ENTRY 4_TRAN THI THUY

Item 1

If you hate Slippery Slope arguments, you will do poorly in class.

If you do poorly in class, you will drop out of school.

If you drop out of school, you will commit crimes

If you commit crime, you will go to prison.

If you go to prison, you will die of AIDS.

–> Slippery Slope

Analysis: The process of inference:

      If you hate Slippery Slope arguments (hidden premise: Students who hate Slippery Slope argument will do poorly in class –> factual error)

      ————>>  You will do poorly in class (hidden premise: Students who do poorly in class will drop out of school –> factual error)

       ————>>  You will drop out of school (hidden premise: People who drop out of school will commit crimes –> factual error)

      ————>> You will commit crimes (hidden premise: People who commit crimes will go to prison –> factual error)

      ————>> You will go to prison (hidden premise: People who go to prison will die of AIDS –> factual error)

     ————>> You will die of AIDS

We see that the funny inferences above are put in order like a sequence of increasingly untrue premises. Consequently, the conclusions seem to be so unreasonable and unacceptable.

 Item 2:                                 Content fallacies

§  Source: http://dchsaplanguage.wikispaces.com/Logical+Fallacies

 Analysis:                                                                                                                      

   In this above picture, a man probably an employee is wondering between 2 doors – 2 ways: one is job with “fulfillment without wealth” and the other is “wealth without fulfillment”. There are only 2 doors, which means that he can only choose one of them for his job, if not he would be jobless. However, in fact people can have other choices for a job such as job with both fulfillment and wealth. Besides, a good job contains other factors not only fulfillment or wealth.

–> Therefore, this argument is fallacy of presumption, which lacks premises, so fail to establish their conclusion. Particularly, this is false dilemma which gives a choice between one or another (“either-or”) even though there are other choices which could be made.

Item 3:                      Content fallacies

A reporter is interviewing the head of a family that has been involved with a feud with another family.

Reporter: “Mr. Hatfield, why are you still fighting it out with the Mcoys?”
Hatfield: “Well you see young man, my father feuded with the Mcoys and his father feuded with them and so did my great grandfather.”
Reporter: “But why? What started all this?”
Hatfield: “I don’t rightly know. I’m sure it was the Mcoys who started it all, though.”
Reporter: “If you don’t know why you’re fighting, why don’t you just stop?”
Hatfield: “Stop? What are you crazy? This feud has been going on for generations so I’m sure there is a darn good reason why it started. So I aim to keep it going. It has got to be the right thing to do. Hand me my shooting iron boy, I see one of those Mcoy skunks sneaking in the cornfield.”

(Source: http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/appeal-to-tradition.html)

§  In this example, the character Hatfield explains to the reporter the reason why he has fought with members of other family. It is just because “This feud has been going on for generations so I’m sure there is a darn good reason why it started”. His argument is:

1.      Feud with another family has existed in many years/in a long time

2.      Therefore this feud is correct / better.

§  He simply thinks that from his great grandfather, his grandfather and his father had feud with them, and so does him. The only evidence that the argument offers is its age. People usually believe that old ways/tradition is the best. However, there are many old ideas that are known to be false like the Earth is flat. We cannot learn anything about the truth of an idea just by considering how old it is. Therefore, in this example the long existence of the feud does not automatically make it correct or better than other ways.

–> Therefore, this is fallacy of relevance, appeal to the old or appeal to the tradition which assumes that something is better or correct simply because it is older, traditional, or “always has been done”