“Thou shall not Commit Logical Fallacies”
Logical fallacies are tricks and illusions of thought. They are often very sneakily used by politicians and the media to fool people into thinking in a specific way. There are a lot of ways that people make terrible and invalid arguments. Making a good argument is about using logic to prove a conclusion based on some given facts. In a valid argument, the conclusion actually does follow from the facts. Unfortunately, this can go wrong in many ways. Facts don 't always support conclusions in the way an argument 's author thinks he does. Those not versed in logic are blissfully unaware of how much our brain messes up the most basic of arguments, leading to the mess of random thoughts, white lies, misinformation,
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It is the bread and butter of political discourse throughout the world. The president uses it here to justify his executive actions. He freely admits that he doesn 't know whether or not the actions he is taking will cure the problem he is addressing, but he says that something must be done, so his executive actions are thus required. This is how many advocates for gun control like to frame the debate, because if something must be done, then they 're the good guys for proposing something, even if its benefit is …show more content…
Social media has become ever-present—which means there are more worldwide debates happening on different issues today than at any time in the past. A journalist suggests, “Because politicians and their campaign managers realize emotions often trump logic, they use numerous illogical and unpersuasive fallacies to appeal to the masses“(Campbell). Indeed, the most commonly found fallacy on Internet conversations is the appeal of emotion. For example, which do you think is the more important issue in India at present: rape or road deaths? According to the United Nations office on drugs and crime, the number of rapes per 100,000 people is 2 (UN). And according to a government research, the number of road deaths per 100,000 motor vehicles is 212 victims (Road accidents). Although the data implies the answer, some will still reply to the question with “rape”—which is an example of how emotionally susceptible we are as a species. A rape case is a story. A road accident is a number. Rape stories appeal to the public more than accidental road deaths. The media doesn’t report road deaths; there are too many of them to keep track of. Also, a headline that says “rape” would attract way more attention than a headline that says “accidental road
398).It is also stated that news divisions reduced their costs, and raised the entertainment factor of the broadcasts put on air. (p. 400). Secondly, the media determines its sources for stories by putting the best journalists on the case and assign them to areas where news worthy stories just emanates. (p.400). Third, the media decides how to present the news by taking the most controversial or relevant events and compressing them into 30 second sound-bites. (p.402). finally, the authors also explain how the media affects the general public. The authors’ state “The effect of one news story on public opinion may be trivial but the cumulative effect of dozens of news stories may be important. This shows a direct correlation between public opinions and what the media may find “relevant”. (Edwards, Wattenberg, Lineberry, 2015, p.
A straw man fallacy, in its most lucid form, is executed when a person not only disregards an opponent’s counterarguments, but also distorts them into exaggerated versions of themselves in the interest of making them easier to refute. In many cases, the adversary’s arguments are skewed to such a severe point that they wind up being completely different than what the adversaries were actually fighting for; however, this is all for the convenience of the proponent. An innumerable amount of politicians and authors are infamous for using this problematic method of disproving opposing arguments, even notable celebrities like George W. Bush. The straw man method of persuasion is a proficient way to make a personal stance sound factual, but it
Our nation is plagued with problems, and we look to one man to solve them all, president Barack Obama. He plans to solve these in his address to the United Nations General Assembly given on September 24, 2014 in New York City. President Obama gave this speech in response to major issues that were taking place at that time. Some of the issues he talked about were Ebola, which was a deadly disease running rampant through West Africa, the conflict in Ukraine having to do with Russia, and the issue of ISIL terrorist groups. Obama talks about all of these issues to bring up one major goal of this argument. The goal is for the international community to come together to sort out and overcome the problems. He tackles two questions in this argument, “whether the nations here today will be able to renew the purpose of the UN’s founding; and
Therefore, I try to figure out a connection between those political controversy and human’s behavior. I don’t actually think different opinions are scary at all because speech is the right bestowed by the first amendment and what determines who we are. But by showing how misleading words can be through Planned Parenthood issue, I want to use this research to emphasize how important it is for an audience to think critically when faced with controversy and dissenting voices.
There are many times in life people use fallacies but do not recognize it. Fallacies are arguments that use poor reasoning. Some fallacies are devoted deliberately to manipulate or persuade by deception. Then there are other fallacies that are unintentionally due to carelessness or obliviousness. “Strictly speaking, it refers only to the transition from a set of premises to a conclusion, and is distinguished from falsity, a value attributed to a single statement. (The Columbia Encyclopedia)” Three fallacies in thinking are hasty generalizations, post hoc, and contradictory premises.
During the first week of class, we discussed informal fallacies. An informal fallacy is defined as a logical mistake. Five of the informal fallacies discussed were equivocation, ad hominem, straw man, appeal to authority, and secundum. Each of these fallacies is comparable to what happens in everyday life conversations. Through analyzing, one should be able to determine how these logical mistakes connect with our everyday lives.
Fallacies, in terms of logic, are forms of flawed thinking. They are obstacles—weeds in the garden of the mind, which can be difficult to distinguish from the plants if not closely observed. The nature of fallacies falls in with our nature as human beings—they do not like to be discovered and plucked any more than we like to be the ones to admit that we are incorrect. Accepting responsibility for our actions, and in this case fallacies in our thinking, is the first step to change. Thus, if we can overcome our human pride and admit our flaws to ourselves, we are then empowered to correct them. Therein lies the value of examining these fallacies, which is an important component of studying critical thinking.
Many turn to social or media throughout their day to gain insight on activities and event that is going on in the world. The media does not have to report the truth so individuals may gain untruthful information and a cloudy perception. Individuals tend to turn to the media to gain an opinion about someone or something.
In the world today, logical fallacies pertain to an immense amount of current society issues. Whether it be personal attacks, racism, or peer pressure logical fallacies are noticeable in many of todays’ global issues.
Without knowing what they are people use them, are exposed to them, and hear them every day. I, myself did not know what logical fallacies were until this class, although after learning about them knew what they were all along. There is many types of logical fallacies out there. Some types are: The Ad Hominem-which is essentially a name calling type of argument where one choses to pick at the person involved rather than the argument itself, An Appeal to Authority- which is having someone well known or famous advocate for something so others with buy it or test it, and An Appeal to Emotion- where someone or something pulls at ones emotions whether it be sad, happy or angry to get the person(s) to do what they want or need them to do. I never knew these types of “arguments or pleas for help” had an actual name being Logical Fallacies, until this
The president can use his executive power to issue rules, regulations, and instructions, that are binding, yet do not require legislative approval. This use of executive power will allow President Obama to “do an end-run around the impasse created by congressional Republicans who…block virtually any controversial legislation.” By altering their current path the Obama administration can focus on renovating current housing polices, allowing homeowners to refinance their homes and avoiding massive foreclosure. This "we can't wait" initiative will also focus on making changes to college loan policies, in order to ease graduating students concerns with repaying federal loans and provide hope for potential students considering college. As the incumbent candidate, President Obama’s "we can't wait" initiative, will “allow him to actually put into effect real changes as opposed to merely proposing them.” These changes will allow the President to campaign against the GOP candidates, in the 2012 election, “by contrasting his specific policy changes against” their “lack of any policies other than to stand by and watch.”
Naturally, journalism would spill over to the Internet and as social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook grew in popularity, so did regular citizens involvement with sharing news. The argument can be made that the explosion of social media journalism was due to frustration from the lack of coverage of news that mattered to society. For example, the lack of subjective coverage of Michael Brown 's death helped with the creation of #BlackLivesMatter and spread of news related to African-American’s and other minorities across the country. After all, journalism is supposed to be a public forum. Millions of people on Twitter share their thoughts and opinions on several topics, furthering the conversation and to some degree challenging society. Things such as “Moments” on Twitter provide us with direct links and summaries to the world’s most important stories and encourage a conversation. According to journalism.org, 63% of users on Twitter and Facebook get their news from these websites. Even more eye opening is that 59% of users on Twitter keep up to date with news stories via Twitter while they are in the process of happening.[3] The rise of social media related journalism has caused some issues however. “Inevitably, as citizen involvement grows, more of our media culture is concerned with talking about news, instead of focusing on original reporting and the vetting of it.”[4] Because the general public has the ability to post as they wish and pass it off as news, it has affected the accuracy of many reports. Many stories lack reputable sources but are shared between millions as an accurate and true story. There are several websites designed to spread inaccurate information. The website www.fakenewswatch.com exists to inform people of these sites in order to avoid mishaps. Recently a Connecticut mom went viral for being involved in an online hoax
In today’s society, fallacies are all around us either in politics, television, radio or even picking up an old fashion newspaper. They can be misleading and may cause bad judgement if they are not evaluated property. Some can even fool you because the argument may have a valid point, but the point does not lead to the correct conclusion.
The purpose of this essay is to develop a further understanding of the impacts of social media in regards to the political debate. By looking at the topic of social media and the use rhetoric in response to politics in the 21st century, a deeper understanding of the issue can be established. Social media has become a primary source for the discussion of politics by the average citizen; whether through the sharing of articles, “memes”, advertisements or personal expository statements. As a result, large sums of information and ideas are spread rapidly to a wide variety of subjects. However, much of this information may not be accurate and could be misinterpreted. Consequently potentially misinformed citizens may not be able to make a properly
In society, social media seems to be the birthplace of most fake news. “ It makes everyone look bad when outlets fall for fake bait. Over the holidays, a heartwarming story about a Santa Claus who visited a child’s deathbed went viral. Three days later, the Knoxville News Sentinel, which originally published the story, retracted it, but not before it had spread to CNN, Fox, USA Today and more.” (Borcel). This quote not only provides evidence, of how harmful fake news is, but how believable the story was and how even news outlets like CNN fell for the false article. Lies and misinformation have been around for a very long time but recently, lies about serious topics, otherwise known as fake news, have snaked their way into social media, advertising, and potentially influenced our most recent election (Wendling). The speed in which the news passed along, was caused because of the way people interact with social media. Fake news workers recruit people called trolls, which are someone paid to go onto social media networks and websites and repeatedly hashtag or spread the news about a certain thing that actually false. These articles, are typically bias, and attempt to change people’s view point based on one topic, such as the election (Timberg). In short, there are many things that revolve around it, which can be very misleading, but by taking the correct safety