Date: Wed, 8 Oct 1997 05:01:09 -0600 (MDT)
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To: socgrad@csf.colorado.edu
From: TR Young <TR.Young@uvm.edu>
Subject: Re: SOCGRAD digest 115
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Linda MacDonald has asked about the logical fallacy of 
affirming the consequent.  There are a lot of logical
fallacies used in most arguments between people dedicated
to the proposition that their view of social life is the
only valid way to understand it.  WL Reese has a wonderful
dictionary of religious and philosophic terms...Linda
and others might want to glance over all of them...I have
added a bit of explanation...Linda will want to look at
No. 22 in particular since is helps explain her concern.

As for, raw empiricism, it is, rightly, used as a put down term for
those who try to let 'the facts speak for themselves' without
any apparent interpretation.  But facts never speak for themselves;
the very act of encoding the incredible complexity of social
life into word systems and thence into number systems and thence
into statistical systems greatly alters the 'raw facts'.

Remember the word, Fact, now means that which is given.  It used
to mean, that which was made...mmmm.
                                                TR

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        FALLACIES FROM WL REESE

Fallacies [of thinking]: Latin: fallacy = trick, deceit, fraud. Those who
place logic at the center of the truth process also rise logical fallacies
to the center of the falsification process: if illogical, then wrong. In
both pre-modern and postmodern knowledge processes, inconsistent and
illogical truth claims can be valid in so far as 1) faith, hope, belief and
trust are involved in the construction of social life (see the
'self-fulfilling prophecy,' and in so far as 2) complex dynamical regimes
produced non-linear behavior of natural and social systems (see Chaos
Theory). However, there remain many tricks of speech and thought used to
deceive and to defraud people, it is worth learning about these:
1)The Fallacy of Amphiboly: the use of words in such a way that more than
one interpretation is possible as in: I'll pay you soon. The word, soon, has
many interpretations; it could mean later today, next week or next month.
2)The Fallacy of Accent: the practice of shifting the emphasis of a key word
to render it trivial during an argument in order to win the argument. I am a
good teacher [Dr. Smith is a poor teacher, I am better than he; therefore I
am a good teacher]. The meaning of 'good' shifts from an absolute quality
referring to all teachers to a particular quality referring to a
conveniently low standard of teaching. 
3) The Fallacy of Equivocation: selection of a different meaning of the same
word in order to confuse an opponent: think of the word, bad and how many
different meanings it offers in a argument.
4) The Fallacy of Composition: the practice of attributing the property of a
part to the whole as in: She got a bad grade therefore she is a bad student.
[Some people who get bad grades may well be poor student but one might be a
very good student but might have been ill, might have had to work during the
review session or might have been verbally abused by the teacher at some
time during the test]. 
5) The Fallacy of Division: the practice of attributing the property of the
whole to that of all its parts: Blue people average higher scores on I.Q.
tests than Green people, I am Blue, therefore I am smarter and more
deserving than all Green people.
6) The Fallacy of Slanting: the use of positive or negative words to win an
argument as in: Men are assertive; women are pushy.
7) The Fallacy of Reification: The practice of treating something variable
and complex as if it were one and only one kind of reality: all workers are
lazy; all women are passive; all politicians are crooked; all lawyers are
dishonest.
8) The Fallacy of Personification: The practice of treating an inanimate
thing or animal as if it were a human being as in: Don't Mess with Mother
Nature, or; I © My Jaguar.
9) Appeal to Force: The use of force or bribery to persuade as in: Vote the
way I say and all my top employees will donate to your campaign fund.
10) Poisoning the Well: The use of a minor fault of flaw of a person to
discredit the argument on a different issue as in: Detective Smith is a
racist, therefore my client is innocent.
11) Appeal to Pity, Mercy, Compassion as in: He is a war hero, therefore we
should elect him Senator.
12) Appeal from Authority (Ipse Dixit): Johnny Cash drinks Folger's coffee,
therefore you should drink Folger's.
13) Appeal from Association (Post hoc, ergo Propter hoc): The use of a false
cause to justify one's action as in: the children of teen-age mothers get
welfare; therefore to prevent teen-age pregnancy, we should deny these
children welfare.
14) Stacking the Deck: The practice of putting the answer in the question as
in: When will you give up your evil ways? It pre-supposes that one's ways
are indeed evil and by definition should be given over.
15) Binary Logic (thinking in 'black and white'): The practice of giving
only two alternatives to a complex question which might call for an entirely
new option as in: Either you are a communist or you are a loyal American.
16) Argument from Ignorance: The practice of using that which is not known
to prove that something else must therefore be true as in: God must exist
since no one can prove S/he doesn't exist.
17) Hasty (over) Generalization: The practice of making a conclusion based
upon inadequate observation: No one has ever climbed this mountain,
therefore no one will ever climb this mountain.
18) Argument from Analogy: The use of the attributes on one thing to explain
the working of another thing as in: All life is jungle warfare; eat or be
eaten, or; all life is a game; there are winners and losers, or; a factory
is a complex machine; workers are merely exchangeable parts.
19) The Fallacy of the Undistributed Middle Term: One changes the first term
in a logical argument to make it the middle term and then distributes it
incorrectly as in; All dogs are mammals; all cats are mammals, therefore all
dogs are cats. It should be all female animals with breast milk are mammals;
dog and cat females have breast milk, therefore they are mammals.
20) The Fallacy of the Middle Term: The use of a hidden fourth term to
generate a faulty final term as in: The end of all life is to achieve
perfection; death is the end of all life, therefore death is the final
perfection. Notice the ambiguity of the word, end, it was used in the first
term to mean 'objective;' it was changed in the middle term to mean
'termination.' But you knew that.
21) The Fallacy of the Major Term: The practice of use of the first term in
such a way which goes beyond its reach as in: All good students get good
grades; no bad students get good grades, he got a bad grade therefore he is
a bad student. See 4, above.
22) Circular Argument (vicious circle, begging the question; Catch 22,
Petitio Principii): He must be guilty since he is in prison [being in prison
is used as proof of guilt]. He must be deserving since he has been rewarded
with great wealth [being rewarded is used as proof of merit of reward].
23) The Fallacy of the Minor Term: the practice of relating the last term in
an argument to the first term in such a way which goes beyond the premise of
the major term as in: All fraternity men drink too much; all fraternity men
are in college, therefore all college men drink too much.
24) The Fallacy of Denying the Antecedent: The practice of denying the minor
term in order to deny the major term as in: when it rains, all streets get
wet; it has not rained, therefore the streets are not wet. You know that
there are other reasons streets could be wet; the fact that they are wet
does not invalidate the assumption in the first [major term].
25) The Fallacy of logical Thought: The practice of using logic to judge
behavior of complex systems: all major terms may be valid and all due
respect may be given to sound reasoning but still some minor terms might be
contrary to the major term. A small change in tax rates may produce a big
and unpredictable change in corporate crime; a big change in poverty may
produce a small change in crime. In nonlinear dynamics, all rational
connections are contingent upon dynamical regime and upon region in an
outcome basin so logic and rational thinking loses their ability to serve
the knowledge process. (From WL Reese)


TR Young
The Red Feather Institute
8085 Essex, Weidman, Mi.,
  48893--ph: [517] 644 3089
  Email: tr@tryoung.com
         TR.Young@uvm.edu