Ways to recognize irrationality and bad reasoning in discussion, criticism and debate
We engage in arguments on social media at various times. Most of the time in these arguments both sides are seen to apply irrationality. There are many misconceptions that seem like a good argument in general but if you think about it well, you can catch their weakness. Fallacy is the use of such erroneous, nonsensical words or the use of wrong steps in argument. There are two types of misconceptions.
One is false but popular belief and the other is to fool the opponent by cleverly applying bad arguments. Academic writers and researchers, however, emphasize the second idea.
Identifying and avoiding fallacies is a sign of prudence. This knowledge is a great weapon to avoid the most tempting missteps when applying reasoning. From Aristotle to nineteenth-century rationalists Richard Whitley and John Stuart Mill all agreed.
In the modern age, heterosexuality is seen to be mainly divided into two parts; As formal and informal fallacy. Formal fallacies are deficiencies that can be identified by looking at their structure. That is, they do not fall within the framework of any established argument. Informal fallacies, on the other hand, provide a framework of reasoning but weak or erroneous communication is established between their proposition and conclusion. Many times the proposal part itself is caught as wrong.
Our main discussion is about some major fallacies.
Two books are considered to be the focus of Hettabhas' discussion: Aristotle's Sophisticated Refutations and John Locke's Anne Concerning Human Understanding. Irving Copy from these two books in 1971 discusses eighteen fallacies in his book Introduction to Logic. These fallacies are found much more in our daily debates.
*Equivocation / ambiguity
‘Equivocation’ is a type of fallacy in which an indefinite or ambiguous word, sentence is used in its own sense one by one to its advantage. Thus a wrong conclusion is drawn. Example:
The end of life is death.
Happiness is the end of life.
So, death means happiness.
Here, in the first sentence, ‘end of life’ literally means ‘farewell to life’. In the second sentence, the purpose of life is explained with the same phrase. Thus two different meanings in two sentences have ruined the continuity of the argument.
*Falsehood of Amphiboli
‘Falsehood of Amphiboli’ is another kind of ambiguity. Here ambiguity is created through indefinite syntactic structure. Example:
Police were told not to stay on campus during the holidays.
Therefore, they are able to take action much faster than before in case of emergency during the holidays.
Grammatically the meaning of the first or preamble sentence can be determined in several ways. At the first reading, it seems that the police were forbidden to go to the campus. But reading the second sentence, it is clear that the police were told not to let others into the campus. If the proposition part is called in this sense then it is a fallacy because the proposition does not support the conclusion part.