Quote:
Originally Posted by Chessic Sense
I understand that, but logical fallacies are like math. There's a right answer and a wrong answer. Sure, it may be difficult to tell at times, but there's still only one answer, and when it's pointed out, everyone should be able to agree.
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Unless you are talking about arguments that are set out formally in some standardized notational format (and, on this board, we never are), this simply is not true. When dealing with informal arguments made in ordinary language, the hard part is in agreeing how they should be formalized. That is an art rather than a science. There is usually more than one plausible answer to formalize something, and only after doing that can you truly get "mathematically" precise about what, if any fallacies there might be.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chessic Sense
If the implicit premise is "the moon is made of cheese," then it's an entirely different fallacy than if it's "if there are worse violations, cops should not enforce lesser laws." The OP doesn't tell us what the implicit premises are, and that's the problem here.
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Quite so. As I said, informal arguments (of any substance)
almost always involve implicit premises. Sometimes, yes, there will be fallacies, depending on what those implicit premises are. It is probably much more common, however, for an argument to produce a false conclusion not because of any fallacy, but because one or more of the premises (most likely one of the implicit ones) is simply false.
The Moon is made of cheese.
Cheese is edible.
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Therefore, the Moon is edible.
There is no fallacy there. It is a valid argument, but unsound because it has a false premise.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Chessic Sense
If you want a factual answer about fallacies, then you can't leave anything implied.
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Indeed, which is why attempts to criticize informal arguments, such as those common in everyday prose and conversation, in terms of what fallacies they might have committed, is usually a waste of time, and comes down to opinions, often based on different people's guesses as to what the implicit premises might be.
Some of the people around here seem to have an exaggerated faith in the usefulness of a knowledge of logical fallacies. People keep posting GQ threads along the lines of "What is the fallacy in this argument (whose conclusion I do not like)?" Generally the only right answer is "It is impossible to tell for certain if there is a fallacy in this informal argument, or, if there is one, which it might be. However, most probably there is not one. It does not follow from that, however, that you must accept the conclusion that you do not like. Very possibly there is an implicit premise that is false." Unfortunately, however, the threads usually consist mainly in people providing speculative (and often widely varying) opinions about what fallacy might have been implicitly committed.
06-19-2012, 10:46 AM
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