Need some better political/real world examples of the fallacies listed and also need a good review on my essay. Offering up to 200 fg on how good the edit/examples provided are.
Critical thinking can require an individual to properly comprehend argumentation or else many flaws can arise without notice. Logical fallacies are among one of the more subtle flaws that are found in any case of reasoning and thus identifying these flaws whether imposed purposely or obliviously is crucial. Logical fallacies are simply errors in reasoning that attempt to use skewed premises to support a conclusion. Typically, solid argumentation will include respectable premises to support for a conclusion however; though fallacies can be deceitful they may still be effective in many ways. This paper will define and further examine four fallacies, and ultimately help explain why they are fraudulent yet effective in argumentation. The four fallacies I will examine are Ad hominem, red herring, post-hoc, and slippery slope.
Ad Hominem
Ad Hominem
An ad hominem as defined by Robert Miller, the author of Current Arguments, is “personal attacks on opponents while ignoring what they have to say, or distracting attention from it...” (Miller 36) In other words, it is essentially a form of ignorance used to try doubting the credibility of an opponent in an argument focusing on the character rather than argument. This type of fallacy is perhaps more often observed in the political world when candidates cannot find acceptable reasons to debate and so they resort to question the other candidates character, idea’s and values. It is important to note that a personal confrontation is only an ad hominem when the original arguers premise was overlooked and not all personal attacks are considered ad hominems. (Argumentum)
When examining the ad hominem fallacy as mentioned earlier, the political world holds great examples of the fallacy. For example, in a political debate regarding Obama Care, a member of the conservative party was attacked by a liberal commentator when he stated his opposing viewpoint on the healthcare plan. The liberal quickly argued he has no remorse for the children from low income households in emergency rooms when the conservative mentioned nothing about rejecting care to children in emergency situation. This was an example of illogical reasoning and an attack to the character of an individual rather than his/her argument. (Articles) Another example applicable to this fallacy is for example, an individual arguing that fast food such as McDonalds could have nutrimental values. Say for instance this individual arguing McDonalds holds some nutritional value is not so fit, an ad hominem response would be “Of course you would say such a thing, you love eating McDonalds.” This is clearly illogical because the response is basing the initial premise imposed to be wrong solely because the individual enjoys eating McDonalds.
Ad hominem fallacies are very deceitful but yet very effective because they excel in refusing to focus on the premise of a statement and instead attack the integrity of an individual. It is considered one of the most “used and abused” fallacies among debates, and is commonly misidentified as a fallacy because as mentioned earlier not all personal attacks are ad hominems. (Character) Many arguments will resort to this “plan B” strategy of swaying away from the argument of interest only to attack a character’s personal belief and ideas that may be used against him in a debate.
Red Herring
Moving forward, there is a far more illogical form of fallacy in argumentation that has a premise with a farfetched conclusion and that is the red herring fallacy. This, according to Miller, “describes a conclusion that does not follow logically from the explanation given for it.” (Miller 39) In a nutshell it is irrationally stating because of a certain occurrence, an implausible outcome was reached. It is safe to say that in this type of fallacy one can impose a deliberate change in topic to distract from the original topic. In other words, if two people are debating a particular statement one individual might change the topic to encourage deeper analysis but in reality is swaying from the topic at hand.
In a political standpoint, red herring is seen all the time. One party might dispute the opposition for a certain factor when in reality they are leaning away from their possibly failing policies. Obama demonstrated this by alluding Bush stating; “The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt” In reality he did not keep his promise to keep the economy his “overriding focus” and Obama was crowned “The Undisputed Debt King of The Last Five Presidents.” (GOP) Red herring otherwise known as non sequitur is as mentioned earlier an absurd conclusion that does not logically follow from what preceded it. For example, I can argue apples and oranges are categorized as fruits and thus Steve Jobs was successful in his entrepreneurship because of that correlation.
The reason this type of fallacy is illogical is simply because it does not hold a logical connection. It jumps from point A to point Z with no logical standing behind it. Despite this loop in logic with this fallacy it is commonly used to divert attention from one topic to the next and thus can be extremely effective in argumentation regardless of its illogic. Similar to most if not all fallacies, they can be purposely used to manipulate an argument in ones favor and that is why understanding fallacies such as this are crucial in argumentation.
Post-hoc
This type of fallacy is closely related to the red herring fallacy simply because it fails to hold a logical connection between a premises and the following conclusion. A post-hoc fallacy, according to Miller, is when one imposes a conclusion based solely on an alleged solution that is not solid evidence. (Miller 36) Simply put, just because one event follows another coincidentally, it does not justify reasoning for why the second event happened solely based on event number one. It will be easy and quite slothful to attach that reasoning for argumentation however; it is clearly a fallacy in logic. It’s also safe to assume most superstition can be categorized as post-hoc fallacy.
One example applicable to this fallacy is the prayer being justified as the reason for certain things happening. When an individual sends prayers for something and then it happens, it will be illogical but considered a post-hoc fallacy for that individual to assume the prayer did it. The fact that there is leeway for coincidence to work its magic in this situation is out the question because the prayer is the motivating factor. Another example observable for this fallacy in today’s world can easily commence with the situation in Syria. If Congress declared the states might be involved in Syria for resource extraction reasons only and the states coincidentally go to war, it would be considered a post-hoc fallacy to assume it was solely for that reason. In the long run, despite this fallacy being a form of illogical argumentation it can also be deceiving due to its ability to mask the real source of support for the premise. Similar to the previous fallacies, this fallacy grants an individual to come to a false conclusion.
Slippery Slope
This type of fallacy is seen very often and is also a form of exaggeration. According to Miller, the slippery slope fallacy states “one step will inevitably lead to an undesirable second step.” (Miller 40) If A will cause Z to happen then why would we want A to happen? That is the general rule of thumb with this fallacy. Similar to most if not all fallacies discussed, there is no proper support or reason to draw the conclusion but it is mere shadowed assumptions while the truth could be oblivious to one. It is common to see this form in advertisements and all over media because it is a powerful tool to try to persuade desired audience to avoid typically an undesirable conclusion by shedding lighting to their product/idea/etc.
A popular advertisement on television illustrates the power of this fallacy and the main idea behind it. The Kellogg's cereal brand has a popular commercial of a sports team eating generic cereal and because of that the team lost their league game. Moments later, the team eats the magical cereal and is impressively victorious their next games. The important thing to note is that the commercial is projecting the message that their product will make you a winner. This illustrates the power of the fallacy because it dims out any possibility for any other supporting evidence to the audience. Another example to examine in this scenario would be anti-homosexuals who believe if same-sex marriage is allowed on a federal level, things can escalate to other marriage status that is downright outrageous such as parental marriage, etc. This illustrates the basic slippery slope structure because the foundation for the support is based on a false conclusion.
In a nutshell, critical thinking requires a lot of comprehension argumentation and fallacies fall into this category. They can be unjustified or justified, purposely imposed or by mere illogic. Fallacies are truly a remarkable mention when breaking down critical thinking. It can be observable on a day-to-day basis such as on TV, literature, history, politics, etc. To an oblivious mind it may hurt but to an individual who can puppet fallacies it may truly benefit one’s critical thinking and argumentation. To sum up, fallacies are errors in reasoning to support skewed premises to support conclusions. Support or evidence is usually inefficient but that does not entirely mean the statement or premise is always false but simply illogical.
Works Cited
"Argumentum Ad Hominem." Argumentum Ad Hominem. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Sept. 2013.
"Argumentumad Hominem." Logical Fallacy: Argumentum Ad Hominem. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Sept. 2013.
"Character Attacks: How to Properly Apply the Ad Hominem." - Engaging Ideas. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Sept. 2013.
"John Roberts v. ObamaCare: An Apologia." Articles:. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Sept. 2013.
"Obama's Top Ten Failed Policies - GOP." GOP. N.p., n.d. Web. 5 Sept. 2013.
This post was edited by visionzstyle on Sep 11 2013 11:10pm