Monthly Archives: May 2010
Logical Fallacies — the Unstated Major Premise
Tryptikon
Hey, guys. This post deals with the misuse of an otherwise valid informal argument, which borrows it’s logical structure from formal reasoning, a first-order Enthymeme, the abuse of this being known as the Unstated Major Premise.
In both forms, this is an argument in which a major assumption, evidence, premise, or reason that justifies the conclusion, is absent from the wording of the argument, and as long as both parties in an argument share the same semantic assumptions for the terminology employed in the argument, all is fine.
The problem arises when the two parties do not share the same assumptions going into the language used between them, and at least one of them fails to clarify to the other what those assumptions are, whether willfully or not. When this is used to arbitrarily misdefine a word, most often out of ignorance or confusion over its accepted meaning, it is known as a Humpty-Dumpty argument.
This is commonly done in debates with pseudoscientists, who either don’t know what they are talking about and are unaware of it, or with more savvy ones who intentionally use this as a rhetorical tactic to confuse their opponent and attempt to hide the fact that they don’t know what they are talking about unless their opponent calls them on it. This is often used in conjunction with a multiple untruth.
A brief list of words commonly mangled, folded, spindled and semantically mutilated by proponents of a variety of pseudosciences is as follows. There are of course many more:
- science
- religion
- evidence
- skeptic
- denier
- (true) believer
- (ad hoc) hypothesis
- logic
- reason
- theory
- model
- law
- reality
- objective
- closed-minded
- open minded
- fantasy
- revisionist
- straw man
- ad hominem
- scientism
- material
- atheist
- empirical
- peer-reviewed
- logical
- scientific
- energy
- vibration
- resonate
- frequency
- harmonic
- spiritual
- mind
- soul
- consciousness
- physical
- scientific method
- evolution
- scientist
- therapy
- natural
- organic
- dimension
A good example of this fallacy are evolution/creationism debates during which the claim is made that ‘there are no transitional species,’ when the creationist is using a different assumption from his opponent as to what constitutes a transitional species, often a sort of half-formed monstrosity ‘stuck’ between two other species in the fossil record, the oh-so 19th century notion of ‘one species crossing over into another’ fallacy, or the ‘dogs giving birth to kittens’ nonsense.
The major point here is that the creationist’s premise of what a transitional species is, an important bit of information in the argument, has been either overlooked or intentionally concealed from his opponent, the latter being the case with the more educated but willfully deceptive creationists, who often do this to keep from having to ever admit that they are mistaken, which just will not do if you’re a crusader for absolute truth. It’s referred to in some circles as ‘lying for Jesus.’
You might ask why I have been picking on the poor creationists here and there in this series of posts, and the primary reason is the fact that like I mentioned in a couple of other entries, creationists are fun because they are just such a wonderful source of logical fallacies, since they use all of them, and are continuously creating new ones often enough to make my head spin — Linda Blair style.
This endless creation (not the sort they’re trying to promote) of new ways for logic to go astray is just too useful for me to ignore, and yet another reason for me to be more alert for these errors in my own reasoning as well, so as to better introspect and avoid them in my thinking and arguments.
Rigorous self-examination is skeptical.
(Last Update: 2013/03/25, Removed Dead Links, Updated Image)
TNQ | Today’s Noontide Query
I make up lots of characters — way too many in fact, and mostly for tabletop RPGs, though some just for my own written fiction.
It’s cool, sometimes, to come up with a persona to play, as with an actor, and vicariously live for a moment in a world that not only never was, but cannot be when going by the preponderance of a carefully gathered body of scientific data obtained over several centuries.
Yes, our understanding is currently crude, but getting better as time goes on.
I could, of course, abandon skepticism and reality and adopt magical thinking as my new logic, but that’s liable to make me a sucker for whatever bamboozle happens by and get me into a world of trouble — so I keep my fictional life and my real life separate.
As cool as temporarily assuming the role of a hero in a game might be, I ain’t him, whoever him happens to be for a given game-session.
So I’ll ask of you today:
If you could, which fictional character would you most like to be?
TNQ is a daily question that I pose to you, my readers, and please, do feel free to comment — I’m not an ogre. As per the title, TNQ is published each weekday at 12:00 PM
TNQ | Today’s Noontide Query
A quote is attributed to Albert Einstein, as follows: “Intellectual growth should begin at birth, and end only at death.”
I try to live by this quote as I pursue my education, each day learning something really interesting, hopefully useful, and if I can, disabuse myself of at least one myth and/or misconception, which is always a good thing for a skeptic.
It’s never a good idea to believe you know something when in fact you don’t — confusing ignorance for knowledge, “I don’t know something, therefore I do!” — a common logical fallacy that anyone can make when they aren’t careful.
My intellectual journey takes me through a lot of twists and turns, around a lot of corners, and each leading to another, often leaving me in places I didn’t expect. There’s also the occasional dead end when I pursue leads that turn out not to be true. — But isn’t that always the case when you discover something previously unknown to you?
Whether discarding erroneous beliefs or acquiring real knowledge, this whole enterprise keeps me sane, active, open to new ideas, ameliorates my enjoyment of life, and prevents or mitigates a whole host of cognitive problems and errors down the road. This is a good thing.
So, tell me, or else I’ll have my inquisitors bring out the comfy-chair and the soft pillows…
What is the coolest thing you’ve learned this week?
TNQ is a daily question that I pose to you, my readers, and please, do feel free to comment — I’m not an ogre. As per the title, TNQ is published each weekday at 12:00 PM
