(Tu quoque) Three days ago there was a political debate on OTV between the lawyer of the fateh el eslam and a journalist who is a nationalistic supporter of the Lebanese army. The journalist was asking the lawyer how he can defend the criminals who slaughtered the Lebanese soldiers. The lawyer started opposing the facts the journalist was saying and justifyed himself by saying that the supporters of the army and the army brought it to them selves because of their idiology.
I saw Tom Cruise in one of his interviews saying that "psychiatry is a pseudoscience". This is considered as a false authority fallacy because he as a Hollywood actor does not have the authority to talk about the science of psychology.
A newspaper article mentioned, "How can voters receiving food stamps or other governmental assistance proudly claim to be "anti-government"?" For a moment, someone might nod in agreement with this. But this is just a logical fallacy the writer has used to effortlessly sound convincing. Just because someone is benefiting from one of the government's services does not necessarily mean he/she is bound to approve of the government. It has countless activities and services, so a single one of those does not imply whether the it's good or bad. And surely, people in need would not reject governmental assistance just because they believe that the government needs to make some changes.
In one of the heated debates about the condition in Syria that I recall and that ended up with a live brawl on television (MTV to be specific), one of the hosts, trying to make a point, asked his opponent if he had listened to the speech of Bachar El Assad. The other replied that he had listened to it but that he believed the president of Syria was lying, an opinion he is free to have. However, his opponent, seeing that he could no longer validate his argument because the other guy chose not to believe a word of what was said, and instead of trying to find another argument upon which both of them could agree on, ended up replying: "Who do you think you are for not believing what Bachar El Assad says?", committing in the process 2 logical fallacies. The first being "ad hominem", since he directly attacked his opponent's character by treating him as a nobody compared to another, and the second being "appeal to authority" since he is absolutely certain of the veracity behind Bachar's words just because he believes he is a great leader.
During a debate about the Ferguson shooting, Ben Carson, a news contributor, said that raising teenagers in a community that doesn’t teach personal responsibilities and that has easy access to drugs and alcohol will make these teenagers violent. I think this is a slippery slope since even if the community has easy access to drugs, it doesn’t necessarily mean that all teenagers will follow this choice and start doing drugs.
On most interviews that I've watched, people(politicians) always tend to fall for the Strawman fallacy. I think it's pretty natural though, nobody likes to look as if he's mistaken or wrong. As a result, the speaker looks for loopholes inside the other speaker's words and focuses on it, even if it is irrelevant to the topic of the debate. Then continues to go round and round over it until the other speaker gets bored and angry, and eventually moves from that point that created the dispute. Which benefits the first speaker.
A common logical fallacy in our country is the one relating to weapons. "I have the right to have an RPG just because other people have them". This statement is an example of what some people say in Lebanon which is totally incorrect because the law states that only a selected group of people such as politician bodyguards or members of the army i.e. people who have a heavy weapons permit can have such items. Thus proving that the right to have a gun just because a lot of people have one is a logical fallacy.
Logical fallacies are arguments that may appear logical but are not.One fallacy that most people encounter a lot without necesarily knowing is called "The sweeping generalization". We usually encounter this fallacy while watching politicians on tv. The sweeping generalization fallacy consists of making false deductions about a specific claim or argument. I remember watching a couple years ago a repeat of the speech of George Bush before he sent his troops to Iraq, he indirectly said that because their was a terrorist presence in Iraq at that time it automatically means that the government and many innoscent Iraqi people are involved in illegal and terrorist activities. This is a completely false and illogical argument that should never have been said by anyone nevertheless the American president at that time. I believe everyone should become more familiar with the different fallacies in order to protect themselves from false and misleading arguments.
Logical fallacies hide the truth. Therefore, pointing them out is very useful. Appeal to the popular is one type of fallacy where one person tends to accept a position because the majority of people hold to it. So the person starts saying," The majority of people like soda. Therefore, soda is good. Everyone else is doing it. Why shouldn't I?" Such a fallacy makes the person repress his feeling of responsibility and blame the society for leading him to commit such negative actions. Such a fallacy can cause a serious dilemma in society. It should be treated before it is too late. If every single individual started denying his responsibility for his actions , the society will suffer from corruption. The denizens of such society will steal and harm the public safety under the fallacy of appeal to the popular.
One of the most logical fallacies I see on TV and especially in interviews is the ad hominem. In fact, last week i was watching "hayda hake" on MTV presented by Adel Karam. So Adel Karam showed us the photo of Ahlam wearing the same dress as Beyonce and said that she wasn't looking good at all in this dress. So instead of responding to his argument, Ahlam said later on twitter, that all what Adel Karam was saying was meaningless because he was nothing but jealous a person who hates gulf people.
Logical fallacies are often used in the media and it can lead to a lot of people being mislead because of illogical arguments. For example recently i was watching an interview with an Anti-Vaccination person who debated that with the increase in people being vaccinated the rate of people suffering from autism has been also rising, but in truth many studies have proved that these two are not related. This is a "False Cause" Logical Fallacy
The main logical fallacy is basically what my argumentative essay was about. People don't take those with mental disorders seriously. Such as people suffering from depression, phobias etc. These issues lead to those who are suffering to develop a stigma and it just leads to worse cases.
Logical fallacies occur on a daily basis intentionally and unintentionally. When watching the film "Mean Girls" I noticed a lot of logical fallacies. One of them was when the character Karen Smith asked the new student Cady Heron "So if you're from Africa why are you white?" which is a bandwagon fallacy as Karen appealed to the popularity of the fact that African people have black skin, which is completely untrue, as an attempted form of validation.
Logical fallacies are nowadays heard on the news, on TV and even on the radio on daily basis. After knowing what a logical fallacy is, I noticed that they occur not only in a political interview or on the news, but also in entertaining shows. Bert and Ernie are two Muppets who appear together in numerous skits on the popular U.S. children’s television show “Sesame Street”. Originated by Frank Oz and Jim Henson, the characters are currently performed by Eric Jacobson and Steve Whitmire. As a matter of fact, in one of the sketches I saw on TV from Sesame Street, Ernie provides an example of the post hoc fallacy. Ernie thinks that by keeping a banana in his ear he will keep alligators away from Sesame Street. When Bart tells him there are no alligators, Ernie assumes illogically that the banana is what is keeping them away.
Logical fallacies ,psychologically speaking, are wicked techniques used by shrewd people to convince others and denounce the opposite opinion. In most of the times, an individual refers to such technique when he has no facts to condemn or refute a person or an idea. One famous type of fallacies is ad hominem. An ad hominem argument is one that is used to counter another argument ,but it is based on feelings and prejudice, rather than facts, reason and logic. Ad hominem is strongly present in political debates and courts. In a political debate, one politician might start degrading another politician during a political campaign when asked about a specific failure in one policy ,and disregard all his accomplishments.Moreover, lawyers tend to back up their points using ad hominem. As a matter of fact, a lawyer might attack a defendant’s character rather than addressing questions based on the case. For example, the lawyer might convict the defendant of theft due to his social status and level of poverty. Therefore, ad hominen was a weapon used by many to convince the public with wrong assumptions and lead to the suffering of many innocent people around the world.
A common example of the appeal to tradition fallacy I have come across many times is when a guy decides to become an engineer since it is a tradition that all men in his family become engineers.
A very common fallacy is generalization, especially towards Lebanese people. Such as people saying that "all Lebanese women have done plastic surgery" or "all Lebanese smoke hookah". This is not necessarily true, and sets a bad image to us Lebanese citizens as a whole.
Logical fallacies are found everywhere in media; in political debates, on the news, in TV shows, movies, and TV commercials also. For example, in an episode of “Friends”, Ross and Joey are fighting because of something Joey did so this latter says that technically he didn’t do anything wrong, and he insists on the word “technically” because he actually did something wrong. In this case the logical fallacy is called Equivocation, which is when a lie is given the appearance of truth or when the truth is misrepresented in a language, which is meant to confuse us.
(Tu quoque)
ReplyDeleteThree days ago there was a political debate on OTV between the lawyer of the fateh el eslam and a journalist who is a nationalistic supporter of the Lebanese army. The journalist was asking the lawyer how he can defend the criminals who slaughtered the Lebanese soldiers. The lawyer started opposing the facts the journalist was saying and justifyed himself by saying that the supporters of the army and the army brought it to them selves because of their idiology.
I saw Tom Cruise in one of his interviews saying that "psychiatry is a pseudoscience". This is considered as a false authority fallacy because he as a Hollywood actor does not have the authority to talk about the science of psychology.
ReplyDeleteOne politician said that the people in Tripoli have the right to possess weapons because many Lebanese citizens all over the country already do.
ReplyDeleteA newspaper article mentioned, "How can voters receiving food stamps or other governmental assistance proudly claim to be "anti-government"?"
ReplyDeleteFor a moment, someone might nod in agreement with this. But this is just a logical fallacy the writer has used to effortlessly sound convincing.
Just because someone is benefiting from one of the government's services does not necessarily mean he/she is bound to approve of the government. It has countless activities and services, so a single one of those does not imply whether the it's good or bad. And surely, people in need would not reject governmental assistance just because they believe that the government needs to make some changes.
In one of the heated debates about the condition in Syria that I recall and that ended up with a live brawl on television (MTV to be specific), one of the hosts, trying to make a point, asked his opponent if he had listened to the speech of Bachar El Assad. The other replied that he had listened to it but that he believed the president of Syria was lying, an opinion he is free to have. However, his opponent, seeing that he could no longer validate his argument because the other guy chose not to believe a word of what was said, and instead of trying to find another argument upon which both of them could agree on, ended up replying: "Who do you think you are for not believing what Bachar El Assad says?", committing in the process 2 logical fallacies. The first being "ad hominem", since he directly attacked his opponent's character by treating him as a nobody compared to another, and the second being "appeal to authority" since he is absolutely certain of the veracity behind Bachar's words just because he believes he is a great leader.
ReplyDeleteDuring a debate about the Ferguson shooting, Ben Carson, a news contributor, said that raising teenagers in a community that doesn’t teach personal responsibilities and that has easy access to drugs and alcohol will make these teenagers violent.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a slippery slope since even if the community has easy access to drugs, it doesn’t necessarily mean that all teenagers will follow this choice and start doing drugs.
On most interviews that I've watched, people(politicians) always tend to fall for the Strawman fallacy. I think it's pretty natural though, nobody likes to look as if he's mistaken or wrong. As a result, the speaker looks for loopholes inside the other speaker's words and focuses on it, even if it is irrelevant to the topic of the debate. Then continues to go round and round over it until the other speaker gets bored and angry, and eventually moves from that point that created the dispute. Which benefits the first speaker.
ReplyDeleteA common logical fallacy in our country is the one relating to weapons. "I have the right to have an RPG just because other people have them". This statement is an example of what some people say in Lebanon which is totally incorrect because the law states that only a selected group of people such as politician bodyguards or members of the army i.e. people who have a heavy weapons permit can have such items. Thus proving that the right to have a gun just because a lot of people have one is a logical fallacy.
ReplyDeleteLogical fallacies are arguments that may appear logical but are not.One fallacy that most people encounter a lot without necesarily knowing is called "The sweeping generalization". We usually encounter this fallacy while watching politicians on tv. The sweeping generalization fallacy consists of making false deductions about a specific claim or argument. I remember watching a couple years ago a repeat of the speech of George Bush before he sent his troops to Iraq, he indirectly said that because their was a terrorist presence in Iraq at that time it automatically means that the government and many innoscent Iraqi people are involved in illegal and terrorist activities. This is a completely false and illogical argument that should never have been said by anyone nevertheless the American president at that time. I believe everyone should become more familiar with the different fallacies in order to protect themselves from false and misleading arguments.
ReplyDeleteLogical fallacies hide the truth. Therefore, pointing them out is very useful. Appeal to the popular is one type of fallacy where one person tends to accept a position because the majority of people hold to it. So the person starts saying," The majority of people like soda. Therefore, soda is good. Everyone else is doing it. Why shouldn't I?" Such a fallacy makes the person repress his feeling of responsibility and blame the society for leading him to commit such negative actions. Such a fallacy can cause a serious dilemma in society. It should be treated before it is too late. If every single individual started denying his responsibility for his actions , the society will suffer from corruption. The denizens of such society will steal and harm the public safety under the fallacy of appeal to the popular.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteOne of the most logical fallacies I see on TV and especially in interviews is the ad hominem. In fact, last week i was watching "hayda hake" on MTV presented by Adel Karam. So Adel Karam showed us the photo of Ahlam wearing the same dress as Beyonce and said that she wasn't looking good at all in this dress. So instead of responding to his argument, Ahlam said later on twitter, that all what Adel Karam was saying was meaningless because he was nothing but jealous a person who hates gulf people.
ReplyDeleteLogical fallacies are often used in the media and it can lead to a lot of people being mislead because of illogical arguments. For example recently i was watching an interview with an Anti-Vaccination person who debated that with the increase in people being vaccinated the rate of people suffering from autism has been also rising, but in truth many studies have proved that these two are not related. This is a "False Cause" Logical Fallacy
ReplyDeleteThe main logical fallacy is basically what my argumentative essay was about. People don't take those with mental disorders seriously. Such as people suffering from depression, phobias etc. These issues lead to those who are suffering to develop a stigma and it just leads to worse cases.
ReplyDeleteLogical fallacies occur on a daily basis intentionally and unintentionally. When watching the film "Mean Girls" I noticed a lot of logical fallacies. One of them was when the character Karen Smith asked the new student Cady Heron "So if you're from Africa why are you white?" which is a bandwagon fallacy as Karen appealed to the popularity of the fact that African people have black skin, which is completely untrue, as an attempted form of validation.
ReplyDeleteLogical fallacies are nowadays heard on the news, on TV and even on the radio on daily basis. After knowing what a logical fallacy is, I noticed that they occur not only in a political interview or on the news, but also in entertaining shows.
ReplyDeleteBert and Ernie are two Muppets who appear together in numerous skits on the popular U.S. children’s television show “Sesame Street”. Originated by Frank Oz and Jim Henson, the characters are currently performed by Eric Jacobson and Steve Whitmire.
As a matter of fact, in one of the sketches I saw on TV from Sesame Street, Ernie provides an example of the post hoc fallacy.
Ernie thinks that by keeping a banana in his ear he will keep alligators away from Sesame Street. When Bart tells him there are no alligators, Ernie assumes illogically that the banana is what is keeping them away.
Logical fallacies ,psychologically speaking, are wicked techniques used by shrewd people to convince others and denounce the opposite opinion. In most of the times, an individual refers to such technique when he has no facts to condemn or refute a person or an idea. One famous type of fallacies is ad hominem. An ad hominem argument is one that is used to counter another argument ,but it is based on feelings and prejudice, rather than facts, reason and logic. Ad hominem is strongly present in political debates and courts. In a political debate, one politician might start degrading another politician during a political campaign when asked about a specific failure in one policy ,and disregard all his accomplishments.Moreover, lawyers tend to back up their points using ad hominem. As a matter of fact, a lawyer might attack a defendant’s character rather than addressing questions based on the case. For example, the lawyer might convict the defendant of theft due to his social status and level of poverty. Therefore, ad hominen was a weapon used by many to convince the public with wrong assumptions and lead to the suffering of many innocent people around the world.
ReplyDeleteA common example of the appeal to tradition fallacy I have come across many times is when a guy decides to become an engineer since it is a tradition that all men in his family become engineers.
ReplyDeleteA very common fallacy is generalization, especially towards Lebanese people. Such as people saying that "all Lebanese women have done plastic surgery" or "all Lebanese smoke hookah". This is not necessarily true, and sets a bad image to us Lebanese citizens as a whole.
ReplyDeleteLogical fallacies are found everywhere in media; in political debates, on the news, in TV shows, movies, and TV commercials also. For example, in an episode of “Friends”, Ross and Joey are fighting because of something Joey did so this latter says that technically he didn’t do anything wrong, and he insists on the word “technically” because he actually did something wrong. In this case the logical fallacy is called Equivocation, which is when a lie is given the appearance of truth or when the truth is misrepresented in a language, which is meant to confuse us.
ReplyDelete