieHorde]

1. Thanks for posting, K&R.

[sailor65]

2. I hope part three is

"How to recognize and buy a thesaurus"

how many times can a serious author use one word and its derivatives?

:rofl:

[Jim__]

3. Fallacies are relatively easy to recognize in a setting like reading this article.

The trick is to be able to recognize and respond to them in the middle of a heated argument.

[Canuckistanian]

4. I'm a big fan of pointing out fallacies in arguments

I think the "Strawman" or "False Dichotomy" fallacies are the most easily recognized in political discussion.

But there are many more that are easily recognizable and can be pointed out.

Thanks for posting.

[struggle4progress]

5. Just to be a pain in the ass, I'm now going to say there's nothing wrong with logical fallacies, if

you use them correctly

A logical fallacy is an argument form that is not always valid. That doesn't mean a logical fallacy is always invalid reasoning -- in proper context, a fallacy may be perfectly good reasoning

Consider, for example, an argument to ignorance: the form is We don't know X is true, so we should assume X is false. A good example of an intelligent use of the argument is: We don't know this gun is unloaded, so we'll assume it's loaded

Consider, similarly, an argument to popularity: the form is Most people believe X is true, so we should assume X is true. A good example of an intelligent use of the argument is: Most people believe Pelosi is Speaker of the House, so we'll assume Pelosi is Speaker of the House