365 Days of Philosophy

365DaysOfPhilosophy 183 — Fallacies Revision

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Early on in the year, I introduced a number of fallacies, and before investigating arguments further, here’s some revision and exercises for the first five:

Weasel words, slippery slope, appeal to authority, argument from ignorance, shifting the goalposts/special pleading.

After revising the definitions in those links, try identifying the fallacies in these statements — more exercises for Patreon supporters at https://www.patreon.com/kyliesturgess.

  1. Maybe the evidence for cheating has has been found, but until the office for academic conduct formally says that there’s a problem with cheating, we can’t say that there’s cheating going on at all.
  2. You should not gamble — Einstein himself said that God doesn’t play dice with the universe, so neither should human beings.
  3. Anyone who votes for him will soon discover that his policies aren’t just about taxes, but also about employment and then they’ll lose jobs and money faster than they think.
  4. The majority of voters think that it’s a good idea to impose martial law.
  5. It’s not certain if there’s a policy about taxes — so we’ll have to assume that there will be and it won’t be a good one.
  6. She’s the best singer in the band and the band says so — therefore, she’s the best singer there is for the band.
  7. These cuts to funding are beneficial additions to the community’s growth and should be viewed as such.
  8. While everyone is thinking about climate change —  we’ve got communities that are under threat due to mining and forestry industry closures.
  9. Until there’s evidence that there’s no cheese on the moon, we cannot conclude that there’s no cheese at all on the moon!
  10. At some point there’s going to be questions about the furniture, and then there’ll be criticism about the carpet so we might as well not buy the house at all.

    11. Answers on tomorrow’s show! Leave your answers in the comments.

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    365 Days of PhilosophyBy Kylie Sturgess