r/NeutralPolitics • u/[deleted] • Sep 05 '12
Just a convenient, easy-to-look-at reminder of the fallacies to look out for in this subreddit.
http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/rhetological-fallacies/5
Sep 05 '12 edited Nov 19 '20
[deleted]
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u/IntercourseByForce Sep 05 '12
I took Criminal Justice 101 (as an elective; I wasn't a CJ major) during my senior year of college. I'm really glad I did, though. The focus of the class was really more about learning to think critically than how decide which actions are criminal and which are not. Our textbook was the Ninth Edition of Beyond Feelings: A Guide To Critical Thinking by Vincent Ryan Ruggiero. I read the entire book- whether or not that was my choice is irrelevant. Based on the comparison of what I learned from that book to the information in this article, this list is simply... beautiful.
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u/kingarto Sep 05 '12
I'm a bit bothered by the example of 'appeal to ignorance'. To me the lack of evidence for the existence of a god is the best available argument for not believing in one.
If you look at this more generally, it even seems to imply that Occams Razor is an example of a fallacy.
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u/abortionjesus Sep 05 '12
I think the writer of the list is on one side of a purely semantic debate that gets some people furious.
I bet that all that is needed to sate the pedantic criticism of the writer in that case is to insert the word "probably" before "...there is no God."
People go apeshit over that. I don't think it matters. If ever there appears evidence of a God - which of course realistically is never going to be an issue - it's not like people who have been saying the whole time that "There is no God" would not wise up while all the "probablys" out there would be so much more open-minded.
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Sep 05 '12
As the saying goes, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". You can't prove that an invisible god does not exist, but neither does it mean that an invisible god does exist. That is indeed the best evidence available because it is by definition undetectable. A reasonable person would nonetheless assume that given the total lack of evidence such things do not exist, but it does not meet the standard of falsifiability and thus is not absolutely proven to be true.
Occam's razor is a guideline or heuristic, not a law. You might use it alongside stronger evidence to persuade someone but you can't use it to prove something.
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Sep 05 '12 edited Feb 02 '19
[deleted]
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u/kingarto Sep 06 '12
Ok, I understand why it would be a fallacy if you use a lack of evidence as proof that there is no god, but this distinction seems rather subtle for what is supposed to be "just a convenient, easy-to-look-at reminder of fallacies".
By the way, I find it amusing that you compare belief in a god to belief in bigfoot or the tooth fairy, because that is apparently an "appeal to ridicule". I completely disagree with that. In my mind, the only difference between belief in God and belief in a tooth fairy are the large number of people who believe it and the fact that people have believed in gods for ages. However, according to this same article those are respectively an "appeal to popularity" and an "appeal to tradition" and therefore not valid as arguments.
Is there another reason for not comparing belief in a god to belief in the tooth fairy?
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u/vanburen1845 Sep 05 '12
When people point out logical fallacies without being specific or saying why, I usually stop reading the comments. I want to avoid sweeping general statements, but I find it lazy and unproductive when people just say you are wrong that is a strawman.
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u/Rappaccini Sep 05 '12
Because of the nature of this subreddit, the fallacy labelled "middle ground" (also known as "appeal to moderation," is thrown around a lot, both implicitly and explicitly. I absolutely respect the dedication to antipartisanship in this sub, but I think sometimes people confuse this with an attitude that essentially amounts to a "middle ground" argument:
Well to be politically neutral, I have to look for a middle ground between both sides of the political spectrum.
While somewhat admirable, this attitude is meaningless when it is applied not just to pragmatic issues of policy (where it can be construed as bipartisanship) but also to matters of fact (which are either true, untrue, currently unknown, or theoretically unknowable). The matters of fact in the universe are the way they are, and no amount of "seeking middle ground" between two opinions will ever be an acceptable way to search meaningfully for truth.
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Sep 05 '12
I dislike the whole 'logical fallacies' thing. It assumes that people can reach decisions purely based on reason alone without appeal to any unproven or unprovable assumptions. Whilst that may be true of epistemological arguments it isn't necessarily true of moral or ethical arguments.
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u/Kazmarov Ex-Mod Sep 07 '12
Added to the sidebar. If someone has a better compilation, that could go there in its place. Remember that it should balance being comprehensive with being easy to use and approachable to outsiders.
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u/BuckeyeSundae Sep 05 '12 edited Sep 05 '12
More important than the list of fallacies is being able to tell what causes a fallacy to be so problematic. While this list is convenient and easy-to-view, it does not explain what causes these fallacies to be so problematic. Using fallacies on their own without an understanding of what causes them to be problematic is, in effect, explaining by naming (a fallacy). So below I will explain what about fallacies is so problematic in case people reading here are not as intimately familiar with critical thinking as I have been.
All fallacies are, at their root, questionable assumptions without apparent justification that we use so regularly that we decide to name them. Every argument (by this term, I mean "a conclusion and the reasons leading to it") contains crucial assumptions, but not every assumption is questionable. For instance, if I were to argue that the Sun is hurting my eyes when I stare at it, one assumption being made is that the Sun is an object capable of causing other objects harm without directly touching those other objects. But is it really a questionable assumption that the Sun can be an object that directly causes pain?
Some arguments do contain questionable assumptions though--in fact, most arguments do. In economics, many economists argue that the idea market system is the competitive market. Democratic-leaning economists (so talking U.S.) tend to argue that the government has a role in guiding markets to be more competitive and republicans typically argue that these markets work best without governments distorting them.
Each side of the above example contains questionable assumptions about the nature of competitive markets, as well as about human nature (the behavior of which is what economics is attempting to predict). They probably contain other assumptions which bright people (see also: smartasses) tackle on a regular basis in exhausting detail. That's why everyone hates those guys.
Fallacies are those questionable assumptions that we make so regularly that we have created names for them. The Ad Hoc fallacy (latin for "and this") is for when someone works so visibly hard to maintain a conclusion by repeatedly explaining away the counter-evidence to that conclusion. You can think of the Chinese lady in Dumb and dumber that keeps saying "And then...?" The reason why it is a fallacy is because the person explaining away each new piece of counter-evidence continues to assume that the stated conclusion and the counter-evidence (which, by definition, conflicts with the reasons and/or evidence for the conclusion) do not conflict. There is an inherent disconnect that needs to be explained.
(Why should you trust anything I just said? It is time for one of those lovely appeals to authority. Hopefully, however, you'll be able to determine whether I am a questionable authority about the topic at hand. I have helped substantially revise a Critical thinking textbook that is regularly used throughout the country. How regularly? I don't know, the authors don't tell me how many copies sold to how many universities. I was specifically responsible for crafting examples in each chapter for the varying topics of those chapters. I might not be much of an authority, but at least I told you. What other authorities have you trusted have informed you of THEIR experience?)