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"Top 10 Logical Fallacies"
- Thread starter Skwim
- Start date
Cooky
Veteran Member
Can you give an example of the doublespeak fallacy, I wasn’t clear on the example she gave.
Heyo
Veteran Member
An equivocation fallacy happens when a word has ambiguous meaning and you use one meaning of the word in one part of your argument and another meaning in an other part, equivocating the two. Example:
P1: Every American over the age of 18 has the right to vote in the presidential election.
P2: I live in Mexico.
P3: Mexico is on the American Continent.
C1: I'm an American.
C2; I have the right to vote in the presidential election.
The equivocation is between American (Citizen of the US) and American (lives on the American Continent).
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Thanks
That is the "She is hot" fallacy. It could be the #1 fallacy that people overlook when discussing fallacies. I am not sure, because there are no statistics on it.
The example of the equivocation fallacy that I like to use because the two meanings of the equivocated word are about as different as can be, and the fallacy so easy to spot due to the absurd conclusion:
Banks are a good place to put your money.
Rivers have banks.
Therefore, rivers are a good place to put your money.
This fallacy is a favorite with religious apologists, who conflate two distinct meanings of the word faith, one meaning justified belief, such as faith that my car will likely start in the morning as it has the last 500 times it was tested, and the other meaning being unjustified belief, as in religious belief, or climate denial - positions unsupported by evidence. The apologist will argue that he has faith in his Bible just as you have faith in science, so what's the difference? It's all faith, right?
None of the other most popular fallacies of apologists appeared on the video. Here are a few of my favorites we didn't see:
- Incredulity fallacy - I just can't imagine how a living cell could have assembled itself without an intelligent designer, therefore it didn't, and there must be an intelligent designer.
- Special pleading fallacy (unjustified double standard) - a cell is too complex to exist without an intelligent designer, so a god must exist, a god which though orders of magnitudes more complex than a cell can just exist undesigned and uncreated. The rules don't apply to God.
- Ignorance fallacy - if you can't demonstrate how abiogenesis occurred, it didn't (usually followed by another special pleading fallacy - "I need proof to believe" except their religious beliefs, which don't even require evidence, much less proof)
- Texas sharpshooter fallacy -"an informal fallacy which is committed when differences in data are ignored, but similarities are stressed," such as comparing the claims in the Bible with the claims from science, and wherever a match or near-match is found, claim that that is significant while disregarding all of the misses."The Bible knew that the universe had a first moment long before science did" as if that is meaningful regarding biblical prescience. How about all of the other things found in the biblical account not in the science, such as a global flood and the first two human beings being made from dust and ribs, and those things found in the scientific account not found in Genesis, such as symmetry breaking, expansion, and inflation?
Regarding the first fallacy named on the video, circular reasoning, also called begging the question, I've noticed that second phrase being used to mean "it compels one to ask the question ..." or the question is just begging us to be asked. This might be thought of as an equivocation of the use of the word beg.
Other words that are changing in meaning according to usage patterns:
literally - this word seems to mean nothing now, as when we hear that she was literally bouncing off the walls.
enormity - formerly horibleness, now it seems to mean largeness, although apparently it meant that in the past as well
notoriety - formerly undesirable publicity or reputatition, it now seems to mean noteworthyness, the noun form of notable..
verbal - formerly using words, it now seems to mean oral: "We had a verbal contract" because it was a spoken agreement (written contracts are also verbal).
Other words that are changing in meaning according to usage patterns:
literally - this word seems to mean nothing now, as when we hear that she was literally bouncing off the walls.
enormity - formerly horibleness, now it seems to mean largeness, although apparently it meant that in the past as well
notoriety - formerly undesirable publicity or reputatition, it now seems to mean noteworthyness, the noun form of notable..
verbal - formerly using words, it now seems to mean oral: "We had a verbal contract" because it was a spoken agreement (written contracts are also verbal).
Heyo
Veteran Member
Excellent examples. I had to think hard to come up with even that one. I guess you are a native speaker? While I can talk, write and think (and sometimes dream) in English, I have problems with tasks like finding words with ambiguous meaning and others that seemingly require a more intimate connection to the language.
