CRITICAL THINKING - Fallacies: Formal and Informal Fallacies
Video Statistics and Information
Channel: Wireless Philosophy
Views: 253,685
Rating: 4.8747501 out of 5
Keywords: Khan Academy, Philosophy, Wireless Philosophy, Wiphi, video, lecture, course, Critical Thinking, Formal Fallacy, Informal Fallacy, Logic, Paul Henne, Duke University, Argumentation Theory, equivocation, affirming the consequent, valid, sound
Id: VDGp04CfM4M
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 7min 5sec (425 seconds)
Published: Sun Jul 03 2016
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The reply by /u/smugliberaltears is obviously rude and a bit much. However, I think s/he does have a point underneath all the caps-lock. This website, and in particular this sub, does have a disproportional interest in logical fallacies. There are many more search returns for "fallacy" on this sub than there are for more fundamental ideas of philosophy like "positivism," "ontology," aesthetics," etc. etc.
These are pillars of philosophy that are being overshadowed by one area of study of one field of philosophy (logic). I notice too that other aspects of the philosophy of logic like mathematics, causality vs correlation, and probability don't garner nearly as much attention as identifying fallacies. Moreover, many of the posts about fallacies are just listicles, I assume for people to be able to easily digest and call them out when appropriate.
I would venture a guess that many people here are more interested in argumentation than philosophy in general. I think this stems from indignation (understandable given the unjust and often stupid world we live in) and a feeling of intellectual superiority (possibly warranted but not persuasive in making a compelling argument). Without getting overly political, often I think forces of vice and apparent stupidity have the upper hand in our world because they remember the two other modes of persuasion that Aristotle puts on equal footing with logic: ethos (essentially moral character of the speaker, or at least the projected moral character), and pathos (emotional appeal). If you consider these to be "squishy" and logic to be "concrete," please remember that Donald Trump's election was a very real, concrete event. Calling out fallacies will neither undo it nor avert a similar debacle in the future.
So I wouldn't entirely disagree with /u/smugliberaltears' blunt characterization of this fixation with fallacies as "a really annoying Internet thing." Clinging to it to the general exclusion of equally or more important ideas isn't far from mental masturbation, to use Woody Allen's phrase. And yes, philosophy should get us somewhere in the real world.
edit: typo
I think it's a pity we don't teach argument validity in schools (I'd love to see a math class being taught tableau logic).
Anyone know what software was used to make this video?
TL;DW: In this Wireless Philosophy video, Paul Henne (Duke University) describes the distinction between formal and informal fallacies. This distinction is useful for understanding the fallacies in Wi-Phi's Critical Thinking section.
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Don't forget you have yourlogicalfallacyis.com an excellent free resource...
Reddit isn't interested in logical fallacies. They just want to screech AD HOMINEM and WHATABOUTISM to make themselves feel better.
I often ask, and haven't quite been satisfied with the answer: What are we to say of persuasive arguments that are not logically airtight, but still possess characteristics such as soundness? This would be informal reasoning, yes? I'm speaking of the most common type of argument -- the one we might make to a group when determining where to go for dinner that evening. Or even the one's we commonly make to ourselves when making any number of small life decisions (and sometimes even large life decisions).
Thanks for sharing! I'm curious about the distinction between formal and informal fallacies. While I'm sure there are some easy cases where the form and content of an argument are obviously different, I imagine there are a lot of cases where the distinction becomes blurry (like in your informal fallacy example). I also imagine that someone could re-frame a formal fallacy so that it looks like an informal fallacy. That possibility troubles me because it can be very difficult to prove or disprove the "content" of an assertion. Questions of fact, in particular, are very hard to prove and easy to muddle: that's why there's so much risk associated with taking litigation before a jury.
tl;dr -- Curious about the distinction between the form and content of an argument and if there are hard lines that separate the two concepts.