57
votes
Accepted
What fallacy in Pascal's Wager allows replacing God with the devil?
This is not the only issue with Pascal's Wager, but what is described in the question is called the fallacy of proving too much. It happens when an argument is structured in such a way that the ...
- 42.5k
46
votes
Why doesn't philosophy have higher standards for its arguments?
Do you have a proof that we don't hold ourselves to higher standards?
There's actually a rather interesting little corner of mathematics called "proof theory." It deals with the question of what a ...
- 17.5k
41
votes
What is this logical fallacy? (Nothing new under the sun?)
Its a funny thing. Like David Blomstrom, I don't think this is actually a fallacy.
The trick is that, in order to have a logical fallacy, one must have a logical argument. This consists of premises ...
- 17.5k
36
votes
Is reductio ad absurdum a fallacy?
Reductio ad absurdum is not a fallacy. Rather, RAA is correct reasoning that exposes a fallacy. From the Logically Fallacious page for it:
[RAA is a] mode of argumentation or a form of argument in ...
- 6,110
36
votes
Is reductio ad absurdum a fallacy?
Your example is not a valid case of Reductio ad Absurdum. It's just an example of an absurd argument.
A real example would be:
Miles: "Copying a DVD is stealing"
Frank: "Why?"
Miles: "If ...
- 511
34
votes
What fallacy is assuming something is the case because of past events
This is not a fallacy, just the old problem of induction. A case of hasty generalisation would be to conclude that the witness tends to lie, if you have observed it two times in a row.
- 1,008
33
votes
What fallacy is assuming something is the case because of past events
All informal fallacies take their force from their similarity to strong arguments. In this case, if you say "This boy lied 19 days in a row, therefore we have good reason to disbelieve him on Day 20,"...
- 27k
32
votes
Is there a name for this fallacy when someone says something is good by only pointing out the good things?
The specific fallacy is cherry picking evidence to support a conclusion.
This is one of the most common fallacies committed by people with actual intention to be rational and is based on the invalid ...
- 10.5k
23
votes
Is it a fallacy to say that a sane person cannot apply rational thought to the motivations of the insane?
The second premise is false unless "heinous crime" and "insane" are defined to make it true by definition, in which case the definitions are question begging. But because people committing heinous ...
- 42.5k
22
votes
Accepted
Why bother with anything else besides Aristotle's syllogistic logic?
Aristotle's syllogistic logic is too weak for serious work.
It does not readily express multi-place predicates. You cannot express two-place relations like, "John loves Mary", or three-...
- 22.8k
22
votes
Dawkins on God: What are the strongest counters to his argument?
Since philosophers don't tend to comment on his argument, one can only speculate about why they don't, but the most likely answer is that it is a bad argument which was already addressed early in the ...
- 7,444
22
votes
Does a counterargument exist to the claim "Too much diversity is a problem/cannot be controlled"?
Sigh...
The notion of 'diversity' only makes sense from an ethno-nationalist perspective of mono-ethnicity. Sure, if everyone is just like the collective 'me' governmental problems decrease ...
- 18.5k
22
votes
What is this "going to the other extreme to make it look stupid to prove something"?
This is an invalid (although very informal) reduction to absurdity: the interlocutor is contesting the claim by contending that, if the claim is accepted, an obviously false result logically follows. ...
- 3,400
21
votes
Accepted
Is rejecting A not equivalent to accepting ~A?
"Belief" is a modality; thus, you are right in saying that "do not believe P" is not equivalent to "to believe not-P".
Compare with possibly and necessary :
The operator ◊ (for ‘possibly’) can be ...
- 36.1k
21
votes
Is reductio ad absurdum a fallacy?
Frank’s argument is not a reductio. It is an argument from analogy, which is not deductive reasoning and needs to be evaluated differently
(Mark’s answer adequately covers the fact that reductio is ...
- 5,257
19
votes
Why doesn't philosophy have higher standards for its arguments?
If I'm understanding your question correctly, then you're basically asking "why doesn't philosophy have the same level of rigor as mathematical proof?"
I think there's two parts involved in ...
- 24.6k
18
votes
What fallacy is assuming something is the case because of past events
I think I found something that comes close:
Appeal to probability (Wikipedia)
An appeal to probability (or appeal to possibility) is the logical fallacy of taking something for granted because it ...
- 461
17
votes
Is it a fallacy to say that a sane person cannot apply rational thought to the motivations of the insane?
I think the fallacy is something along the lines of:
Because we cannot provably apply rational thought to what motivates every insane person, every time, we can never apply rational thought to the ...
- 17.5k
17
votes
What kind of a logical fallacy is giving an example from the past - in order to justify present unjustice?
This is called an Appeal to tradition.
Wikipedia states
Appeal to tradition (also known as argumentum ad antiquitatem or argumentum ad antiquitam, appeal to antiquity, or appeal to common practice) ...
- 332
17
votes
What are philosophical arguments for the position that Intelligent Design is nothing but "Creationism in disguise"?
Did the court of the law that judged ID to be creationism in disguise employ philosophical arguments to come to that conclusion? ... More generally, are there philosophical arguments for the position ...
- 22.7k
16
votes
What are philosophical arguments for the position that Intelligent Design is nothing but "Creationism in disguise"?
Reasonnably, you can make a philosophical argument that creationism and intelligent design are close from each other and overlap, or point at the flaws of intelligent design that make it a ...
- 5,126
15
votes
What fallacy in Pascal's Wager allows replacing God with the devil?
I don't think we can categorize it under a single fallacy. Furthermore...why would we want to? We'd have to explain our reasoning anyway.
What we do instead is simply look for the premises of the ...
- 1,875
14
votes
What fallacy in Pascal's Wager allows replacing God with the devil?
The questioner believes that Pascal must be committing a fallacy since he reasons that Pascal's reasoning can be applied to other cases, e.g., to show the existence of Black Magic or Satan. The ...
- 3,657
14
votes
Why doesn't philosophy have higher standards for its arguments?
Philosophical theories are more like scientific theories than mathematical theories, in that they have empirical content. As such, there aren't any (universally agreed upon) "first principles" that ...
- 3,784
13
votes
Does a counterargument exist to the claim "Too much diversity is a problem/cannot be controlled"?
The counter argument is that a more diverse government is more representative. If your prime objective is to streamline decision making, then replace the elected government with a dictatorship so that ...
- 13k
12
votes
Accepted
Why do people who subscribe to self-refuting skeptical philosophies still argue with others?
Your position would be reasonable against the kind of absolute relativists and radical skeptics that you describe. Unfortunately, those are only convenient straw men that are easy to refute, which is ...
- 42.5k
12
votes
Is there a name for this fallacy when someone says something is good by only pointing out the good things?
Short Answer
What you seem to be interested in is not so much a fallacy, but is called paltering.
Long Answer
Is there a name for this fallacy when someone says something is good by only pointing out ...
- 22.7k
Only top scored, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible