Fallacies and Moral Arguments

Fallacies and Moral Arguments

Christian Nicole Giles

University of Arkansas at Little Rock

Abstract

People encounter logical fallacies on a daily basis. Every time we turn on a TV, or a radio, or pick up a newspaper, we see or hear fallacies. Fallacies are part of everyday and become staple in certain aspects of life. Political campaigns and reporters would be lost without the use of fallacies. This paper will discuss three common logical fallacies. Each fallacy will be explained to the significance of each pertaining to Critical Thinking, and how decision making is applied

Fallacies and Moral Arguments

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica (2006), logical fallacy is defined as “erroneous reasoning that has the appearance of soundness.”  When we think about making decisions, most people believe that they are making logical decisions. A critical thinker should be able to determine a rational decision based on the facts given rather than emotions or “erroneous reasoning.” Bassham, Irwin, Nardone and Wallace (2002) say that fallacies, which are arguments that contain mistakes in reasoning, fall into two groups. The first group, fallacies of relevance occurs because the premises are irrelevant to the conclusion. Fallacies of insufficient evidence do not provide sufficient evidence to support the conclusion although the premises is logically relevant.

Appeal to Authority

This fallacy occurs when a person is presented as an authority on a specific subject while making a claim about that subject. The person whom appears to be an authority, is often taken for granted that the claim must be true. People generally accept a claim as true without there being adequate evidence to do so. However, those people are accepting the claim because they erroneously believe that the person making the claim is a legitimate expert and hence that the claim is reasonable to accept (Labossiere, 1995).

All the appeals to authority are not fallacious. For one to determine if the appeal is a good or bad one, certain things must be considered. Is the person a legitimate expert with experience in the area of the claim? Other experts, do they generally agree? The answers to these questions my help determine the truth. For example: In the June, 2005 issue of Popular Science Magazine, an advertisement for The Sleep Number Bed appeared. This advertisement had a picture of a famous actress with her signature standing next to the bed. The advertisement is merely trying to convince the consumer to rely on the reputation of a famous actress as the reason to buy the bed. The appearance of the actress in the advertisement is unnecessary and does not validate any reasons to buy the bed,

“We commit the fallacy of hasty generalization when we draw a general conclusion from a sample that is biased or too small” (Bassham et al., 2002). The following is an article that gives a good example of a hasty generalization. Windows only users have no idea what they’re missing and are not inclined to do “test” to see if they really like Mas OS X. A great point is made pertaining to generalization by simply stating, “Windows-only users have no idea what they are missing) (Jack, 2005). There is no information supporting to prove that they don’t know what they are missing. He makes another generalization statement, “And we all know what happens once someone really given Mac OS X a try- Windows quickly falls by the wayside.

        The author assumes everyone that tries Mac OS X, will find it to be superior to Windows and will eventually stop using Windows. Both statements may be true but, there is no evidence or any other data that would suggests these things are true.

        The last fallacy is the questionable cause fallacy. The questionable cause fallacy occurs because an error in reasoning concludes that one thing causes another error because they are associated with one another. For example: Hassan Lami was herding some sheep to a city lot to graze when six masked men, using guns with silencers, shot him more than 30 times. As far as what can be determined, the just married 20 year old was killed that July morning because he was a Shiite Muslim (Rubin, 2005). The author of the article assumes the reason this man was shot was solely because of his religion. The reason identified is based on insufficient evidence to prove that this is the reason the man was shot. “The key to avoiding the questionable cause fallacy is to take due care in drawing casual conclusion. This does require taking the steps to adequately investigate the phenomena in question as well as using the proper methods of careful investigation” (Labossiere, 1995).