PHILOSOPHY 100

rests on the notion that just because something is new it must also be better than what preceded it

rests on the notion that just because some idea or thing is popular, it must also be good idea or a good thing

takes the form of a simple slogan

utilizing words that have no concrete content (fancy words that sound good but that really don’t mean much) or by using words that tend to get people agitated at merely hearing them

attempts to persuade by changing the meaning of a term or phrase by placing quotation marks around it

affirming the consequent is affirming what comes after the “then” in a conditional (if-then) statement

(affirming the antecedent)

Denying the Antecedent

(denying the consequent

it is not acceptable to have a conclusion that includes an ‘ought’ (or a statement that says what a person should do) unless the argument also includes a premise that includes an ‘ought’. Simple ‘is’ statements (statements about what is the case) cannot, by themselves, tell us what we ought to do.

attacking the person who gave the argument (rather than actually addressing the argument) or it rejects a claim due to disapproval or dislike of the person who makes it

Whenever someone would benefit from something, we should reject their arguments in favor of it

Whenever someone’s behavior is inconsistent with their advice, that advice is false.

Even though the two books have many things in common (the author, the publisher, and the cost), we have no justification for thinking a book about chess is going to help a person with finances. That is, there is a huge dis-analogy (dissimilarity) between chess and finances.

This fallacy occurs when we mistakenly infer that an event X caused an event Y merely on the basis that Y occurred after X.

jump to conclusions

When we reason with a generalization as if it has no exceptions, we commit the fallacy of accident

a claim has not been proven it must be false (the negative form), or that because a claim has not been disproved it must be true (the positive form).

• the illegitimate switching of the meaning of a term during the reasoning
• Brad is a nobody, but since nobody is perfect, Brad must be perfect, too.

is used to throw someone off the trail of the argument by distracting them with irrelevant information

a person asserts that some undesirable event must inevitably follow from another without any argument for the inevitability of the event in question

When a person misrepresents, exaggerates, distorts, or simplifies another person’s argument he or she commits a straw man

form of circular reasoning

also known as the "either-or fallacy" because it makes you think that your options are limited to either one or the other

• an inference is mistakenly drawn from the attributes of the parts to the attributes of the whole
• small to big

• a mistaken inference is drawn from the attributes of a whole to the attributes of the parts of the whole
• big to small

argued that everything in the universe is made of water and returns to water; he specifically omitted any reference to the supernatural

žargued that an infinite substance (that he called the Boundless) is the source of everything in the cosmos. He also tried to use purely natural explanations.

argued that the nature of things resides in mathematical relationships and the universe contains an inherent mathematical order. He also discovered how to express the musical scale mathematically

argued that everything emerges from one substance and that all of reality is really one, eternal, and unchanging

žargued that all of life is maintained by a tension of opposites that fight in a continuous battle that neither side can win.

argued that all knowledge is derived through sense perception and he maintained that the universe consists of empty space and an infinite number of atoms (that which is uncuttable).

distinguished between magic and medicine