When I studied Philosophy 101, this was the book we were assigned first of all: The Republic. The course was structured as a chronological tour through Western Philosophy, unlike ones I’ve seen and taught since. 

Plato’s Republic is a bit of a misnomer; the title could be be better defined as “state” or “society”. What makes for a good society? How should it be run, and who should run it? And what will make it a just society? It features great examples of Plato’s dialectical method — discussing and unpacking ideas and concepts, encouraging argument amongst characters and debate as an exercise in thinking. How well do ideas about the world stand up under question? 

In this creation of the ideal society, he draws upon his era, where divisions in Ancient Greece between the wealthy and the poor led to civil unrest. With leaders who were extremely wealthy and self-interested, he was able to observe and propose a solution to poor governance. The result is not unlike a team-player attitude to politics; public education for everyone (men and women), creating citizens who were committed to common goals, encouraged to do well at what they were good at and creating “philosophy kings” or leaders who were public-minded and wise. How well that stands up as a proposal is something that has been debated since, and as Plato and his characters such as Socrates, Cephalus and Polemarchus demonstrate — such debates are good for encouraging and improving our thinking.

While later in my schooling I had the opportunity to be in a dramatic production of Apology, The Republic remains with me as his most powerful work and it is certainly his most popular.

Further Resources:

Plato’s Republic — the text

Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy — Plato’s Republic

Hegel and Plato

Patreon supporters get an extra exercise sheet on fallacies today — join up at www.patreon.com/kyliesturgess.

Formal Fallacy

This is when you have an invalid form of an argument, where the premises can be true — but the conclusion might not. And even if the conclusion does turn out to be true, it won’t have been reached reliably. Remember! An argument is valid if the conclusion follows directly from the premises and could not be false if the premises were assumed true.

Formal logic is structured, and so when we have formal fallacies, it’s about intra-argument errors and inconsistencies in the structure. In fact, you can even represent the sentences with letters and key logical terms (such as “if-then”, “iif”, “and”) to map out where the argument goes awry.

For example, the fallacy of affirming the consequent, or converse error:

If A — then B
B is true.
Therefore A is true.

(“If my computer breaks, I can’t write my homework. I can’t write my homework; therefore, my computer must be broken”).

Informal Fallacy

This is any other type of flawed argument other than a formal fallacy — they’re more mistakes we can make, even though they can be valid in their logical structure.

For example, the slippery slope fallacy. It’s where the argument involves claiming there’s going to be a ‘domino effect’ if a certain step or occurrence happens. 

The internet meme “Well, that esculated quickly!” is one simple way to remember it!

Here’s a great cartoon that demonstrates the absurdity of this particular informal fallacy, from the Book of Bad Arguments. It’s a great book for taking an animated look through arguments — and a useful resource for learning philosophy in a creative way. An interview with the creator, Ali Almossawi, can be found here. 

To further the resources that you can seek out online, here’s a few suggested videos that you can view and use for revising “introduction to arguments and fallacies”. Tomorrow for my Patreon supporters (you can join by heading to the blog) I’ll be posting some more content on fallacies with exercises to do.

Firstly, I’d recommend checking out the Australian TechNyouvids, which has a great summary of arguments, fallacies and more; TechNyou is a free information service to help raise awareness about emerging technologies and associated issues. Here’s an example of one on straw man fallacies.

There’s also the Idea Channel, which has a great little series — that you can apply in all sorts of circumstances.

Finally, something that I think helps keep philosophy learning relevant… real-world, current examples. The TeachArgument YouTube channel has a great example of that, using current politics to demonstrate fallacies.

I’m also posting a link to a compilation I’ve used, fallacies in advertising and it’s entirely possible there’s more compilations like this out there.

Have you found any video series that encourage you to learn philosophy? Let me know in the comments any recommendations you have.

It seems odd not to point out one of the more modern avenues to learning about philosophy, on a podcast about philosophy… and that is, other podcasts you might like to check out!

Since this week has started looking at fallacies and arguments, there’s a number of podcasts that have investigated logical fallacies — here’s a few that you might like to check out:

Some other recommendations:

Do you have particular radio shows or podcasts you use to get into critical thinking? Let me know in the comments at www.365daysofphilosophy.com.

This week I’m recommending Nigel Warburton’s A Little History of Philosophy — published in 2011 and is still easy enough to find today. It’s one of his most popular books, and it’s not difficult to see why. It’s a great journey through Western Philosophy with an equal helping throughout of the classics through to modern times. Even the chapter headings have a sense of humour (“Is The Present King of France Bald?” for Bertrand Russell, for example).

There’s forty chapters, fifty-two philosophers and a variety of topics covered within those chapters. Kant gets two chapters, and it does include women philosophers, which has always been something that has irked me about many introductory texts (after all, it’s fine to have Sophie running around learning Philosophy, but she should have more women role models for her to engage with!).

In saying that, it must have been difficult for Warburton to select which ones to include or leave out, and I like the fact that there’s a few philosophers who are not as well known, especially post-1900s. I’d recommend this book on the basis of the examples and the range, but you may have noticed that I said ‘journey through Western Philosophy’, which is something that is a problem with pretty much all introductory texts on the subject.

Overall, this is a book I’ve recommended to students (and I’ve given away about four copies to people interested in the subject!) because it is accessible and thought-provoking — whether it’s Schopenhauer and the old lady or Phillipa Foot’s questioning of the trolley car problem, A Little History of Philosophy stretches the reader beyond a Wikipedia entry when learning dates and key concepts, and does so with a light heart and love for the subject.

What introductory philosophy books do you enjoy? Let me know in the comments, and consider supporting the series (and get bonus content) at www.patreon.com/kyliesturgess.

When Looking At Arguments:

1) Are the reasons true?

2) Does the conclusion/s follow from those reasons — is the inference good?

If: 1 and 2 = cogent / sound. Which means we can be convinced by it.

NB: arguments are not true or false — they are only sound or unsound [as ‘un-cogent’ isn’t a word!]

Therefore:

Weak validity — Slightly likely. Inferences are unacceptable, but at least the reasons are relevant to the conclusion. In a weak argument, even if the reasons were true, the conclusion would only be slightly more likely as a result. ‘The rooster crowed yesterday, it rained yesterday, therefore it will rain today because the rooster crowed today’. [Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy!]

Moderate validity — Fairly likely. If the reasons are true, then it is fairly likely (although not inevitable) that the conclusion will be true too. Some support, but not strong support. ‘Australia did well at the last Olympics, therefore they’ll do well at the next Olympics’.

Strong validity — very likely. Where the reasons are almost conclusive. ‘The price of wool is falling, while the demand for wool is rising — therefore wool prices will start to increase’.

Deductively valid — must necessarily follow. Where there’s no question as to the result — ‘He has often lied to me, therefore he is not a completely honest person.’

The straw man fallacy works like this:

Another way of putting it is:

Imagine that you have two figures in front of you. One is a statue made from marble; the other is a scarecrow made from bits of sack and made of straw. The state is a very good representation of the human figure; the scarecrow sags and droops and has a carrot for a nose. You knock it over with your hand because it is an easy target and it is useless. Poor scarecrow! This what happens in straw man arguments.

Some clues to help spot a straw man fallacy:

They have not committed ad hominem, because they have not attacked a person’s character, honesty, integrity and so on.

Exercises: identify if / where straw man fallacies have occurred in the following examples.

1. Prof. Jones: “The university just cut our yearly budget by $10,000.”
Prof. Smith: “What are we going to do?”
Prof. Brown: “I think we should eliminate one of the teaching assistant positions. That would take care of it.”
Prof. Jones: “We could reduce our scheduled raises instead.”
Prof. Brown: ” I can’t understand why you want to bleed us dry like that, Jones.”

2. Prof Anna: “Evolution has been the main engine of speciation throughout natural history, from mice to elephants.”
Prof Nanna: “Evolution is false! How could a mouse evolve into an elephant? There would have to be billions of changes for that to occur, and nobody has ever seen speciation anyway! So it’s silly…who has ever seen a mouse evolve into an elephant? Nobody! Therefore, evolution must be false!”

3. Child: “Can we get a dog?”
Parent: “No.”
Child: “It would protect us.”
Parent: “Still, no, as I am allergic.”
Child: “An allergy to not being robbed? Why do you want to leave us and our house unprotected?”

When creating arguments, it is possible to produce fallacies. Generally a fallacy is considered to be a mistake, a bad argument, or even a deceptive or misleading one. It would be more accurate to consider a fallacy as a flaw in the argument that makes it invalid or unsound.
 
 When we talk about soundness (or cogency), we mean that an argument must be both:

For instance, a classic example is:

All men are mortal.
 Socrates is a man.
 Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

The argument is valid (as the conclusion is true based on the premises — that is, that the conclusion follows the premises) and since the premises are in fact true, the argument is therefore sound / cogent.

Here’s an example of an invalid argument:

All men are mortal.
 Socrates is a man.
 All men are Socrates.

While the premises are true, the conclusion doesn’t follow — making it invalid (and it’s also a fallacy called a non sequitur, as the conclusion does not follow logically from the premises used to support it).

Here’s another example that has become popular (you can find the original cartoon by Randy Glasbergen here):

Penguins are black and white
Some old TV shows are black and white
Therefore, some penguins are old TV shows

For the rest of the week, I’ll go through a number of logical fallacies, including videos and audio links for additional resources. As always, subscribe to the podcast and blogposts by visiting 365daysofphilosophy.com. If you’d like more exercises and bonus content, visit www.patreon.com/kyliesturgess.

This episode collects all the podcasts on arguments into one ten-minute show - for an additional worksheet on argument structures, subscribe to www.patreon.com/kyliesturgess.

In short, arguments are sets of statements, one of which is intended as a conclusion. The rest are offered in support of the conclusion; these are called premises.

The conclusion is the claim that you are trying to establish when making the argument. The premises are offered as reasons or evidence for the truth of the conclusion.

Not all arguments are equally strong or convincing — as you can see!

How to recognise an argument — what point is the author or speaker trying to make? That identifies the potential conclusion. Then, have a look at what support (or intended support) the author or speaker provided for that point or claim — and that will help you find the premises.

Recognizing arguments is often made easier by the author’s or speaker’s use of indicator words. They frequently appear in arguments; however, even if we find no indicator word/s in a passage, we should still try to figure out whether it contains an argument.

There’s many things we might confuse for arguments — reports, imperative sentences, statements of belief or opinion, descriptions or explanations. Be wary of emotionally appealing phrases or blanket statements, as they may be confused for premises.

There may be use of humour, fear or exaggeration to encourage people to accept arguments — watch out for those too! We’ll discuss fallacies next week.

Tomorrow — some exercises on arguments that are available to Patreon supporters — for as little as $1 a week, you can have access to that material and more, as well as support this podcast.