Logical fallacy PSA

[blackmanon4chan]

hey guys,
Ive been seeing a situation ,more likely than i would like, where someone states something and then someone else would reply "that's not true that falls under X fallacy!!!". for everyone doing this, stating that an argument falls under X fallacy does not prove the argument incorrect.
For example
person A: "cats and dogs are the same because they both have fur"
person B: "equivalence fallacy"
person A: "how is that a equivalence fallacy"
person B:" well an equivalence fallacy is a logical fallacy which describes a situation where there is a logical and apparent equivalence, but when in fact there is none. This fallacy is categorized as a fallacy of inconsistency"


you see person B is still not explaining why person A's statements are incorrect. all person B did was state a fallacy and explain the definition of that fallacy. at no point in time does person B actually disprove person A's statement. therefore Person A's statement still stands.

correct example
person A: "cats and dogs are the same because they both have fur"
person B: "equivalence fallacy"
person A: "how is that a equivalence fallacy"
person B:" Well cats and dogs are classified under two different animal species, as such they are not the same. QED"

now person B has adequately disproved person A's statements. however a disproof can itself be disproven. example

person A: "cats and dogs are the same because they both have fur"
person B: "equivalence fallacy"
person A: "how is that a equivalence fallacy"
person B:" Well cats and dogs are classified under two different animal species, as such they are not the same. QED"(a well formed disproof)
person A: "contradiction! cats and dogs fall under the same kingdom for species" (person A's disproof to person B's disproof)
person B: "simply because they fall underneath the same kingdom does not mean they fall under the same Genus"(person B's disproof to person A's disproof to person B's disproof)


however just because an argument can fall underneath a logical fallacy does not mean the statement made is itself incorrect.

example:
person A:"yaris's and corolla are the same so they both need gas"
person B:"equivalence fallacy"
person A:"how?"
person B:"the yaris's and corolla are both different kinds of vehicles so they are not the same"

in this example just because the yaris's and corolla are not the same type of vehicles that doesn't mean that the statement was false. it means it conditional on the parameter "same", this is something that comes up a lot in conversation i see. as technically by strict semantics person A's statement is false however once a conditional for same is made person A's statement would be true.

these are just examples yet this can apply to any "logical fallacy" used

TLDR; you cant prove a sentence/statement incorrect by just naming a fallacy, nor does naming a fallacy prove a sentence/statement incorrect. please pass it on.

(i wrote this kinda quick so if anyone notices any miss spellings/grammer please point it out. if i have any math majors in the audience please note its supposed to be general,I didn't proof check my work)

edit: removed the word constantly.

 

[Itdoesthatsometimes]

Come on man, don't start your PSA with constantly in the first sentence.

Edit: I noticed the change, this post is now irrelevant.

 

[1Life0Continues]

This is called the fallacy fallacy.

Not kidding, either.

I think people "discovered" the logical fallacy and went "Ah-ha! Now I have this weapon too!" and went about applying it without truly understanding the actual logic and critical thinking theories behind them. Not everyone, but a whole lot I'm sure.

Arguments are about conclusions and premises, and it's likely that unless people have been educated in the art of argument, many people do misunderstand how to really argue properly by spotting fallacious logic and applying the rules of logic to spot deductive vs inductive reasoning.

[Note: I sure as hell am not an expert, and cannot be considered innocent of poor argument either.]

Basically, a lot of people aren't actually arguing a case, but simply begging the question and that's poor logic.

[Edited to correct a terminology error.]

 

[Silvanus]

For example
person A: "cats and dogs are the same because they both have fur"
person B: "equivalence fallacy"
person A: "how is that a equivalence fallacy"
person B:" well an equivalence fallacy is a logical fallacy which describes a situation where there is a logical and apparent equivalence, but when in fact there is none. This fallacy is categorized as a fallacy of inconsistency"


you see person B is still not explaining why person A's statements are incorrect. all person B did was state a fallacy and explain the definition of that fallacy. at no point in time does person B actually disprove person A's statement. therefore Person A's statement still stands.

B doesn't need to disprove A, necessarily; B can also discount the positive evidence that A has put forward. If the only given evidence is fallacious, then the statement doesn't still stand.

 

[blackmanon4chan]

B doesn't need to disprove A, necessarily; B can also discount the positive evidence that A has put forward. If the only given evidence is fallacious, then the statement doesn't still stand.

stands is different from disproven. by stating a fallacy you can argue that the persons statement isnt valid. however that doesnt mean it is exclusively invalid either. the statement can still be true, yet not formulated in a way to which the statement is always true.
Simply stating a fallacy doesnt make person A's statement false it only states that Person A did not present a well formed formula. his statement can still be true. ie it still stands as it can still be true.

but my terminology could be off.

 

[Vendor-Lazarus]

When where these lessons handed out in school?
Don't tell me I was sick that day..wait, this seems more important than just a single lesson.

I would have liked learning how to argue and spot flaws when composing my own posts and reading others.

Really though, why isn't this taught? (it isn't is it?) ,)

 

[1Life0Continues]

When where these lessons handed out in school?
Don't tell me I was sick that day..wait, this seems more important than just a single lesson.

I would have liked learning how to argue and spot flaws when composing my own posts and reading others.

Really though, why isn't this taught? (it isn't is it?) ,)

Argument examination occurs in Philosophy, due to the nature of the beast. Many tertiary level courses involving dealing with people often have philosophy units, dealing with amorphous topics such as morality and ethics, which often include sections devoted to critical thinking and logical thought.

100 Level Philosophy units (at least in my country) deal a lot with unpacking arguments and dissecting them.

Why these things aren't taught earlier, I'm not sure, but it has something to do with the nature of Philosophy itself. Lower branches of education deal primarily in foundational, concrete theories, right and wrong answers etc. Not always, but usually. In Philosophy, there are no right answers as such, the point is in how you argue your position. Philosophy, as my lecturer put it, is mental masturbation, thought experiments taken deeper. It takes a lot of conditional understandings that to my knowledge many younger students supposedly aren't ready for.

Of course, that's just my opinion.

 

[Mezahmay]

That's the funny things about logical falicies: that doesn't mean the argument is invalid too. Just because the end conclusion isn't arrived to logically doesn't mean it is illogical. It just means it wasn't arrived to logicacally. If I may be so bold as to advertsize a book I read recently, Made to stick, [http://heathbrothers.com/books/made-to-stick/] by Chip and Dan Heath, it has a lot to say about effectively communicating ideas that "stick".
In fact, the source material even recognizes that logical fallacies are arrived to based on biases and the fact that more often than not we don't realize that we are making them, ;they just happen to follow the same logic we are thinking through at the time.

Perfect example, I am currently writing this post while quite drunk. Yet I am able to recognize spelling errors and logical inconsistencies minutes after throwing up into a toilet and am swaying violently as I type this. Sure it took me at least a half hour because Diablo 3 logged me out, but I'm really hopeful I made a coherent point nonetheless.

Please someone reply to this post within the nest few hours so sober me can respond to drunk me and realize I can form a coherent point or not while drunk. I'm curious now.

 

[TechNoFear]

IMO...

Sometimes the rebuttal of the argument will take the thread so far off topic that it is not worth rebutting (and it is better to focus on your opponent's other points and point out the fallacy).

Argument examination occurs in Philosophy, due to the nature of the beast.

And science.

Also in computer programming, you should always carefully examine the arguments... [/bad jk]

 

[Itdoesthatsometimes]

Sure it took me at least a half hour because Diablo 3 logged me out, but I'm really hopeful I made a coherent point nonetheless.

Your points were coherent. You could defend this sentence if you would like. I am not too versed on fallacies, but I believe this is one.

Edit: Although, I guess technically you already have addressed it.

Add in: I first learned fallacies in English 201. I say learned, but that does not take into account that I forgot almost everything at this point.

 

[Fox12]

I'm rather sick of logical fallacies on the internet. Or, rather, that their consistently brought up. Most arguments just devolve into a mess where both sides accuse the other of various fallacies, or debate who has the burden of proof. It stops being a discussion about the topic itself.

 

[blackmanon4chan]

I'm rather sick of logical fallacies on the internet. Or, rather, that their consistently brought up. Most arguments just devolve into a mess where both sides accuse the other of various fallacies, or debate who has the burden of proof. It stops being a discussion about the topic itself.

next time that happens just post a link to this friendly psa, hopefully we'll get that to die down... or at least force people to engage in better paced conversations.

IMO...

Sometimes the rebuttal of the argument will take the thread so far off topic that it is not worth rebutting (and it is better to focus on your opponent's other points and point out the fallacy).

cant argue your opinion, but i still feel thats kinda lazy. id say it would be better to ignore the problems with their statements and go right into a disproof a the main point a person is trying to make.
Ie
fact: dogs go woof
fact: cats go meow
main point : all animals make sounds

then just focus on the main point rather than the facts.... im going example crazy

 

[megaflash]

At my college, logical arguments and fallacies are taught at the intro classes, i.e. ones everyone has to take and pass to keep coming.

I believe that these things need to be taught in schools; not just the fallacies themselves, but how to apply them in ways that actually get your point across.

Sure, you could take debate club, but:

A)There isn't enough room for an entire school
B)Not everyone wants to learn these things, even though they should
C)These kind of things are important, because most people only know us by how we communicate. If we don't articulate ourselves the way we think, people don't get a clear picture of what we believe.

Thoughts?

Captcha: bath water - Yeah, probably

 

[Silvanus]

stands is different from disproven. by stating a fallacy you can argue that the persons statement isnt valid. however that doesnt mean it is exclusively invalid either. the statement can still be true, yet not formulated in a way to which the statement is always true.
Simply stating a fallacy doesnt make person A's statement false it only states that Person A did not present a well formed formula. his statement can still be true. ie it still stands as it can still be true.

but my terminology could be off.

The statement wouldn't still stand unless there were positive evidence. In the absense of any positive evidence, the null position is the default.

That's why B doesn't necessarily need to disprove it. If B discounts any positive evidence, then the null position remains the default.

An example; people have provided rhinoceros horns in the past as evidence of unicorns. Now, we don't need to disprove the existence of unicorns to counter this; all we need to do is discount the evidence (show that the horn is from a rhino) and the null position becomes the default again, even though unicorns aren't actually disproven.

 

[Something Amyss]

Logical fallacies can be a handy shortcut, but they're not the end all to conversations. People routinely abuse them, to boot.

Like any other tool, it's better if wielded by someone competent.

 

[TWRule]

When where these lessons handed out in school?
Don't tell me I was sick that day..wait, this seems more important than just a single lesson.

I would have liked learning how to argue and spot flaws when composing my own posts and reading others.

Really though, why isn't this taught? (it isn't is it?) ,)

Argument examination occurs in Philosophy, due to the nature of the beast. Many tertiary level courses involving dealing with people often have philosophy units, dealing with amorphous topics such as morality and ethics, which often include sections devoted to critical thinking and logical thought.

100 Level Philosophy units (at least in my country) deal a lot with unpacking arguments and dissecting them.

Why these things aren't taught earlier, I'm not sure, but it has something to do with the nature of Philosophy itself. Lower branches of education deal primarily in foundational, concrete theories, right and wrong answers etc. Not always, but usually. In Philosophy, there are no right answers as such, the point is in how you argue your position. Philosophy, as my lecturer put it, is mental masturbation, thought experiments taken deeper. It takes a lot of conditional understandings that to my knowledge many younger students supposedly aren't ready for.

Of course, that's just my opinion.

This is more or less how most educators view things where I live too.

I think it's unfortunate really; as someone who has recently begun teaching low-level philosophy courses, including 'critical thinking'/argumentation courses myself (I just taught the 'fallacy fallacy' to my class recently in fact) - and, of course, as someone who was and still is a student, this attitude does not match up with my experience of the situation at all.

Someone might blame it on my teaching ability (or lack thereof rather), but most students are just as tuned out in college 'critical thinking' courses as they are in any other General Ed. college course or even K-12 course they aren't particularly interested in. I don't blame them; I remember being in the same position and feeling the same way about my courses, including the argumentation ones.

Even back in high school, it wasn't so much that I or my peers couldn't handle the material - it was that it was being presented to us as some arbitrary snippets of information we were being coerced into memorizing. It's unlikely that anyone is going to cultivate any passionate interest in the subject-matter in that way. But student unresponsiveness is usually mistaken for inability on the part of the students, and so education is structured around a condescending attitude toward students.

The same goes for 'critical thinking' classes in college; while I try my best to present the material in an interesting way to my students, there are laws determining what I have to cover, and a lot of it seems to the students like more arbitrary information to memorize. If the students can't handle it by that point, it is probably because they have gotten through their K-12 education being told there were right answers to everything, and so passing classes became a game of memorization or writing what you most think the instructor wants to hear (most classes still are like that, even in college).

It is also unfortunate that philosophy is thought of as 'mental masterbation' that paradoxically has to be kept away from students because they 'aren't ready' for it. Actually, I would agree that most of what goes on under the title of 'philosophy' in academia right now is accurately described as 'masterbatory' in the way that it is myopic and of no far-reaching significance, though I like to think that philosophy proper goes beyond that - and even back in middle school or high school, I could have benefited from philosophy proper (and did in some ways). If in my earlier education I had been given a genuine chance to approach philosophy in the form of something that wasn't either just another history class or focused myopically on pedantic hair-splitting, then perhaps I would have been a more attentive student.

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

To point out a logical fallacy is sufficient to invalidate their argument. If their logic does not follow then it's invalid. They could be right, but there's really no need to prove them wrong if they have no valid argument. If someone makes a statement it is not my job to prove it wrong. It is my job to prove my position right. If my position is that there statement is utterly, absolutely false then you might expect something more from me.

So nope their statement does not stand. A statement without anything to support it can be ignored.

As for what Mezahmay said, that's wrong. The argument is invalid and illogical if it has a fallacy. The conclusion itself could be right, but that particular argument for it is not valid.

Also the fallacy fallacy is to claim the conclusion is false because the argument is invalid. It doesn't mean you have to disprove or pay attention to the conclusion. You can just ignore it as we do billions billions other unsupported ideas.

 

[TWRule]

The argument is invalid and illogical if it has a fallacy. The conclusion itself could be right, but that particular argument for it is not valid.

Technically, an argument could be formally valid (i.e. its conclusion deductively follows from its premises) while containing an informal fallacy (a line of reasoning which just makes the argument unconvincing or generally unreasonable independently of the laws of formal logic).

 

[sanquin]

If the argument itself is a fallacy, it's just too much trouble these days to go into detail about it. Starting a discussion about why something is an invalid fallacy only detriments the actual topic of the discussion. In this case, what is there to be gained from trying to explain why someone is wrong? Most likely they won't listen anyway. Now, if the argument itself isn't fallacious, but an example used for it is, then we can get somewhere. Because then you have an actual argument to go against.

Long story short, arguments that are in itself fallacies are a waste of time.

 

[Secondhand Revenant]

The argument is invalid and illogical if it has a fallacy. The conclusion itself could be right, but that particular argument for it is not valid.

Technically, an argument could be formally valid (i.e. its conclusion deductively follows from its premises) while containing an informal fallacy (a line of reasoning which just makes the argument unconvincing or generally unreasonable independently of the laws of formal logic).

Right, fair enough. Didn't think of that