Critical Thinking: Fallacies 5

so today we have two more fallacies these they don't fit into that family structure of fallacies that we talked about it's not because they're content you know like they've been fallacies that deal with emotion and they all had some basic content in common or pseudo challenges that deal with popularity you know tradition popularity common practice those are all pretty similar right these are not similar in that respect so why do they put them together today what a one to false dilemma and slippery slope have in common that's a rhetorical question because I don't expect you guys at this point to actually see that but I hope that you do fairly quick remember we've talked about arguments conclusion and how did things go wrong in an argument if we have a fallacy we have some sort of bad underneath just to review how do they go on what goes off the tracks pregnancy's not true yeah premises could be could be false that's a big problem right a lot of the fallacies that we're looking at some of the premises are going to be false what else is important for an argument well the evidence is the the premises right but then the question is how do you get from here to here who was a word I used for that yeah actually the there will be implicit premises along the West Nate the implicit premise sees fit in with what we call the structure right you've got premises evidence starting points we've got some where you want to get to it but then how do you actually get to there well that all depends on how you put it together right so you could start out with the same content and arranged in two different ways what's wrong with these fallacies is not actually the process of interest as a matter of fact both of these fallacies could be looked at as logically valid arguments I'll show you why in just a sec the problem with them is that the premises aren't true and very often people just don't see that the premises are true so let's actually look at the structure of these two different arguments before we start putting any content down so when I say come on what do you think we talked about this before that's what's the first thing that comes to mind okay so there there's a key element you have to decide between more than one train you have a force trust right if it's a dynamo it'll be three will it be ten it'll be 2 right because diamonds - I'm just like by diets coming from from Greek - relax so imagine you're here right this is just sort of like that remember the old Robert Frost poem that they turn into posters and probably encountered it in elementary school or high school two roads diverged in a wood and I took the path less traveled blah blah blah blah blah you know that's made all the difference supposed to turn all of you into nonconformist rebels you know creative types because you know the path of conformity is so terror you know that's why people love their lives are just awful if they follow the you know the route that other people think that's not true right oh yeah it's a puppet you've got to take one or two paths so this is sort of a pictorial representation of it let's say we want to put it in terms of actual words in the market you're in a choice and that's either A or B a therefore B well this is actually a motto logically valid argument type remember when I gave you that list of argument forms this is what we call a disjunctive syllogism and we didn't cover this very much but you can take me at my word this is a logically valid argument so if these premises are actually true that conclusion will be true so let's think about some some real dilemmas either you come to class or you don't come to class you didn't come to class well this is gonna be sort of you know Trevor you know therefore these things from the class will be another let's say you're at a restaurant and they only have two menu items steak or macaroni and cheese either you have steak or you have macaroni and cheese they don't let you have both and they don't let you opt out you don't have steak you're having macaroni and cheese so if those premises are actually true that conclusion follows you guys will see that so where could the problem be it won't be with the structure it'll be with the premises and with a false dilemma which is going to be the problematic premise it'll be this one so I'll just give you one example there were some people out there saying stuff like this is a fairly extreme view when when Barack Obama was first elected if you disagreed with his policy sometimes people would accuse you being a racist right so either you support the president or you're a racist you don't support the president must be a racist right then the people we're making this argument again not as much as this some people portray know what's wrong with that you know this is false that you don't support the president let's say you don't know that's true there's something wrong with this it's saying look either this or this there's no middle ground there's no possibility of overlap you think about the different combinations you could be you could not support the president and also not be a racist right you can also support the president and be a racist couldn't you so these are not what we call logically exclusive mutually exclusive possibilities that's where this sort of thing so when the false dilemma you should be looking yeah but at the conclusion but looking at that either-or I'm trying to figure out what's wrong with us test it there are some real dilemmas out there I think I've given you the one as an example before this kind of joke all right but somebody takes his fiancee to a fancy restaurant remember this scene and the violins are playing and they're having a three or five or seven course dinner and it's very fancy you know candles at the table and all that and then the that you know they bring the champagne and what's in her champagne glass the engagement ring yes and that you know he she's she's drinking at home what's what's this and she finds it and he takes it and he gets down on bended knee and he says so instead I can't live my life without you bla bla bla bla will you marry me now she's in an actual dilemma and that's not a real false dilemma it's a practical because she can say yes you know unreservedly yes I've been waiting for this moment all my life I'm so happy to be with you or she can say anything else that me she could say no no no sorry you're not the guy for me nice mean although or she can say other things like I don't know let me call my friends or she could say can I can I take a look at the ring for a while or she could say yeah just hang yeah well that's the thing anything other than anything other than a clear yes really is translating to know if that's the case then you would have a real dilemma here I mean this one's debatable you could say oh no she should have a chance to to think it over right we could debate about that one but that's an example of something that might not be a false alarm let's look at before we look at a few more examples of this let's look at the structure slippery slope you guys have all heard this type of argument being here's one that's common in child rearing if you steal a candy bar than you all well we're going to try to get to that by step by step because steal a candy box is something really small what is still next steal a toy if you steal a toy then you'll start stealing cars yeah cars and then once you start stealing cars you've pretty much lost all respect for the law pretty soon you're going to tell the people but that all comes from that one thing it's dealing that gain Ebro so if you steal that first candy bar you are inevitably on the path to ruin not only for yourself with your family for society you know further further now let's say we want to draw this out graphically what it's saying is you know if you have a yeah that's gonna lead to B that's going to see and you can make steps as you want you could have 531 steps you could have three steps it all has the same basic structure you're also all bit of saying that if you start down on this slippery slope if you put your foot to it once you take that first step you are going all the way down this is some sort of small stuff and what's down here total catastrophe so here's another example when I was in school I had I think they don't show you these in school that much anymore there are these anti-drug films back then we had a mind like on the projector or with a VCR yeah what they would show is little Johnny on the playground and then you know what's gonna happen a little Johnny do smokes to join alright why is it do it we've already talked about peer pressure so we know why John's supposed to join so he can fit in well what's gonna happen if little Johnny does that he's going to become hooked on marijuana doesn't mean alright that's the next step and then what happens well you know marijuana is a gateway drug so he's gonna need a picture your choice he's gonna get hooked on know we're spending a regular crack or what else math heroin yeah after in Chicago well the big drugs of choice PCP that have a brief resurgence for a little while another big drug anymore you know it's kind of funny though you know the most abuse drugs out there are actually yeah prescription drugs so probably we should haven't going to start smoking pot ladies using oxycontin or something right but they invest about how they represents the street drugs right so now he's down here Namah he's you know hooked on say crack or heroin or meth and once you can hook down that your life is pretty much over until you get cleaned up and so you know you're gonna be the dirty scammy junkie on the stained mattress and the flophouse with the rats all around you and all that sort of stuff so who knew you know if you smoked that first joint you're gonna be that junkie so you better not smoke that joint right by the way you know by making fun of ozone icing anybody to use drugs right I'm just putting out the sort of inconsistency in the logic and it you can think about each step along the way each of these is a premise and it works like this if need so therefore the conclusion is if you start on that first thing then total catastrophe is going to be business all now in order for this to be a good argument not only does the structure animal you know if these premises are actually true this is a great argument this is a logically valid argument it's a version of what we call slightly more complicated version of what we call the hypothetical syllogism you know if a then B if B then C therefore if a then then C that's bad the trouble is are all of these premises actually true and in this case some of them are you could think about if C is you're using math or crack or heroin and D is being a junkie in a pretty bad state is that pretty much true yeah I mean if you get hooked on crack you've got math you Harold you're screwed and you know all those are very addictive drugs and people ruin their lives because of them but what about this one this is the marijuana is the gateway drug so if you get hooked on marijuana let's say you're using marijuana every day are you going to be using these other drugs not necessarily I mean some people do right but as a matter of fact most pothead seem to like pop mostly that's kind of play dynastic sentence most pothead seem to stick to pot as far as we can tell they're not so drawn to the other place and if you smoke a joint are you going to become a person who's smoking pot every day okay maybe President Clinton smoked pot right you too young to remember it was a famous thank you you know the first presidential candidate would admit to it first was serious presidential candidate who admitted to trying marijuana and he said yeah I didn't inhale yeah this kind of running jokes because well of course he did inhale she was just saying yeah I mean you know if you smoke pot that you know in hands we're kind of missing the point of the exercise actually that's really saying yeah I take a they go to the bar and I take a sit down grandfather I spit it right now yeah well again you're paying a lot for something that you're not using but now you see the structure of this right both of these have balanced structures both of these are good arguments except for the fact that there's something wrong with one of the premises and for the slippery slope to fall apart you don't tell all the premises to be false you just got to find one weak point and then you can say slippery slope argument there and it falls apart that could be any of them any of any of the premises in order for an argument to be in order for a valid argument to be sound all the premises have to be true so if one premise is false it's valid but unsound and it becomes a bad market it becomes an argument that you wouldn't rely on okay so let's let's go back to false dilemma now let's think about some of the ways in which your two choices might not be as opposed to do that so again here's our schema you are going to ask and you have to choose between A or B G there you love me or you hate me now does that cover every possible what are other possibilities you like them yeah or you can be in an inference to be a different and then maybe also dislike all right dislike some people without hating them so yeah you could say there is a continuum because familiar with this term a continuum there's like a whole bunch of different points along the way so if this is Bob and this is Pete then maybe in differences here and waiking is over here and disliking is there yeah that works think about another possibility can you love and hate the same person yeah call it a lot of hate relationship right you can even have that with a candy bar you know I love it because it tastes so good I hate it because it makes me fat right people have one hate relationships of all sorts of things yeah if somebody is saying either you love me or you hate me that would be a false dilemma because it's forcing you to choose between two different things that usually with a false dilemma here you're trying to steer some of these tools to one of them well you don't hate me do you better love me or you obviously don't love me so you must hate me the problem is the two choices are actually opposed the way that they say they are so there could be a continuum in between them there could be the possibility of both of those terms being true all right another possibility would be that there's actually a third term but you know the indifference might be a third term in that case a third alternative now you could also have a tri-level you couldn't do to make this as many as you want and trying to box people in that way but the basic structure is the same your book has a number of great examples because these are easy to come up with let's look at this one this is mph 218 I like this one Theresa I had both endorse this idea of a lot of current public schools don't betray stuff I never said such a thing oh I didn't know you're an atheist now we have to really construct that alone what's what's going on there the person is is not actually spelling out they're false below they're sort of throwing the person into it they're saying therefore your name is so that people do this sort of sort of trick a lot of way to solve it if you're not for this then you are that either you are for this or you're this kind of person either you're against this or you're this kind of person you've got anyway as well great that sort of thing all right have you ever used it on somebody late right and there could be real real dilemmas you know either you actually do your homework or you're not a good student those probably go together right but in this case supporting parents water their other religious people who don't support parents will in other songs financially there's some religious groups that are as and religious groups against it they prefer to do it privately so yeah this is a false dilemma you could put all sorts of other contents in there if you wanted to your book gives you a couple variations as well and these are kind of good to talk about one it's called the perfectionist fallacy what is it perfectionist I mean some of you may have been accused of that at one point in your life that's part of it trying to do something best or better than anyone else one's perfectionist a pejorative or a bad term because nothing's perfect right and so what does the perfectionist end up doing yeah they cause usually they're more harmful to themselves and other people sometimes they can screw things up for other people by wanting things to be perfect when they aren't in fact perfect and demanding that you're you're setting yourself up for a lot harmony right so if you're a perfectionist when it comes to well here's a great example if you ever do like household work there's always some mess left after you're done you ever notice that it like a Swede or if you paint or you fix something there's nobody something still screwed up right now if you're a perfectionist you can't stand that it all has to be perfect and so do invest you know an hour into sweeping some sectional for just to get all the dust off to let me in so you know you've taken something like 50 minutes away from something else that's the problem for professionals now the perfectionist fallacy the way it's structured has to do with plans and here's how to read if policy acts will not meet our goals as well as we'd like them that that is how perfectly and then policy actually be rejected so they give the example actually the National Football League's experience with the instant replay which allows off-field officials to review videos tapes of the play to determine whether the field officials rule is was correct and then when it was first proposed this citizen state to and use replays to make calls because gonna miss some calls right because you won't see everything now in order for it to be a good thing doesn't have to be perfect no here's how it would be so unless here's that alright so the camera died and recharged it and I'm finishing up this dr. control the next boss comes in we're talking about a variant of the false dilemma called the professionals fallacy and when you're a perfectionist you're saying that something has to be entirely perfect or else it's it's no good at all and that's a false dilemma so it's really a false dilemma applied to the other two levels you're at a juncture and you have a choice don't do a certain policy or do the policy and doing the policy is going to be a limited good but it'll be an improvement or we're not doing the policy here's what the false eleven answer unless you actually attain perfection which is good it's just everything else everything else is at the same level and it's all equally bad so the perfectionist fallacy is a false dilemma that in the words the the actual code the actual improvement stay in place and here's where the problem lies it's forcing a choice between two terms either profession or non perfection when really this was to be a whole bunch of different graded choices as well obviously if you could have perfection that would be desirable but that's not usually the case and there the perfectionist fallacy actually fits the saying that people have falling into the trap allowing the best to be the enemy of the good because if doing certain policy is going to be good it's going to have good effects if it's the better thing to do then there isn't an improvement there the best the ideal best can often become the enemy of the limited good another one that the book talks about variation of the line protocol which says that unless we can actually say exactly at which point something transforms it to something else you can't claim that it's as different and the example of the users after the Rodney King trial during the trial one of the arguments that was made was well look at the first blow from the police baton is that excessive force no it's not excessive force because if it was then nobody would be able to use that's where the force at all what about the second one what about the third one if you can't point at exactly where the excessive force begin if you watch that video of the Rodney King beating that's out there you know that the excessive force was used but it's very difficult to pin exactly at what point excessive force was used so here's the dilemma there you can either give a definite criterion in which case some some threshold has been passed or you can you haven't that's the case then it doesn't matter whether it's the first blow the second wall the 138 blow no threat has been passed it's all on this side again what's being left out here there's a continuum and at certain point things do transform there's some qualitative the thing that's being moved out we talked about the slippery slope already and I just want to reiterate that the slippery slope is a valid argument usually it could also be there's an inductive form of it as well that I went to that just considered to be a logically valid argument that does not have sound premises okay so once again camera troubles that's why all this is patched together slippery slopes I'm going to give a couple examples of them like I was saying you should consider a slippery slope to be a logically valid or perhaps an inductive the strong argument in which the premises are not actually true so if you think about a slippery slope as something like this you know look at it in chart form a necessarily needs to be be necessarily needs to see see necessarily leads to D a is some small step and the steps are getting bigger along the way D is something terrible to catastrophe if you do anything or you're going to indeed that would be if all the parentheses are true here's how you can represent it in argument form if they the me of B then C you see indeed therefore if you do a that little stuff then you're going to do need that fix that big catastrophe now where is it going wrong it's not in the structure of the earth there are some real life super slopes for example if somebody it's bit by tech that carries boxes these thing they get those rings that's a symptom of the disease so if you have those symptoms you have the disease - disease if you don't treat it it will spread through your system and if it spreads through your system and actually sometimes it just produces the work of damage sometimes it actually can produce death so you know let's say you're in the locker room and you see somebody they've got those rings and you say hey you better get that treated you got - disease you can you can actually say well you know if you don't do that you're gonna you're gonna risk organ failure or damage or perhaps death and that would be a real slippery slope there are a lot of other slippery slopes there's fallacies precisely because somewhere along here all it takes is blonde someone of these premises it's not actually true so it could be first one it could be the end one I'm going to give you a few examples if you commit a crime then you will be caught if you get caught you will go to prison if you were to prison whether you know what happens to people at the wrist abduction so if you've been in crime then it's right there too the terrible thing that you know everybody thinks about prison well actually no things will be to each other necessarily a lot of crimes never get caught you know they never find the culprit for them the crime as a matter of fact police in some areas don't even investigate certain types of crimes if you get caught you're not necessarily going to prison if it's a misdemeanor you're going to jail if you're actually found guilty but you might not be found guilty even if you are you might go on probation a lot of people get off on technicalities they plea bargain you know they go from a line down to misdemeanor if you go to prison are you necessarily going to be what's the great stereotype you're going to get raped you know my prison students I taught in prison for six years some of them actually wrote interesting essays about the mechanics of social groups of them the prison at least in the Indiana prisons they said that's a stereotype and it doesn't happen most of the time it really depends on which some groups here you're hanging around now if you're stuck in some the California prison system god help you but you know some DLCs are quite good another great example think about you know these are these drug things these anti drug films that we used to watch when I was a kid in school some of them were these cautionary tales and by the way I'm not I'm not you know I'm advocating drugs or anything like that I'm not trying to live it up but these work and them over the top so you can see little Johnny on the playground and little Johnny is smoking a joint you know what that's going to be is going to become addicted to marijuana marijuana is a gateway drug so that's going to lead to one of the big three either crack or heroin or crystal meth and then what follows after that johnny is the dirty scab across the junkie lying on a stained mattress in a terrible dank apartment filled with rats and cockroaches doing god-knows-what for money so you know if you smoke that Joanne you're gonna be that jungle well that's clearly a slippery slope fallacy right because at least some of these steps in here don't necessarily lead to each other I would say arguably and I've known some people who were there are monkeys if you get hooked up one of those drugs you're probably under way to to junkie dumb because you can't keep your life together while you're using crack or meth or heroin it's it's just not possible but so that that's true look let's assume that that's that's completely true and there are going to be some exceptions well let's just assume for the sake of argument that it's necessary conclusion to start from C automatically go to B if you use marijuana are you going to automatically shift to some harder drug clearly so that's a false premise if you smoke a joint are you going to become hooked at marijuana well Bill Clinton's example is relevant apparently not but there are people who try a drug and don't get addicted to it so yeah it slippery slope your book has other examples you know do the military of things I find those interesting but a little bit harder to relate to so that's why I use these other examples which fit into our culture a little bit more the basic thing to keep in mind is when there's a slippery slope if there's some sort of disconnect if they say if you do a D is going to follow you say I'm not sure about that and I might start looking for the connections where along the way is there some sort of disconnect where is the premise or parentheses that are false when you to false conclusion is to do it in these palaces it's not the conclusions fault somewhere along the line the reasoning went wrong and with these two fallacies it's in the premises so that's what to keep in mind false the line on slippery slope or both what would be good arguments but some of the premises are false in case of false dilemma it's either A or B there is no real either A or B or there could be other possibilities with a slippery slope at some one of the premises

Channel: Fayetteville State University

Views: 8,869

Rating: 4.8651686 out of 5

Keywords: False Dilemma, Slippery Slope, Perfectionist Fallacy, Line-Drawing Fallacy

Id: UvZ2GeTuVro

Length: 37min 1sec (2221 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 11 2011